Front-page Shop Items

I guess the girl wearing two strategically placed thin white bars is sitting on a flesh-colored cushion.

A thumbnail of a pan cel isn't all that small, you know. I have also been seeing one or two hentai cels every time I go to the front page. And going to the front page is the only way to see who has updated their blogs. Nothing against hentai (I'm an artist, I've seen plenty of nudity) or those who want to collect it, I tend not to find it esthetically pleasing myself. I see enough fugly, lumpy, hairy, or old men in real life. . . I don't really want to see them in anime, let alone naked. The tentacle hentai is enough to put me off of takoyaki, to be sure. I don't think it's unreasonable to place hentai cels where you have to make a choice to view them. And as others have pointed out, there may be legal repercussions if they are allowed to be viewed by anyone. The clever disclaimer at the bottom of the page may not shield the site, particularly if a moderator approved the posting.

Obviously without blurring the image, or placing something over the whole of the offensive area (which may be the entire image as far as some people are concerned), everyone is going to be able to see some of what's going on in the image. While you may not want to see hentai images on the front page of RS, we feel Cel Addict should have the right to advertise his items on the front page just like everyone else. Also, please keep in mind that while hentai may be offensive to some, other elements of anime (such as yaoi or yuri) may be very offensive to others depending upon their religious beliefs and/or cultural upbringing. Should we answer all complaints of decency? Any? None? Should anything at all be shown on the front page of RS? While we can certainly agree to an adult artwork "yes/no" implementation like what Mandarake uses - where people have to click prior to entering - that might be a bit hard to put into place on RS, where new items are being added every hour by dozens of different people. And before anyone gets all worked up, we know that the crux of the argument here is the "for sale" section of RS, but the legal ramifications of this discussion could extend far beyond that.

My point was if I, with a rather relaxed attitude toward nudity/sex, could be taken aback seeing hentai on the front page then how would an ordinary person react upon seeing it? But, since the powers that be didn't write anything to the contrary when setting up the RS shop people are free to post whatever they want to for sale. But this site is accessible to anyone, not just registered users. That's where you run into trouble. A registered user could expect to see anything at all on the front page, knowing what this site is about. Anyone else may not. There is a potential for trouble and turning a blind eye to the possibility won't make it go away.

And now, I am done caring about any of this. Carry on.

I find the yaoi and yuri to be offensive myself. Bring on more tentacles!

Some additional thoughts: 1. The majority of parental control software blocks entire sites by category of content, not specific image files. If Rubberslug is listed as "adult" or "mature"... it won't load at all. Any parental control software that claims to be able to filter specific images must rely on information embedded in the files themselves to analyze the images, and would therefore be extremely unreliable and potentially very easy to circumvent. 2. It would actually not be impossible to implement a feature like Mandarake has for choosing whether or not to view mature content. Dynamic sites like Rubberslug utilize this sort of code all the time to determine what is displayed on the site's pages. This, in fact, would be an excellent way to deal with this issue and make everyone happy. 3. There could be legal ramifications for Rubberslug because it does not attempt to determine the age of its users or non-users before displaying obviously adult content, no matter how well or not well censored the content is. 4. Some of the mature content shown here could easily be mistaken as depicting underage participants rather than adults, which would make the consequences even more severe.