New Feature: NSFW cover flag

Feature removed, see >108 timspalding:

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I've added flag for covers that are NSFW ("Not Safe for Work").

Note: The books and covers below ARE safe for work. I'v unfairly—but temporarily—accused these covers of being NSFW, to show off the feature. They are fine.

After that, consider yourself warned, including subsequent messages by me, and messages by other members.

Here's an example:


Here's an example in my recommendations:


Here's a link to some examples:
https://www.librarything.com/work/3919274/covers

Why:

A member brought some risque-to-pornographic covers to our attention. I believe they or others thought they were spam, but it seems that most or all are just erotic/pornographic zines. Of course, we delete spam, including pornographic spam. But LibraryThing is not going to remove images of real covers from real members' real collections.

Current Feature Details:

1. The flag works like other cover flags—multiple people need to vote to agree; updates happen overnight.
2. Only member-uploaded covers can be flagged.
3. The "NSFW" cover appears in work contexts. Book-level contexts, such as within a member's catalog, show the actual cover. Zooming to see cover details shows the original cover too.

Two features I am considering:

1. Applying the NSFW image wherever such images occur, but…
2. Giving members a way to opt out of the NSFW feature entirely.*

Standards?

LibraryThing has very few true pornographic covers. But troll through erotic fiction, collections of erotic photography and subgenres of manga and you'll find lots of highly sexual book covers. I would propose a standard no-exposed-genitalia rule, which is pretty much the rule for professionally published material. But I prefer if the LibraryThing community could agree on standards together. If you have opinions on that, put them here.

*Honestly, I wanted to do this right away, but the settings page is currently in disrepair while @conceptdawg works on the design, so it was hard to add it.

Okay. Fair enough. I have a few of those. I'll work on it in the next few days.

Wait: just flagging?

>1 timspalding: Thumbs up!

This is the first (proposed) LT feature I'd want to actively opt out of.

I'd opt out if I could so I hope you go with that eventually. Not because I have any books in my collections that are likely to get hit by this, but because the NSFW flagging feels too close to censuring for my taste.

Well, I don't know. At a quick glance I didn't see anything I'd flag in your library. For example, I don't think we should flag the alternate cover on "Ik Jan Cremer" (see https://www.librarything.com/work/175507/covers). But I'm open to discussion. No matter what, however, LibraryThing is committed to making it possible to see all covers, NSFW or not.

>4 paradoxosalpha: >5 PawsforThought:

I hear you, and agree. See note above. I'll make that possible soon.

Another consideration is, frankly, that Google, which we rely on for ads when you aren't signed in, has been sending me increasingly nasty notes about porn on LibraryThing--which invariably comes down to book covers. I'd like a way to flag those, so members can see whatever they want, but the default public view excludes them.

I'm sorry. It would help if I could actually mark my covers as such. I would gladly do so, but I'm not going to remove any of them.

>7 timspalding: Google, blergh. But I understand the need to keep the covers in question excluded from public view.

>8 Nicole_VanK: The NSFW flag is active now. If you click on the magnifying glass when viewing a book page, you see a link to Flag This Cover. If you click on that, you get the various flagging options, including NSFW.

I rather liked that when teachers signed whole classes of young children up you could ask if they really thought parents (all the parents) would want their children on a site with books like ...

>12 MarthaJeanne:

Yeah. LibraryThing is not for the under 13 crowd. But if you want to see porn online, LibraryThing is about the worst place to look :)

I notice that some of the most egregious manga porn has large parts blurred on Amazon, but members often upload the actual cover.

>1 timspalding:

2. Giving members a way to opt out of the NSFW feature entirely.*

I hope this (the opting-out option) will definitely be offered.

This is something that can and will be abused. Appeal to majority control won't help here. LT is majority American and conservative and I've no doubt the Xtian Taliban are itching to go hog on any representation of nudity.

Disturbing synchronicity with the whole "secularism is destroying society" trend in the US...

It would help if in this case at least the flaggers were listed. People can make a good case for hiding actual pornographic images, but we ought to be able to defend art and simple nudity.

>15 LolaWalser: I think most of us are concerned with covers that are not with the correct book. Those that wish to use the new NSFW feature can do so and I expect that libraries that are meant for small children will opt in. The rest of us don't particularly care about the picture on the cover.

>1 timspalding: I hope that the two NSFW covers on this work:
https://www.librarything.com/work/3919274/covers
will be removed. They are legitimate covers and are not offensive in any way.

>16 fdholt:

I know how the incorrect cover flagging works, that's not the issue here.

If I'm understanding Tim correctly on this "NSFW" feature, what would happen is that a certain number of flags would hide the covers for everyone--and not just the covers in their own catalogues, but anyone's covers.

While I wouldn't choose to spend my life arguing with the sort who goes around sticking fig leaves on statues, it does irk me that such people will have the power to hide my covers not just from their own view (which is fair enough) but also from others--who may not know or care about the feature or the (so far hypothetical) opt-out.

I definitely want to opt out of this. Inviting users to flag NSFW content inevitably means that the most priggish attitudes win out. And I don't want to give in to overzealous prudes who'll flag things "just to be on the safe side." I have to accommodate such prudery elsewhere, and I'd prefer it if LibraryThing would not have to be moved into that quadrant.

I do hope that gay romance covers do not count as NSFW. Example: Ivan vs Ivan. I am not looking forward to having to spend time counter-flagging this and similar issues (in case the opt-out doesn't materialize). A blanket "no exposed genitals" standard I can accept (though I'll leave the actual flagging to others).

I think >15 LolaWalser: has a good suggestion: listing the flaggers publicly (like the "not a cover" flags). Also, would it be possible to tie sanctions (such as temporary suspension) to abuse of this feature?

>17 fdholt: Yes I am puzzled by that also. Especially since the other covers are not flagged.The only difference is that the resolution is poor. :-) I voted no, but it seems silly compared to what would be truly pornographic. Do you think Google would be upset with this?

>17 fdholt: >20 krazy4katz: All the users who are shown as having flagged it as NSFW are LT staff, I believe (not sure about Axel), so I suspect these were simply test cases. I went ahead and counter-flagged anyway, just in case.

>17 fdholt: This is just temporary to demonstrate the new feature. See Tim's Note in >1 timspalding:

I notice, though, that what this demonstration shows is that books with covers that have been given the NSFW treatment will have the NSFW "cover" ("cover covering"?) appearing in their cover gallery. Is that right? Doesn't it seem to stigmatize the actual book?

I'd like to opt out of seeing the NSFW covers. That image is more offensive to me than the indie covers safe for certain bookstores and libraries could be.

ETA Questions:

Designwise, the accusatory red and the large lettering bother me. The cover couldn't be a paper bag texture with "NSFW" more discrete in the image?

I'm also confused about how this will appear when we're viewing our libraries. Will my own flagged book covers be recovered when I'm scrolling through collections? (Is that our "catalogs"?)

Are you going to fix the private edition feature? That would limit what Google crawls all over, I'm guessing.

I'll work on getting an opt out soon.

I would like to discuss standards, though. This is a cover-voting feature. In practice this means that the same people who currently do most of the voting on other cover flags are going to do it here.

I'd propose that we only mark things that would be regarded as true hardcore porn elsewhere. So, basically, not mere nudity, but, like actual fucking shown as explicitly as possible, naked Japanese comic-book girls covered with semen, etc. These appear to be usually blurred on Amazon (and therefore Goodreads). There must be some Amazon standard—as much nudity and suggestiveness as you want, but no hardcore shots. Where Amazon has blurred versions, or versions with warning plastic over parts of the image, LT members often upload the actual covers.

IOW, I'm talking about the sort of thing somewhat beyond "indie covers safe for certain bookstores and libraries could be."

You guys aren't going to make me link to particular covers, are you?

>24 aspirit:

I've changed the image so it's grayscale, not red. Good call.

>19 Petroglyph:

You de-flagged two covers on Untitled. I agree with you, and have reversed my vote. But you voted NSFW on another--the most explicit one. This was really the image that started this. So I'm thinking you understand what I mean.

I think >15 LolaWalser: LolaWalser: has a good suggestion: listing the flaggers publicly (like the "not a cover" flags). Also, would it be possible to tie sanctions (such as temporary suspension) to abuse of this feature?

The flagger is indeed listed. And all the votes.

Either way, we need a standard, then. Or we need to move this out of user control, and have staff do it according to an internal standard. (I'm wary of doing that.)

But, yes, abuse of flagging of any sort is always a violation of the TOS.

there's just a think which is not clear to me. (Not that I care for such covers in a sense or the other).
I agree that for people not signed in (and therefore to Google... ) it makes sense not to show those covers. But shouldn't the default for signed users be "show NSFW covers", with an opt-in to cover :-) them?

>27 .mau.: Yeah, I agree with that. Non-censur should be default rather than the censur. As you said, it's fine that these covers are hidden from Google and such, but shouldn't be default when logged in.

>11 rosalita: Thank you. I think I may just have been clumsy. It had been a long hard day :)

What about users witch use LT in their mother tongue?

Do they get the cryptic "NSFW" or information in their language?

The image NSFW is displayed for everyone, but the texts about flagging can be translated. However, there are very few of us left who bother to translate LT into our languages.

>31 anglemark:
But there are more and more people who are sure that the center of the world is between 67° and 125° W and between 25° and 49° N.

>30 birder4106: I think that many people who use LT knows about NSFW acronym, even if they prefer the localized version and they do not know the exact meaning.

But I prefer if the LibraryThing community could agree on standards together. If you have opinions on that, put them here.


Yeah, no. You'll get all the church librarians saying that anything showing two women or two men kissing or even holding hands, is complete smut. Even if their opinion doesn't prevail, it's needless acrimony.

Adding my voice to the ones proposing that hiding NSFW covers ought to be opt-in for signed-in users. I'm fine with filtering them out for Google and anyone else who is not signed in.

>26 timspalding:
"You de-flagged two covers on Untitled. I agree with you, and have reversed my vote. But you voted NSFW on another--the most explicit one."

Yes: the only standard mentioned so far is "no exposed genitals", and that one was the only cover that qualified. I'm glad you've changed your vote on the other potentially questionable covers; the fact that staff deemed these en masse to be NSFW makes me feel uneasy.

"But, yes, abuse of flagging of any sort is always a violation of the TOS."

Good! As long as there are clear standards about what counts as valid NSFW flagging and what doesn't -- including protective standards for things like art, photography, lgbtq.

>34 lorax:
"it's needless acrimony."

And extra counter-flagging work and effort.

>33 .mau.: many people who use LT knows about NSFW acronym

This is clearer:

NSFW is also inaccurate. According to your standard a lot of the allowed covers would not in fact be safe for work.

>33 .mau.: Not everyone using LT in English understands NSFW.

>26 timspalding: On standards: If you're going to call it an NSFW flag, you need to flag based on SFW standards, not "Is it porn?" standards. Those are two different things. The Ik Jan Cremer cover you pointed out is not at all pornographic, but also definitely not something I would want my boss to see over my shoulder. Obvs. different workplaces/different countries have their own customs, but NSFW is pretty standard at this point, and read-as-female bare breasts with nipples showing are definitely included. NSFW you're really looking at PG, basically.

If you want to make it a "don't anger Google" flag or a "pornographic image" flag or something instead, then go with bare breasts as OK! That cover is definitely not pornographic. But if you're calling it NSFW, then the standard needs to include things like that example cover, or it's not useful as an NSFW flag. The SFW standard is "will someone's asshole coworker in Alabama think it's inappropriate", not "is it actually pornographic."

(I actually am, I think, in favor of going with NSFW as the standard if you're going with this, because a) I do read LT at work and b) because it's an absolutely pragmatic standard with no moral judgments implied, unlike "pornographic" or "adult". But if you're using it, it needs to be the actual standard you're using.)

For NSFW, I would say at minimum a) no genitals, bare butts or "female-presenting nipples", b) no clothing where the shape of the genitals underneath is not at all obscured; c) no unambiguously sexual positioning even if genitals etc. aren't showing*; d) no extreme gore; e) no sexualized body fluids.

* by that I don't mean "hehe it looks like a blowjob with clothes on" or "feet under a bedsheet", but things like carefully-cropped doggystyle or so on.

If you do want to use a "pornographic" standard instead, then "exposed genitals" is probably fine, but I vote you use >37 civitas: 's image (but add "by Google" on the end :P)

Technically, if we're talking about comprehension & translation, Not Safe For Work doesn't make a lot of sense if you're unfamiliar with the phrase, literally translating, & work at home (or work at a graphics house producing Japanese manga porn, etc). So, yeah, Censored for Content or Cover Image Censored are probably clearer in other languages.

The SFW standard is "will someone's asshole coworker in Alabama think it's inappropriate", not "is it actually pornographic."

Then ditch this feature altogether. Because asshole Alabama coworkers will definitely think two men kissing is inappropriate.

>41 melannen:, >42 susanbooks:: FWIW, I translated NSFW with "explicit porn" in the Swedish transation, based on Tim's description of what he was getting at.

If there'll be a global "cover covering," I favor an image of a brown paper wrapper with the word pr0n scrawled across it.

What's NSFW has a terribly wide meaning that goes well beyond the nebulous meaning of porn. People can be fired from jobs for displaying a photo of two smiling men holding a baby. There are countries in which a cover with a chaste kiss would be required to be labeled as 18+ and hidden from view by the general public. Looking at my own library, I see dozens of covers that would be flagged as NSFW on other sites.

I've seen too many NSFW and "Adult" policies be used against minorities to feel confident that, unless we're given a clear standard such as "no genitilia" we're not about to see the usual pattern in flagging and arguments about what's abusive happen here.

And >25 timspalding: Amazon's vague standards are contentious with cover designers for LGBT+, romance, erotica, and some fantasy and action books. Publishers have had to figure out to avoid attracting the attention of Amazon's content reviewers (more challenging for books featuring marginalized characters) or argue for the re-listing of works that are suddenly blocked or removed because of the suggestion of a nipple through fabric or a seductive pose by a fully clothed character.

Goodreads pulls what's allowed on Amazon, with what I think are fewer people than what we have here on LT uploading covers from works that were never in Amazon Marketplace. That's one of the things that I like about LT; people tend to choose to display covers of the editions they've actually read or want, instead of dealing with the most common cover for a work, regardless of dissimilarities.

Another reason for not basing LT's standards on Amazon's is that (from what I've seen in publishers' complaints) the standards on Amazon appear to change frequently. We would not be able to keep up.

Your proposal, Tim, is much clearer than Amazon's or Goodreads. I think that's what we need: clarity.

Thanks for the stone gray. That is much better than the accusatory red.

* edited to fix typos

>43 lorax: Two men (or women) obviously tongue kissing close-up as the focal point of the image, unfortunately, probably still on the edge. It would definitely have been NSFW in the 90's when the term originated. It's probably still not automatically PG unless someone really wants to fight the MPAA on it. But things have probably moved on enough in the places where NSFW is a useful term that it's safe to hold to the same "sexual contact" standards regardless of gender now; it would be hard to get someone in trouble for looking at two boys kissing in a world where "Two Boys Kissing" is the title of a bestselling novel.

But, yeah, NSFW isn't about what we think is morally fair, it's about protecting people in crappy situations (which has its own moral weight, tbf). There's probably more leeway with small still images than video too, in that who is kissing wouldn't be immediately obvious to someone peering over a shoulder the way bare breasts or butts would be. I don't think a different standard for different kinds of bare chests is fair either, but it's what it is. NSFW also usually has to exclude things like breastfeeding images if most of the breasts are exposed, as dumb and awful as that is.

Kissing or expressing affection in a deniably sexual way, even if it's clearly romantic (like smooches or cuddles) is probably fine regardless of who's doing it.

If we do want to set a standard that's based more on fairness than pragmatics, something vague like "hidden due to image content" is probably a lot better.

>44 anglemark: "Explicit porn" does sound more like what Tim's getting at! Unfortunately a page covered with placeholders that say "explicit porn" is probably less SFW than the original covers would be, but it will make Google happier and I don't usually browse erotica covers at work anyway.

>45 paradoxosalpha: I would go for brown labelled 'plain brown wrapper'.

Is your suggested label misspelled or have I missed another acronym?

I also think it is likely that these covers will be seen more rather than less if they are hidden like this.

No, melannen, you miss the point.

This is not a zero-cost game. It is not about choosing a label. It is about queer stuff being censored, yet again, for the millionth time, because it upsets assholes.

We do not *have* to choose to implement a "NSFW" policy that means the most prudish, homophobic, and vindictive co-worker would find nothing objectionable whatsoever, and I am saying that we SHOULD NOT DO SO because it means, yet again, throwing queer folks under the bus to appease bigots.

>47 melannen: Two Boys Kissing was one of the most challenged books in the USA last year....

https://www.librarything.com/topic/311545

How long will it take for even the works of Charles Darwin etc. will have to disappear from LT?

Excuse my poor english.

In german: Wie lange wird es wohl dauern, bis sogar die Werke von Charles Darwin etc. aus LT verschwunden sein werden?

Off-topic: Why are there two #46 posts? In >50 aspirit:, I meant to link to 46 melannen.

If you are in an office where a small cover image of two people kissing is going to get you into trouble, you probably shouldn't be LTing at work. Certainly the genders of the two people should not matter. I would certainly vote 'No' to flagging the cover of Two Boys Kissing.

There is a difference between explicit porn and depictions of normal everyday behaviour on the streets of most Western cities. Breastfeeding should be allowed. If male nipples are OK, female nipples should also be fine.

>52 aspirit: melannen's post is 47.

>50 aspirit: There's a big difference between "could get you fired for looking at a picture of it" (SFW standard) and "parents will be super mad if you give the impression their kids should read it" (banned books week standard.) or "they can fire you for any reason whatsoever regardless" (late-stage capitalism standard, which is what actually applies in Alabama). But I assure you that lots of people in the places where Two Boys Kissing was challenged read articles about it while they were at work.

Probably closer to what I was trying to say with that example is something like: if it might be on the cover of Time magazine, it's probably SFW even if people might find it objectionable for other reasons, because everybody, regardless of their moral feelings, would say it's ridiculous to fire someone just for reading Time magazine at lunch. These days, not-explicitly-sexual gay stuff shows up on the cover of Time magazine now and then, so it's probably SFW. Similarly, "fine art" nudity, for a deeply culturally biased definition of "fine art", shows up on the cover of Time sometimes, so that's probably sfw even though other kinds of nudity aren't sfw and that's a dumb distinction to make.

>49 lorax: I don't think we actually disagree? I would rather we did not censor at all, because any way we censor is going to be shitty and unfair, because that's what censorship is. But this thread is not actually "should we censor", it's Tim saying "we're doing this, what standard should we use", and I was replying to Tim, trying to engage from where he'd started. And we live in an unjust world, so sometimes you do have to live with the shitty and unfair compromise.

Anyway, the rest of you seemed to have the "please don't do this" part well covered already!

I just think if he says we're using a NSFW standard, that's the standard we need to be using, and so I'm trying to lay out what SFW is. If we're not using an SFW standard, he shouldn't call it that. I'm not sure how that's zero-sum.

ETA: And yeah, any censorship standard is going to be massively culturally relative. Which is another reason it never works well on the internet. SFW is a standard that mostly developed on the Western Anglophone internet, so it's based on US/to a lesser extent English/Canadian/Australian norms.

If it really is just about not getting angry letters from Google, you should probably just say outright (like I suggested in my first post) that we're using Google's standards because Google is forcing us to, and then use Google's standards.

>53 MarthaJeanne: weird. Now it is 47. My screen showed it as 46 when I first posted.



Moving on... what's the point of using the "NSFW" phrasing if we're not basing decisions of what to flag based on what's safe at work? My concern is that what's safe activity on the site has been left up to each member but is now expected to follow a to-be-determined consensus, which in my past experience, favors the more conservative definitions unless there's a loud and long-lasting protest to not exclude people who are dealing with daily disrimination offline.

So, I made the feature to deal with explicit pornography covers--the sort of covers that can't be displayed in a bookstore or library, or get blurred or otherwise obfuscated online.

The cover most objected to (on Untitled), which was of the "look at the genitalia!" kind, was being knocked into oblivion as spam and/or inapplicable—censored by other means.

It's probably true that many other book covers would be not-safe-for-work, depending on your work. But if your work were bookstores or libraries, you'd be fine with everything, except the above mentioned.

Moving on... what's the point of using the "NSFW" phrasing if we're not basing decisions of what to flag based on what's safe at work?

If this is the hang-up, I propose we change the wording. As said, I want a way for members to identify covers that show hardcore pornography. NSFW is broader than that, at least for some workplaces.

>56 timspalding: I work at a library, and we don't generally put nipplicious or bare-butt covers on face-out display, at least not without manager pre-approval (Like, "how are babies made" books we would probably do despite the likelihood of complaints, old pulp reprints with nekkid ladies on the covers probably not), and we've also got different standards for staff computer use than we do for materials available to the public. And when working the patron floor we basically have to abide by a standard of "if a little kid saw your screen, could their parents complain?" and similarly for books on face-out display. We don't censor in terms of what we're willing to loan, but we've actually got stricter standards than basic SFW for images that could be easily accidentally seen.

Maybe we're stricter than other libraries and bookstores but I really don't think so. The reason Time magazine has those standards is that it wouldn't be displayed in bookstores and newsstands if it didn't. Comic books stores keep all the 17+ manga in the special room even if the covers are mostly okay. (The cover of Saga Deluxe Vol 1 was censored out of comic stores, for example, even though I wouldn't even call it NSFW.)

I want to make it clear again that I'm not arguing in favor of a SFW standard! Just that "explicit porn" is really not the same thing. "Change the wording" would solve all of this.

>57 melannen: You're definitely stricter than here! I also work in a library ( a school library at that) and we don't have any rules for what type of cover can't be shown. We used to subscribe to Rolling Stone and they frequently put "risque" photos on their covers.
Straight up pornography is not allowed but nudity and near-nudity is fine. Same for all computers. There are no banned words on computer/internet searches either.
And I've worked in other libraries and in a couple of bookshop - they don't have any other rules than where I work now.

Huh, interesting! I don't think the school library I volunteered at had any display guidelines like that, but they also wouldn't order any books with risque covers unless they'd already been judged acceptable, so they didn't need them. Whereas the public library definitely has stuff of No Redeeming Social Importance (90% of which has SFW covers, including the erotica. You can go pretty far with an erotica cover and still be technically SFW.)

(We definitely didn't carry Rolling Stone at the school library. But I don't think Rolling Stone does bare butt or boobs on covers either, for all that it will go fairly risque on the interiors. We didn't have any explicit computer use guidelines either, because we had comically strict internet filters.)

>59 melannen: They've definitely done bare butts. Jennifer Aniston had a bare butt cover. The famous one with John and Yoko shows his butt. They had one with Zoë Kravitz completely nude (but holding her body so things weren't shown).

And of course, the vast majority of the books here have "SFW" covers, and I can't recall any that don't, but we don't have a rule against them.

And we don't have internet filters either.

> 60 You are super lucky with no internet filters, the schools around here have ones that are strict enough it's hard to teach kids how to use Google. (And of course we have all met the kids who use LT talk because all "social media" and "chat" are filtered for them.)

I think in some ways it may be getting stricter lately, too, with the general ambiance of "think of the children" everywhere; the Aniston cover was quite a while ago (and unless it's our internet filters, her butt was blurred on it.)

>61 melannen: We used to have some filters, but they made it almost impossible for staff to do their work (the school nurses were particularly affected).

I definitely think there's more prudity now than there used to be, atleast compared to maybe 20 years ago (as opposed to 50 years ago).

>41 melannen:
ut NSFW is pretty standard at this point, and read-as-female bare breasts with nipples showing are definitely included. NSFW you're really looking at PG, basically.

There are a number of PG films that feature bare female breasts with nipples. So just saying PG doesn't really help.

The more people discuss this, the worse the feature seems. Out there it's not Alabama-24/7-and-everywhere (or work) so why on earth should we act as if it were? It's inserting that "asshole Alabama co-worker" into everyone's lives.

Insofar this is something done to appease Google's rules or whatever, seems to me it would be preferable to keep actual LT users' experience separate from that of Google. If you could make a curtain for Google but not for LTers.

I am reassured by Tim's comment that "NSFW" was a poor choice of phrasing and that this is only intended to be used for explicit porn. (NSFW is very workplace-dependent, anyway).

In that case, I think "porn" in the infamous "I know it when I see it" sense may be better than "exposed genitalia" so you do not end up with stuff like

https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/ec/d2/ecd2040a0a45d2d5934323555414443... (a book on Michelangelo, with a nude statue on the cover)

or

https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/e0/46/e046ea9a20de29e59782b7355674443... (an edition of Thucydides)

being flagged. If you put in the standard "art" exception, then you get to try to define art, which doesn't sound like a worthwhile endeavor. And if you say "only photos of genitalia are flaggable", the pornographic manga gets to stay, which doesn't seem ideal either.

So, yeah. No porn. Boobs can stay - the whole "nipples belonging to a person we or some algorithm decided looks female" criterion is nonsense. (ISTR seeing an article once by a trans woman who posted monthly topless photos beginning when she started taking hormones, and at some point the platform's algorithm decided that they were suddenly naughty.)

>63 andyl: I would not have thought that, but I concede, you are correct! This list has quite a few: https://m.imdb.com/list/ls069961819/

I note that except the documentaries they're all more than 25 years old, though - probably another casualty of "think of the children"; I can't imagine those Bond movies getting PG these days, much less the slasher horror!

Anyway if we aren't calling it NSFW, I vote for either exposed genitalia with exception for high art, (assuming that's good enough for Google), or nothing. Or we could go all the way to "labia or erection" which avoids most of the usual art anyway, and also allowed most nonsexualized nudes.

Pls not "I know it when I see it"; that puts us right back at having to argue with the alabamian homophobe.

To what extent do we really need to 'think of the children'? They aren't supposed to be on LT anyway.

> 67 I didn't mean to give the impression I was advocating it!

There are 35 suggestions for the NSFW flag. I voted on all - most were no, some undecided and I did vote yes on one.

http://www.librarything.com/helpers_covers.php

I'm kind of reluctant to apply an all-or-nothing solution; at home, I don't care what I see. If I'm away, I'd prefer to not see explicit covers. If at work, I'd prefer not to get LibraryThing falling foul of WebSense (which has some peculiar ideas about what's inappropriate).

So effectively, I feel we perhaps need something more nuanced:

1. No filter - anything goes
2. Lightly filtered - the hard core, explicit covers
3. Highly filtered - anything likely to cause offence

The level of censorship for viewing when signed in can be set in Settings.

It would also be a nice touch for members to perhaps choose a default 'brown paper bag', a bit like how we can choose a default cover. I'd like to request a fig leaf image, please!

>69 fdholt: Just because I voted no doesn't mean I thought the pictures were in good taste. Some of them I would rather not see again. This makes voting on flagged covers something that I am even less likely to do than was already the case.

Look, I've never seen anything pornographic on LT. I think that if you aren't actively searching, you're unlikely to stumble upon the very worst instances, so the likelihood of collateral damage by having the "Highly filtered" option existing is not worth it.

People WILL flag the mildest possible LGBTQ+ content if "likely to cause offense" is flaggable.

>71 MarthaJeanne: I agree that many of my no's meant not in good taste, just not over the line. I am trying to see all sides and vote accordingly.

Edited to correct spelling and to add: I am still more interested in flagging wrong covers to works. I am also concerned with children's books getting these covers. (Years ago it happened to one of my books.)

I'm probably going to regret speaking up, but here goes. I'd say that I probably lean in the direction of not wanting to see explicit images, and note that I used a word (explicit) that isn't all that meaningful. However, with extremely rare exceptions, I don't think I've seen anything on LT that qualified as offensive (to me). Are there book covers on LT that I'd find offensive? I'd bet money that there are. However (and this is really important) I suspect that my choice of books and authors makes it unlikely that I'd see anything.

I *do* own a few books that would be unlikely to be found in the school library, such as this one:

https://www.librarything.com/work/12268116/book/123812035

Interesting subject matter, but the author's style is turgid, which is a shame.

Instead of NSFW, how about just a cover that says "Adult" or something similar? I expect to never see such a cover, and hope that if this all comes to pass, that it's used sparingly, if it all. I'd also hope to never see one that was deserving.

In addition, Google is stupid.

OK, I went through most of the works at the link provided by >69 fdholt:. I decided my standard would be light, i.e only flag covers that were pornographic. Interestingly, as I went along, I found my standards were changing! Why are women's breasts OK and not men's genitalia? It is a society bias. And perhaps there is a difference between something that is offensive and something that is distasteful? I am OK with whatever if necessary but I can even see myself becoming biased as I go through more and more covers. What was first "just not to my liking" was then "distasteful" and by the end "offensive". In other words, it became aggravating to look at covers I generally don't see and I got grumpy.

Tim, I think do what you have to do to satisfy Google, but too bad we have to go through this. I certainly won't vote unless I have to.

I don't mean to offend anyone here. As far as I'm concerned, the only covers that would truly offend me (rather than just be distasteful) would be racist, sexist, homophobic etc. Should I just look away from those also or report them? Does Google care? Or do they only care about sex?

I have forgotten why I started writing this. My apologies to everyone. You don't have to read it.

Okay, I have changed it everywhere from "NSFW" to "Explicit Image."

Some thoughts:

1. I find it quite heartening that, actually, we agree most of the time on the actual votes. Fears have been raised that I don't see playing out.

2. I went through some Japanese comic porn on LT and there's a curious phenomenon where a lot of material has unretouched Amazon—not LibraryThing—covers.

There are at least a dozen covers I'd rate not only as explicit, but as flat-out child pornography. (In the US, as I understand it, drawn pornography is not child porn, but can be illegally obscene.) In some cases Amazon was selling the material; in others it wasn't, but the presence of an Amazon cover—still being delivered by Amazon servers—indicates that it was or perhaps that it does in some locales.

That so many of these covers were Amazon covers is a problem for me, because the current method was designed only to deal with LT covers.

I'm weighing two possible courses of action:

Route 1:

Get rid of this as a user-facing decision; have staff make a very few images "Explicit Image" and leave it at that. Our standard would a high one--basically hard-core pornography, and all drawn child pornography.

Route 2:

a. Do 1 for explicit images.
b. For milder stuff allow staff and members to flag images as "adult." This would be a lower standard, including simple nudity but explicitly forbidding use against LGBTQ material unless it would otherwise qualify.
c. This lower standard would mean NOTHING to most LibraryThing users. If the user is signed in, all these images would be visible by default. If the user is not signed in—including the Google bot—the images would be hidden.
d. There would be a selector where users could opt not to see any such images, but it would not be on by default.

This policy would be better for Google, as they are complaining about images that aren't actually explicit by a stronger definition. At the same time.

>76 timspalding: "b. For milder stuff allow staff and members to flag images as "adult." This would be a lower standard, including simple nudity but explicitly forbidding use against LGBTQ material unless it would otherwise qualify."

That could get interesting for Paranormal Romance covers...

Oh, and perhaps have the flagging text to read 'Adult image'? Otherwise I can see people flagging an innocuous image as 'adult' when it's being used on an 'adult' work?

>76 timspalding: 1. I find it quite heartening that, actually, we agree most of the time on the actual votes. Fears have been raised that I don't see playing out.

I flagged some of my works that could get into trouble (deliberately including some that are simple nudity), mostly just to see how this would be going.

>74 Lyndatrue: Aw, what a shame the author's writing isn't good. The book sounds really interesting.

>75 krazy4katz: Why are women's breasts OK and not men's genitalia?

Because breasts aren't genitalia. The current social norms allow for mens bare chests but censur women's bare chests - THAT is bias, not forbidding the genitalia of men but not the upper bodies of women. Two completely different things.

>76 timspalding: I would vote for route 1. It would mean less risk for books to me wrongfully flagged (and though there's a general concensus, it's obvious when looking at the currently NSFW-flagged covers that many are being unfairly flagged).

>79 PawsforThought: Check out >78 Nicole_VanK:. The current flagged books are by member testing how this would work out on books she owns. It seems to be a useful test, because most of us have voted most of them down.

>80 MarthaJeanne: Sure, but there are some who have voted yes on them, despite obviously not being pornography. That is a problem.

>51 birder4106: Image flagging does not make works disappear. Yeah, books can be flagged too (as spam for instance). But that's very easy to undo.

>71 MarthaJeanne: >73 fdholt: Sorry about that. I agree with you on "poor taste" on at least some of them. I hold on to some stuff I don't like for private reasons.

For some reason, this cover cannot be flagged as explicit: https://www.librarything.com/work/12673433

>84 anglemark: That's an Amazon cover. See >76 timspalding:.

Ah. Thanks.

>76 timspalding: For milder stuff allow staff and members to flag images as "adult." This would be a lower standard, including simple nudity but explicitly forbidding use against LGBTQ material unless it would otherwise qualify.

How about flagging them as NSFGoogle?

>74 Lyndatrue: In addition, Google is stupid.

And hypocritical at least when it comes to this subject. While the link below is a few years old, considering some of the Google ads I've seen just in the last few weeks, it hasn't changed any.

https://thisistrue.com/why_ive_removed_googles_ads/

>76 timspalding: Route 1 would be OK with me. Perhaps less work for you because you don't have to establish the consensus among LTers? k4k

>87 jjwilson61: Haha. That's my favorite suggestion.

>76 timspalding: So... "Adult" is such a problematic phrase that I'm worn down from debates about its meaning. One of the reasons I have an Adult collection tag here is that I'm trying to clarify my own view, for my own understanding, after countless discussions on where to draw the lines. Is it for sexual acts? What is adult vs. adolescent sexual acts? What counts as sex?
How much does the perception of the characters' ages matter? What about for violence; is that more appropriate for teenagers?

An "Adult" label for "explicit" work clarifies nothing while carrying a stigma that transfers to the works' holders. Considering the stigma, I wonder how the warnings mentioned in the opening post would play into the voting. Will we be expected to flag works in our collections? Won't that make finding similar works with cover views more difficult, reducing one of this site's features?

This is to say that out of the two routes, #1 seems as if it's vastly a better option, especially as people here generally don't see covers that vary widely from what's in their library collections unless directed to voting. (I think?)

>4 paradoxosalpha: Yeah, this is skirting way too close to censorship and also messing with my library data for me. No thank you.

>Yeah, I was around for when Livejournal and Photobucket both decided to censor bared breasts because of outside pressure, and that resulted in a whole lot of censorship of queer texts and art. It always starts with "well of course we'll just flag the hardcore stuff," and then goes downhill very quickly. Tumblr also recently failed hard with censorship of "female-presenting nipples" and that site's numbers suffered as a result.

I can appreciate LT's being pressured by Google, that sucks. But this is worth taking a stand on. ITA that these policies are typically used against minorities and that trying to establish guidelines through community discussion often results in terrible arguments with scorched earth results. I've also been on LT for over ten years and I don't think I've seen a single porn or explicit image. Art, sure. Porn photo or cartoon images, no.

If female nipples are unacceptable, then so should male nipples be not allowed.

>93 MarthaJeanne: Precisely my point about paranormal romance covers, especially shifter stories. In fact, a lot of romance covers fail the nipple test for males.

I've also been on LT for over ten years and I don't think I've seen a single porn or explicit image. Art, sure. Porn photo or cartoon images, no.

This (as a couple of other posters mentioned before too). I've been here most every week or at least month for 12 years, adding and searching thousands of covers, combining thousands of works, and never came across anything like the images linked. My impression is that you really have to go digging to find them--and why would anyone without an interest in such images or topics do so?

Why would anyone make it their business to censor other people's porn? I've been trying to imagine when and where images like those could catch one unawares--the "book roulette"? That guess the cover game? Random hover-over in Talk? HAS it actually happened to anyone here? What was that busybody's who raised the alarm in >1 timspalding: problem
exactly?

Tim says fears of abuse are unfounded, but what will happen is that more tolerant people by-and-by won't go anywhere near this nasty-minded feature (note what the poster who started out "fair-minded" but eventually felt "offended" said about feeling increasing disgust at those images, as if it were their fault and not the fault of the flaggers for throwing them in her face), leaving the field to the censorious zealots, the most fanatical bigots.

Will we be able to tell which of our covers got flagged or will this entail checking the entire flagged set?

If staff can flag covers that Google objects to and they are then hidden from those who are not signed in, do we really need anything more? I've seen more sexual covers in the past few days from this topic than all together the rest of my time here.

>96 MarthaJeanne:

Cuts to the core of the matter. As far as the anonymous member cited by >1 timspalding:, can we please risk such dissatisfactions?

I agree with >95 LolaWalser: I would definitely like to get some kind of warning signal when one of my covers (or works) gets flagged

>91 the_red_shoes: too close to censorship and also messing with my library data for me

In >1 timspalding: said "Book-level contexts, such as within a member's catalog, show the actual cover. Zooming to see cover details shows the original cover too" - so you'll always see your own covers (explicitly not messing with your library data) and when you're looking at another person's catalog you'll see their covers, and if you ask to see the full size cover you'll see the real cover. This won't prevent you from seeing what you want to see, or limit what can be added to LibraryThing.

>96 MarthaJeanne:

Right?

>98 Nicole_VanK:

Yeah, we ought to know when it happens and who does it.

>99 r.orrison:

if you ask to see the full size cover you'll see the real cover.

I don't want to have to do this. I expect that's what opting-out will allow--that we can have the same setup as we did before this feature, without having to remember or perform any additional tasks. But it's a real question how clear it will be to anyone casually browsing around that they can see the hidden cover. I'd bet most people won't realise this or care to click. Especially if it opens up a full-size cover. What bullshit concept is that? Think about the psychology here.

Whoever it was above who said that already the act of hiding and alerting sets a psychological barrier, is off-putting, was right. In effect it's forcing people to consciously acknowledge "yes I want to see this "explicit", "unsafe" thing", making us some kind of voyeurs, and as if guilty of something. And then, after being forced to an extra step to see this unholy thing, it opens up FULL SIZE--bam! there, you perv, got enough? Ridiculous. If anything, people clicking mistakenly might get some shocks. Why wouldn't these covers behave as others? One click to reveal, another click for full size.

There's nothing people do with their genitalia that's half as dirty as the minds of those sticking paper bags on them.

>99 r.orrison:'

This won't prevent you from seeing what you want to see

If I have to ask to see the full size cover, that is preventing me from seeing what I want to see.

or limit what can be added to LibraryThing.

I don't want to sound dire but in my experience, even the most well-intentioned self-policed versions of this kind of internal censorship go down a slippery slope pretty fast.

>96 MarthaJeanne: I feel the same way. I have been here more than 10 years without seeing anything that bothers me. This suggests that the absence of policing is working well.

Okay, I'll figure out a new system today.

I think this is a case where, although voting works in practice, it doesn't work in theory.

There's nothing people do with their genitalia that's half as dirty as the minds of those sticking paper bags on them.

LibraryThing currently hosts at least three covers from Japanese child-rape cartoons, with distressed, naked, spread-eagled pre-pubescent girls leaking semen. In most countries "simulated" child-porn images are actually illegal, and are often illegal in the US, depending on locality. They are 100% banned from every social platform out there, from Facebook to Reddit. Well, I suppose 8chan might allow them, in between school-shooting announcements.

I proposed that members, who can be as young as 14,

1. UNLESS they are looking at their own library or book,
2. and UNLESS they are looking at someone else's library or book,

need to

1. click once to see such a cover,
2. or, click a setting once to see all such images forever.

But, sure, this is about me, a dirty-minded bigot… <checks talking points> trying to shame gay people.

>103 timspalding:

Personally I didn't notice anyone saying you did it for the purpose of shaming gay people but I think we can agree that's one of the inadvertent results here. And it's not just gay people, but anyone who lists not just frank porn, but books with covers someone somewhere may deem pornographic, or explicit etc.

I don't imagine you or anyone relishes the prospect of endless repetitive recriminations if members are allowed to hide other members' covers from general view.

1. click twice to see such a cover,

Why twice? If it's hidden, shouldn't it just be one click to reveal? (But without it jumping to full size, as was mentioned above.)

>104 LolaWalser:

Right. Once. I mean you click to see the page and then click again to see the cover.

>103 timspalding: I am sorry if you feel offended.
I understand that we, the adult LT users, are not the people who need protection. I just think voting won't work because people have to discriminate (poor choice of words) between what they dislike personally and what is generally unacceptable. If you hide what you believe should be hidden, someone can then protest if they feel strongly about it. It is likely no one will.

Best wishes,.

>103 timspalding: I think this is a case where, although voting works in practice, it doesn't work in theory.

I think what people are trying to say is quite the opposite. Just because the "test drive" of NSFW voting hasn't (as far as I know) resulted in misuse and censuring of other images YET doesn't mean that that will always be that case. In fact, people's experiences have been quite the opposite.

And I don't think anyone here wants the kind of images you're describing to pop up on their screens, not the screens of any child who uses LT.

But honestly, I would personally prefer it is the works that had covers like that were banned completely from LT, instead of their existence on the site causing other works to risk being censured.

You suggested that a different way was for LT staff to handle the graphical porn images being hidden, instead of doing the flagging, and I find that to be a much less dangerous route to go, at least if LT members are allowed to lodge complaints if they feel something has been mistakenly hidden/censured.

>103 timspalding:

Feature removed.

As things stand, I'm not going to reintroduce it. Google seems to be okay warning us about pages and having us ignore the warning. If they cut us off, we'll deal with it.

I'm sorry if you feel you wasted time and energy for nothing, although I expect the experience may come in useful yet. I think it's one of those things where one can't foresee all the ramifications on paper, before actually trying it out.

Should you make it a staff responsibility to deal with child porn, I doubt many of us would ever notice.

I think the big problem here is that you were thinking of "doing something about the 0.0001% worst-of-the-worst covers", but announced it as "NSFW", which is a heck of a lot broader. If this was really designed to deal with a literal handful of images, creating a huge member voting thing where "female-presenting nipples" or "gay kissing", both of which could in some contexts be NSFW, were at risk of being shamed into being hidden, was tremendous overkill.

>108 timspalding: I think if it did become a real problem, a mechanism for staff to hide those worst-of-the-worst covers from logged-out members would be fine in terms of LT. (Do you currently have a mechanism for dealing with illegal images in members' galleries? That is probably something you should have if you don't, otherwise it's lucky nobody's started using it for that yet.)

I'm not sure it would enough to be fine with Google - my experience with both the LJ purges and the recent Tumblr changes (which were specifically an attempt to meet Google's standards) are why I have a fairly good working knowledge of this - but if you do want only hardcore hidden, I don't think voting is needed.

(also, having actually tried the voting page - some of the hardcore covers are honestly really disturbing to stumble on unprepared; it's a risk you take when browsing anyimage feed, but I would not want to suddenly run into them when voting on flagged covers in general, and I wouldn't want to encourage members-in-general to have to look at a page of nothing but that, either. "Looking at flagged CP" really does need to be a paid-staff-who-have-mental-health-coverage thing, I think.)

>1 timspalding: You say here "The flag works like other cover flags—multiple people need to vote to agree; updates happen overnight."

This might be off-topic, but what exactly do the other flags do? I see covers that are flagged to oblivion and still show up obviously on work pages. Does flagging have any actual consequences?

>114 ricesz:

The discussion occupied two days (October 20-21, 2019), more than four and a half years ago. This hardly suggests "fixation" on a topic. To revive a salacious dormant topic after that much time seems rather prurient.

Yes, there were many posts. This allows people to express their opinions, and also to, potentially at least, learn from others and adjust their views. Would you prefer that people form their opinions without thinking?

Also, speaking as someone who is neurodiverse but does not suffer from ADHD, if you had ADHD, you might not know it, but (unless you also have other disorders which reduce your cognitive skills) you would know you are different. What you exhibit is not neurodiverse behavior but provocative behavior.

>115 waltzmn:

A correction to my own post: The original thread of course occurred slightly less than four and a half years ago. I was sufficiently irritated by a certain poster's orthography that I mis-edited my own post. :-/

OK. Take a deep breath. We are all good people here. Communicating in writing makes it much easier to be misunderstood. Let’s just cool down.

>120 krazy4katz: Who are you talking to and why? There is only one uncouth person here, nothing @waltzmn wrote was out of line, and the person who wrote the stupid things is no longer a member.

>121 anglemark: Sorry if this bothers you. He was still a member when I wrote the post. At least I think he was.

>122 krazy4katz: No, they were not.

It obviously bothers me a little since I posted, although I'm not sure why. Perhaps that you treat it as a misunderstanding when it was one rude person out of line and one innocent person defending themselves. But I could of course have kept my mouth shut instead. I'll do that now.

>122 krazy4katz:

FWIW, as the other party to the dispute, I did initially feel as if you were attacking me as well as the problem poster. But evidently I misunderstood. So I'm OK with krazy4katz's post, and the other person was clearly being flagged by someone other than me. (I did not flag the posts, since I considered myself a party to the dispute.)

I was extremely irked at the other poster's comments -- perhaps more than I should have been. (It's why I made my error.) But I was defending LT itself, rather than myself.

Sorry if I made things worse. Again: the problem with written discussions. I am not immune to the same flaws.