Posted by Kim on March 13, 2018, 9:50am
Following a public comment period about the specifics of how moderators would enforce a rule about RL characters and what the community would like to see, we are announcing a new rule for the RP Repository:Quote:
RP with fictional characters only
We are primarily a site for fictional characters. We do not allow the creation of characters based on other real life humans. We believe that human beings should have as much right to say how their identity can be used as players have to ask that other people not copy and use their original characters.
We make exceptions for respectful portrayals of historical characters (typically defined as over 100 years dead) or accurate references to/minor NPCs of real life public figures that provide contextualization of plots that occur in the real world.
We are primarily a site for fictional characters. We do not allow the creation of characters based on other real life humans. We believe that human beings should have as much right to say how their identity can be used as players have to ask that other people not copy and use their original characters.
We make exceptions for respectful portrayals of historical characters (typically defined as over 100 years dead) or accurate references to/minor NPCs of real life public figures that provide contextualization of plots that occur in the real world.
In many ways, we believe this is essentially a clarification on our "Be nice" rule, which asks us all to be considerate of one another. We know that the majority of people who create characters of real life people do so out of great admiration or love for the subject, and don't realize they may be overstepping or doing something that could make the person they are so excited about uncomfortable.
Over the next week, the moderators will reach out to those people we know who are currently utilizing real life people as RP characters and work with them to either retool those characters into originals, or help remove those characters from the site. Since this is a new rule, we're offering a 30 day grace period before any actual mod-deletions occur; hopefully this gives everyone a chance to save their work for private storage or do needed rewrites.
Faceclaims
Rules regarding the practice of "faceclaims" or "muses" (the use of an image of a real person, usually an actor, to give a starting place for imagining what a character looks like) have not changed. As a reminder, these are the guidelines that govern the use of faceclaim images:
- You must ensure that you have permission to use all images that you upload to the RP Repository.
- Keep in mind that 99.9% of images you find online - including those from a general Google Image search, things posted to Facebook and Instagram, etc. - are copyrighted and not technically okay for use here.
- This means that largely only people of whom "open license" images specifically exist of can have face claims made of them.
- Keep in mind the "be nice rule" and consider how many people would be squicked to discover that someone was encouraging people to picture a carbon-copy of them, only with a different personality, doing things they maybe would never do, and try to be sensitive to that concern.
- Remember that if we receive a complaint from the copyright holder or the person the picture is of, the images will be immediately taken down and repeat offenses can impact your account.
Cacophony
March 13, 2018
10:01am