Mature/Trusted Section?

[Caite-chan]

Child friendly? Technically you have to be 13 to join the boards. That's not a child that's a teenager and most 13 year olds are in middle school going into high school. You can't say we are child friendly and cater to all ages. We're either child friendly OR we cater to all ages. I'm not saying we make it rated R all over the place but if something is a bit more mature or graphic we just put warnings at the top. We can warn but we can't prevent people from looking and reading that's their choice.

[shaymin]

Child friendly? Technically you have to be 13 to join the boards. That's not a child that's a teenager and most 13 year olds are in middle school going into high school. You can't say we are child friendly and cater to all ages. We're either child friendly OR we cater to all ages. I'm not saying we make it rated R all over the place but if something is a bit more mature or graphic we just put warnings at the top. We can warn but we can't prevent people from looking and reading that's their choice.

To me, I feel like it's a bit child-friendly, or at least the forums seem a bit "kiddish", yknow? A large problem I have with Sarah's argument that "it doesnt belong on a pokemon forum" is that it applies to our off-topic sections too! Like, what belongs in a Pokemon forum? Obviously Pokemon sections, but you want to make people happy who don't always talk about pokemon and add off-topic sections, also. Like music, forum games, and other stuff like that. But do we get rid of them, because they have nothing to do with Pokemon? Of course not, we keep them because we're flexible and it'd be boring and stale talking about Pokemon all the time. It's possible some people would join that arent even interested in Pokemon and want to just for the community itself. There are many things we have to consider here before making that argument.

I'm going to go a bit off-topic here (but for good reason) and say that we really need to be more flexible as a forum. The more open we are to topics and discussions, the better off we'll be in the future, and that's what it is when concerning Pokemon forums. PXR is literally the only forum I frequent that has such strict limitations on what you can discuss and what you cant discuss. Being a forum admin of this place, even I don't know whether or not debates belong in General Chat, and I think it would be ludicrous if debates like marijuana legality or abortion or sex before marriage couldn't at least be discussed there.

How I see it is this: If you want to look at it, absolutely no one is telling you to. If you're curious enough to browse threads that arent suitable for the typical child/early teenager, then that's on you. That's your responsibility. And heck, to even enforce this further, I'd go ahead and make [18+] or [Mature] tags myself on threads that are mature in content. If you want to ignore the warning and look there, and you get offended by what you see, that is your fault, and you cant yell at anyone for it. There was a warning, you chose to check out the thread anyway.

tl;dr we need to stop being so restrictive and overworrying about whether or not people would get offended by the content here. If we put warnings or disclaimers, then we'll be fine, no one has any right to get mad at anyone if they get offended anyway. I really feel we're not really going to make much progress as a forum if we keep being like this.