Approval Queue and User Verification

Today we have deployed a much-needed change to combat increasing volumes of abusive content that is being posted to our site: the Approval Queue.

Before you all panic, no, this isn’t arbitrary “quality control” for content that’s being posted here. The queue is needed so that staff members can make sure that no IRL gore or child abuse imagery can ever see the light of the day. We only check if the image blatantly breaks Rule #5, nothing else.

Certain users will bypass the queue. Everyone who registered prior to March 1, 2022 is already automatically verified, and your experience using the site will remain absolutely the same. For all newer users, once you reach a certain amount of approved uploads, you will be reviewed by the staff members and be granted verification. The process may take a few days after you hit the required number of approved uploads.

Users without an account will always need to go through our approval queue. Users without an account may also not make comments/posts that have embedded images in them (the ![](image here) syntax). Any image embedded this way will be replaced by a link to it.

Brand new accounts (younger than a certain amount of days) can use the embedded images syntax, however if they do so (only if the text contains ![](image here) syntax), these comments, posts and private messages will need to be reviewed and approved by the site staff before they’re visible to anyone else. This goes away automatically as soon as the account is old enough.

We hope that these measures are adequate to protect our users from harmful content, and it’s also our hope that we cause no inconvenience to our most active users.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day!

@Background Pony #682D
Already a spam come on :(

@Princess Celestia
Thank you for your work Celestia. :) Already got a spam reply unfortunately :(

@☬ lincolnbrewsterfan ☬
The system is designed to combat image spam specifically, and not really normal spam of the spambot variety. We’ll get there eventually too, though.

@☬ lincolnbrewsterfan ☬
That looks like it was just a Very Special Person, not a spambot.

People might complain about this as “censorship” regardless of the reasoning or explanation, but this is imo a necessary evil given the string of events that necessitated this change. Hope things are better going forward.

Still a good start :) thanks :)

Okie thx c:

Should this also at least stop those guys posting bullshit links whatsoever just like those same spambots I also see on other forum sites that I know like SkyscraperCity and SpaceBattles?

@Khauntzat Adramélekhizarovich Searmaev
That is not the intention with this change; while those spambots are annoying, they don’t cause real issues and don’t require urgency to handle. Work to handle them may still happen, but isn’t on the immediate horizon afaik.

Wonderful!

Though I am a bit wary of the auto-approval of all accounts made prior to March 1 2022. We have dormant spam accounts here made before that, so this won’t immediately get rid of all spam.

I’m pretty sure there’s going to be some backlash from this but, hay if this is the current solution to the growing problem, it only makes sense to screen and approve comments.

Awesome news. I had seen some NSFL stuff popping up recently, glad it’s being taken care of.

I feel like I missed something, what happened?

@ZhaoZoharEX
Those people would also complain about them not censoring harmful content, so, hypocrisy.
Though I wonder what they would want if it someone asked how they would do it?

@Shadowking58
CP being frequently posted.

@JP
Yeah, there’s a problem.

I approve of the idea and the way it’s being executed. Seems like it is necessary then if people are posting such things.

And this way it shouldn’t affect any of the existing accounts.

@DaMagics
Ehh, true.

Hopefully there will be less stupid pictures and DNP stuff as well.

@Background Pony #0AE2
Jesus Christ, that’s massively f’ed up. And yeah I also wonder what they would come up with.

@HorsesandMuchMOAR
This won’t affect DNP or any other rule issues; there isn’t going to be pre-moderation, just checking that the image isn’t an obvious #5 breaker.

Alright, understood.

I think this is a very needed system that this site needs, because I have seen somethings that don’t even has anything to do with our content and stuff

@silvertwilight
We got a mystery on our hands!
-Fred (Scooby-Doo!)

@JP
They probably got rid of those accounts before hand.@Princess Celestia
You did get rid of them, correct?