Well the new Moderation system has been active for twenty-nine days so far and we are already creeping up to 42,000 cases having been filed; that's a little over 1400 cases filed every single day since the launch.

So far it appears that reports of misplaced deviations is about the same, reports of art theft have probably increased and reports of things in need of a mature content tag or which contain prohibited content have remained about the same.

But what I actually want to bring up for this journal concerns one of the types of prohibited content; namely "pornography".

Now it seems that prior to the new system launch people would report all sorts of things as "pornography" even if they did not meet the currently definition which is in use right now. Without the option to receive feedback on their report it appears many people convinced themselves that the reported work stayed up because we were all simply far too overworked to have gotten to their report when the fact of the matter is that what they reported was simply ruled not to be a violation.

Now that the new system includes a couple of types of feedback, a note to reporters and the option to see whether or not something was reported incorrectly in the past, a few people are becoming upset.

I can think of a couple of names off the top of my head, but one person in particular has been particularly vocal and has unfortunately taken to exaggeration, misquoting, and generally giving out skewed versions of private conversations in an attempt to stir up mob reaction.

Rather than attempt to correct every single misquote or exaggeration I will simply clarify the situation here so that it will be conveniently in one location.



deviantART has an Artistic Nude Gallery as well as a Fetish Gallery. We've had them for years and the mere presence of both of these galleries means that we tolerate and welcome a certain level of erotica.

Now the policy governing these types of works has changed slightly from year to year (but not recently) as we've refined things after listening to community input from both sides of the issue as well as legal advice and the opinions of certain core staff members.

At the very beginning there were some minor attempts at forcing any sort of nude photograph to conform to an artistic minimum but that was abandoned after a time as unworkable. For one we did not enforce "quality standards" anywhere else on the site and it made no sense to do it in just two galleries but not the other thousand plus areas which make up the gallery structure.

The FAQ attempting to explain the boundary has also been rewritten several times; not because of changes to the policy but rather to make it less grey and less open to reinterpretation. Currently the FAQ is as specific as possible without listing hundreds or thousands of distinct scenarios covering every possible situation; going into that sort of painful detail is never productive and is in fact useless because you can never cover everything so accept that it will continue to contain a little grey area to keep things simple.


The purpose of the policy is, as I stated already, to draw a dividing line of judgment and to remove as much grey area from the decision making process as possible.

I should point out here that the decision making process involves a qualified and trained member of staff. Your personal interpretation of the policy is not a factor in the decision regardless of how personally offended you might be.

That's just the way it is; policy cannot flip flop back and forth depending on who is whining the loudest at the time because policy must be as consistent as possible, and regardless of what complaints you may hear the enforcement of this particular policy is as consistent as humanly possible.

As I stated previously deviantART allows a certain level of erotica; pinups, nudes, fetish, etc.
The difference between erotica and pornography is that pornography has the objective of showing you sexually explicit scenes in some manner while erotica does not.

Our policy seeks to define what we officially consider to be sexually explicit.

I know that some of you look towards a definition which includes "exploitive" or "degrading" or "intent of the artist" and similar subjective opinions.

Our policy does not rely upon subjective opinion but rather the work itself. The reason for this is that by introducing subjectivity you cannot hold a consistent standard against to judge something.

The policy must be objective and neutral and a policy judgment must be made after looking at the work as a whole with subjectivity and personal opinion removed.


Firstly bear in mind that these are general clarifications written without example works in mind; since all judgments are made after an examination of the work in question the outcome can vary case-by-case depending on exactly what the work presents.

FAQ #565: You prohibit the submission of 'pornographic material'; what do you consider this to be?

The portions which seem to be most often misinterpreted are;

• Masturbation
Hands should not come into contact with genitalia in a manner which is clearly a display of fondling or masturbation.

Notice the phrase "clearly a display". I trust that I do not have to painstakingly explain the mechanics of masturbation to you people. Needless to say placing your hand near your genitals is not "masturbation", neither is covering yourself with your hands, etc.
The question you need to ask is "does this clearly and without a doubt show somebody masturbating?". "Implied" doesn't cut it here and neither does "Suggestive" because it's a "Yes or No" answer.

• Sexual Intercourse.
Subjects should not be positioned in a manner which is clearly a display of sexual intercourse. This can include depictions of sexual penetration, genital to genital contact, genital to anal contact, oral to genital contact, oral to breast contact or oral to anal contact.

Notice that the qualifier here is "can include". There are exceptions which can and do occur and while this line is supposed to make that clear I suppose it falls a bit short of that. I will edit this line in an attempt to clarify it further.

• Vaginal or Anal Spreading
Female subjects should not be depicted with their vagina spread or opened by hand or manipulated open by any other artificial means. Neither sex should show the anus opened in a similar fashion.

I had though this one was fairly clear but evidently it is still open to misinterpretation. This is intended to address the vaginal area or anus being manually spread open by hand, or clamps, or some other clearly artificial method. Opening ones legs or bending over or doing some sort of bizarre yoga move doesn't count. I will edit this description slightly in attempt to eliminate the ability for this section to be misinterpreted.


So essentially erotic photography and artwork has a place here, pornography does not and we have set the official line between erotica and pornography at the place where we believe allows for the greatest leeway for people in that genre while excluding explicit sexual works.

The policy obviously doesn't please everyone; some people want more room and some people want more restrictions and censorship but the point is that the policy was never intended to please everyone, is incapable of pleasing everyone and we aren't even going to make that attempt.

Whether you approve or not the line has been drawn where it is and it is as close to being set in stone as things get around here.