Neopets Now LGBTQIA+ Friendly!

[hrtbrk]

A major (and long overdue) update to the Neoboards filters and rules surrounding LGBTQIA+ community was announced earlier today.

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We wanted to give you a heads up about some changes coming soon to the filters on the Neoboards. As many of you are aware, certain discussions that extend to real-life topics are not permitted on the boards, in order to ensure the safety and privacy of our users.

However, Neopets should always be a safe place to express yourself, regardless of your identity or orientation, and many of the filters we had in place in the past did not allow for that expression. Above all else, it’s important to us on TNT that Neopia and the Neoboards are a safe and welcoming place for everyone, including Neopians in the LGBTQIA+ community. We've realized that some of the filters or restrictions placed on the Neoboards did not always account for that, so we’ll be making changes to filters surrounding LGBTQIA+ filters and topics on the Neoboards.

It's always been a priority for TNT to support our userbase in expressing themselves openly and safely, and we are excited to roll out these long overdue changes! In doing so, we'd like to be very clear about what we can and cannot allow to keep Neopia safe, supportive and inclusive for all our users. Please look over our new rules below, which will be added to the Chat Rules page as well.

• 1. Do not post about anyone else’s sexual orientation or gender identity. This includes outing someone, pushing an identity or belief onto someone else, or recruiting others to join an off-site group or organization.
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• 2. Neopets has a wide userbase with many different personal beliefs and opinions. The Neoboards can be a place to express those beliefs, but not to discuss or debate them. In the event of an argument, we will have to flag all users involved, even if you believe you are in the right. If you are being harassed or discriminated against for your identity by another user on the boards, we ask that you not interact with them, and to report the issue to a moderator who will handle the situation.
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• 3. As a reminder, aligning yourself with a hate group is not an acceptable form of personal expression. Anyone who labels themselves as such or expresses hateful beliefs will be frozen.
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• 4. Coming out is absolutely fine! You’ll have a warm and accepting family of Neopians to welcome you! But please do not attempt to out someone else.
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• 5. You are free to use terminology such as “gay”, “straight”, “bi”, “queer”, “cisgender”, “trans”, “questioning”, “lesbian”, and others to describe yourself. All we ask is that you use these terms in a positive way and not about another person.
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• 6. As with any form of harassment, we will not permit anyone to use these terms in an insulting way. If this does occur, the user in question will risk being warned and/or silenced.
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• 7. Relationship discussions are not permitted. Casually mentioning “My partner and I went out to see a film…” is not a problem at all! Going into even borderline/graphic sexual discussions is not allowed.
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• 8.Pride flag colours in your signatures are perfectly fine!

http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index.phtml?section=editorial&week=923

[GillyTook]

I get the feeling that while I could so use my flag, I'd have to stick to ace, short for asexual, as part of the term would likely still be flagged.  No skin off my back because that's what I typically say anyway, but yeahhh!  This is great for the site  

[Angeló]

That is great and honestly it's way overdue

It's just a game site , we don't discuss color / race / ethnicity ... I don't see how or why people could be divided according to their sexual orientation as well .. I enjoy the site regardless of who I'm talking to on the boards , or trading with etc

 

[Duskitty]

This is a pretty good update to their site policy. I appreciate that they're doing this, as well as permitting talk of relationships in general - this in particular was way overdue.

I wonder if they'll do other things, like allowing more gender options besides "Male, Female, Other".

[berriganify]

huzzah! very happy to see this. i mean, it's kind of been a semi-accepted thing on the neoboards for a while, anyway. people have had flags in their signatures for ages, and been using metaphors to talk about themselves, with the unspoken understanding that as long as it all stays pg there wouldn't be any icings over it... so might as well make it official, right?

i'm also really happy to see that outing other people is forbidden.

and yes, i would like more gender options! "Other" is... better than not having a third option, but it is kind of putting us in that literally othering "you are not like us" category

but there's also a lot of labels and genders, so i can also see that trying to account of all of them might seem a little daunting. and that's not taking into account that there's a lot of culture-specific genders, too. the best option would probably be a write-in box, i think some other sites do this. the site's spaghetti code might not be able to handle that, though, pretty sure all the other similar fields on the profile are all drop-downs.

[hrtbrk]

On 12/19/2020 at 6:06 AM, Duskitty said:

This is a pretty good update to their site policy. I appreciate that they're doing this, as well as permitting talk of relationships in general - this in particular was way overdue.

I wonder if they'll do other things, like allowing more gender options besides "Male, Female, Other".

Yes they will be. Gutterfoot said on the boards that non-binary options are coming in the future and we will be able to change gender options of our pets whenever we like.

credit: r/neopets discord server for the screenshot

[Angeló]

What will happen when the Lab Ray changes the pet's gender , though ? and what about Royal, Elderly and Usuki pets that come in Male and Female ?

[Duskitty]

4 hours ago, hrtbrk said:

Yes they will be. Gutterfoot said on the boards that non-binary options are coming in the future and we will be able to change gender options of our pets whenever we like.

credit: r/neopets discord server for the screenshot

That's actually really cool! I wonder if we might also be able to change things like username or name of pets, although that might be harder for them to change.

[jellysundae]

5 hours ago, Angeló said:

What will happen when the Lab Ray changes the pet's gender , though ? and what about Royal, Elderly and Usuki pets that come in Male and Female ?

Hmm, that's actual coded gender though, isn't it. I wonder if what they're meaning for your pets is basically the same as what's available for us, a dropdown option for displayed gender, but it won't alter the pet in any way. So an Elderlyboy pet, could have female or whatever other options pets get, on their pet page.  Stuff like that.

2 hours ago, Duskitty said:

That's actually really cool! I wonder if we might also be able to change things like username or name of pets, although that might be harder for them to change.

I read a thing on Reddit a couple of days ago... some guy who's a coder saying changing pet names is pretty much impossible. Oh gosh, can I even vaguely remember what he said... x'D

Something like... pet ID stuff and everything that's tied into that goes by the pet's name, rather than a unique number and names being a supplementary thing, and when site's do that it's ... I need to try and find this again, I wonder what on earth it was I was looking for to find it in the first place!

Nah, I can't find it, but basically to be able to change names the entire backend of the site's code would have to be re-written. EEK!

Ah, this I remember. This guy basically saying Neo's code is skilled amateur level, that's the term he used, and Nickleodeon and Viacom just added to it rather than bringing the original stuff up to standard.

So basically Neopets' bones are still Adam's two decades old student coding.

[Duskitty]

20 hours ago, jellysundae said:

Something like... pet ID stuff and everything that's tied into that goes by the pet's name, rather than a unique number and names being a supplementary thing, and when site's do that it's ... I need to try and find this again, I wonder what on earth it was I was looking for to find it in the first place!

Nah, I can't find it, but basically to be able to change names the entire backend of the site's code would have to be re-written. EEK!

Ah, this I remember. This guy basically saying Neo's code is skilled amateur level, that's the term he used, and Nickleodeon and Viacom just added to it rather than bringing the original stuff up to standard.

So basically Neopets' bones are still Adam's two decades old student coding.

Yeah that makes sense. I suppose that's why we don't get username changes and the like either. Oh well, it's a nice thought.

[jellysundae]

4 hours ago, Duskitty said:

I suppose that's why we don't get username changes and the like either. Oh well, it's a nice thought.

It is! I've always felt that username changes are a thing that could be monetized and TNT would have jumped on the chance if it were possible; there's people out there who would absolutely pay cold hard cash to get rid of the cringey name their 13 year old self saddled 'em with. There'd need to be an NP option too; a fat 7-or-more figure sum to justify the NC option, act as a nice NP-sink, also to deter the less pleasant Neopian (scammer, troll etc.) from changing their name all the time so people didn't know who they were...

Who knows what the future may hold though!

 

[berriganify]

1 hour ago, jellysundae said:

It is! I've always felt that username changes are a thing that could be monetized and TNT would have jumped on the chance if it were possible; there's people out there who would absolutely pay cold hard cash to get rid of the cringey name their 13 year old self saddled 'em with. There'd need to be an NP option too; a fat 7-or-more figure sum to justify the NC option, act as a nice NP-sink, also to deter the less pleasant Neopian (scammer, troll etc.) from changing their name all the time so people didn't know who they were...

Who knows what the future may hold though!

 

Could have an area of the profile display all previous names, like on steam?

but yes, i, too, would actually be willing to play nc to change my name, although i would definitely take the np option if it was there! it would be a good cash sink. a limit to one username change a month, or something similar could also be a thing.

also re: neopets gender, i hope the royal/usuki/etc appearance differences are kept separate (as the pet's gender presentation), with a drop-down menu being gender identity which would affect/override the look-up and pet's pronouns. cause they don't always match up, so it would be a nice way of adding a bit more nuance to your pets!

[jellysundae]

2 hours ago, berriganify said:

Could have an area of the profile display all previous names, like on steam?

That's a good point, "the Neopian formerly known as..." or similar. xD

2 hours ago, berriganify said:

also re: neopets gender, i hope the royal/usuki/etc appearance differences are kept separate (as the pet's gender presentation), with a drop-down menu being gender identity which would affect/override the look-up and pet's pronouns. cause they don't always match up, so it would be a nice way of adding a bit more nuance to your pets!

YES! I really hoping that it how this is gonna end up!