PathfinderWiki talk:Images

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Definition of "not safe for work"

User:Descriptivist removed artwork from lashunta, Castrovel, and shotalashu in November 2024, and from velstrac and {{Velstrac species navbox}} in October 2024, with the edit summary "‎Readers have reported that NSFW art harms the user experience". No guideline or policy defines not-safe-for-work (NSFW).

I created the {{nsfw}} template to flag the removed art, in order to warn against its potential future use in a manner that would offend readers. It also categorizes the artwork in Category:NSFW artwork, currently hidden and flagged as a maintenance category pending a more consensus handling of such artwork.

A policy or guideline defining and enforcing this should accompany any further application to artwork. I'm opening discussion here as a venue since there are no existing content policies or guidelines that cover the morality or ethics of image contents.

I have no experience or qualifications to create or maintain content moderation policies or guidelines and would welcome any and all feedback, especially from User:Descriptivist for making these initial determinations based on feedback (presumably via a Discord discussion that wasn't captured on the wiki). -Oznogon (talk) 00:19, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Surveying adjacent projects, Wikipedia has no useful guidance here since Wikipedia is not censored, and its workarounds involve users disabling images in their browser, whether by userscript or browser settings.

Fandom's community guidelines suggest taking context into account, but generally allows for "artistic nudity", with examples of allowed nudity including "a small amount of non-erotic nudity from a game screenshot".

A 2018 forum discussion about fan art at Forgotten Realms wiki includes an admin (Moviesign) recommending against a policy and public categorization:

“

I would recommend against any category or warning about content because 1) it's subjective and 2) it calls attention to it, possibly attracting the prurient. Just let the images be like any other images and not put them all in a group that says "here is the risqué stuff". Act mature and you will be considered mature. As for fan art, I think it will be difficult adjudicating how well it reflects the Forgotten Realms, leading to hurt feelings or protests to the Powers That Be. I'd be ok with allowing an artist to put a link to their DeviantArt page in the Further Reading section of the appendix.

”

The resulting policy proposal included:

“

Fan art should be suitable for all audiences and avoid provocative content. Nudity and/or excessive gore are not allowed.

”

(To be clear, I raise these policies with no focus whatsoever on fan art/editor-provided artwork. FRW has no other policy I can find on such artwork, and as a Fandom wiki they follow the community guidelines already linked. This is mentioned only as a prior example of a TTRPG canon wiki discussion on content moderation.)

The proposal was rejected for unrelated reasons. -Oznogon (talk) 01:04, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Separately opened a broader discussion at Policies and guidelines about the potential need for a content or community policy that codifies things like the above, use of generative artificial intelligence, or other legal content moderation concerns. -Oznogon (talk) 01:32, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Repeating what I commented on the NSFW template talk page.

I strongly oppose this decision, especially considering none of the artwork depicts genitals or full nudity. It is official Paizo artwork, has been present on the website for over a decade, shows off no more than you'd see on a beach, many creatures have few if any alternative images available, and the definition of NSFW is highly subjective.

Does File:Basileus.jpg also count as NSFW? How about File:Ankana.jpg and File:Seoni tattoo.jpg? I can easily see someone considering these examples and many more as NSFW. Regardless, intentionally hiding or obscuring some part of the world of Golarion goes directly against the purpose of the PathfinderWiki. --Rexert (talk) 12:08, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

I have looked in the Paizo FAQ and similar areas for their guidance but could not find anything useful for us. Though, I am sure I remember seeing an age guidance for Paizo's work and maybe, if we could find that, it could serve as a definitive guideline, even baseline, for content. I understand Rexert's comments and point of view above and, we assume, Paizo has vetted all such art to be acceptable for their age range. However, I don't think it's the strict censorship Rexert fears. The art in question is not deleted, is still searchable, and still categorized for anyone wanting to find, say a picture of a kyton or lashunta. It's simply not front and centre, er, top right of a page when opened.

Two more howevers though: 1. not all our art is sourced from Paizo CUP and Oz has mentioned today that Wikipedia (the greatest other source) has no censorship - that is a potential route for inappropriate but properly licensed art to enter our wiki and we may wish to manage that avenue better? 2. When a reader is offended by art (or anything else on the wiki for that matter), we need to be able to take that seriously. A problem I see at the moment is that User:Descriptivist had to handle their concerns in public - that's brave and commendable, but should we seek to find a way for readers to raise such concerns away from public glare? Something like a comments area that is either anonymous or, likely better, a private message capability to inform the admins or the new company? The latter allows for a private discussion, if needed, and a quiet resolution. --Fleanetha (talk) 18:21, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

My personal stance on the artwork that User:Descriptivist unilaterally removed from articles is that, with the exception of File:Castrovel.jpg for shotalashu, the artwork in question was already either supplanted by newer artwork (velstrac) or wasn't strictly required to depict the subject (Castrovel) anyway. Raising NSFW concerns about the artwork only made those decisions more controversial than was strictly necessary.

From a content perspective, File:Castrovel.jpg likewise does not read to me as not-safe-for-work by any definition I'd apply, any more or less than File:Distant Worlds.jpg does in depicting the same lashunta design and a similar pose that's still available as a promotional cover for a product still for sale on the Paizo store.

My much bigger concern than the artworks, however, is that User:Descriptivist removed them from articles on a common basis of "reader feedback" without describing the nature of the complaints in a meaningful manner, and without discussion, consensus, or definition so that the decision could be consistently applied.

If complaints can warrant the systematic removal of artwork from articles, that constitutes, in practice, a content moderation policy that hasn't been discussed, agreed upon, proceduralized, assigned to a responsible party among wiki contributors, documented, or given a specific venue for contributors to appeal the decision. That constitutes a potential legal issue, beyond simply being a decision about whether and how to censor content that's already by definition compliant with the CUP.

As User:Rexert also points out, without any definition of "not safe for work", we also can't constructively apply any standard to any other artwork because we can't even begin to debate what crossed the proverbial line into offensiveness. This is a potential vector for abuse, because any piece of artwork can be the target of some arbitrary definition of "not safe for work"—equally non-sexual artwork of LGBTQ+ characters, depictions of blood or violent combat, etc. Any complaint could then be used to justify removing non-sexual artwork of a bared transmasculine chest, or of a depiction of a non-heterosexual marriage, from articles if bigoted "‎readers report that NSFW art harms the user experience".

I still have to assume that the "reader reports" were provided in a closed, off-wiki venue, so it's impossible for me, User:Rexert, or anyone else who wasn't actively participating in that venue at that time to understand what the specific concerns were to warrant unilateral removal, until and unless User:Descriptivist provides them on the wiki.

The closest I can find is 18 October 2024 re: velstracs, a discussion that took place entirely in the Discord, was not captured on the wiki, and boiled down to:

• "the evangelist art is a bit NSFW (or even objectifying/sexist) to be the face of the creature family"
• "I know a few people who were put off from looking further just by the page image"
• "the alternative is fine and less likely to bother anyone"

The discussion made no attempt to define "NSFW" and was limited to File:Evangelist velstrac.jpg. The 24 November 2024 removals don't appear to have been discussed on PFW Discord at all.

Are Pathfinder First Edition depictions of Seoni inherently "NSFW", regardless of context?

What about in the context of Paizo's changes to the character's design over time?

And can we, or should we, make such determinations on Paizo's behalf about artwork they've released as being CUP-compliant?

A content policy can exist without specificity by codifying context and consensus, as Fandom's does. Non-sexual, non-explicit artwork lacking nudity, like File:Castrovel.jpg, being used in a thumbnail to depict a shotalashu when it's the only permitted artwork of the subject, and when presented in an intentionally encyclopedic and non-salacious manner, is a vastly different context than, say, using the overtly oversexualized File:Nocticula.jpg or the contrived File:Evangelist velstrac.jpg instead of more recent or more representative artwork of the subject.

Re: User:Fleanetha's questions about audience guidance from Paizo, any past guidance might be moot with the recent introduction of All Ages PFS content, the general-audience nature of most Free RPG Day releases, and what looks very much like a general-audience focus for the recently and quietly announced Pathfinder Game Night line. Paizo's audience is clearly not limited to adults, but Paizo content also often explicitly involves adult subjects; the line between them is rarely as clearly designated as the All Ages PFS tag.

However, it also isn't clear to me whether or how any Paizo guidance on its audience is necessarily relevant to the wiki as a project. Paizo's own standards on artwork and character designs have changed dramatically since 2007, but by definition we still capture and include content that Paizo wouldn't necessarily use in a product published in 2025, and for many reasons not limited to the objectification or sexualization of characters (such as OGL-related changes to character and creature designs).

Re: User:Fleanetha's concerns about freely licensed or editor-provided third-party art, any art depicting a canon subject would still have to comply with the CUP, which prohibits "adult content" despite its vague definition. Our restrictions could be more specific, but not more permissive; the question is whether the wiki should have more specific prohibitions. I'm inclined to say it shouldn't.

Re: User:Fleanetha's questions about feedback, we've floated ways for people to provide feedback to wiki admins without requiring an account on the wiki (primarily for freelancers and contributors to update biographical details, but also relevant here). Email or web forms for the Tabletop RPG Historical Society non-profit might be appropriate venues for such contacts, but it's unclear what presence the non-profit is meant to have apart from the wikis, and I don't know where or how to find out.

The more pressing question for me still remains: what would we actually do with that feedback? If we don't have a policy to determine what is and isn't appropriate for whatever our definition of our audience is or becomes, soliciting feedback is at best an exercise in perpetual timesinks of debate, and at worst a vector for facilitating potential bigoted abuse against Paizo and its contributors. -Oznogon (talk) 21:06, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

The PathfinderWiki file system is a fairly back-end feature that readers certainly can access, but are highly unlikely to, compared to the articles these files are relevant to. And having no image at all for an article, despite one being available, is a significant reduction for the quality and value of that page.

If Paizo releases art that PathfinderWiki readers feel uncomfortable viewing, I would argue that is not our fault or responsibility, but the fault of Paizo or the readers themselves. Our responsibility is to be comprehensive and accurate regarding the content published by Paizo, not to moderate and censor their own content on their behalf. Again, I would agree with the removal of third-party NSFW content, but certainly not content from Paizo.

I think it is a mistake to take any and all criticism seriously at face value, without questioning the complaint itself. Personally, if a reader reports they feel uncomfortable with the presence of evil deities as it clashes with their real life religious values and requests all images of Asmodeus to be removed, I would prefer losing that reader over catering to their expectations. And if a reader feels offended by official Paizo content, then perhaps they should consider moderating their own choice of entertainment, rather than expecting entertainment to conform to their whims.

That being said, I wouldn't oppose a feature allowing users to toggle between viewing and hiding NSFW content themselves, if that's something admins are interested in implementing. I just oppose hiding official content—NSFW or not—as a default. --Rexert (talk) 21:21, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

MediaWiki includes a feature called the Bad image list, which prevents certain images from being rendered inline. We don't currently use it, and it can't be toggled per user, it's always a global application. It's potentially hookable for use by an extension, but that's work and maintenance on the tech admin, and I'm not sure whether it would override the default behavior of not rendering them.

Any functionality to opt-in or opt-out would require a user account, which doesn't address complaints from readers and visitors who don't have and won't sign up for accounts. -Oznogon (talk) 22:03, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Extension:ImageFilter similarly allows the flagging of images with a "magic word" (_NSFW_) that then allows registered users to disable filtering. However, this also doesn't address users without accounts, and its implementation as a raw PHP extension is inherently insecure. -Oznogon (talk) 22:06, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with flagging an image as "NSFW" so it appears in categories of such or so someone could theoretically have some sort of warning pop up to alert them of such content on a given page. I do think we should be flagging but not removing such content, however. After all, "NSFW" is a weird term to use for official Paizo art that is, literally, my work as an employee at the company. I think we can curate what image is used to illustrate the velstrac family, for example, without fully removing that image from the wiki or more specific articles like evangelist. But I don't want editing the wiki to become some sort of thought-policing exercise in determining if something crosses an entirely arbitrary line. If it's good enough for Paizo to have posted on the blog or otherwise put into the Community Use Package, I think it should be considered acceptable for our community.— Yoda8myhead (talk) 21:29, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps I was inconsiderate in using the term "NSFW". I believe the three images in Category:NSFW artwork and the cover of Distant Worlds are objectifyingly sexist, like my description of the 2009 evangelist when I was quoted higher up on this page. I wish to build off an observation by Oznogon that I thought he was prudent to make. Akin to how Paizo is pretty well understood to regret racist aspects of material they have published before, I feel that these characters' near-nudity in these images was a choice to sexualize them such that Paizo would similarly regret sexist aspects of this material; the understanding that Paizo would not use such artworks in the PF2e era did inform my decision-making to Be Bold. Sensitively curating what artworks we choose to display within articles like lashunta and shotalashu makes for a deliberately higher bar than the base level of being acceptable, because it serves the community to make articles not only tolerable/bearable (for some alienated readers, unbearable) but a positively safe and welcoming space for women like me. Just to borrow one instance of Rexert's words, a "fault of Paizo" is a fault, and addressing these faults is a good idea to me.

Now, readers interested in viewing all of a subject's artwork are already intended to click the "Images of lashuntas" Category hyperlink that is automatically included in articles' infoboxes; but these articles' Talk pages seem like perfect places for interested editors to choose to call interested readers' attention to the existence of (or, of course, to make discussion posts debating the removal of) particular artworks that aren't suited to be displayed within those Mainspace articles. I apologize that I may have been imprudently inclined against calling attention to or creating controversy that I assumed not strictly necessary. If a consensus calls for me to create those three Talk pages, then I can certainly do that.

If a consensus calls for creating a formal Inappropriate Artwork Policy, such as to define a "higher bar", then I could propose a starting point like generally discouraging articles from including Racist, Intolerant, or Sexist artwork; a "R.I.S.ky" guideline, perhaps.

If it's okay, in the interest of this Talk page's readability, I added an :indentation level to User:Rexert's un-indented reply. —Descriptivist (talk) 09:53, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't feel like it's the wiki's role to editorialize what official content is and isn't offensive. If Paizo retracts the images, like it's done with objectionable textual content in the past, then we have clear guidance on the direction of the brand from its owners. Until then, it's subjective when something is racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive. Do we hide every image of shirtless Seltyiel or stripper outfit Seoni? We just accept them as products of the time they were created and can choose to focus on newer alternative images when available. If there are no newer alternatives, then I think we should use the existing images, objectionable or not. I don't want the wiki to be so afraid of potentially offending someone that we are either making our own calls on when something is and isn't acceptable or are actively revising history to hide stuff that modern readers might find objectonable. It's a 20-year-old brand. There are going to be elements that are dated. And that's ok.— Yoda8myhead (talk) 18:10, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The nudity-based NSFW argument made sense, but I don't really follow what makes an image of a character with little clothing inherently sexist. Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on gender, and I don't see how these images do either. In fact, hiding or censoring artwork of female characters based on their clothing while leaving countless shirtless male characters untouched sounds a lot more like the definition of sexism to me. Real-life cultures with rampant sexism seem to agree, severely restricting what women are allowed to wear.

Either way, the goal of the PathfinderWiki should be comprehensive documentation of the Pathfinder setting, regardless if that setting is sexist, racist, homophobic, atheistic or otherwise. My previous message was intentionally left without indentation to clarify it's meant as a response to User:Fleanetha, but it doesn't make a big difference I suppose. --Rexert (talk) 19:16, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

resetting indentation

I strongly agree with Yoda here, particularly regarding User:Descriptivist proposing that the wiki make decisions about the appropriateness of content on Paizo's behalf.

User:Descriptivist, if you feel strongly that the artwork in question is inappropriate for the Pathfinder community, it might be more useful to raise that with Paizo and determine whether there's a process for retroactively retracting specific pieces of artwork. They ultimately grant the permission to use that artwork and define how it can be used to represent them, and if Paizo retracts a piece of art from the CUP—or even expresses a preference against its use—and someone disagrees with that decision, it's more appropriately Paizo's decision to defend.

I cite and use boldness frequently; it's a valuable guideline. If this decision had been limited to the first instance with velstrac and the template, I would have raised the discussion the image's or article's Talk page instead once I noticed the change. I raised this broader discussion because the subsequent systemic application of a standard as systematic content moderation implied some level of consensus or agreement toward that practice, and left me uncertain as to whether and how it should be enforced elsewhere.

Regardless of the intent or soundness of the standards User:Descriptivist applied—and regardless of whether I personally understand Descriptivist's determinations about the art's objectification or its potential to be distressing to some readers, which I do—systematically applying an unwritten set of standards as if they were policy, and without public discussion, raised a flag to me that went past boldness and entered disruptive territory. Particularly since that action effected a form of censorship, however mild, which—again, regardless of the intent or soundness of the decision—is still inherently controversial.

There's an existing middle ground where we can potentially flag art as suboptimal depictions of a subject and avoid using them in articles without codifying specific standards: by discussing and reaching consensus on a case-by-case basis. This can also extend far beyond "not safe for work" determinations; for instance, like User:Descriptivist, I've also flagged, replaced, or removed outdated artwork from articles without discussion. Not out of ethical or moral implications of the content, however, but on issues of accuracy. Those decisions should perhaps also be revisited on a case-by-case basis for the same reasons I state here.

Either way, even the slightest of guidelines or policies to define the process for contesting a depiction—"If you think a piece of artwork is an inappropriate illustration for an article, open a discussion on the article's Talk page and reach a consensus on whether and how the artwork should be used"—would provide at least something to point to and enforce. This discussion at least illustrates how wide the divide is in editor opinion about whether decisions like this, or the practice making the decisions off-wiki, or the extrapolation of one decision to apply to other potentially controversial subjects, are either common sense or highly controversial. -Oznogon (talk) 19:42, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Indeed, I also now remember removing File:Shokuro flag.webp from articles based on a Paizo contributor's statements about Paizo's intent to reduce harm in its changed depiction of Songbai. That should also be reopened to discussion by these standards. -Oznogon (talk) 19:46, 1 April 2025 (UTC)