Art Fight's maturity system pisses me off

This article was written on 7/13/2023

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(This article is a more refined version of a post I made on Tumblr. I will also give a small content warning for mentions of gore-y subjects and body horror, but no depictions.)

I can't think of a snazzy way to lead into the topic of this article, so we'll jump straight to the point: I hate how vague the censoring system is on Art Fight.

There are 6 broad categories an artwork could fall into if it is a "mature" work. These categories are: Gore, body horror, nudity, sexual themes, eyestrain/epilepsy inducing, and "sensitive content". The issue is that these are all just umbrellas for more specific art features, some of which may or may not ruin one's day. For example, the gore category includes but is not limited to: small to large amounts of blood, heavy injuries, extreme bruising, exposed muscles or organs, missing skin, and eye injuries. Each of these features have their own nuances to them too, as a character with visible organs may need a gore filter if these organs are semi to super realistic, but do not if the organs are super stylized. Art Fight's filter system divulges none of these details. When you come across a censored work, you are simply told which of the 6 broad maturity categories the art falls into. So, if you are a viewer who is fine with lots of blood but hate looking at exposed muscles or organs, just being told a piece contains "gore" with no note as to what that entails is super unhelpful.

Now, multiply the issue by 6, as the other maturity categories are quite broad as to what they contain as well. Does this theoretical post marked with "body horror" have characters with more eyes than normal or a face that splits open? Is it cartoonish or realistic? You wouldn't know until you take the gamble and potentially scare yourself!

Another thing adding onto this issue that I recently learned of is that the current warnings Art Fight gives does not specify where the mature content is. When viewing censored works the usual assumption is that the mature stuff is in the art itself, however a filter is required if mature content is in the art's description as well. This is understandable, but having no indicators of where the viewer will witness mature content is just another factor that forces people to take a gamble when viewing art.

What I think would solve this problem is giving people the ability to give specific warnings, both on character profiles and particular images. The Art Fight devs couldn't possibly account for every sect of gore or "sensitive content" there is, but giving people something like a user input field would be leaps better than what we have now (which is almost nothing). I so strongly believe this should be a thing that I've whipped up an example of what a specific warning could look like:

The above is an example for what it could look like when you're about to go onto the profile of a filtered character, but here's something for when you're already on the profile and about to view sensitive art works as well.

As much noise I have made about a user input field, I do have to acknowledge it's only as perfect as the person who has to label their own art. Not everyone is familiar with writing effective content warnings and some may write theirs to be just as vague as Art Fight's regular filter system, but having some specific warning system in place is much better than no system. I also just feel like if users are already willing to label their content with the system already in place, I imagine quite a few users would take to adding a few extra lines to be more specific with the labelling.