I was thinking something along the lines of having a Mature subforum to GC. 18+ members would automatically have access to it. Based on behavior seen around the for, but also in GC, underage people can be granted viewing permission to this forum. Likewise, 18+ members who act too irresponsibly could have said privilege taken away. Yes, I know its work, especially on the GC mods who would be the ones debating who is eligible (Andy lets face it, you don't really do much as a GC mod, I'd know), but it's an idea.
As I said previously, I just don't think a restricted-access forum is the way to go. Maybe keep it restricted to members-only, but that's as far as I'd go. Those places become terrible really quick. I'd much rather just have a subforum where all those topics can be collected and ignored if the person so chooses; where people can have their discussions and be moderated by considering a bit different criteria to the rest of the community. I don't like age-restriction and I don't think manually making exceptions like that would work very well; we have a significant amount of younger but pretty mature teens here. And idk I do appreciate the idea that sex could be an open topic and handled at least somewhat educationally- we do have a lot of people at the age of questioning and figuring things out. Could be helpful. The trick is to not let it get out of hand. And that's where drawing some clear lines needs to happen. If a member is causing trouble in this forum, they can be punished according to PC's infraction system rather than simply having privileges for that forum be taken away. There needs to be some rules in place for users' protection- not just in this hypothetical forum, but across the board and as it is now.
Ozzy was a little extreme in his examples imo but he does raise some valid concerns- some things really are inappropriate. We can't really revolutionize society through one community, nor all at once. We can become a little more lenient with our limitations and we can encourage mature discussions, but we have to have an enforced set of rules. We have to keep a careful eye on these things because wow people accidentally get themselves over their heads and don't know what to do or who to go to. We may say talk to a staff member, but that requires 1) the member to feel comfortable with that, 2) the staff member to not be dismissive and 3) the staff to be able to resolve the situation. If we're allowing mature content, I feel like staff really have to be more alert to potential discomfort; even if people feel confident sharing in a mature thread, that doesn't mean they are comfortable with potentially creepy responses. I posted in a thread once that was like "are you comfortable being nude in a locker room" and said yes, I'm fine with it. I got a response from someone that I am not friends with, nor had any interaction with, essentially that being nude in a locker room would be a dangerous thing because I'd get people staring at me and increase the chances of sexual violence/perversion. Like, he would definitely stare at me! And that's really damn creepy and inappropriate tbh. And that wasn't even a topic I would consider mature. I don't know why I didn't report that tbh. But I mean, if
I didn't report it... what are the chances that someone else really creeped out by something would report it?
If we're going to allow discussions that have the potential to turn into something even more uncomfortable than that, someone really needs to be looking out for people. Sometimes you just don't know how to react. Sometimes you get shaken up and just leave. Sometimes you get talked at more on the subject when you'd like to drop it. And you think you can handle yourself, or you think the staff won't care, and you just try to deal with it. That shouldn't have to be the case.
Another thought: Some people are severely uncomfortable with the discussions in D&D, whether is be politics, sex, violence, mental illness, whatever. So they avoid that forum. However, GC is meant to be a chit-chat forum for
everybody. It really hurts activity and a sense of community when people feel like they can't go in there without seeing things that make them uncomfortable. As we have many younger members and people who just don't like that stuff, we certainly have a good amount of people that really are uncomfortable with seeing so many sexual/mature topics, even the titles and the hovertext that includes the first few sentences.
If nothing else: There are RPs and fanfic with M/NC-17 ratings on here iirc. They are required to be labelled accordingly. I'd like to see the same in GC if mature threads will be around.