Update 1: I edited the 📽️ Credit Where Credit is Due rule to be more clear about attributions, watermarks, and cropping of comics. Also I fixed some spelling mistakes.
Update 2: I edited the 🧬 Keep it Real rule for clarity. Keep it coming!
Update 3:
I edited the 🏘️ Community Standards based on user feedback.
Updated the formatting of the rules to remove spoiler tags.
Be more concise with some rules.
Good day/evening folks!
Note: Please read until the end; there is a lot here, so if you want to skip straight to business you can search for “Call to Action” and “New Rules” to get right to it. I won’t be terribly offended. 🥹
Last night (2026-04-08 America/New_York time) I was approached and asked to moderate this community. It seems our esteemed @lawrence@lemmy.world has found themselves otherwise occupied and unable to commit time necessary to maintaining the community. Whatever their reasons, we thank them for their service and wish them well in whatever they are doing now.
My name is @dohpaz42@lemmy.world. You may call me dohpaz42, dohpaz, doh!, jerkface (with love!), or whatever; just don’t call me late for dinner. I have been a Lemmy user since July 2023, and it’s been a wild ride. Love me or hate me, know that I took this post with the intention to be a fair and impartial mod. I do understand that I may will make mistakes, but I promise that if you come at me respectfully, I will listen. I may not agree with you, but I will listen. I only ask that you do the same for me and my (eventual) team.
A little about moi:
- I am a divorced father of two young boys
- I am a web developer who dabbles in devops
- I am not an arch user (sorry, not sorry 😏)
- I enjoy hobbies like: 3d-printing, household DIY, video games, woodworking
- I like to watch Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror (Stargate SG-1, Supernatural, Star Trek (TNG, DS9, etc), Night/Dawn/Day of the Living Dead, Paranormal Activity, etc)
- Cooking (Send me gluten-free recipes!)
Call to Action
If you are interested in helping to moderate this community, please let me know by DM. I will evaluate each request on the merits of the person making the request. This will mostly involve a user’s post/comment history and modlog history.
Note: Having a modlog history does not automatically exclude you from being a moderator, but I do want to make sure that whomever helps helms this community can do so in a respectful and positive manner. Mods will be held to a higher standard than regular users.
I also have a modlog history. Some of it was (in my opinion) unwarranted, and some of it (upon reflection) was very much warranted. I believe in second (and possibly third) chances. I’ve been there too, and I’ve still been given this opportunity. So to honor that opportunity, I am willing to give (almost) anybody a chance.
New Rules
I have decided to start out with a rewrite of the rules. Nothing dramatic, but I feel there are a couple of things that can be refined and improved upon. Before I make it official and update the sidebar, I am open to your feedback first (see below). Once the feedback is given, and any revisions made, I will post the new rules to the sidebar. I will accept feedback (comments in this post) until Saturday, April 11, 2026 at 3PM EDT (19:00 UTC).
Note: If you moderate a similar community, and wish to be linked in our sidebar, please leave a comment and I would be happy to add it to the list.
And without further ado, here are the new rules:
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
Rules
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😇 Be Nice!
- Treat others with respect and dignity. Friendly banter is okay, as long as it is mutual; keyword: friendly.
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🏘️ Community Standards
- Comics should be a full story, from start to finish, in one post.
- Posts should be safe and enjoyable by the majority of community members, both here on lemmy.world and other instances.
- Any comic that would qualify as raunchy, lewd, or otherwise draw unwanted attention by nosy coworkers, spouses, or family members should be tagged as NSFW.
- Moderators have final say on what and what does not qualify as appropriate. Use common sense, and if need be, err on the side of caution.
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🧬 Keep it Real
- Comics should be made and posted by real human beans, not by automated means like bots or AI. This is not the community for that sort of thing.
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📽️ Credit Where Credit is Due
- Comics should include the original attribution to the artist(s) involved, and be unmodified. Bonus points if you include a link back to their website. When in doubt, use a reverse image search to try to find the original version. Repeat offenders will have their posts removed, be temporarily banned from posting, or if all else fails, be permanently banned from posting.
- Attributions include, but are not limited to, watermarks, links, or other text or imagery that artists add to their comics to use for identification purposes. If you find a comic without any such markings, it would be a good idea to see if you can find an original version. If one cannot be found, say so and ask the community for help!
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📋 Post Formatting
- Post an image, gallery, or link to a specific comic hosted on another site; e.g., the author’s website.
- Meta posts about the community should be tagged with [Meta] either at the beginning or the end of the post title.
- When linking to a comic hosted on another site, ensure the link is to the comic itself and not just to the website; e.g.,
✅ Correct: https://xkcd.com/386/
❌ Incorrect: https://xkcd.com/
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📬 Post Frequency/SPAM
- Each user (regardless of instance) may post up to five (5 🖐) comics a day. This can be any combination of personal comics you have written yourself, or other author’s comics. Any comics exceeding five (5 🖐) will be removed.
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🏴☠️ Internationalization (i18n)
- Non-English posts are welcome. Please tag the post title with the original language, and include an English translation in the body of the post; e.g.,
Sí, por favor [Spanish/Español]
- Non-English posts are welcome. Please tag the post title with the original language, and include an English translation in the body of the post; e.g.,
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🍿 Moderation
- We are human, just like most everybody else on Lemmy. If you feel a moderation decision was made in error, you are welcome to reach out to anybody on the moderation team for clarification. Keep in mind that moderation decisions may be final.
- When reporting posts and/or comments, quote which rule is being broken, and why you feel it broke the rules.
Web of Links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: “I use Arch btw”
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don’t say!)
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Finally, the beepening is over.
Good luck moderating this place, hope my provocative content doesn’t create too many moderation headaches, I’ve stirred up the userbase quite a few times in the past :)
As a former mod of some big communities, make sure to always remember it’s a volunteer task and not a job. You don’t owe anyone explanations, you’re allowed to be wrong, you can take breaks, even if you’re doing your best some people will dislike you no matter what. Keep it cool or it might affect your mental health. Remember this comment if you ever feel burnt out!
Should i just unsub now before i get banned for using normal adult language?
Miss me with the fuckin family friendly shit.That’s exactly what this formerly unmoderated, yet tame community needs: ti be forced into being PG. 🙄
👶 Keep it at PG/PEGI 7
Can we add an ‘unless tagged NSFW’ addendum to this? There’s plenty of quality NSFW things that get posted here (e.g. Oglaf comics) and I for one would be sad to see them go (or to have to create a new community for those things).
Edit: To add to this, looking back at post history, it looks like we get about 1 NSFW post per week here, give or take. Have those really been problematic enough to warrant a ban (when appropriately tagged?)
I’d be in favor of using PG-13 as the baseline, not PG. A lot of the stuff here I probably wouldn’t show a 7 year old. Lemmy isn’t exactly a children’s site anyway.
NSFW tags can be used for anything you wouldn’t show a minor, but keep in mind this isn’t a porn community - adult topics and suggestive content are okay, but actual porn is not (unless we do want to allow it???).
Going with the PEGI ratings for sexual content might be a bit more helpful. (There’s a bit of interpretation leeway because this is written for games not comic strips)
This [sex] content descriptor can accompany a PEGI 12 rating if the game includes sexual posturing or innuendo, a PEGI 16 rating if there is erotic nudity or sexual intercourse without visible genitals, or a PEGI 18 rating if there is explicit sexual activity in the game. Depictions of nudity in a non-sexual context do not require a specific age rating, and this descriptor would not be necessary. Wikipedia
If I’m reading this correctly, PEGI 12 is if it subtly references sex in someway, or if a character is in a “sexy” pose; a “let’s Netflix and chill” or “is that pickle in your pocket” type of thing.
PEGI 16 is the sex scene on TV that your parents always seem to be watching when you walk in. It doesn’t show main parts of the act, but you know what they’re doing.
PEGI 18 is just porn.
From those descriptions, I suggest allowing PEGI 12 with no tagging necessary, PEGI 16 must be tagged, and PEGI 18 is not allowed.
I’d get rid of the last sentence of the wiki description too to make it simple - if there’s nudity tag it as nsfw.
Or even simpler; If you’d get arrested for showing it to a 16yr old, tag it. If you’d shoot your “creepy uncle” for showing it to your 16yr old kid, tag it.
I’d apply similar rules for violence, pegi 12 is fine, pegi 16 tag it, and pegi 18 is guro/NSFL and not allowed.
The original rule stated:
Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
The adult content is already a rule; I was merely rewording it and trying to offer a clearer definition of “adult content”. However, if the community so desires and posts can be properly tagged NSFW, I wouldn’t be against adding onto this rule.
But, I also do not want this comm to devolve into yet another porn depot. There are instances for that already.
Sure, but the original rule was not being enforced. Presumably given that we have an active mod, now, you’re planning to enforce the rules. Basically all I’m saying is, I’d prefer that the content that has been getting posted be allowed to continue to be posted. Nobody’s looking for hardcore pornography, but the occasional risque comic should (IMO) not cause problems, as they haven’t been for quite some time.
It does look like the community overall enjoys the more adult themed comics sometimes splashed in here, and theyre not super frequent and we havent devolved into a porn spot yet.
Like others have said, Oglaf is fun and can be very raunchy, their site is 18+ and at times they have some safe PG13 to PG comics in their arsenal. Besides them, Cyanide and Happiness are very PG to PG13 and then on occasion they post very R rated content.
I think as a community we can generalize what we enjoy without going overboard and a NSFW provides a clear boundary to people in settings where looking at this content can get them in trouble. While I understand wanting to keep things relatively family friendly we shouldnt be the guardians over other peoples children.
Really not digging the pg-13 stuff. Lemmy has an older demographic than most social media. And it’s certainly not up to us to censor in case of someone’s spouse (???).
I’m fine with disallowing full nudity but NSFW is meant for stuff that can be seen at a glance, not for a coworker or kid breaking into our phones and actually reading the content.
Yes it was like that in the rules before but it was not enforced and it doesn’t seem like something the community thinks needs rectifying.
Tagging anything mildly spicy isn’t a compromise! I do not surf here with the NSFW on, most people don’t either. I’m not on Lemmy to look at porn but that doesn’t mean I want it clear of anything related to sex. This isn’t a church.
Sorry if I’m being a dick, but reading the comments, it seems like most people have a problem with it and you haven’t properly addressed it.
“Raunchy” is fine, anything with explicit sex or nudity behind a tag. No censorship for the jokes actual content (text) whatsoever. It’s that simple.
Thanks in any case, I’m just happy that loser finally got banned.
Edit: Maybe I’m over reacting. It depends on how intense you are about the whole thing. Browsing the most upvoted this month, these’s quite a few comics that could potentially fall under the umbrella. I mostly want to avoid missing out on content just because of mild sexual themes.
Hi Dohpaz42! Welcome and thank you for doing a bit of a pulse check and getting some input from the community.
I’m one of the many lurkers that typically just browses and rarely comments or posts but I wanted to post a little feedback on your proposed updated rules:
I would like to ask that you consider including something about the comics themselves being cropped/modified before posting.
I know there will be times where a person mistakenly uploads a modified one randomly found on the net, but recently there have been a ton of posts (comments as well) where the one user in particular, decided that cropping the images are justified and will link to places like Reddit or the main website for their comic (e.g. xkcd.com) without the direct link/attribution. Followed by taunting others who point it out in other threads. It is causing unnecessary drama in the community obviously.
Thank you
📽️ Credit Where Credit is Due
This is the rule that was meant to address that issue.
Comics should include the original attribution to the artist(s) involved, and be unmodified. Bonus points if you include a link back to their website. When in doubt, use a reverse image search to try to find the original version. Repeat offenders will have their posts removed, be temporarily banned from posting, or if all else fails, be permanently banned from posting.
Attributions include, but are not limited to, watermarks, links, or other text or imagery that artists add to their comics to use for identification purposes. If you find a comic without any such markings, it would be a good idea to see if you can find an original version. If one cannot be found, say so and ask the community for help!
How does this sound?
Edit: Updated with more verbiage based on other feedback.
Hello, and thanks for stepping up.
Bots and AI are cool…
Does this mean the no AI generated comics rule is gone?
Edit: no, it’s still in place.
Honestly, I think most people here, me included, don’t want AI content in this community. It’s low effort and there’s already other places for gen ai stuff :S please, reconsider this one.…but we value genuine human effort in posts… This is not the place for that sort of thing.
I was trying to be concise, and cheeky, but I see where that might be confusing. Let’s see if we can make this more clear:
Comics should be made and posted by real human beans, not by automated means like bots or AI. This is not the community for that sort of thing.
I am also open to any suggestions you or others may have on wording this better.
“Keep it Real” is literally the rule name.
Plus the “Bots and AI are cool… BUT” part seem clear enough to me that AI slop posting is against the rules.
This seems great!
I am concerned for the family friendly rule😅 Will nsfw comics be banned? will jokes that are sexual in nature be banned? There is this one comic that often just has casual nudity f.ex - would that be banned?
+1 for attribution
-1 for PG. We’ve been unmoderated for probably over a year now, and it hasn’t devolved into anything. Starting to enforce a PG filter now is an active change. Not a passive continuation.
Man, jerkface, I really appreciate you taking on this responsibility, but I’m really wary of a hard pivot to “no adult content”/PEGI 7. I’d even be slightly skeptical toward PEGI 12, but PEGI 7 is pretty restrictive and leaves out really good content that’s non-offensive to social media platforms like Lemmy where
users are expected (not formally in LW’s ToS, but nevertheless expected) to be at least 13.(edit: I’m a dummy; I forgot LW’s ToS were 18+. The 13+ assumption was sort of threadiverse-wide, but I totally whiffed the LW-specific part.)I wouldn’t gripe too much over PEGI 12 and allowing for the NSFW tag for exceptions (because that covers 13+), but PEGI 7 is saying “let’s keep it appropriate for users who shouldn’t even be browsing Lemmy unsupervised”.
Anyway, your diligent moderation is better than beepsville, and I still really appreciate the hard work I know you’re willing to put in.
