I responded earlier to a question about what images are ‘furry enough’, why we don’t delete all the images tagged ‘not furry’, and whether people who upload ‘not furry’ images should be banned, and while the original post is no longer appropriate to keep public, there were some parts that might still be useful or interesting to keep public in case it helps with transparency and to help encourage discussion.
What makes an image ‘furry enough’, or what do we do about images that aren’t furry at all and the people who upload them, is an interesting question and one which I myself am still getting a feeling for, and it feels like over time the site is becoming more accepting of a wider set of images which includes images that are not themselves furry, but which are parts of ‘furry franchises’, such as otherwise human characters from games that have a furry aspect.
Like, why are we allowing images of Samus on the site? She’s a human - where is the furry? (short answer: Metroid itself is furry so the characters from the game are also ‘implied furry’ even if they are full human, and are ok as long as the human-only images are tagged ‘not furry’ so people who don’t want to see that particular kind of mammal can filter them).
For myself, the way I think about it is that if an image has absolutely no connection with the Furry fandom or Furry stories, franchises, games, or universes, in other words something that has absolutely zero interface with anything Furry, then it probably is Rule #3 - but I’ll check with the rest of staff to make sure.
For example, I can’t think of anything in FireFly that’s furry. So any FireFly images that weren’t an alternative universe where the characters were furry would probably not be ok here. As much as I love FireFly, a straight up drawing of Mal being awesome is just a human from a human-centric non-furry franchise, so that would almost certainly be Rule #3.
On the other hand, if an image has SOME connection with a furry show or universe or franchise, or a show that has at least furry elements, like Ryoko out of Tenchi Miyu (because the series has space-faring extra-dimensional battleships whose physical representations in our universe are a talking rabbit, and a couple of the characters in the show periodically also become talking rabbits themselves) then that’s OK to host here as long as it is tagged “Not Furry”. I’ve uploaded such images myself - for example I’ve been uploading images from the She-Ra reboot, and uploaded
a drawing of a character from ソウルアームズ ラ・ゼッタ (which has a lot of strong furry elements and is, to be fair, an elf character who looks a lot like Ryoko, and who also is an extra-dimensional battleship whose physical representation in our universe is sometimes very much like a cat). That image is itself “not furry” but not so much “not furry” that it isn’t welcome here, because the series itself is arguably very furry and this specific character sometimes dons her fur suit from the inside out. Maybe I should draw her in that aspect as well - that arguably would be even more grounded in what this site is about. I should do that.
FFXI is another example - sure, many of the characters are human or humanoid, but there’s also races like the Mithra.
Soooo many Mythra.
So, unfortunately, what is and isn’t “too not furry” doesn’t have a hard line. The furry world has grown to include a lot of shows and franchises that previously were very Humans Only. And a lot of shows that only ever hinted at a furry component are now openly embracing their furry core.
Someday maybe everything will have a furry aspect. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
As for banning people who upload ‘not furry’ images, generally speaking, the only time someone is going to receive a ban is if they are also doing something else wrong, like if there is some problem but they won’t stop when we ask them to stop doing whatever the problem is, or if someone is ban evading, or - rarely - if they are logged off and we can’t identify who they are and we need to give them a temporary ban just to communicate with them and get them to come to Support so we can talk. There’s a couple people who do persistently break rules here and only use the site anonymously, so when working with them we really don’t have a lot of ways to communicate with them short of a temporary “Please talk to us about this” ban on the IP.
I hope this helps answer any questions about ‘not furry’ images on a ‘furry site’. But if not, and folks would like to discuss it more or have questions, then maybe that’s something we can talk about.