Revisiting Creators on Discord & Generative Art Policy Update

News

Before we jump into this week’s topic, today is the last day to preorder our brand new Yukari and Sakuya T-shirts! Find them at Gensokyo.store.

Gensokyo Radio’s online community has a space dedicated to the talented artists, producers, musicians, writers, developers, hobbyists, and other creative types that have joined either through the community or as guests on our radio station’s live programs. Over the years, our community has formed a natural nexus for talent, and in 2022 we organized a space just for this subset of community members.

The #creator-space (creator-space) forum on Discord is meant to be a place for creators to find others to collaborate and network with, get critical feedback from others with similar experience, and learn from one another. We’ve opened up our community to creators as a way to reach an audience through hosted web events and virtual panels via Discord Stages.

In an effort to keep things organized, we created the Creator role on Discord alongside sub-roles for specific areas of interest. We currently have over 350 members with the Creator role (about 10% of our Discord community) which is surprising since the amount of activity in the role’s dedicated forum space is comparatively very low. When it was first introduced, the creator role was ungated and anyone who wanted the role could simply press a button in the Channels and Roles screen to obtain it.

Starting this week, we will begin the process of verifying creators on the server. The application process is very simple: show us what you create.

• You will need to provide proof of your creations on whatever relevant platform you publish on (Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube, Twitch, ArtStation, Pixiv, etc.)
• You should have a history of creating works or be able to demonstrate that you are actively working on something that fits the role.

Applications will be open later this week and can be started by visiting a designated channel and clicking on the “Create Ticket” button under “Creator Verification”. This will start a new ticket which will be submitted for review.

We are moving to verify creators for a few reasons:

• As an open role, many have taken the role without understanding its purpose. This is not a color role; it is meant to manage different kinds of content and posts within this server, and to provide a specific service to community members.
• Verifying creators will help assure other creators they are working with people that share similar interests and skill sets, plus it will help us understand how many creators are truly in this server.
• It will help prevent unnecessary spam for folks who are not creators; pings to this role are specific to creators, and for those who took the role without considering its purpose, this may be confusing and/or annoying.

We reorganized these spaces in 2022, but it’s worth reminding folks how we recommend using them:

• #fanworks is for works that the server member has completed and wants to share with everyone on the server. This channel has been around since near the beginning and its purpose hasn’t changed.
• #music (Discord forum) has a tag “WIP” (work in progress) that should be used to gather feedback from everyone on the server. We’re using the forum format on Discord for this since it neatly organizes feedback about specific topics and items.
• #creator-space is for a bunch of things but can also be used for WIP items that the poster wants feedback on from other creators. This can be useful in cases where specific technical feedback is desired, or a creator does not yet want to share the work publicly but can still get feedback from a smaller group of people.

Finally, we’ve been getting more questions about generative artwork over the past year and how related posts should be handled from a moderation perspective. For over 13 years, Gensokyo Radio has had a community focused on people creating works using their own talents, skills, and effort, with our radio station showcasing works by independent artists around the world since long before the advent of this new technology.

We understand that “generative AI” tools as they are today are fascinating for many, and this technology may have other intermediate uses which people can learn from. However, effective today, posting generated works—image, audio, or otherwise—will be discouraged and any posts made to present generated works as creations will be removed with additional consequences as deemed appropriate by the moderation team.

We encourage those who are interested in these mediums to learn, practice, and create; using generative tools to skip the first two steps and move straight to the creation process is disingenuous not just to the artists who made works that were used in a given model (often without the artist’s permission), but to oneself as a lost opportunity to learn more about how these works are created in the first place. Our community’s creator space provides such a place to learn more and grow as a creator, and we welcome everyone to join in and start their creative journey today.

That’s all for this week! Questions about role and policy updates are always welcome, and thanks for listening!

[Knowledge #175]

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