Hello. As you are probably aware, there are rules on what backgrounds are and aren't allowed.
Since this is a subjective issue, there is a voting process, the Content Voting Process (CVP) to determine what is and isn't allowed.
This process involves as many s/experienced volunteers as possible - potentially the entire NAT and GMT and all BNs.

There are also rules on what songs are and aren't allowed. This is also a subjective issue, especially in cases of "heavily political" songs or songs with extremely sexual lyrics.
Since it is a subjective issue, there is an informal voting process that involves some of the NAT and GMT, but not BNs.
It is also nowhere near as transparent as the review process for visual content.

I think the current Content Voting Process is a great system for determining the appropriateness of content in subjective cases. No matter the outcome, people will find the process fair and respect it, even if they disagree with it.
There is almost never a significant controversy about visual content in/backgrounds of beatmaps now, thanks to Content Review.
By contrast, there are some recent cases of song content that caused significant controversy, the most notable one being:

1. slashmaid, a song that was eventually removed for being excessively and unreasonably sexual.
2. reviewed internally by the NAT (and maybe GMT, this is unclear due to lack of transparency) and was found to be acceptable because while it was highly sexual, it was reasonably permissible within Explicit Content rules.
3. Deer Dance was not removed or involved in a controversy, but it is an example of a song that could reasonably be subjected to review for heavily political content, given it talks directly and at length about the flaws of the police in the US.

Therefore, I propose that songs should be subject to the same Content Review as visual content. If a finds a song that they believe violates the Song Content Rules, they should be able to report it via the BN site's report form. If an NAT member agrees it is controversial, it should be put up for Content Review, with publicly visible voting.

While I recognize that, if every song that may violate rules were to be reviewed like this, it would overload s, the same limits for what visual content can be reviewed (significant chance of being nominated or checks before for safety) could apply to song content to fix this.

There is a risk of politically motivated Content Review requests as well - for example, someone very socially conservative could attempt to CR a song about non-binary gender identities. The solutions are either:

1. If a song is only slightly/insignificantly political (or otherwise not close to violating guidelines), the NAT simply summarily dismisses such CRs. This uses rule 7 without needing to write exceptions, but the standard for rejecting CR is very high ("all but the most obvious situations"), so this can lead to complaints of "political bias in the NAT".
2. Write exceptions so that songs that are only mildly/vaguely political (such as in the example) are safe. This heavily mitigates criticisms of potential bias, but actually writing these exceptions will be very difficult.

I think the BNs should have voting power here, since while backgrounds are not directly related to the content of a beatmap or its gameplay, and are therefore more clearly s' territory, songs are the foundation of a beatmap and are therefore directly related to how a map plays, and since BNs help push songs they prefer/deem acceptable, they should also have some power in determining what songs are acceptable for osu!, since it's more directly related to their role.
Don't take this to mean I think BNs shouldn't be allowed to vote on visual content, however.

GMT is involved in the discussion I am pretty sure acording to this

"Any beatmap containing a disallowed track will be removed from the website.

Each time your submission is removed, you will be afforded an explanation by the presiding member of the Nomination Assessment Team (NAT) or Global Moderation Team (GMT) responsible for the removal with reasoning justifying the removal."

I don't think BNs should be involved in this vote imo. It should stay as NAT and GMTs jobs to do.

OP is correct I believe, for song content the NAT of the preisiding game mode are responsible for deciding if it's appropriate or not, the same goes for difficulty names unless they directly violate rules.

Then yeah it might be a good idea if the GMT is interessted to get involved since they also moderate beatmap content

Tailsdk wrote: 3p4t

I don't think BNs should be involved in this vote imo. It should stay as NAT and GMTs jobs to do.

If your issue is that the BNs should not be involved in the Song Content vote specifically, I would ask why that is the case for this and not the VCC votes. I will, however, also consider not allowing BNs a vote if enough agree with you.

If your issue is that the BNs should not be involved in moderation votes in general, I will suggest proposing a change to the CVP separate to this proposal.

+1

BNG unfortunately don't have a high stake in doing content review (CR) due to their decision upholding only when NAT and GMT cannot come together and find a consensus, last time I checked. I think aceticke and others can confirm or deny that statement.

Considering that BNG do no moderating and only have powers to nominate, rank, and denominate (full BN), I do not think including them in the wording is necessary as it stands.

Though, including them on the people to ask if a BG/Diff name is appropriate is always a good resource as if they are unsure they can ask in the BN server and can get back to the player at a reasonable time.

Yeah basically what blushing said

Agree with what Blushing said - the BNG do not need to be included in the wording as they are not as involved in the voting as the NAT and GMT, only being called on as a tiebreaker if there is no consensus.

I have changed the wording of the proposal to reflect this.

The GMT is actually also in charge with the vote decision when it comes to audio matters (as this falls on general moderation), so i think the wiki is kinda misleading for this one and need to have PR on including GMT in the vote decision making.

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As for content voting process, Iirc The CR (content review) was being used for a while in the past when reviewing audio, but it was ultimately being abandoned after the existence of the "explicit tag", which the song itself either will fit the explicit tag criteria in case they are being vague, or the song itself is just that obviously bad that it's gonna be removed immediately because it's even worse than the explicit tag allowances, making the CR itself being redundant in the process for audio.

Maxus wrote: 483o1v

The GMT is actually also in charge with the vote decision when it comes to audio matters (as this falls on general moderation), so i think the wiki is kinda misleading for this one and need to have PR on including GMT in the vote decision making.

Yes, absolutely! Even if the rest of this amendment is rejected, I hope this change will still be implemented.

Maxus wrote: 483o1v

As for content voting process, Iirc The CR (content review) was being used for a while in the past when reviewing audio, but it was ultimately being abandoned after the existence of the "explicit tag", which the song itself either will fit the explicit tag criteria in case they are being vague, or the song itself is just that obviously bad that it's gonna be removed immediately because it's even worse than the explicit tag allowances, making the CR itself being redundant in the process for audio.

I understand what you are saying, that there is a very slim, rare margin between "fine by the Explicit rules" and "obviously not allowed", and I agree. However, I believe that in the rare cases where there is a song where it is ambiguous whether it is allowed at all or not, the CVP should be used instead of just an NAT vote.

I'm an ex-GMT now, but Maxus is correct in that the decision to remove songs is not necessarily put to an "official" vote but rather an unofficial one by consulting with other GMTs/NATs to get a handful of opinions on whether a song is acceptable or not. The wiki page definitely needs updating now since it's misleading as to what the actual process is, though it's up to the team whether or not they want to formalize a process for this or keep it as is.

Additionally, s get a one submission leeway for songs deemed unacceptable for the platform (even with explicit tag) so there is some protection in place for the in case they think their song is fine when it's decided otherwise by the team.

Can anyone provide some examples of songs that were or would be considered unacceptable? With the existence of the explicit tag it's hard to think of songs that can't be used even with that label (other than extremely loud noise).

Serizawa Haruki wrote: 294t5w

Can anyone provide some examples of songs that were or would be considered unacceptable? With the existence of the explicit tag it's hard to think of songs that can't be used even with that label (other than extremely loud noise).

I don't think the topic of the discussion is whether {insert} songs are deemed unacceptable, but rather who should be allowed to vote for content review. As seen from the OP:

niat0004 wrote: 412k52

Should the BNs be allowed a vote? (IMO: Yes, they should - the CVP limits BNs' power in a good compromise)

Blushing wrote: 1q5s13

I don't think the topic of the discussion is whether {insert} songs are deemed unacceptable, but rather who should be allowed to vote for content review. As seen from the OP:

niat0004 wrote: 412k52

Should the BNs be allowed a vote? (IMO: Yes, they should - the CVP limits BNs' power in a good compromise)

I know that, I asked in order to understand what exactly the voting criteria are. BNs often have different views compared to the GMT/NAT so whether they should take part in voting and how much their opinion weighs partially depends on the way these cases are assessed.

Serizawa Haruki wrote: 294t5w

Can anyone provide some examples of songs that were or would be considered unacceptable? With the existence of the explicit tag it's hard to think of songs that can't be used even with that label (other than extremely loud noise).

This song would almost certainly not be allowed anymore.

Protastic101 wrote: 104y5t

I'm an ex-GMT now, but Maxus is correct in that the decision to remove songs is not necessarily put to an "official" vote but rather an unofficial one by consulting with other GMTs/NATs to get a handful of opinions on whether a song is acceptable or not. The wiki page definitely needs updating now since it's misleading as to what the actual process is, though it's up to the team whether or not they want to formalize a process for this or keep it as is.

Additionally, s get a one submission leeway for songs deemed unacceptable for the platform (even with explicit tag) so there is some protection in place for the in case they think their song is fine when it's decided otherwise by the team.

If my proposal does not , I suggest this change to the wiki phrasing:

There will be an update to the wikipage soon don't worry

I feel this issue needs re-opening for 2 reasons:

No changes made yet

Tailsdk wrote: 3p4t

There will be an update to the wikipage soon don't worry

It has been 8 months, and there have not been any changes to the wiki page. There are no pending changes either.

A fresh start to the discussion

The last time, the discussion shifted towards simply clarifying the wiki page, which is absolutely a good thing, but I had made my proposal with the desire for the system to change.
(Which is why I removed [assigned] from the title - it doesn't make sense to keep it because it implies the discussion is over, and I want to continue/restart it.)


I believe that there are many songs that are on the edge of the song content rules, especially political ones. For example, the recently ranked Deer Dance could likely have been removed for heavily political content given different GMTs/NATs.

My vision is a system that works like Content Review for backgrounds.
This means that if someone is unsure about a song that is being used or that they want to use, they can submit a report. (This may also help s who want to use a song, but are not sure if it is allowed.)
There would be a song content review page like the current Visual Content Review page, where the NAT and GMT (and BNs to some extent) could vote.
This would reduce potential controversy if a song is removed (or not) since the song would have a right to a consensus judgement with transparent results.

I think the addition of this line to the reports page:

Report Submission | BN Management wrote: n6y10

Reports can be made about anything mapping/modding related, including but not limited to:

1. Beatmap songs violating osu!'s Song Content Rules

is a step in this direction.

necrobump ik, but I got My Angel Chino's permission

i feel as if this is literally just a natural extension of what already exists- if we have this for bgs i don't see why we shouldn't have it for songs- it's really simple as. Certainly something to consider.

+1

I feel like BNs having a say abt song review would only make sense

OK i've pinged the NAT & GMT about this yesterday and the consensus was overwhelmingly:
- song content is covered by song content rules and that is working fine
- anything that would be "bad" enough to warrant action is decided on a case-by-case base either by the moderation teams if it is brought up (it'll likely either be a very clear 'yep it's fine' or very clear "no")
- when the moderation team isn't sure we ping peppy to arbitrate

=> cases of songs that are in this area are rare enough that we don't want to formalize a process everyone has to participate in when the volume of things that it would likely affect is like one or two beatmaps each year

i'll leave this thread here for a bit so people can see the answer before moving to finalized