Rule Change Announcement

Good day everyone! It appears that it is time for another announcement regarding template legibility. It has come to our attention that mode-changing templates have been making their rounds on Pokefarm, and we're going to be straightforward here in stating that all mode-changing templates, including but not limited to templates that change based on time or the user's device settings, are not allowed on PFQ for distribution, personal use, or otherwise. The same template must look the same way to everyone at all times. The Legibility Guidelines will be updated to reflect this rule change shortly. "But why now? This wasn't in the rules before!" Just like the recent decision made on custom cursors, light/dark mode affects an individual's gameplay--this is why PFQ does not have a built-in dark mode. Sudden changes to the colors on a page may result in seizures or other adverse reactions for photosensitive viewers. Additionally, this is a relatively new thing that users have discovered regarding CSS on PFQ, meaning before now, it was not necessary to moderate. However, issues have already come up since the introduction of these templates, such as difficulties for our moderator team when we need to check if essentially two templates pass legibility. One moderator's device settings may differ from another, meaning two team members could see the same template entirely differently, which may result in internal confusion. "But what if I properly define everything in my template and it fits all guidelines both in light and dark mode?" Unfortunately, even if your template fits all other guidelines, having a template that changes based on a user's device settings still impacts gameplay that is not related to your own interface. This does not apply to mode-changing CSS applied to Site Skins, but it goes without saying that skins with that CSS used may not be distributed. Please take note of these changes effective immediately.

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In addition to this, we are making a small change to the rules on advertisement. Up until this point, our rules on advertisement have only permitted the use of text links and adoptables. We are expanding this rule to allow the use of non-animated clickable banners that lead to other sites in your About Me or forum signature. It's a small change, but still notable! If you have any questions or need clarification on these rule changes, any moderator would be happy to help. Thank you for your time.

Ok

I've commented something similar before, but as a disabled person I really appreciate that accessibility is something that you guys are actively committed to and have built into the site's rules :)

Just to clarify, by advertisement, would it apply to shops or places around on this site, off-site links, or both? And thank you for letting us know of the new change ^^

TIL you can make a template do that. But I can def see how they can be extremely problematic in terms of eye strain.

I recently started using this template in my journal. I was wondering if we will still be able to be using templates in are journal post's and also if I have to edit all my posts that I used the template in.

I'm honestly lost and don't understand the template thing ._.

This rule doesn't change anything for me but I did think of a hypothetical situation. When a user uses a Site Skin and they post a pokémon platform, that platform takes on the colors of the skin and other users without that skin can see the different colors. My understanding of the rule change is to limit, if not remove, potential epileptic triggers (please correct me if I read that wrong). So if someone were to, let's say have a trade post where they have a bunch of platformed pokémon that got traded out and now have different colors based on the site skins of the users they got sent to, and a photo-sensitive viewer scrolled past it a little too fast, would that be a concern at all? Let me know if I need to explain what I mean some more. Example of a platformed pokémon:

do you mean site skins, if so i have the normal PFQ site skin

Hello! I am going to answer as many of these questions as I can for now and pass a few of the other questions I cannot answer on to my colleagues. Thank you for being so understanding and patient! This change in advertisement applies only to off-site links, which were previously disallowed, via the use of banners. There has been no change to the use of banners that link to places on-site. c: This template does not change modes. Therefore, it is not affected by the rule change. If you don't understand, it thankfully (most likely) does not apply to you, but I'm still more than happy to explain. There is a CSS value called @media that allows you to set the appearance of something based on your device's settings (ie. whether you have your phone in light mode or dark mode). We are disallowing using the @media CSS tag to change a template based on device settings. This does not mean the @media value is disallowed entirely, and in fact, it's actually pretty important to make some template values legible on mobile. We just want users to avoid using it to create templates with different modes due to the reasons listed in the front post. Hopefully this answers your question! No, this rule change only applies to templates used to modify the appearance of a forum post.