Legibility Requirements Relaxation - 2023

Hello there, this announcement is regarding the relaxation of some of our rules (yeah, you don't get to hear that very often, do you?) Specifically, this is in regards to the legibility rules covering About Mes, forum posts, and forum signatures (particularly templates). After a great deal of discussion, we (the Moderator Team) have decided that our energy and time is best spent addressing actively harmful legibility issues, rather than every issue that makes something difficult to read. In regards to things that are merely difficult to read... well, you could consider us to be taking a Darwinistic approach. If a Trade Shop is hard to read because of the template the owner is using, we recommend that customers save themselves some eye strain by not shopping there. If an About Me is difficult to read, don't waste your time reading it. It's up to the shop owner/poster/profile owner, whether they want folks to actually read their content, or ignore it and move on because it's unpleasant to look at. These are the actively harmful things we are absolutely NOT relaxing on:

• Harmful colour combinations - also known as "my eyes, they burn!" Your content should not hurt to look at. Common offenders are neon colours and highly saturated colours when they are used excessively.
• If you define any colour, every colour must be defined. Only partially defining your colours means at least some colours are imported from the viewer's skin, resulting in potentially harmful colour combinations.
• Anything that alters the viewer's UI, such as custom cursors. That kind of thing should be 100% the viewer's choice, not the poster's.
• Multi-phase templates, which means anything that changes between viewings.
• Legibility specifically for image credits. Image credits must be easily read at a glance. That means no ant-sized text, no subtle blending into the image itself, etc.

Things that we are relaxing on:

• Font size (excepting image credits). People don't like reading ant-sized text. If you want them to read what you're saying, don't use it. That said, if your post is taking up the entire screen because the letters are ginormous, we can and will step in on behalf of the "don't spam" rule.
• Contrast ratios (how legible your chosen text colour and background colour are when looked at together). We would no longer be sticking to a strict number. Caveat here is that if someone reports that your text caused them actual pain to read, we'll still take a look and determine whether we need to step in.
• Weird fonts. Excessively cursive fonts and Zalgo text (that glitchy-looking one), among others, are a pain to read. If you actually want your content to be read, we suggest you reconsider using those fonts.

If a legibility requirement is not mentioned here, consider it to still be 100% in effect until further notice. All of this, of course, is subject to this rule relaxation not being abused. If we have to we'll go back to enforcing legibility as we have been. Please don't make us have to do so. Please.

I like this change!

Seems reasonable!

Oooo :0

yippee!!

By highly saturated colors does that mean really bright colors such as a bright yellow or a bright green?

does this also mean i can go back to the more common worldwide useage of PX instead of PT for fonts? that is hard to remember to do after 30 years of using px... *smiles*

Correct. Common examples are the basic red, yellow, and blue web colours. We still recommend using pt over px, but it's not something we would address unless it resulted in illegible image crediting.

oo good to know! :0c excited to see what people do with more lax guidelines!

i think having a set number was really helpful, as someone who has a template shop and creates templates for everyone who orders from me, and even makes some for free for friends as gifts. i'm neurodivergent and kind of need a set number to know whether it's okay, because my vision is not the same as others and i tend to overthink. is there a way we could send our templates for a preview to staff for them to determine if it's okay ahead of time-- you know, before the sale/giving out of templates?