Cheeky themes

June 27, 2012 · by Arnstein Teigene

So far we have taken a reasonably liberal approach to the content of the themes that we allow into our themes catalog. We have a list of acceptance criteria we use and everyone that upload content must adhere to our Terms of Service, which explicitly states:

You warrant that you will not upload Content that is obscene, vulgar, sexually oriented, hateful, threatening, or that violates any laws or third-party rights, including but not limited to third-party intellectual property rights.

A few people have commented that we are allowing themes into our catalog that are of a slightly explicit nature. Our acceptance criteria so far have been "no nudity or sexually explicit content", which our moderators are currently interpreting as "no private bits". That's fairly straight forward and easy to moderate.

But we want our catalog to be safe for everybody to browse, including children, so we have decided to take a stricter approach to explicit content. We are now introducing a new acceptance criteria which is stricter, but more ambiguous: "No sexual undertones, nudity or explicit content". It will be up to our moderators to use their best judgment and I hope you appreciate why we are doing this if you are uploading a theme that you think is borderline. In fact, a general rule of thumb is, if it's borderline sexual, then it's not OK.

As a consequence of the new acceptance criteria we will remove a few themes from the catalog. I humbly ask the people that shared their "cheeky" themes to be understanding of why we are doing this.

Readers' comments 17

Left under the original article, as archived.

Mağruf ÇolakoğluWednesday, June 27, 2012 10:03:09 AM
Nice. Will you declare that which of them will be deleted?
Arnstein TeigeneWednesday, June 27, 2012 11:16:43 AM
We will notify the theme owners only.
Mağruf ÇolakoğluWednesday, June 27, 2012 1:34:19 PM
OK that is a thing
Manuel Andreas KuhnWednesday, June 27, 2012 3:06:02 PM
Mhh, why don't you just add an option (in the browser), like the make picture as speed dial background, an option make picture as theme.

Then anybody can use a background he liked and also can use pictures not approved from you. So you can run a save addon site for children and the users who want so pictures can go to wallpaper websites.
MikanoshiWednesday, June 27, 2012 4:59:13 PM
Why all "themes" are just backgrounds? I'm still using "Dimmed skin" for Opera 8 by Vidar Gundersen and it changes GUI entirely, even dialog windows. That is what I call A THEME
Eli MitchellWednesday, June 27, 2012 5:57:44 PM
Glad to hear this. I was getting a little worried with some of the themes that were getting accepted.
Martin RauscherWednesday, June 27, 2012 9:34:22 PM
That just sucks... Or well, that would probably count as a borderline sexual undertone...
Joel SpadinWednesday, June 27, 2012 9:50:36 PM
Originally posted by timmi:

Mhh, why don't you just add an option (in the browser), like the make picture as speed dial background, an option make picture as theme.

Then anybody can use a background he liked and also can use pictures not approved from you. So you can run a save addon site for children and the users who want so pictures can go to wallpaper websites.
You could use this extension to make your own themes.
QuHnoThursday, June 28, 2012 4:53:44 AM
While you are on it:

How about "no violent undertones"?

There is no such thing as no violent undertone when it comes to weapons.
JaahquubelThursday, June 28, 2012 7:33:34 AM
Very good decision!!!
I hope there would be no more actions like "Ściągnij Mini" anymore, too.
SaskatchewanThursday, June 28, 2012 10:17:40 AM
Originally posted by Jaahquubel:

I hope there would be no more actions like "Ściągnij Mini" anymore, too.

For non-Polish speakers: "Ściągnij Mini" can be translated both as "Take off your Mini (skirt)" or "Download (Opera) Mini".
JimThursday, June 28, 2012 1:24:06 PM
Can you just prevent them from being shown to the countries that would not accept them?

Your Norway what is with the censorship?
ChirpieFriday, June 29, 2012 3:07:53 PM
Originally posted by toyotabedzrock:

Your Norway what is with the censorship?

So you don't want censorship? Does that mean they should allow child porn too?
JaahquubelFriday, June 29, 2012 3:39:16 PM
@Saskatchewan
Yeah, I should have translated it by myself.
Tiago WakabayashiWednesday, July 18, 2012 6:54:40 PM
if the problem are kinda the themes with women in sensual poses(no nude), could create a "filter" for that.
r2x0tTuesday, July 24, 2012 12:59:55 AM
When you are at updating, what about finally adding filter option to show just skins? There's too many simple themes that changes just background image. If you want more than that, you can either go to old Skins page or click trough hundreds of simple themes.
There's still big Opera skin community, but by not making it possible for users to look for skins, it's almost not worth publishing new skins at all.
Cutting SpoonSaturday, July 28, 2012 6:54:59 PM
Originally posted by Chirpie:

Originally posted by toyotabedzrock:
Your Norway what is with the censorship?

So you don't want censorship? Does that mean they should allow child porn too?
*snerk* That always makes me laugh. I am given to understand there are some island nations further south for that. Norway seems to honor certain freedoms, just not "UN sanction bait" freedoms. This is a difficult subject to reach compromise on, especially with a very wide audience living in places with very different laws and content standards. I unfortunately am willing to take the side that accepts most any level of "easy access" censorship (for so long as "side loading" is still permitted). TL;DR both you and the fellow above you are WRONG. Opera ASA has amended its preexistent compromise on uploaded content. The company's public web pages have been and *will be* as safe for everyone as possible...without mandating filtered text and disabling pictures.