Is pony.squares.im Safe?

***** (ponysquare) is a pony role playing website where people, especially Bronies, can pose as MLP characters and role play as them. Ponysquare (and Bronysquare at Brony.squares.im) has been around for several years now and is one of the oldest Brony networks still around today. You will find a lot of neat characters to role play with on pony.squares.im, so it's not hard to make new friends here in this community. You do need to be careful though because there are also several users here that are rather toxic and stress-inducing. But pony.squares.im has a strict two-way blocking system you can utilise (PHPFox originally doesn't have that capability but the staff made it possible). That being said, there are a few concerns I have regarding this website. The first is that I do not feel this website is very safe for children. Yes, the staff do actively take a stance against sexual and child-unfriendly roleplaying if it happens in public. But if it happens in private, they do little unless users actually know how to "properly report" the incidents. In addition, staff are not all that proactive in dealing with users who frequently adult role play with, or request to adult role play with, minors in private conversations. This is a potential legal issue waiting to happen. My second concern is that harassment and bullying is not handled to satisfactory levels in these communities. Very often, when harassment or bullying is reported, staff will simply instruct the users to block each other, and MAYBE issue some discipline. This is not an effective solution given pony.squares.im allows multiple accounts for the sake of having multiple characters to RP with. But that can easily be abused by creating accounts to circumvent blocks (you can go even further and use a service such as Tor to mask your IP so staff have an even harder time detecting your evasion). I get they don't want to try and make people get along because it's not their job. However, I think they need to take a more active role in protecting user security and safety. A lot of bullying, harassing, attacking, and gossip can potentially happen here. My third concern is the staff themselves. Granted, I've met worse staff on other website communities myself. But the staff here aren't necessarily that great either. I will give a plus though to the fact that the staff system here have very detailed written procedures and rules within the staff. They also utilise signed contracts stating they will not use information about users anywhere except for staff purposes only. These contracts include not doing unlawful things like power abuse. It is rare to see a staff this organized in website communities. However, staff are not always loyal in terms of properly enforcing the rules fairly, informing users very diligently about what they do wrong and especially how they can improve, and following with their own set of rules and contracts. Please proceed to this community with an initial doubt / suspicion about staff trustworthiness. One other thing I dislike about the staff is the lack of transparency. First off, discipline is issued via. a proxy account by the name of "Pinkie Pie". All staff use this account to issue discipline, so you don't know who issued the discipline. They do this to protect themselves, but at the cost of true customer service. Users don't know which staff to speak to specifically about their violation. Sure, they can go email someone to appeal. But that one person is often not the one who issued your discipline, and sometimes emails and messages can sit for a long while. Staff also are not diligent enough in informing the community of happenings. They do inform the community to an extent of things that happen, but sometimes they will make a major change and THEN tell the users, rather than proposing the change first and getting user feedback before proceeding. They really don't do well with ensuring their users have a say in things and that their users are treated well. It's often about themselves. They also recently abolished a very important team: their Public Relations. Now they don't have an active team dedicated to gathering user feedback, interfacing with the users, running events, and so on. That was a very important team... and I'm very disappointed it was abolished. My final issue with this website is simply that it's boring. Sure, there are many characters you can interact with on the website. But the staff don't really put on fun events or anything anymore. It was incredibly difficult to even organize events to begin with because a lot of ideas among staff are met with closed-mindedness and shut down. So I'm not surprised that it is a very conservative place very reluctant to make any changes or have fun or interaction with their users. To conclude, I would say use this website with caution. Do not expect staff to be there for you if you have problems, especially with other users (they'll probably tell you just to use the controversial block button). Don't expect any refreshing or re-vitalizing events to keep things exciting... you'll have to rely on that via. your role plays with others. And do not let your children use this website without adult supervision, given the high number of erotic role players and harassers in the community.