Content Policy pre-check (beta)

Hi everyone. Today we're excited to announce the beta of our new content policy pre-check process. This is a program designed to help you anticipate how a given model might be impacted by our content policy, specifically the rules that govern weapons and obscenity (the IP rules are beyond the scope of this process for now). While we have worked hard to make the rules as clear as possible, we know that there is no way for our rules to completely anticipate every possible model that our design community might come up with. We also know that it can be frustrating to invest time in modeling and promoting a model just to find out that it violates our content policy once the orders start coming in.

As part of this beta program, we invite you email content-precheck@shapeways.com if you find yourself working on a model that might get close to our content policy lines. You don't need to send us a final model - it can be a work in process or even just an idea. That email will open up a discussion designed to give you a decision from us on how the model will sit with our content policy. In the event that we can't give you a final answer because the idea isn't quite finished, we'll give you the guidelines that we will use to evaluate the model when it is done.

To be clear, there is no requirement to use the content pre-check process. We're merely trying to offer this to help give you a better sense of how our rules might apply to your model. This is also a beta. As you know, that means that we will work to evolve it based on feedback we get from you.

That starts now. Let me know what you think about pre-check. And I encourage you to give it a shot when you are working on a model that you are worried might get close to our content policy.

-michael

Somewhat obvious question would seem to be if/how a pre-approval obtained through this process would carry over to the actual ordering process - will there be something similar to the "printed before" status entry, or would we still have to challenge spurious later rejections by a more narrow-minded individual ?

A reasonable and obvious question. The short answer is yes. Our intention is that once your model has been fully approved during the pre-check process it is approved for good (unless the model itself changes or some major legal or societal shift forces us to reevaluate).

Just to clarify, content policy rejections are not decided by a single individual precisely because we want to avoid a situation where some individuals would interpret rules one way while others interpret them another way. Once a model is flagged for content review, the trust and safety team reviews the model collectively and comes to a consensus decision. Our goal is to make the decision making as consistent as possible from one model to the next and avoid idiosyncratic decisions. That same team will review all pre-check models and their decision is designed to carry forward into the future.