Who we are

BCJ is an organization that is dedicated to improving the image of Blacks throughout Japan and Asia and giving them a platform to express their art. Our mission is to provide our people with the knowledge and tools to build and fortify our art community and define our culture. Our primary goal is the establishment of a cultural hub for Blacks in Japan on the internet.

Our Vision
Our vision is to create a place on the internet where our issues and culture in Japan are front and center. We want to build a community that uniquely connects creative people all throughout Japan and hopefully Asia. There is a lack of quality services and organizational structures within our community in Japan and Asia. We hope to provide organization and leadership to creatives in Japan and give them a platform and set of tools to construct digital creative zones. We believe with great leadership and organizational structures that our platform will scale to meet the demands of the Black Creative population.

Community Rules

Expectations of Community Members
The following terms and conditions govern all use of the Black Creatives Japan and all services and products available at or through our platform.

The type of identity you must use
Using an alias and using the internet are synonymous - the act of using made up identities is common but presents a unique set of problems. When people choose to use an alias instead of their real name it presents security vectors within the community. The security issue is that it becomes hard to verify the information a person is sharing and in addition hard to establish reciprocity between individuals who choose to use false identities and those who use their real identities. In an effort to make people accountable in the sense of having to own up to what they write we require the following identity type to be used on our community. You are required to use at the very minimum a name or nickname that you are comfortable with. It does not have to be your government name, but it must be something you are comfortable using throughout your accounts life with the community. You are required to use a profile picture that falls in line with the identity you assume within the community. If your identity is male you must avoid using a deceptive picture, if your identity is a cat you must remain a cat. The reason we request the following identity type is pretty straight forward. It creates an atmosphere in which people are required to behave in a civilized manner because they do not have digital identities to hide behind. And because they don’t have multiple digital identities to hide behind they are more likely to behave in a way that mirrors how they are in real life. It also fosters interpersonal relationship building when you have a name and a profile picture to match an online personality.

Single Account
Community members are expected to maintain exactly one account on our platform. The single account architecture allows for tighter security and better enforcement of rules. When users are required to only have one account they value the account more and avoid needlessly doing anything that would put that account in jeopardy. Having to only remember one account means not dealing with remembering multiple username/password combinations and having seamless integration throughout all services offered on our [platform].

Valid Email required for use

Community members are required to have a valid email address. We define a valid email as the following: one that exists, one that you have ownership over and one that you check semi-frequently. We send important messages to the email address associated with your account such as password resets, information on security and correspondences with other members.

Minimum Age
The content on BCJ is for mature folk, no young’uns allowed. The minimum age to join the community is 18 years old; anyone younger than this age is prohibited from creating an account and participating in the community without parental consent. Anyone who is under the minimum age and lies about their age to gain access to the community will be subject to an instant ban.

Internet Posting Etiquette
When replying to any topic you must refrain from derailing. Please stay on-topic. What does on-topic mean? This means that you are replying only to what was originally asked by the original poster in the thread. When replying, post meaningful, thought-out responses. If your post is well thought-out, you will not only get your point across but you will remove any miscommunication. Think, also, of others in the future who may read your post. The more focused and succinct your speech is, the less reading some future member will have to do. Please do not derail a topic or hijack for self-promotion. Be courteous and open minded, because even bad topics have their value in displaying the type of content not to post. Also, please understand that there is a difference between insulting someone’s intelligence and creating an invitation to educate. If someone provides information that is incorrect, use this as an invitation to educate them as opposed to insulting them. Remember, not everyone has the knowledge to understand certain topics as well as you do. As such, it is your responsibility as a community member to provide education in place of shaming another member. It does the community no good when a member feels belittled because they lack information, instead imagine how much better a community member would feel being taught something instead of being insulted.

Don’t be an ass
The internet caters to the lowest common denominator of behavior due to mob mentality. It is easy to be a jerk on the internet because you are interacting with individuals whom you most likely will never meet, who have no direct connection to you and cannot by interaction cause serious discomfort to you. Also with the anonymity that comes with being on the internet, a sense of security is created. This leads to people saying things that they’d never say in real life. We ask that our members try not to be jerks and for them to adopt a higher form of behavior. It is easy to be a jerk on the internet so we ask our members to take the higher ground and be good people.

Integrity and Conflict Resolution

As a member of the community you will be expected to behave in a manner similar to how you would be expected to behave if you were among close friends. This means we have a zero tolerance policy for personal attacks on any community member. If you have an issue with someone, debate the issue and not the person. If someone has wronged you in any way, go through the proper channels of communication and don’t make it a public shouting match. We expect our community members to have mature conflict resolution experience. When dealing with conflict resolution, the best solution is the one that meets the bare minimum to get the desired outcome. Here at BCJ we employ this strategy - that is we do the bare minimum to get the conflict resolved and continue on with our community operations. We expect our members to have a high sense of integrity, for those of you who don’t know what that means - simply, it is behaving as you would if you knew your parents were watching.

No Trolling, Behave Civil
Trolling in the context of the internet is making a deliberately offensive or provocative online post with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them. We have a zero tolerance policy for internet trolls, if you are trolling we will promptly take administrative action against you.

Please behave like you are from a modern civilization that understands concepts such as politeness, empathy, boundaries, tolerance and kindness. By behaving civil, you help defuse tension which eventually reduces the amount of conflicts that result within the community.

Be Brief/Succinct

Writing in complex grammatical structures and using difficult vocabulary does not help you to get your point across and can sometimes overcomplicate things. Use simple succinct speech patterns that express things in simple to understand ways. This will make your content easier to read and if it is easier to read, people are bound to actually read it.

Post Sparingly
Post sparingly topics that already exist, topics that incite disagreements in belief systems (unless in the proper forum section), racial issues, activism and topics that incite mob mentality towards an individual/organization. Understand that not all content is wanted on Black Creatives Japan, we want to focus on improving our culture and establishing systems that can promote it. Spending time on low quality topics that cater to the lowest human emotions is not something we wish to do.

Lurk before posting
When you’re new anywhere the best thing to do is observe how things are done and then participate. When joining a new community you will fit in better if you first lurk and understand how the community works. This enables you to understand what the community values and what communication nuances the community has. By lurking, you ensure the path of least resistance in joining the community effectively.

Don’t Cross/Multipost
“Crossposting” and “Multiposting” - are the actions of reproducing content across many different locations in an effort to get it noticed. This seems like a good idea but what you actually end up doing is irritating people who see duplicated content in different locations of the community. Instead of applying shotgun promotion strategies, apply sniper promotion strategies. One thing you might not realize is by cross/multiposting, you are indeed getting more viewers but are also building distaste for what you’re promoting from users who see it as spam. Instead, focus on posting in the area that most relates and you will have more direct viewers that are interested. In summary, don’t try to spam your content across many different areas in an effort to get it more visibility.

Use Descriptive Subject lines
Your post subject line (title) should be descriptive and accurate. Do not clickbait by having misleading or misinforming titles that do not paint an accurate representation of the content you are sharing. Your title should do a good job of letting the audience know what type of content to expect. Any post that are misleading, meaning that the title is not related to the content will be removed.

Post in the correct location, Do your homework first

Post content to the location in which it is most suitable. This makes it easier for it to be found by other community members. Content that is posted to the wrong location will be deleted as it is the responsibility of the poster to submit content where it belongs.

Always do your homework before posting a topic. Do you really understand what you’re about to write about? If you don’t understand what you’re writing about completely just imagine how much more the audience will not understand what you are writing about. Avoid making claims without having sources. If you state something as fact, provide sources to back up your view. Give proper credit to ideas/information that you write about. If you are sharing something, always make sure you are giving out the correct citations when due. And if you’re asking a question, think it through and provide all the details needed to completely understand and frame the question from the audience’s point of view.

Review, Review, Review

Before submitting a written reply or topic, always review your submission. Proofread your submission for grammatical errors, misspellings and proper tone of voice. Ensure that your submission is well constructed, contains minimal grammatical errors and is easy to read.

Do not spam or promote
Do not spam. Spamming is the action of posting unwanted, irritating content in a short period of time. Do not attempt to promote any product/service in this manner as this will result in the post/replies being removed. Users who attempt to promote a product or service in this manner are bad for the overall community. Promotional spam dilutes the overall quality of content in the community and any user who willfully attempts to dilute the community via spamming will face administrative action.

User Limited republish
Community members are asked to keep republishes of community generated content on community [platform] to a minimum. This means directly link to content instead of republishing. If there is a passage a community member wrote and you want to reuse it, please paraphrase it and link directly to it. If there is artwork that a community member made, link it to the source image instead of re-uploading it. By limiting republishing on community generated content you give proper credit to the original author and it becomes easier to see where content originated from. In the situation where you feel that having a republish of the work is necessary, properly credit the original author in your republish and include a link to where it originated from. This will allow for a cleaner authorship/credit system.

Edit/Delete limited

Please avoid deleting a topic you’ve created, there might be useful information within the topic that future reader might enjoy reading. By deleting your thread you create a loss of information and it becomes difficult to follow replies that originated in your post. Do not edit a post/reply to change content. The only reason a post should be edited is for the following:

To add additional resources and content that is still on-topic
To fix grammatical or logical issues
To convey a message to someone who is reading the reply as to a change in viewpoint, or new information that the reader should know about
By limiting editing/deleting in this manner, we make community citation and readability more efficient.

Limited Language

Black Creatives Japan employs a system of language modification in order to reframe words that evoke negative automatic thoughts. The language we use has associations that connect patterns of speech with collections of related information(content) within the brain. Example thinking about someone with a bright personality evokes the idea of light vs dark, good vs evil, this contrast exists within our language and is evident by the speech patterns used in our culture. For example “I had a bright day!” vs “I had a gloomy day”, “There are dark times ahead of us” vs “there are bright times ahead of us”. Both of these phrases evoke the idea of light being good and darkness being bad. George lakoff explains how these associations can be misused in his book Don’t think of an Elephant. In this book he describes how particular politicians misuse the science of cognitive science and framing to make something horrible appear good and something good appear horrible. A small passage from the book is found below:

George Lakoff Don’t Think of an Elephant

“Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions. Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames.
Thinking differently requires speaking differently. You can't see or hear frames. They are part of what cognitive scientists call the "cognitive unconscious"-structures in our brains that we cannot consciously access, but know by their consequences: the way we reason and what counts as common sense. We also know frames through language. All words are defined relative to conceptual frames. When you hear a word, its frame (or collection of frames) is activated in your brain. When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame. This gives us a basic principle of framing, for when you are arguing against the other side: Do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame-and it won't be the frame you want. That is what framing is about. Framing is about getting language that fits your worldview. It is not just language. The ideas are primary-and the language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas.To be accepted, the truth must fit people's frames. If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off Why?

Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have-the long-term concepts that structure how we think-is instantiated in the synapses of our brains. Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts, or they mystify us: the right use of language starts with ideas-with the right framing of the issues, a framing that reflects a consistent conservative moral perspective” - select passages

We acknowledge the existence of frames that have been carefully constructed for cultural engineering against our people. Through many years of media indoctrination these frame have been used to create associations between our people and negative automatic thoughts. We have carefully investigated the way language is used to control and define culture. And have modified speech and vocabulary to remove malicious framing that is harmful. We heavily enforce language in an effort to remove deep seeded generational language patterns that are harmful to our community’s mission.

Obsolete Language(To Do)

New Language(To Do)

Free Speech
The type of speech allowed on our platform is regulated, we are not a free speech community. The reason we are not a free speech community is simple, free speech implies unregulated, biased and unfiltered. Because of the particular type of content and communication we want to foster, we have to regulate the type of speech on the site. Cultural engineering requires that we enforce language modification and through this enforcement foster adoption of a new language that is beneficial to our people and community. When new language is adopted new thinking can begin and with new thinking comes a new culture.

No Excessive Foul Language
Excessive and foul language is often used to express dissatisfaction with an idea, person or belief. Foul language helps to showcase the level of dissatisfaction a person has, but it is not the best form of expression for discussions on the internet. By using excessive and foul language you instantly move the discussion away from one founded on information exchange and logical reasoning - to one that is completely emotional. When discussions become emotional, people become emotional. Both parties then suffer the curse of the emotional echo chamber, in which they never get the resolution that their emotional state wants. This usually leads to neither party feeling a sense of satisfaction. Because of this, we strongly recommend choosing other communication styles and speech patterns to avoid falling into this trap. When you keep excessive and foul language out of discussions, you create an atmosphere for great content and invite opinions that differ from your own. This allows for better exchange of ideas, beliefs and for a cleaner discussion overall.

Types of Links allowed
The internet is what it is because we have the ability to share links that take us from one corner of the internet to another. When you are posting a link to our community from a site outside our network please be mindful of the following:
That the site you’re posting does not have a redirect to somewhere else. This means that the URL you submit does not after loading instantly redirect traffic elsewhere.
That it does not have nefarious behavior. Is the site something you’d be ok opening while at a coffee shop? If the answer is no, please reconsider posting it.
That it does not cause emotional harm to the viewer or harm the viewer’s computer in any way.
Any additional URL junk is removed. Many sites add a lot of identifying unneeded tags to the URL which are used to identify users. Please use the shortest version of the URL.
That the description of the link is not misleading, example description “Funny Cat” actual content “NSFW content”.
When posting a link to our community, be mindful of those that will click it. In summary, your link should be as clean as it can be, go directly to the content you’re sharing and not be misleading in any manner. Your link will be promptly removed if it violates any of the conditions above.

No Competitive Links
At the end of the day we are a community that is trying to accommodate two competing goals. Firstly we are trying to foster a community atmosphere that leads to great content and better sense of group cohesiveness. Secondly we are trying to pay the bills to keep the community up and running while trying very hard not to completely mess up the first goal. This balance is difficult to maintain and can turn into an issue if a community member starts to attempt to redirect traffic to competitive communities. We ask our members to be mindful of posting competitive links that attempt to redirect traffic away from our community and direct it elsewhere. It is sometimes difficult to tell exactly what constitutes competitive links and what constitutes regular links. Black Creatives Japan has chosen to define competitive links as links that attempt to redirect traffic that would naturally flow to our services elsewhere to competing services. This means if a community member intentionally attempts to redirect traffic in a competitive way, we will take administrative action against this type of behavior.

Moderation
Moderators are selected because they show clear understanding of community guidelines and rules. They are the absolute authority on administrative rulings within their realm of influence. Black Creatives Japan is fully behind our moderators and will side with them when necessary. Moderators have total authority where they’re given permission and should be respected as such. Their job is to ensure things keep running and that your behavior falls in line with agreed upon community rules. Personal attacks against moderators will be met with administrative action. If a moderator’s actions are rogue, please go through the official channels to report the behavior along with any evidence you have gathered.

Moderation Appeals
We understand that humans are flawed and that the nature of being human is making mistakes. As such, we believe in due process in the sense of being able to appeal an action taken by a moderator. If a community member feels that they’ve had moderation action taken against them for a reason they feel is incorrect, they will have the ability to appeal the moderation. There is, however, a clear distinction that we want to make. What you feel is right might be different than what our community defines as right. Please ensure you read our rules before seeking the appeal process. If you feel that some of our rules are unrealistic or could be amended please use the proper channels of communication to voice these concerns.

Cooperate with moderators
Moderators are here to make your experience on the community as good as possible with two very distinct exceptions:

That your behavior doesn’t violate the rules
That your presence does not make the experience of other community members worse

So long as 1 & 2 are met, the moderator will attempt to make your experience on the community as comfortable as possible. They are here to help you, not bully you. Please cooperate with the moderators. They are doing the best that they can in order to keep the community in good working order.

Instant Short Bans
Instant short bans are temporary refusals to service based on a community member’s behavior. They serve the purpose of enforcing behavioral control by denying a user access to services. An example is a user who receives a two day ban from the community for spamming links. The two day period serves as a period for the user to reflect on their actions and then come back and modify their behavior so they do not get into trouble again.

Strikes/Points for infractions
There is a point based system for infractions on our community. In summary, if you reach 10 infraction points within a 30 day period you receive a lifetime ban from community. A lifetime ban can be appealed after a 60 day period. The community member has to write a persuasive essay on why they were banned and what they plan to do differently in the future to make sure that the infraction/s do not happen again.

The following types of content is not warranted on our community:

Pornographic content that is not in the correct section (2 infraction points)
Profane, threatening, obscene (4 infraction points)
Spam or promotional (4 points infraction points)
Content that is/encourages illegal activity (5 infraction points)
Hate speech (5 infraction points)
False, defamatory, invasive (5 infraction points)
Harassing (6 infraction points)
No preemptive content (8 infraction points)
Abusive, vulgar, hateful (8 infraction points)
Personal info of a third party - (banned)
Child pornography - any media depicting a child in any sexual situation (banned)

Note: all doctrines/ideologies will not be exempt from discussion/criticism. Be tactful.

Right to refuse service
Black Creatives Japan has the right to refuse service on our platforms to anyone for any reason. We believe it is a privilege, not a right, to have access to our services. Thankfully on the open web there is a community for every individual. We do not wish to cater our community to everyone, we have a specific target audience in mind that we are attempting to integrate. We wish to use refusal of services as a method to achieve better quality members. Although we have the right to refuse services for any reason we will use the community rules as the ultimate judge of service refusal. If service to the community has been refused to a member, a list of reasons for the removal of services will be provided. This list is provided so that the member in question has the ability to appeal the ruling.

Vandalism, Tampering, Abuse
Under no circumstances do we permit the vandalization, tampering, or abuse of our services. Any actions deemed to vandalize our services such as defacement, spam, shock or intent to misuse shall be met with refusal to our services. Anyone who attempts to tamper with our services in a nefarious manner shall also be met with refusal to our services. The abuse of our services in the form of DDoS (distributed denial of service), hacking, account hijacking, evading bans via IP spoofing and circumventing moderation actions will be met with refusal to our services. As a general rule, if you have to ask to do something, odds are that you shouldn’t. If there is any confusion as to whether or not something is in violation of this condition, ask a moderator.