Comments on post #2430440

@user_460797 on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-13T08:47:47-04:00

I think you should create a new forum topic for this.
And I want to add that albert didn't approve this once. The approver line is this way:
buehbueh-Provence-NotOneOfUs-zaregoto-Flandre5carlet-Randeel-Nitrogen09
That matches the amount of flags :3.

But yeah, before talking anymore: I think opening a topic is pretty much the better way. This comment section is so blown up, new comments aren't even shown under the new comments :3.

@Astolfo on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-13T08:30:14-04:00

NWSiaCB said:

I judge the work as a whole, and the thing is, the "background" is where most of the focus of this piece is, and therefore weights heavily on it. How can you "judge the work as a whole" and then consider the flaws? Isn't that saying the flaws are not part of the whole?

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I first look at the piece as a whole, the composition, the theme, etc, before going into details and whether this and that flaw are big enough to detract from how the overall piece looks. Those things are not the same thing at all. Same goes for non-Western pieces and whether some proportion or anatomy errors might be small enough to overlook and approve the piece anyway (ie. post #2652718 which I initially approved then appealed with my reasons.)

re:cherrypicking

I didn't ignore anything. If I did, I wouldn't even be responding to any of your arguments, I'd just say "But albert said this so stop arguing." Which is the exact same reason why there is no mutually exclusiveness between bringing up albert's statement while having ongoing discussions about the matter.

Why should there be a "unilateral disarmament" of one side of this equation while things get sorted out?
-snip-
I mean, will you agree to stop approving things upon which there is no consensus until there is consensus?

Because there is currently a status quo that allows but discourages upload of western art and holds it to higher scrutiny, and flagging art solely because they are western works directly goes against what is explicitely stated.
I will agree to uphold the current status quo and terms of service until an eventual consensus might be met.

re:polls

I didn't bring anyone in to make them agree with me. Much like I explicitely said, they came to me telling me what basically amounts to "look at this shit, people think this is poor quality." The point in bringing that example up is that even if people might not hop into the discussion, they see these things, they think about these things and they have opinions about these things.
Discussion can change opinion, yes, but it can still be useful to poll the general population about what they think, if only to get a general idea. The very reasons you're against the poll are specifically why I'm not of the opinion that the results should be a be-all-end-all, but rather simply a source of information and data.

Then why did this get reapproved twice?

Don't ask me, I did not approve it when it was in the queue specifically because of the reasons I stated.
Much like I did not re-approve post #2557315 for being simply western comic book art with what is to me passable art, yet reapproved post #2643001 because the artist generally also draws other copyrights and it looks better.
Though bear in mind that (unless I'm looking at the wrong place) howto:upload only states that Western art is "generally rejected".

@NWSiaCB on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-12T19:27:06-04:00

sweetpeɐ said:

This really doesn't answer my question, at all. The WWW standard means nothing if you have no way to apply it. Is it a procedural check, is it a weighted score, if so which part of the check is most important, or what score makes something a Western artist?

You have to realize people are talking about very different things when they say "Western." Comic book heroes are Western sure, but is Overwatch as some say? What about other IPs closely associated with Western otaku cultures representing non-Japanese video games?

My mistake, I didn't realize exactly what it was you were asking for.

What I'm most heavily arguing (and you functionally argue with your list) is that there should be some sort of cut-off, beyond which something is definitely off-topic. This means, for example, that if you have Doomguy meeting an anime character, that anime character makes it on-topic, even if everything else is Western. And yes, of course Overwatch is Western. (I certainly haven't seen anyone say Activision-Blizzard isn't a Western company that makes Western-style characters...)

It was treatment of clearly Western-style Mass Effect art as though it is always on-topic that trigged this argument months ago, and it's argument over clearly Western Overwatch art being treated as always on-topic now that puts this argument front-and-center, completely throwing the notion that these works need "stricter scrutiny" by the wayside. This is more than just "letting in some off-topic things because they are high-quality," this is "there is no such thing as off-topic", and if someone says a post in the mod queue breaks rules for being off-topic, it gets approved, anyway. If you flag it for being approved in spite of being off-topic, it gets re-approved, anyway, being said "it's fine since it 'passes stricter scrutiny'". If you flag something that's an average-quality piece of Western art, people complain that you're somehow making up these rules that something has to 'pass stricter scrutiny'...

In short, there is no enforced standard as it stands. This is why I think at least having some hard line "you must pass this standard at the bare minimum" rule is needed, the way, again, we have a functionally hard ban against photos of porn actresses. Everyone at least agrees on maintaining that standard. Having some kind of weighted scoring system on top of this to deal with some of the border cases may be nice and preferable, but I think there is some case to be made for just having clear, simple, direct black-and-white rules, just because they are easier to understand, disseminate, and come to agreement upon the application of them. (To go back again to recent test-flaggings, there are janitors who will simply approve things because they think the argument for why something is flagged is "TL;DR", which is a gross abnegation of their supposed role.)

reiyasona said:

Have we finally reached the point where we need to use well known historic paintings from the Baroque or the Renaissance as examples to explain why we need a hard ban on everything WWW? The big majority of pictures uploaded here are digital paintings from the 21th century. What's with historical Japanese art? Do we now have to worry about users uploading artworks like Cypress Tree Byōbu or Three Beauties of the Present Day because they won't be affected by a hypothetical total WWW ban?

The argument about classical works, as Sweetpea says, is reductio ad absurdum. To use something else Sweetpea said earlier, if the argument you are making is one that quality, and quality alone should determine what is on this site, with absolutely no other limits, then why aren't we hosting Girl With A Pearl Earring?

That you say there should be some hard limit against classical works that clearly aren't anime is my point. (Happy to have you agree!) As you are now arguing, not having some sort of hard limits saying at least something is out of bounds is absurd. (That's what makes it reductio ad absurdum.)

In fact, that image that Provence used as the example of something so blatantly off-topic? People have been re-approving that, now. So apparently, yes, there are janitors and uploaders who would approve classical-style works.

reiyasona said:

I fully agree with @Flandre5carlet. If we banned art by origin in cases where we compare two images with western artstyle and western subject matter, we would end up with ridiculous post confrontations like:

post #2653432 (Eastern artist) vs post #1951942 (Western artist)

post #2203322 (Eastern artist) vs post #2179567 (Western artist)

post #2633120 (Eastern artist) vs post #2621709 (Western artist)

post #2545556 (Eastern artist) vs post #2622644 (Western artist)

post #2602232 (Eastern artist) vs post #2645106 (Western artist)

Not very appealing, I must say. : /

Well, the original ToS said none of those should have been uploaded in the first place. The alternative argument to be made is that they should all go, because they're all completely Western properties and art styles.

Allowing for exceptions for Eastern artists or for at least partly-anime styles while still maintaining the hard line somewhere on the far end of what should be acceptable allows for a lot more to be permitted without forcing some big purge, which seems to be what most of the resistance to having standards comes from, since there still is relatively few flagrantly Western artworks relative to the bulk of Danbooru's still mostly anime art (although that becomes less and less the case day by day).

And, well, why DO we have 3d rendered Western-style art of Star Wars in the first place? Outside of there being anime characters with some 3d-rendered X-wings in the background, those have always been off-topic, and should have always been deleted. That people are defending them is the problem.

reiyasona said:

no_humans ~scenery ~landscape

Oh, and for the record, landscapes can be done in anime styles.

reiyasona said:

To better understand where the two main "antagonists" of this discussion ( @Provence and @NWSiaCB ) are coming from,

I don't think Provence is the "antagonist", here. I probably agree with him more than most when he's going out flagging on anatomy grounds or the like, although I do maintain he should be more consistent.

It's simply that Provence was willing to stand and argue his case more than others before it made enough noise that the rest of you were willing to join in, and I'm one of the few people pushing this thing stubborn enough to still not be so utterly sick of this to still be making the case 8 months down the road.

If it were just Provence that didn't seem to have any limits on what constitutes "off-topic", it would be the relatively simple task of organizing some of the others to watch and flag his approvals to weed out the clearly off-topic ones. However, it's not just Provence that thinks that Overwatch is some exception that might be allowed in maybe if it has really high quality to justify its being off-topic, but that straight-up Disney art is always on-topic, and are willing to both re-approve those images and harangue those who flag such things in the first place.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what your point is. Yes, my interests, personally, lie with interesting 4komas and Japanese-language webcomics and translating them much more than trying to upload just another "girl showing off her boobs" pic, but I'm approving plenty more than that, and for that matter, Provence has been approving a disproportionate share of 4komas, himself.

Saladofstones said:

However, concept art of System Shock, though I think it has its own merits as far as design and utilizing limited resources to create a detailed model, is not going to be something that is appropriate here.

We don't need to do a sweeping ban of western media or anything, things like this image are an anomaly and end up being a flashpoint for the broader debate about the focus of the site and how to interpret rules and how much discretion versus difference people should have.

What I'm trying to argue, however, is that saying concept art of System Shock is simply off-topic (implicating that it is regardless of quality) is, in itself, a "sweeping" hard ban, it's just that you're not phrasing or recognizing it as such.

We agree there are limits, let's just find some place we can agree upon some explicit, communicable standard that we can tell those who want to be more permissive where those limits should be.

Flandre5carlet said:

It's clear neither of us is going to budge from their position so we can chalk it up to a difference in standards, but when judging whether to approve something or not, I judge the picture as a whole. The composition, the theme, the art style, the anatomy and general quality. THEN I look at it in detail and whether some flaws I may notice affect the overall quality of the picture or not.

I judge the work as a whole, and the thing is, the "background" is where most of the focus of this piece is, and therefore weights heavily on it. How can you "judge the work as a whole" and then consider the flaws? Isn't that saying the flaws are not part of the whole?

Flandre5carlet said:

Really? Cherry-picked? Come on. Rather than it being "cherry picked to support my argument", I think it's the fact that it doesn't support yours that seems to bother you so. Yes, albert clearly said that in terms of content such a picture was not objectionable. And yes, it was part of a slightly longer comment which generally adressed the issue with "Western art isn't the problem, bad art is the problem."

Yes, you pick the one argument made in favor of allowing Western art in without regards to quality while ignoring the tremendous amounts of precedent and words left that argue against it. That is the definition of cherry-picking.

The fact that Albert said something once while having plenty of record of changing his mind is far from the be-all-end-all word of God, as you and Provence both argue, as well.

Which brings me to this...

Flandre5carlet said:

Which is why it should be explained clearly.

[...]

Besides that, I don't see how taking albert's word and polling people for what they think are mutually exclusive concepts.

Because saying Albert said something, therefore all discussion is over is mutually exclusive with saying there should be more discussion.

Flandre5carlet said:

Because there is currently a huge lack of consensus which makes this issue devolve into "whichever side can flag or approve a picture the most" regardless of each other's arguments, and that is not how this matter should be handled. The fact that this has been flagged and approved so many times clearly points at the fact that there's an issue somewhere - one that should be discussed, not handled like it currently is.
As indicated by the last wave of "Western" flags including this one, there is a clear push to set a forced precedent against Western art rather than a push for consensus through discussions.

Why should there be a "unilateral disarmament" of one side of this equation while things get sorted out? If some actions can't be taken while there is no concensus, why is it the side that approves things that can push whatever they want while claiming there is no consensus? (And that's a dangerous precedent to set, since anyone can claim anything contrary to what is commonly held to break up consensus.)

As Provence has put forth in argument to justify his own flagging, flagging and approval are roughly equal in power, and yet flagging is vastly more inconvenient and invites vastly more blowback especially personally if there isn't anonymity in the process.

I mean, will you agree to stop approving things upon which there is no consensus until there is consensus?

The fact that flagging itself is treated as an affront or heresy is itself a part of this problem.

Beyond that, yes, I do think there should be more discussion. That's why I've been trying to discuss it with people.

Flandre5carlet said:

Compare how many people voted in the last opinion poll with how many people are actually active in the forums. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people just don't post on forums about these matters, regardless of what they think. Case and point a couple friends with accounts brought up this very DOOM picture to me, and how they found it silly that it'd be considered "poor quality." They aren't anywhere here arguing about it though, even if it's annoying or whatever, because they just aren't involved in danbooru beyond finding pictures. Which is what a lot of users do here, even despite the fact that a big complaint in the last poll was how obfuscated decision-making is.

Why I think polls are not the solution is that they're isolated and impersonal and don't invite people into the dicussion to see the other points of view, argue, and reassess what they think in response. (They also open up the possibility of just having random people who aren't Danbooru users being invited in to "stack the deck" without really understanding what they're voting for or caring what the outcome is. Your example is a bunch of guys who don't really use or care about Danbooru that much that you brought in to ask opinions about/agree with you on something they don't have an investment in...) Because discussion can change opinion and when it does so often does so towards consensus, while simply asking people from behind a double-blind to fire off their opinions without any real sense of its effect or how people responded to it lacks that quality that discussion has.

Flandre5carlet said:

Yes. Much like reiyasona said, you're comparing digital paintings from the 21st century relating to current-days pop culture with classical pieces.
People who like anime also generally have an interest in video games and other contemporary forms of media (TV shows, comic books,...) and thus fanart from such things is completely different than classical pieces which you are bringing up.

Then why did this get reapproved twice?

Saying "nothing but anime and OK, certain video games or comic books that I like" sets some kind of limit, it's just a limit that nobody else is going to agree to because it's highly specified to your tastes. And in the absence of those kinds of agreed-upon limits, there's people who apparently really are ready to approve classical paintings if only out of spite.

And again, Western comic books are what are explicitly mentioned as what Danbooru is opposed to hosting in howto:upload.

Super_Dick said:

and yet the same problem is still arising...this situation here is proof...so therefore the problem has still not been fixed...the only difference is that janitors & builders have been thrown into the equation.

Yes, again, my argument is that this whole thing will always be a moving target that always generates more and more problems until and unless there are explicit rules. Otherwise, it's just Eternal September.

Super_Dick said:

flagging should only be used by average users only...staff members should have no flagging privileges...same with appeals...this defeats my previous argument yes, but...after some time of thinking about it...I've considered a new perspective...a better one as well, in my opinion....plus I believe appeals should be held into higher consideration then they are now.

I don't get your reasoning. Why

If anything, if we're stripping flagging away from approvers, then there should be some sort of overt "flagger" role with a mod queue like tool for checking all recently approved works created to be guardians of standards that watch the watchmen, as it were.

Again, as it stands, having someone who goes completely out of their way to explicitly look through pre-approved uploaders' uploads, which is a rather thankless, tedious task, is the only way that some kind of quality check will ever occur on those people who are pre-approved. Yes, they had to show good behavior to get there, but when you are going so far out of your way to explicitly discourage flagging, there's absolutely no reason to remain on good behavior anymore past that point.

Super_Dick said:

and that's why I've considered that staff members should have no rights to appeal or flag a post...it is the staff's job to maintain the site...and it is the users job to moan and bitch at the staff about the problems they have with a certain pic or user that's rubbed off of them the wrong way...not the other way round...here I see staff members arguing with staff members...not a very professional scene is it?...but alas, humans are humans at the end of the day...and things like this must happen from time to time in order to remind ourselves that we are exactly that...annoying humans who are too stubborn for our own good.

You think professionals don't have discussions about their jobs? They just typically do so in conferences and meetings with themselves, not out on the showroom floor.

Anyway, we're not paid "professional" staff, here. (But if someone wants to slip me a salary, I sure wouldn't mind...) The "staff members" are basically made up of all the users who are most active and have relatively clean records. That is to say, the people who argue and complain the most just become the "staff members", provided they don't have lots of deletions or something.

In fact, at the start of this whole affair, I was a regular member joining in on complaints about how the "staff" was letting their standards slip, and since then, I've been "promoted" all the way up to being "the staff", as well. Even during those arguments, the response from some of the mods was that I should just apply to be a janitor, and my response then was that being a janitor didn't matter because having approval privileges is not the same as having disapproval privileges or any other sort of ability to actually try to get others to actually get together into having a consensus about what is or isn't allowed.

And again, that's kind of the problem - it's not really THAT hard for anyone who has an interest in this site to get promoted, (I certainly wasn't trying, I in fact passed it up, before...) and once they're in, they have tremendous discretion and very little oversight to allow for anything, and invite almost anyone.

Super_Dick said:

but as I've said before NWSiaCB...this is a good piece of art...to keep it from this site would (from a general point of view) be nonsensical...wouldn't broadening the horizons for danbooru be a good thing?...to accept the western style into the fold...wouldn't that bring to this site, a bigger audience, and therefore make this site that much more successful?

No it wouldn't.

To take Zaregoto's example and run with it, that would be like if we said we wanted to "broaden the horizons" of a museum of classical art by taking away the focus on classical art and creating a petting zoo or maybe hosting some death metal concerts.

This becomes a problem because, again, there is no role for disapprovers, just approvers, and once someone gets in as a "metal concert approver", bringing in more and more metal concerts, and therefore those "broadened horizons" metal fans, they then have just as much power to ask why there's so many people complaining about all the loud noise and trying to look at paintings in their concert hall.

If you are someone who came here without liking anime, only wanting all the Western stuff that's being brought in, and wondering why people have been coming here for years to look at anime images, talk about recent animes, and look at soft-translated webcomics, and angry that those people are here, then that's kind of the problem on full display, now isn't it? Again, Eternal September wasn't just that Usenet "broadened its horizons", it's that the original users were no longer welcome, and eventually forced out of the site they had originally created, Usenet lost its purpose, and eventually withered into utter purposeless irrelevance because of it.

And to put the shoe on the other foot again, I've seen a lot of yaoi porn being uploaded by a particular user, recently, and I've gone ahead and approved the quality on-topic ones for lack of any real reason not to do so... but what happens when there's enough male-figure porn and trap porn that it starts really bothering people? What happens when it attracts enough people who want to only see porn of men and not of women to actually start mounting a fight about it with the female-figure porn stuff?

For further argument on the purpose of curation, and why a gallery is defined less by what it includes than what it excludes, I really want to bring up some of the arguments that have been going on in and about Steam, and both its admittance policies and the curator program in particular, recently. (Because I haven't provided enough reading material to everyone, already, but hey, I added some YouTube videos for people who like to hear instead of see...) I remember a wonderful argument explicitly on how curation is meaningful only by what it excludes (I.E. a curator that only deals with turn-based strategy games instead of any "games they think are good") but my Google-fu is failing me at the moment.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/14/steam-curation-user-reviews-fixes/
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/09/who-curates-the-curators-the-canon-according-to-st.html
http://steamed.kotaku.com/steam-curators-need-a-revamp-1740374769
http://steamed.kotaku.com/valve-still-hasnt-fixed-steam-curators-1789581064
http://kotaku.com/nearly-40-of-all-steam-games-were-released-in-2016-1789535450
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPm4HsM-IUQ (Warning: Total Biscuit and three others talking for two hours about Steam Greenlight and Direct)
https://youtu.be/jNLemHpDQ60?t=1m48s (Jim Sterling on the mass of approvals on Steam, 10 minutes of the actual topic, with other stuff on the ends)
https://youtu.be/uTfxrH9R1yc?t=1m10s (Jim Sterling on the death of Greenlight)

---

In any event, it seems clear I need to revive that forum thread, or outright create a new one so that this conversation can be a little more organized and it would be easier to bring everyone up to speed at this point, since I'm obviously talking to more than just a couple people at this point... but I've basically read and written for something like four hours of my weekend at this point, so not tonight.

@Super_Dick on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-12T15:06:27-04:00

NWSiaCB said:

Approval privileges were created for a reason - there aren't enough moderators that spend enough time on Danbooru to actually go through all the posts. Until there were waves of recruitment drives that brought in the likes of Flandre5carlet and myself, people were complaining about how there were images being deleted after only being reviewed by only 2 or so moderators.

and yet the same problem is still arising...this situation here is proof...so therefore the problem has still not been fixed...the only difference is that janitors & builders have been thrown into the equation.

If you say that we should just have more moderators, then all that would mean is that the same people who have approval privileges now would just have become moderators to fill the void, instead.

not unless if they have an assessment or a check/Q&A list for the recruits as to how they would deal with a situation such as this plus other situations of course.

I also don't see why you'd want to restrict flagging and appeal privileges. Appeals in particular do nothing on their own, they are just requests for moderators to reconsider, so what abuse are you trying to prevent? Flags do have some mechanical function, but again, the point is that moderators and janitors are the ones who make the ultimate decision. Also, moderators can see who is flagging, and have banned people for spurious flagging before. If someone were doing something abusive in flagging this image, like setting up sockpuppets, I would suspect some of the moderators who have made their bed on the "allow Western art" side and had their approvals flagged again would have banned them for it.

flagging should only be used by average users only...staff members should have no flagging privileges...same with appeals...this defeats my previous argument yes, but...after some time of thinking about it...I've considered a new perspective...a better one as well, in my opinion....plus I believe appeals should be held into higher consideration then they are now.

I suspect you say this thinking that all these flags are just from random members, but again, there are more janitors and moderators voting against (or at least, "no interest") this image than have approved it. Considering that some of the janitors have stated they had flagged it, then can you really be sure it would have made a meaningful impact on the outcome, here?

and that's why I've considered that staff members should have no rights to appeal or flag a post...it is the staff's job to maintain the site...and it is the users job to moan and bitch at the staff about the problems they have with a certain pic or user that's rubbed off of them the wrong way...not the other way round...here I see staff members arguing with staff members...not a very professional scene is it?...but alas, humans are humans at the end of the day...and things like this must happen from time to time in order to remind ourselves that we are exactly that...annoying humans who are too stubborn for our own good.

but as I've said before NWSiaCB...this is a good piece of art...to keep it from this site would (from a general point of view) be nonsensical...wouldn't broadening the horizons for danbooru be a good thing?...to accept the western style into the fold...wouldn't that bring to this site, a bigger audience, and therefore make this site that much more successful?

@Astolfo on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-12T07:29:18-04:00

NWSiaCB said:

Again, I'm explaining why such arguments are simply not good arguments.
-snip-
Again, this just proves the lie of "stricter scrutiny", and why an explicit rule is necessary.
-snip-
It would be far from the first time someone on Danbooru thought something was at least good enough quality, only to have it deleted in the end when people didn't agree.

It's clear neither of us is going to budge from their position so we can chalk it up to a difference in standards, but when judging whether to approve something or not, I judge the picture as a whole. The composition, the theme, the art style, the anatomy and general quality. THEN I look at it in detail and whether some flaws I may notice affect the overall quality of the picture or not.
In this case, under my higher scrutiny, I decided that no, having some parts of the backgrounds or some of the demons drawn slightly less detailed did not detract from the overall piece and also contributed to the general feel of it: the DOOM Slayer manhandling an endless horde of demons in hell.

Yes, and it's also a single cherry-picked statement that happens to support your argument without lending any credence to any of the other statements made against Western art
-snip-
Oh, and if you want, I can also cherry-pick some arguments from the Bible that says murdering children is totally moral, too! That's why I think it's a pretty clear statement that God wants Christians to be baby-killers.

Really? Cherry-picked? Come on. Rather than it being "cherry picked to support my argument", I think it's the fact that it doesn't support yours that seems to bother you so.
Yes, albert clearly said that in terms of content such a picture was not objectionable. And yes, it was part of a slightly longer comment which generally adressed the issue with "Western art isn't the problem, bad art is the problem."

I didn't say they didn't care, I said they wouldn't realize what they were voting for. In fact, YOU said you were worried they wouldn't realize what they were voting for.

Which is why it should be explained clearly.

But again, as with Provence, I have to ask why you're stating in one sentence that we should be respecting some fiat from on high from an admin that should quash any and all further debate
-snip-
and gives an impression that you're more interested in "winning the argument" than the precedent set or having an actual set of policies by which future disputes are resolved.

Because there is currently a huge lack of consensus which makes this issue devolve into "whichever side can flag or approve a picture the most" regardless of each other's arguments, and that is not how this matter should be handled. The fact that this has been flagged and approved so many times clearly points at the fact that there's an issue somewhere - one that should be discussed, not handled like it currently is.
As indicated by the last wave of "Western" flags including this one, there is a clear push to set a forced precedent against Western art rather than a push for consensus through discussions.

Besides that, I don't see how taking albert's word and polling people for what they think are mutually exclusive concepts.

Beyond that, the forums are open to everyone.
-snip-
In what way has this entire exercise, both commenting here and in the forums, not been an airing of opinions where even regular member-level users were invited?

Compare how many people voted in the last opinion poll with how many people are actually active in the forums. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people just don't post on forums about these matters, regardless of what they think. Case and point a couple friends with accounts brought up this very DOOM picture to me, and how they found it silly that it'd be considered "poor quality." They aren't anywhere here arguing about it though, even if it's annoying or whatever, because they just aren't involved in danbooru beyond finding pictures. Which is what a lot of users do here, even despite the fact that a big complaint in the last poll was how obfuscated decision-making is.

-snip-
And, like I asked Provence, can you actually state anything that is well and truly out of bounds, or is there seriously no reason for there not to be The Last Supper or The Night Watch on here other than an apparent belief that those paintings are "not good quality"?

Yes. Much like reiyasona said, you're comparing digital paintings from the 21st century relating to current-days pop culture with classical pieces.
People who like anime also generally have an interest in video games and other contemporary forms of media (TV shows, comic books,...) and thus fanart from such things is completely different than classical pieces which you are bringing up.

@chilled_sake on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-12T01:13:49-05:00

@Saladofstones said:

While its arbitrary to remove one bit of western-styled art and leave another because of the hailing of the creator, in the sense of having a reason related to the image itself.

However, I don't see the point of having things like this doom pictures here, honestly.

I came out strongly against this concept both months ago in the forums and just a few days ago however I now see strengths in considering artist origin.
Edit: forgot to finish this blurb at that the time of posting, continued next line.
For one it allows for Eastern artists that primarily post using anime-styles to have style parody works. It's also more about culture and where someone grew up; for instance an artist with an English bio or that lists somewhere in Europe or the Americas as where they lived probably has had more cultural exposure to western styles and if they received high education in art probably have been primed in western styling. Also an artist born in East Asia or of East Asian heritage who was raised in the United States (Say Ken Wong or a thousand other artists here) for instance could be considered a western artist if you consider it a classification of national origin only.

As far as things that are borderline, that I am fine with. A vaguely animesque image of a western property by a western artist? I think that is permissible.

I agree with this. Not the least of which being I am quite fond of those 'animesque' illustrations and have uploaded many. This is why I think my etch of a standard determining if something is "western art" (comment #1666390) could be useful. It doesn't get to the bottom of how to assess genuinely Western art but it does give amnesty to most of the synthetic western-eastern styled art and imitation eastern styled art by western artists, avoiding a mass purge.

Also @reiyasona since I forgot to @ you in the preceding comment.

@chilled_sake on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-12T01:06:22-05:00

reiyasona said:

@NWSiaCB

Have we finally reached the point where we need to use well known historic paintings from the Baroque or the Renaissance as examples to explain why we need a hard ban on everything WWW? The big majority of pictures uploaded here are digital paintings from the 21th century. What's with historical Japanese art? Do we now have to worry about users uploading artworks like Cypress Tree Byōbu or Three Beauties of the Present Day because they won't be affected by a hypothetical total WWW ban?

I think he was using classical paintings more as an argumentum ad absurdum. In lieu of any firm boundaries for what can and cannot be posted, one might expect that classical works would be given as an example of what can't be posted but from his view defenders of western art won't even muster that. Clearly however neither European nor Japanese great historical artwork work be allowed because they aren't anime-influenced.

I fully agree with @Flandre5carlet. If we banned art by origin in cases where we compare two images with western artstyle and western subject matter, we would end up with ridiculous post confrontations like:
-

Heh heh, nice to see some of my posts used as examples on both sides (though some were sniped from image samples 😈)

Again if you read and comprehend everything he's said on the matter (quite a tall order!) he made it clear (I think!) that there wouldn't need to be a mass purge but he's concerned about blatantly western art with not relevance to Japanese culture or anime (I think!).

Not very appealing, I must say. : /

Well quite honestly a lot of those nude renderings of caucasian women seem beyond the pale in terms of their westernness to me. And probably fail my tests (score of 0 or three answers no).

@Saladofstones on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T23:30:30-05:00

While its arbitrary to remove one bit of western-styled art and leave another because of the hailing of the creator, in the sense of having a reason related to the image itself.

However, I don't see the point of having things like this doom pictures here, honestly.

It has nothing to do with the picture itself.

As far as things that are borderline, that I am fine with. A vaguely animesque image of a western property by a western artist? I think that is permissible.

However, concept art of System Shock, though I think it has its own merits as far as design and utilizing limited resources to create a detailed model, is not going to be something that is appropriate here.

We don't need to do a sweeping ban of western media or anything, things like this image are an anomaly and end up being a flashpoint for the broader debate about the focus of the site and how to interpret rules and how much discretion versus difference people should have.

@reiyasona on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T22:53:11-05:00

NWSiaCB said:

So let me ask, as with Provence, and has been asked of me, what principles are you actually trying to argue? How SHOULD Danbooru work, how should disputes be resolved, what standards should janitors be held to and hold others to in a way where there can be actual consensus rather than incentivizing grudges, and how should those who get outvoted be treated? And, like I asked Provence, can you actually state anything that is well and truly out of bounds, or is there seriously no reason for there not to be The Last Supper or The Night Watch on here other than an apparent belief that those paintings are "not good quality"?

@NWSiaCB

Have we finally reached the point where we need to use well known historic paintings from the Baroque or the Renaissance as examples to explain why we need a hard ban on everything WWW? The big majority of pictures uploaded here are digital paintings from the 21th century. What's with historical Japanese art? Do we now have to worry about users uploading artworks like Cypress Tree Byōbu or Three Beauties of the Present Day because they won't be affected by a hypothetical total WWW ban?

Flandre5carlet said:

And so then that makes it okay for, say, post #2424283 to stay, the single deciding factor being the artist's origin - even though there is virtually zero way to tell in the actual artwork whether that post is by a Japanese artist while this post is by a Western artist.

I fully agree with @Flandre5carlet. If we banned art by origin in cases where we compare two images with western artstyle and western subject matter, we would end up with ridiculous post confrontations like:

post #2653432 (Eastern artist) vs post #1951942 (Western artist)
post #2203322 (Eastern artist) vs post #2179567 (Western artist)
post #2633120 (Eastern artist) vs post #2621709 (Western artist)
post #2545556 (Eastern artist) vs post #2622644 (Western artist)
post #2602232 (Eastern artist) vs post #2645106 (Western artist)

Flandre5carlet said:

Much like I said earlier, I think that's bull. It's either Western art of Western franchise goes, or Western art of Western franchise stays. Artist origin should have absolutely nothing to do with it.

If we were to ban all Western style art of Western franchise and original Western style art, we would end up deleting posts like:

Not very appealing, I must say. : /

Side note:

To better understand where the two main "antagonists" of this discussion ( @Provence and @NWSiaCB ) are coming from, I compared their uploads and favorites. There are indeed huge differences in personal preference. Judge for yourselves:

@chilled_sake on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T20:32:25-05:00

NWSiaCB said:

The suggestion put forward by Feline Lump, and which I support, is the "WWW" standard of Western artstyle, Western subject matter, and Western artist, with any sort of Eastern aspect to the art (such as comic book-style Wolverine meeting an anime character with an anime art style) providing it an exception. This basically is a "it has to have SOMETHING to do with Japan, China, or Korea" standard.

Again, there's some contention about whether the Western artist part should stay, but generally, that creates a fairly permissive set of guidelines that 99.9% of art already on Danbooru follows, anyway, so that it doesn't require any sort of "mass purge" I have seen a couple people cite as their reason for trepidation with an explicit set of guidelines.

This really doesn't answer my question, at all. The WWW standard means nothing if you have no way to apply it. Is it a procedural check, is it a weighted score, if so which part of the check is most important, or what score makes something a Western artist?

You have to realize people are talking about very different things when they say "Western." Comic book heroes are Western sure, but is Overwatch as some say? What about other IPs closely associated with Western otaku cultures representing non-Japanese video games?

Your suggestions lack anything concrete which was a criticism you leveled at Provence.

But anyway I suggest we can narrow the scope of what we are talking about by assuming all "Western art" would answer 'no' to the following and that if the answer is yes to either than it's not western art...

1. Is the artist from East Asia?
This could be changed easily to just generally from Asia. A problem I have with that is the Orient extends as far as Turkey, which doesn't exactly come to mind when I think of "anime style." Also this rule could be interpreted as the national origin of an artist; therefore Westernized Asians would be treated as "Western" and westerners naturalized in Asia could be excluded...
2. Does the work incorporate stylistic attributes common in anime and among Japanese fan artists (I.e., such as the Pixiv community); does it lack a toonish quality, such as "Disney faces"?
3. Is the work is of a Western IP; if it is are the subjects drawn in the original Western style?

If no to all of those, don't call it Western art. If yes to more than one it is suspect and it would be subject to stronger rules or janitor review.

This I believe would provide an amnesty for the popular 'western' Overwatch illustrations and those interesting ArtStation/DeviantArt artists I like so much while making more overtly western works suspect.

Another way works could be checked for relevance is generating a score based on those questions rather than a procedural check. I.e., there's a total value of three and each question is worth a point. A typical work on this site therefore would be worth 3 (Eastern artist, anime style, IP is original or anime-related). Off the bat tested works would have a maximum of 2 (non-East Asian artist), so if they are in an anime style they get a point; and if they have an Eastern IP (or an original work) they get another for their maximum of 2. If they have just the Eastern IP then a score of 1.

I'd say in general 2 scores should pass as on topic while 1 scores would have to show exemplary quality. You get the picture with 0, that would just be flagrantly off topic (no relevance to anime or Japanese culture). I'm assuming of course people are going to be reasonable and recognize other aspects of Japanese culture can be substituted for anime in terms of relevance; i.e., Japanese (or Korean for that matter) games.

The questions could be strengthened by breaking them up, i.e. making a 2a and 2b, 3a and 3b, or adding specific explanations about the different emphasis on facial/body anatomy common among anime and western artists though there should be wiggle room because of the synthesis some artists create.

Applying either standard to this post would result in: off-topic.

@NWSiaCB on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T17:17:43-05:00

Kikimaru said:

Jesus Christ @NWSiaCB fucking condense your answers; you're just spewing hot air & hypothetical scenarios now.

"TL;DR" is not an argument, and people not taking the time to think through the ramifications of their decisions is one of the points I'm trying to make.

@Kikimaru on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T17:11:14-05:00

Jesus Christ @NWSiaCB fucking condense your answers; you're just spewing hot air & hypothetical scenarios now.

@NWSiaCB on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T15:33:04-05:00

Flandre5carlet said:

Mind, I already said I disagreed with the quality complaints as a whole, so there is no tacit admission of anything - much the opposite. I haven't claimed it to be an art style either but that it could be a stylistic effect to draw focus.

Again, I'm explaining why such arguments are simply not good arguments. Saying, "this is good quality," is wholly subjective, but at least the kind of argument one should make on Danbooru, provided you can throw in some supporting claims. Saying, "this is good quality for this artist's artstyle," or, "all the anatomy this artist draws is bad, so we should allow this," are bad arguments and tacit admissions of poor quality. It's alongside "there are worse" as a defense.

Flandre5carlet said:

The point is: is every picture that might have a somewhat undetailed background "poor quality" and flag worthy? Does a picture need to be the most absolute detailed in every possible part to be "high quality"?

Well, the "compromise" that was made in allowing there to no longer be a hard ban on non-anime artwork was that they would be subject to "stricter scrutiny" and "higher standards". Why are you, like basically everyone else who tries to defend Western art, speaking as though saying if something that must pass "stricter scrutiny", it means all the things that aren't declared to need "stricter scrutiny" must then be flagged?

Again, this just proves the lie of "stricter scrutiny", and why an explicit rule is necessary.

Besides that, however, in most images with forgettable or poor backgrounds, there is a clear, overwhelming focus upon the central figure(s), which take up about 80-90% of the image and basically all of the viewer's attention. This isn't the case, here, where the marine is about 10-15% of the image, and there's a clear intent for the viewer to be looking at the hoards around him... which are blurry, messy, and indistinct. (Besides, even if there's detail on the marine, it's not like it isn't rather blurry and sloppy, either...)

Flandre5carlet said:

Frankly, if this is genuinely seen as "poor quality" art by some then I don't know what to say.

It would be far from the first time someone on Danbooru thought something was at least good enough quality, only to have it deleted in the end when people didn't agree.

Flandre5carlet said:

I'd say that albert openly saying "This picture's content isn't objectionable" is definitely making a clear statement about the matter.

Yes, and it's also a single cherry-picked statement that happens to support your argument without lending any credence to any of the other statements made against Western art, like the fact that the posting guidelines explicitly LEAD OFF by saying that Danbooru is an anime imageboard first, and a high quality imageboard second. Or the sets of rules he put up that explicitly banned Western art for years, and have only recently been softened to merely heavily discourage Western art... And again, the fact that "we heavily discourage" is treated no differently from "we generally encourage" is the whole problem.

Oh, and if you want, I can also cherry-pick some arguments from the Bible that says murdering children is totally moral, too! That's why I think it's a pretty clear statement that God wants Christians to be baby-killers.

Flandre5carlet said:

Then if people don't care, they won't really bother voting or giving their opinion? I really don't see how it can be a bad thing to poll the general population of Danbooru about whether they think ToS should change in this or that way. Some people will care and reply, some won't. Either way, it's not necessarily supposed to be a hard decision-making vote but rather gain data about what people generally think regarding this particular subject; and either way, it's better than not polling anyone at all and just moving on toward something like a hard WWW ban after a months long and wholly consensus-less debate.

I didn't say they didn't care, I said they wouldn't realize what they were voting for. In fact, YOU said you were worried they wouldn't realize what they were voting for.

But again, as with Provence, I have to ask why you're stating in one sentence that we should be respecting some fiat from on high from an admin that should quash any and all further debate, then in the very next sentence, you're saying we should be having a giant, open debate where everyone is invited to vote on what the rules should be. So I'm not sure, do you believe that Danbooru is like a corporation and we the employees where we are but to follow the directives of CEO Albert, OR do you believe that this is a democratic venture where we are meant to serve out the democratic will of the people? Certainly, there are some in-between stances to take, but switching from one complete extreme to the other in the space of a single period lacks any intellectual consistency, and gives an impression that you're more interested in "winning the argument" than the precedent set or having an actual set of policies by which future disputes are resolved.

Beyond that, the forums are open to everyone. I don't recall seeing too many polls, but decisions have been made about the direction of Danbooru, regardless. The forums and comments sections, for that matter, are open to everyone to have months of debate, and in the first sentence of the paragraph, you implicitly state that if someone doesn't care, then it's fine if their opinion isn't counted. So why are those months of forum debates that previous decisions have been made upon not ways of gaining data on what people (who care enough to go to the forums) think about a particular subject? Especially when, in an actual debate (consensus-less or not), people actually interact in a way that guarantees they actually do get informed as to the ramifications of what they are "voting" for? In what way has this entire exercise, both commenting here and in the forums, not been an airing of opinions where even regular member-level users were invited?

So let me ask, as with Provence, and has been asked of me, what principles are you actually trying to argue? How SHOULD Danbooru work, how should disputes be resolved, what standards should janitors be held to and hold others to in a way where there can be actual consensus rather than incentivizing grudges, and how should those who get outvoted be treated? And, like I asked Provence, can you actually state anything that is well and truly out of bounds, or is there seriously no reason for there not to be The Last Supper or The Night Watch on here other than an apparent belief that those paintings are "not good quality"?

@Astolfo on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T14:40:38-05:00

NWSiaCB said:

As has been argued on plenty of other posts that have been flagged and deleted, "it's poor quality as an ART STYLE" is a bad argument, and essentially a tacit admission that it's poor quality. Images deliberately drawn badly as a choice, like making some MSPaint scribbles to mock other artists or the like, are generally not approved.

Mind, I already said I disagreed with the quality complaints as a whole, so there is no tacit admission of anything - much the opposite. I haven't claimed it to be an art style either but that it could be a stylistic effect to draw focus.
The point is: is every picture that might have a somewhat undetailed background "poor quality" and flag worthy? Does a picture need to be the most absolute detailed in every possible part to be "high quality"?

Frankly, if this is genuinely seen as "poor quality" art by some then I don't know what to say.

-albert paragraph snip-

I'd say that albert openly saying "This picture's content isn't objectionable" is definitely making a clear statement about the matter.

-last paragraph snip-

Then if people don't care, they won't really bother voting or giving their opinion? I really don't see how it can be a bad thing to poll the general population of Danbooru about whether they think ToS should change in this or that way. Some people will care and reply, some won't. Either way, it's not necessarily supposed to be a hard decision-making vote but rather gain data about what people generally think regarding this particular subject; and either way, it's better than not polling anyone at all and just moving on toward something like a hard WWW ban after a months long and wholly consensus-less debate.

@NWSiaCB on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T14:19:12-05:00

sweetpeɐ said:

I've agreed with much of what you've said - such as the need to TOS reform and the imperative of concrete rules - but do you have any suggestions of what those might be? You repeatedly asked for some of the "pro-western art" faction to provide definitions or cutoff points but can you? I have to guess you have at least some idea of what the rule might be else you wouldn't have sought another standard by which to potentially compare it to.

The suggestion put forward by Feline Lump, and which I support, is the "WWW" standard of Western artstyle, Western subject matter, and Western artist, with any sort of Eastern aspect to the art (such as comic book-style Wolverine meeting an anime character with an anime art style) providing it an exception. This basically is a "it has to have SOMETHING to do with Japan, China, or Korea" standard.

Again, there's some contention about whether the Western artist part should stay, but generally, that creates a fairly permissive set of guidelines that 99.9% of art already on Danbooru follows, anyway, so that it doesn't require any sort of "mass purge" I have seen a couple people cite as their reason for trepidation with an explicit set of guidelines.

Super_Dick said:

but yet here we are...at it again...begs the question doesn't it...the question being shouldn't mods and admins be the only ones who can approve a post?...another question could be shouldn't flagging & appeal privileges be allowed for gold and platinum members only?

Approval privileges were created for a reason - there aren't enough moderators that spend enough time on Danbooru to actually go through all the posts. Until there were waves of recruitment drives that brought in the likes of Flandre5carlet and myself, people were complaining about how there were images being deleted after only being reviewed by only 2 or so moderators.

If you say that we should just have more moderators, then all that would mean is that the same people who have approval privileges now would just have become moderators to fill the void, instead.

I also don't see why you'd want to restrict flagging and appeal privileges. Appeals in particular do nothing on their own, they are just requests for moderators to reconsider, so what abuse are you trying to prevent? Flags do have some mechanical function, but again, the point is that moderators and janitors are the ones who make the ultimate decision. Also, moderators can see who is flagging, and have banned people for spurious flagging before. If someone were doing something abusive in flagging this image, like setting up sockpuppets, I would suspect some of the moderators who have made their bed on the "allow Western art" side and had their approvals flagged again would have banned them for it.

I suspect you say this thinking that all these flags are just from random members, but again, there are more janitors and moderators voting against (or at least, "no interest") this image than have approved it. Considering that some of the janitors have stated they had flagged it, then can you really be sure it would have made a meaningful impact on the outcome, here?

Flandre5carlet said:

What if that's meant to be a stylistic element to draw focus to The DOOM Slayer? The background being relatively undetailed while the central elements (DOOM Slayer and demons surrounding him) are detailed.
And I say relatively here because I do think it's a huge exaggeration - especially the current flag calling it poor quality.

As has been argued on plenty of other posts that have been flagged and deleted, "it's poor quality as an ART STYLE" is a bad argument, and essentially a tacit admission that it's poor quality. Images deliberately drawn badly as a choice, like making some MSPaint scribbles to mock other artists or the like, are generally not approved.

Flandre5carlet said:

An admin did come and settle things once and for all, didn't they? Didn't albert flat out say that this Doom picture is not objectionable back when the debate was happening on the forums?

Albert never "settled things once and for all". He approved the image once while allowing for it to almost immediately be flagged again, because he wasn't putting his foot down about it. What he said and did amounted to little more than "enh, I think it's OK, but I won't stop others from having the final say." And you should know, you re-approved it after it was deleted, so it WAS settled as this image being deleted, not approved.

Albert also said about the whole issue of how much Western art gets approved that, "It's not a problem until it is." That is about as non-committal as one could possibly be about the whole topic, and very deliberately leaves open the possibility for him to say he saw a couple Western art images he didn't like the other day, so we're going back to strict rules against it with no forewarning. Albert has always been very reticent to make dramatic top-down declarations, which is in no small part why so much of Danbooru is essentially just consensus of the mods and janitors, with whatever rules that do exist being filled with weasel-words.

Flandre5carlet said:

I can second this, I think it would be best to gauge everybody's interests. I do hope that people realise "Western" can also mean popular copyrights such as Overwatch, though.

Well, that's part of the problem, now, isn't it? Even if those of us who are trying to explain why more explicit rules are necessary can convince people we debate long enough, that doesn't matter if there are people who just don't care to listen or engage. You're asking people who may well not even realize what they're voting on to decide... And there's no guarantee that even if you put up a lengthy explanation of the options right above the checkboxes that people won't "TL;DR" it.

Besides that, as I mentioned with Provence, saying in one sentence that admin fiat should stop all conversation once and for all in one sentence then saying in the next that you want to put it up for a vote for majority rules doesn't maintain any kind of intellectual consistency. It's the sort of thing someone says when they just want to "win the argument", but don't care why or how or what kind of precedent it sets going forward. That just tends to lead to sloppy, inconsistent judgements going forward that will only encourage the only real rules being interpersonal rivalries against whoever is "on the other side". Having actually consistent rules to follow and enforce makes things impersonal.

Besides that, should Danbooru allow yaoi/gay porn? Strictly speaking, there's nothing in the rules against it, but the Eternal September effect means that the mostly female-centric porn will ensure users who like female-centric porn come and will then upload more female-centric porn. There are people who complain about there being yuri already, so if there were any more sizable amount of yaoi stuff, with it being enough to start being all over the front page or comments section as new yaoi fans talk it up all the time, you can bet there will be vociferous complaints. A lot of futa, furry, and guro stuff would definitely get the same treatment.

I remember there being one artist, for example, where all his works were purged because he once posted an image of a razor falling and slicing into Alice Margatroid's face, and this so outraged a group of people they went and flagged everything he had made, regardless of their actual content.

Again, governments have constitutions that ensure rights of those who are out of power and prevent unfettered democracy for a reason - absolute democracy is a dangerous tiger to ride, as anyone who is ever surprised to find they are outvoted will find out. As buehbueh mentioned, that also creates a very unstable foundation where the will of the users not only constantly changes, but, because of Eternal September, is also a self-perpetuating cycle. Even if you're in the majority now, you may not be in the majority a few months from now, as all it takes is one or two "triggering" posts like the Alice razor one to cause a mass backlash. Eternal September is also not at all civil, and making majority rules and keeping a majority fully dependent upon keeping anyone who isn't part of your majority out through making them feel unwelcome basically overtly incentivizes harassment. To go back to the constitution metaphor, having some static, basic guidelines for what the site is for and is supposed to mean doesn't prevent change, but does provide some stability and also provides the sort of consensus about what is and isn't allowed to diffuse many of these arguments.

After all, if someone has a post deleted because they're told it's against the clearly stated rules, they have nobody but themselves to blame for not following the rules. If a post gets deleted because of some nebulous shift in the power dynamics of the janitors' internal political battles following a poll result most random users who don't routinely log in may not have ever seen, and find they're suddenly outvoted, they definitely have some people to blame. You can already see that in all the posts about how much people hate how arbitrary they feel flagging has been recently, and how that was the number one complaint in the (non-policy-setting) poll we just had. In fact, you could even take the explicit request for more consistency in moderation to be an implicit request for more explicit guidelines that all janitors and moderators are asked to uniformly follow.

@Super_Dick on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T13:10:53-05:00

An admin did come and settle things once and for all, didn't they? Didn't albert flat out say that this Doom picture is not objectionable back when the debate was happening on the forums?

but yet here we are...at it again...begs the question doesn't it...the question being shouldn't mods and admins be the only ones who can approve a post?...another question could be shouldn't flagging & appeal privileges be allowed for gold and platinum members only?

@Astolfo on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T08:52:38-05:00

Kikimaru said:

The thing that irks me, is flagger(s) saying this has "bad quality".

Like, where?
The anatomy is full of detail & exposed muscle, the colours are used in interesting ways, and there is good focus on Doomguy.

NWSiaCB said:

The argument is that (especially when you bring it up to full zoom) it's full of thick, blurry, indistinct brushstrokes and lines. Doomguy has detail on him, but pretty much everything else lacks it, and has sloppy linework. (And presence or absence of exposed muscle is just irrelevant.)

What if that's meant to be a stylistic element to draw focus to The DOOM Slayer? The background being relatively undetailed while the central elements (DOOM Slayer and demons surrounding him) are detailed.
And I say relatively here because I do think it's a huge exaggeration - especially the current flag calling it poor quality.

Super_Dick said:

that's the best thing I've heard out of all of this...why doesn't an admin just come along and sort this out?

An admin did come and settle things once and for all, didn't they? Didn't albert flat out say that this Doom picture is not objectionable back when the debate was happening on the forums?

buehbueh said:

My personal solution is to invoke a response to the community of active users to ask if there can be a vote using the same tool used for the recent survey to ask what the general attitude of the community actually is. The rules should serve the userbase, and we need to know what the userbase feels to achieve that.

I can second this, I think it would be best to gauge everybody's interests. I do hope that people realise "Western" can also mean popular copyrights such as Overwatch, though.

@Super_Dick on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T04:20:04-05:00

"But before that happens, one should call to an admin who settles things once and for all. That didn't happen in the past, but it might happen here. I think Admins have to power to lock a post's status."

that's the best thing I've heard out of all of this...why doesn't an admin just come along and sort this out?

all nitpicking and selfishness aside...this is a great piece of art...of course, its not the mona lisa of badass pics but its good enough to meet the high quality criteria when the ToS is involved...plus I've seen tons of other posts like this...so I don't see the reason why this is getting any special attention...so yes...I believe this deserves to be on this site and it should be an admin that approves it so then afterwards he can lock it's status in order to silence those who feel an uncontrollable need to express their freedom of speech on their 1st world problems.

@chilled_sake on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-11T04:02:33-05:00

NWSiaCB said:
-

I've agreed with much of what you've said - such as the need to TOS reform and the imperative of concrete rules - but do you have any suggestions of what those might be? You repeatedly asked for some of the "pro-western art" faction to provide definitions or cutoff points but can you? I have to guess you have at least some idea of what the rule might be else you wouldn't have sought another standard by which to potentially compare it to.

@NWSiaCB on post #2430440 (doomguy, cacodemon, imp, baron of hell, revenant, and 4 more (doom and 1 more) drawn by alex_palma)

2017-03-10T22:46:03-05:00

buehbueh said:

stuff

The problem I have with this is that Danbooru's system is such that it takes *much* more effort to flag, much less get a flag to stick, than it is to approve something. (When things are not approved or flagged, they go to the moderator queue, but you get no notification about the things that are approved, so for someone to have parity in flagging ability, they need to go out actively searching for images to police... and of course, there's a reason approvers are announced, but flaggers are anonymous - there's serious blowback for someone who makes it known they flags things.) It only takes a couple mods and janitors approving crappy stuff to make the work of other approvers meaningless, especially the more blowback flaggers get. This is basically whole reason there was all that argument over Not One Of Us.

So, when you create this overt grey zone, the problem is, all it takes is one or two people treating "grey" as "white" and the rule is basically meaningless unless someone is willing to organize more flaggers to push forward a sustained effort over months to force the flag over whatever coalition is willing to keep approving the image. I mean, the drama this image has been a lightning bolt for is obviously going to be the exception, not the rule, but what does it say about the random other images that are really not "exceptional quality" Western stuff, guro, furry, etc. when people are willing to just say "the ToS only discourages all this stuff, so that's absolutely the same thing as it all being approved!" And to again point back to Not One Of Us, pretty much the only recourse for correction outside of simply convincing someone through argument otherwise (which generally gets responded to with complaints about TL;DR) is to have months if not years of drama on the forums or sustained, targeted flagging/stalking someone to "punish them" until someone has a bad enough deletion record that they get demoted. Unless someone's behavior is so radically out of line they immediately bring the whole website against them, there's no meaningful mechanical feedback built into Danbooru that will discourage a janitor determined to keep approving things others disagree with. It takes nothing short of a conspiracy of people willing to pursue an outright vendetta against someone flagging their approvals over months of likely tons of drama to actually start triggering the disciplinary action on this site, and that's not only far more effort than any set of individuals will reasonably put forward, it's not exactly the kind of behavior we should be incentivizing, either. (Survival of the most vindictive!) After all, whether this post ultimately is deleted or has a sustained approval (if it ever DOES settle down at all...) what does it really mean, what precedent is set, if the only reason one side or the other prevailed is because they were simply more stubborn than the other side, not the side that had the more convincing arguments, or actually have a consensus around a set of guidelines that actually govern approval for other images? It just means that the same argument will happen all over again for the next image people are willing to actually converge upon.

And that's why seeing these arguments really just makes me more and more convinced there has to be a hard line, because it only takes one person not accepting what "stricter standards" means to make any flag require months of drama or an organized movement to have one flag sustained.

After all, people aren't defending this or other flagged "off-topic" images as "being of sufficiently superlative quality to overcome the stricter standards guidelines", it's simply, "enh, it's as good as other stuff we approve." (Or outright dismissal that "off-topic" is even a legitimate reason to flag anything at all...)

Again, we have the exact same language in howto:upload discouraging invasive watermarks, copyrighted mangas and hard-translated mangas, banned artists, photographs, and bad anatomy as we do for off-topic, furry, and guro... and yet, the things from that first list are FAR more likely to never be approved, or have flags against them sustained as the ones from the second group (with anatomy being sort of borderline between the two). Why is it that the same language is a de facto hard line for the former group, and off-topic, furry, guro, and (semi-regularly) anatomy are de facto mere fluff? If someone flags a photo, nobody even pauses to question it, but there will be people talking about how much they hate the moderators that are cancer that is RUINING DANBOORU FOREVER when it's about anatomy or off-topic posts.

So, if you want to keep Western art's place on this site "small", how are you going to do so, when the deck is so stacked in favor of those who want to make Western art's place on this board much larger, and so stacked against those who want to keep it small? Again, it only takes a couple people coming in saying "I don't read arguments or care what reasons there are" to destroy the entire flagging system so long as people act as individuals. Unless you're going to be willing to actively assist in re-flagging questionable content and basically forming conspiracies against certain types of content, then the system is stacked such that simply sitting on the sidelines is functionally assisting those who think it's perfectly fine for Danbooru to "become a Mass Effect Wallpaper site".

Again, just letting Eternal September take place incentivizes everyone being as petty and vindictive as possible against anyone who has different tastes as themselves, because only those who sustain the flags or uploads more stubbornly and spitefully than the other side until they finally just get so disgusted with Danbooru's drama that they just plain quit will prevail. And this is why I disagree even with the statement, "If yet again another approve/flag cycle occurs, such is life. If the site were to grow to a solid unilateral consensus with less dissent that accommodated my views would be fine, and if it were to swing the other way and deny mine, I'd have to accept that shift. This would hold true for everyone regardless of position. The general view as it is feels up in the air because many people aren't saying anything." - you're basically encouraging Eternal September, which is not a process by which people peacefully disagree, it's a process by which people actively ostracize the unpopular until those who disagree are so harassed that they are driven out. Think of any place with open political arguments, and how frequently they tend to turn into all-right or all-left wing boards who will descend like a pack of wolves upon those who dissent. Basically telling people they can get the chance to vote for which people whose tastes they don't like (be it a flat chest versus giant boobs war or whatever) to functionally be discriminated against essentially makes it open season to try to punish the fetish you don't like. (See, for example, Kikimaru's telling me to "go to Gelbooru", or Super Dick's comments. Being nasty and trying to drive people out of Danbooru is functionally the only way to "win" the "debate" when you make it a game of Eternal September.) There's a reason why constitutions exist in democracies - because some things, especially things that discriminate against certain groups of people, shouldn't be up for a vote. It guarantees eternal drama.

And no, it doesn't HAVE to be eternal drama, as some people are clearly resigning themselves to, you can solve the problem by simply generating actual consensus around the rules and guidelines that exists around photographs (which, again, don't have this kind of drama) for off-topic art. That means the overwhelming majority of janitors have to be willing to actively sustain flags against things that aren't something so extraordinary they actually justify that "stricter scrutiny". Again, it's just plain easier to do this when you have far stricter language in the ToS to start with for less janitors to actively hide behind functionally acting that "generally rejected" gives them all the latitude of "generally accepted".

And really, if the purpose of janitors and mods are to sustain the quality of Danbooru's image gallery, then why aren't flags given the same importance as approval in their arsenal? Janitors and mods are actively prodded if they haven't moderated things in a while, but there's never any push to flag anything. How many of you are actively looking out to flag things that clearly don't fit with Danbooru's quality guidelines as regularly as you look to approve things? At best, there's two or three people who actually try to do daily flags, and that's counting the people who actively delete sample images. The reaction many of you are likely to have to this point is, "why should they try to flag things as much as approval?" And that attitude on Danbooru is kind of the root of the problem, isn't it? Why isn't flagging (or at least, looking through approved works to find those that need flags) treated as being as important to maintaining quality standards as the approval process. (Especially when it seems like at least half the uploads on Danbooru get through on people with automatic approval privileges, and without someone going back over their stuff, there's literally NO other checks on their behavior.) That flagging is so rare, so often unsuccessful, draws so much contempt from other users, and is so generally stressful that almost nobody does it should be seen as a problem.

I mean, there are several people in this comment chain that have changed their position just through talking it out, but those who have approved this image already but now say they have changed their minds and wouldn't approve it again... but there's no "undo approval", and saying they wouldn't approve it again isn't the same thing as joining in to actively flag it if it is approved again.

(*sigh*... And here I thought I'd just fire off something small and quick when I started...)

Kikimaru said:

The thing that irks me, is flagger(s) saying this has "bad quality".

Like, where?
The anatomy is full of detail & exposed muscle, the colours are used in interesting ways, and there is good focus on Doomguy.

The argument is that (especially when you bring it up to full zoom) it's full of thick, blurry, indistinct brushstrokes and lines. Doomguy has detail on him, but pretty much everything else lacks it, and has sloppy linework. (And presence or absence of exposed muscle is just irrelevant.) As I said to Provence, I know for a fact he's flagged and not approved for less than this. (And it seems he is willing to accept it being deleted on quality grounds, so I suppose that's a convincing argument to him, at least...)