about:upload limits
Upload limits are used, along with the moderation system, to prevent inexperienced uploaders from flooding the site with too many low-quality images. You can see your current upload limit on your profile page or on the new upload page.
Your upload limit controls how many status:pending posts you can have at once. For example, if you have an upload limit of 20, then you can have 20 status:pending posts at once. When you reach your limit, you can't upload more until your existing uploads are either approved or deleted.
Rules
Here's how the system works in detail:
- Each status:pending upload takes up one upload slot.
- Slots are freed when uploads are approved or deleted.
- You start out with 15 upload slots and can have between 5 and 40 upload slots.
- You gain and lose slots based on approvals and deletions.
- You lose a slot for every 3 deletions.
- You gain a slot for every N approved uploads, where N depends on how many slots you already have:
- If you have 15 slots or less, then you gain a slot for every 10 approved uploads.
- If you have more than 15 slots, then for every slot over 15, you need 2 extra approvals.
For example, if you have 15 upload slots, then you need 10 approvals for the next slot. If you have 16 slots, then you need 12 approvals. At 17 slots, you need 14 approvals, and so on. The number of approvals you need goes up by 2 every time.
At the maximum level you can have 40 upload slots. To reach this level you will need at least 900 approved uploads and an average deletion ratio of less than 5%.
Unrestricted uploads
Users with the unrestricted uploads permission have no upload limit. You may be granted this privilege by consistently uploading high-quality posts while maintaining a low deletion ratio.