howto:rate (locked)
Image ratings help users organize and search through the various levels of explicit content contained on Danbooru. It's very important to rate your uploads properly. By doing so you help ensure that searches continue to return accurate results.
Danbooru has three ratings: Rating:Safe, Rating:Questionable, and Rating:Explicit. Broadly speaking, these categories are:
- Rating:Explicit: For pornography — images containing explicit sex, gratuitously exposed genitals, or that are otherwise pornographic.
- Rating:Questionable: For images that may contain some non-explicit nudity or sexual content, but that aren't quite pornographic.
- Rating:Safe: For everything else. Note that rating:safe does not mean safe for work and may still include "sexy" images containing cleavage, panty shots, skimpy bikinis, and so on.
Ratings only apply to sexual content. Violence, gore, or profanity do not affect an image's rating. Note also that ratings do not say how "family friendly", "kid safe", or "offensive" a picture may be. This is explicitly not a goal. Danbooru users are assumed to be responsible adults and the ratings are there only to help them choose the content they wish to see.
Guidelines
Ratings can be tricky, especially since Danbooru does things a bit differently than a typical website. Here are some guidelines regarding ratings to help you make the right choice. Obviously these lists don't cover everything that belongs in each rating, but you should be able to grasp the general idea of what kind of images each should contain.
Before we start, note again that Rating:Safe does not mean "safe for work".
Rating:Safe
- All art clearly lacking sexual content.
- Innocent romance between couples (kissing, hugging, eye contact, etc.).
- Tasteful swimsuits.
- Tasteful lingerie.
- Tasteful panty shots.
- Discreet, clearly non-sexual nudity that do not fall under Questionable or Explicit.
Rating:Questionable
- Non-genital nudity, including exposed breasts, nipples, or areolae.
- Non-blatantly exposed genitals, full frontal nudity without additional "action" or bodily fluids.
- Erect nipples under clothing.
- Cameltoes and wedgies.
- Images in the middle of disrobing or torn clothes that are designed to be sexually suggestive in nature.
- Sexually suggestive acts (sucking suggestively on hotdogs, etc.).
- Erections under clothes.
- Sex toys not being used, or hinted at or hidden under clothes.
- Mild sexual contact (ear biting, breast grabbing, saliva-swapping, etc.).
- Pubic hair (while the rest of the genitals remain hidden).
- Sex acts implied and hinted at, but not shown.
- Actual intercourse, if portrayed in a restrained and tasteful manner (this can be tricky and is necessarily a judgement call, but if it concentrates on the act and omits anatomical details, it's likely okay).
- Implied or obscured bodily fluids (someone sitting on the toilet, somewhat wet panties, etc. Again, this is a judgement call).
- Bondage, spanking and more general BDSM activities without object insertion or bodily fluids.
- Other assorted erotica, as long as it doesn't cross the porn line. While rather hard to define precisely, the basic test is that of intent -- does it show just to show sex, or is it rather as a part of some other, normal human activity?
Rating:Explicit
- Blatantly exposed genitals (of either gender, censored or uncensored). "Blatantly" means in a way designed to draw the attention to the fact, by means of viewing angle or perspective. This includes spread pussy / anus, erect penises, etc.
- Openly and unambiguously portrayed sex acts (including intercourse, oral, fingering, handjobs, masturbation, object insertion, etc). This includes censored images, as the presence of censorship makes it unambiguously clear what is happening behind that censor.
- Clearly visible sexual fluids (cum and pussy juice).
Note also that if an image is loli or shota, it lowers the threshold for what is considered explicit significantly.
If you are ever unsure of what rating to use, post a comment or ask in forum #37461. The fewer mis-rated images, the better!