All right, I'm out on uploads - the auto-approval is crap

Blue_Trident said:

To be honest, I don't like this idea at all. The random aspect seems like it would just be punishing and frustrating to users that upload/approve good posts. It says: "we trust you to upload/approve, but not fully". If your idea is to provide feedback (which is a fine idea), I think there are far more effective ways of doing that. For the example, the feedback system. It appears to work fairly well in correcting bad tagging behaviour, I see no reason why it can't also be used for bad upload behaviour. Another way to provide feedback would be to create a report system. Rather than flagging individual posts, which might not be noticed amid a lot of other uploads, users could be reported for consistently bad uploads or approvals. These reports would be visible anonymously to the offending user, and otherwise to mods and admins only, who could then take whatever action they see fit, be it nothing, a warning or loss of privileges. I believe that would create much better feedback than having to go through the mod queue randomly again sometimes.

I really don't think bad contributor uploads is as big a problem as it's being made out to be, but admittedly I tend to only look at a few copyrights, so I don't have the best overview of the site as a whole.

+1 for a reporting system plus flagging. I do get upset at posts which barely or don't meet minimum tagging requirements, or ones which are abusing tagme and similar vague tags to simply move into the next upload. I will upload batches at a time, but I will also go back to clean them up. It may take a few minutes, or longer... but I clean up my messes. Not everybody does.

But a random upload to moderation? I already do that to myself by accident often enough, and it just means you're overloading the moderators and approvers even more for no real purpose other than spite. Imagine how many more posts would have to be appealed because only three moderators viewed the post if 5-10% out of every 100 uploads from even five Contributors. The only other option is to remove unlimited uploads, which means those large Pixiv updates don't get uploaded as someone will want to conserve their uploads for the day... and then we lose out on Shino's books, or new artists who have a pool of good work on Pixiv as even Contributors won't risk uploading those good pieces because they'd rather upload sure bets like the latest Zounose or Mizuki Hitoshi art. Then what separates Danbooru from Sankaku Complex?

If the OP or Richie think things are bad now, how will they feel when even more of their posts are deleted due to approvers spending more of their time sorting through all the uploads someone like Province, Sacriven, or gary25556 make a day?

Part of the problem, I feel, is that there really isn't any precedence for demotion. Rarely does a given ability on Danbooru later get taken away; only one I've seen a few times is approvers being revoked for being inactive for years. I dunno about other staff members, but I personally never "demote" people because I don't know if it's really expected of me, appropriate, allowed, part of my job, or if it will cause a controversial shitstorm.

EDIT: Well, I should say, I've never been so piqued by someone as to consider demoting them from unmoderated uploads to date, but if it were to arise I'd be given pause.

When was the last time a contributor was demoted anyway?

The only valid reason I see for contributor demotion is consistently uploading crap. I guess they are careful enough not to do that, otherwise anyone is free to bring it up on the forum or in DMail to any mod.

Assuming contributors continue to upload good enough images, "we have too many contributors" will never be an issue, since mod staff would be happy if there would be less stuff in the queue.

tapnek said:

When was the last time a contributor was demoted anyway?

I did.

Type-kun said:

The only valid reason I see for contributor demotion is consistently uploading crap. I guess they are careful enough not to do that, otherwise anyone is free to bring it up on the forum or in DMail to any mod.

Assuming contributors continue to upload good enough images, "we have too many contributors" will never be an issue, since mod staff would be happy if there would be less stuff in the queue.

And what is about really bad tagging habits on own uploads? There are some Contributors that are only tagging eye/hair color and maybe 3 more tags, but they don't put real effort in tagging.

Several users have gotten demotions of various types that I've seen, but their behavior was more significant. Kikimaru held contributor status for a short time before getting demoted for not uploading what the staff wanted, and Magicalasparagus got a temporary demotion for overdoing it on the undeletions/approvals and got it back by petition.

Honestly, there's 2 or 3 people I do think might deserve demotions, but it's always for pictures I remember I'd never upload nor approve, and yet didn't feel I could flag. Someone was repeatedly uploading fat pictures, some of which got flagged, but they eventually uploaded more palatable material. Whether or not the idea of uploading whatever you want without immediate review is fair in and of itself, all the most real cases of people actually having the system kick in against them was not for being one toe over the line, but for huge or specific infractions. And usually it's not actual rule violations that drive large changes in the system by themselves, but drama and debate.

The Rifyu debacle was the result of unilateral behavior, and when the alarm was sounded, the majority made a parliamentary point, that even if you hate her work, you don't unilaterally erase stuff without real debate. The rule changes for guro and furry were not made because people liked it, but on technicalities (banning content in itself usually doesn't help improve quality as much as you'd think). Most rule changes are by persuasion here, and while a large number were against it, there was an active team effort of users pushing for change.

But pressing for demotions of both uploaders and approvers on an individual basis has never been advocated by a major wave of users. Only a few users ever come on here and say anything about it. Asking for people's demotions or for rule enforcement requires something more than what we used to see the user base willing to push for in complexity and effort. Now that other users are coming out of the woodwork to offer a complaint and demand for some actual events to occur, this might mean a chance for this, but a more rigorous criteria for demotion of poor contributors needs to be in place, and no one has yet to truly offer something other than throwing statistics at trying to solve it in a really roundabout way.

I would try something along the lines of an vote of confidence/no confidence for certain users in an open thread, with the use of evidence, and a response from said contributor. That to me makes more sense than to have users reported to staff and suddenly demoted without prior immediate warning or review. And unlike flagging, which should at this point continue to remain anonymous, we should not have decisions on this stuff done without thorough communication and transparency. But of course, this is all my vision of a healthy process.

OP's complaints were for instance a vote of no confidence in Recklessfirex, evazion, Fenen and Kadoya for each of their uploads, even though it's obvious that the actual evidence is flimsy and sparse. And since OP used typical comparison complaints, they've demonstrated the lack of merit in their statements by not demonstrating what was wrong in the first place was wrong on its own, but in relation to their own uploads, and of course, started and ended with disclaimers of it being a rant.

To put some rigor into this process, people need to be show that contributors have a consistent history of defying the rules and flouting quality standards with no relation to the accusers own uploads. Feedback, actual uploads, comments and other behavior can all be factored into it. And poor taggers should definitely get demotion, regardless of upload quality. That alone could probably get a few people demoted immediately.

I've been working on a draft proposal for user probations, which would be a tool to help curb this issue with contributors uploading stuff without any controls. It was an idea that came up here previously during discussions about deficiencies with the moderation process.

It's basically a system of escalating upload timeouts that restrict how much you can upload. You could subject it to any contributor and (after an initial warning period) they'd be restricted to 1 upload an hour or per day.

There are lots of problems and dangers with a system like that (like who should have the right to issue probations, and is a system of negative reinforcement a good thing) which is why I'm still tweaking the draft. It's one possible solution to this complaint, however.

Blue Trident said:

To be honest, I don't like this idea at all. The random aspect seems like it would just be punishing and frustrating to users that upload/approve good posts.

How is "punishing" putting only a few random posts in the queue to get them evaluated by mods? If that's punishing and frustrating, then what should say all the uploaders who are not contributors?

It says: "we trust you to upload/approve, but not fully".

But our trust in contributors *is* limited. If it wasn't then they would be granted their status for life and were unrevokable.

If your idea is to provide feedback (which is a fine idea), I think there are far more effective ways of doing that. For the example, the feedback system. It appears to work fairly well in correcting bad tagging behaviour, I see no reason why it can't also be used for bad upload behaviour.

Hello - we do have such feedback system implemented right now. And no, it doesn't work with bad uploads that easy as with bad tagging behaviour. One of reasons is because - contrary to bad uploading - bad tagging can be spotted much more easily and objectively.

Another way to provide feedback would be to create a report system. Rather than flagging individual posts, which might not be noticed amid a lot of other uploads, users could be reported for consistently bad uploads or approvals. These reports would be visible anonymously to the offending user, and otherwise to mods and admins only, who could then take whatever action they see fit, be it nothing, a warning or loss of privileges. I believe that would create much better feedback than having to go through the mod queue randomly again sometimes.

But how what you've proposed here is different than flagging bad posts? Except maybe writing an even bigger, longer and much more detailed report witch - as happens with flagging - could and would be easily rejected. So interesting and *yawn* rewarding.
Plus, let's not forget some of higher tier users also, let's just say, have sometimes problems with being consistent with quality of their selfuploads. Good luck with writing such report about such user being *not* anonymous.

Jarlath said:

If the OP or Richie think things are bad now, how will they feel when even more of their posts are deleted due to approvers spending more of their time sorting through all the uploads someone like Province, Sacriven, or gary25556 make a day?

Oh, it's very easy to prevent that. By applying the percentage quota of posts bypasing the queue to all users. Of course, different ones - based strictly of their current ratio of accepted/deleted posts.
Newly registered users and/or those with small number of posts would begin at 0%.
Then, they would be granted new quota of selfapproved uploads based of their current (hopefully positive) activity. Preferably automaticaly by some kind of mathematic formula. 10% at first. Then later they'd be promoted to 20%. And so on. Point is the ceiling wouldn't be 100% but for example "only" 90%.

The only other option is to remove unlimited uploads, which means those large Pixiv updates don't get uploaded as someone will want to conserve their uploads for the day...

How? Sending to queue mechanism would be random. Of course depending from your quality mark. If you are an 90% user then you have 90% chances to selfupload and 10% to have send it to queue. Regardless of how much pictures you're sending today.

and then we lose out on Shino's books, or new artists who have a pool of good work on Pixiv as even Contributors won't risk uploading those good pieces

If they are really good, then there won't be problems with these literally few randomly put pictures of them in the queue to be accepted by those who have approval powers.
...unless, just maybe, they're not so really good and one random check in mod queue would reveal it.

To think that this escalated into a new level.

richie said:

Oh, it's very easy to prevent that. By applying the percentage quota of posts bypasing the queue to all users. Of course, different ones - based strictly of their current ratio of accepted/deleted posts.
Newly registered users and/or those with small number of posts would begin at 0%.
Then, they would be granted new quota of selfapproved uploads based of their current (hopefully positive) activity. Preferably automaticaly by some kind of mathematic formula. 10% at first. Then later they'd be promoted to 20%. And so on. Point is the ceiling wouldn't be 100% but for example "only" 90%.

Seriously? You want to take down our unlimited posts privilege again? And back to square one? I've spend 3 years to get this privilege, you know. (At least this is what I get after reading that post)

=====================================================

I don't think it's fair that the mistakes of a few contributor will affect other contributors as a whole.

So you're saying that instead of just moderating most uploads, the approvers now not only have to moderate all uploads in the moderation queue, but then have to actively view ALL of the uploaded posts that bypassed moderation? How does this reduce their workload and keep up quality? You're just shifting moderation from the queue where they can just go to one place to find posts to review to having to actively trawl all of Danbooru to make sure those extra posts which bypassed moderation aren't in violation of the quality and tagging requirements in the first place.

I'm not seeing the benefits to that, save to people who wouldn't have been picked as Contributors to begin with.

As it is, the problem people have with moderation now is that so much gets uploaded that we only get maybe 1-3 people who ever check a post... and if they're not a fan of the copyright/character/subject matter/artist in question, they'll pass the burden of approving onto someone else who might like it better. And when that someone never comes, the post times out. Your suggestion doesn't fix that problem. - either the queue goes even higher as the Contributors who have the ability to bypass the queue suddenly add another several hundred posts a day to that queue (which means the approval resources get further stretched) or else they suddenly have to leave spend hours trawling all of Danbooru instead of an hour or two in the queue.

And you're assuming those larger posts in Pixiv would actually get uploaded by multiple people, rather than the four or five people who make an effort to look at the unknown stuff which has high quality but may not necessarily be from the most popular artists or copyrights. With limited uploads, I certainly remember that I'd either spend a few days uploading (and nobody else would pick up the slack, as they were saving their uploads for their own favourites)... or else I'd give up and let a contributor get it.

You're also assuming that your taste in art, and your discernment, is substantially better than the approvers and Contributors already on Danbooru. I'm going to keep trusting the Admins,let.

Let's not forget that all approvers are Humans, not Once-Humans.

reiyasona said:

+1

IMO users should only loose their unrestricted upload permission if there are strong indications for a declining upload quality. In this case, the most obvious indicator is the amount of rightfully flagged posts (posts that are flagged an deleted afterwards).

Diligently reasoned flags should not just be ignored. As already mentioned above, the flagging system is pretty much the only quality control mechanism for uploads that bypassed the mod queue.

Spot checking quality control can only help to reassure that the basic quality control system is working as intended. The heart of that system is the perception of every user here on Danbooru. Users that come across bad quality art should be encouraged to make use of the flag function, especially if the artwork in question was uploaded by a user with unrestricted upload permission. QC is very important to ensure that users with special permissions don't degrade over time (decadence). Some might even feel tempted to put quantity over quality, while striving to dominate the scoreboards (@BrokenEagle98 nice work there btw.). :P

About the low ratio BrokenEagle mentioned:
I don't reallx feel overwhelmed by the mod queue. There are 2 to 3 pages at total with 200 posts each. Looking through them does not even require a huge amount of time and I look through a lot pics manually. So this reason flies out of the window pretty fast IMO. Seriously...people who think that we have too many post...I don't really understand that. Doesn't even take 10 minutes^^.
My point is: If you chose five pics out of 100 pictures you have a very good view of the user's quality. At least way better than simply 1 (huhu, ke-ta gets instantly approved like I said, so one image is definitely to low. And yes, I want to upload a lot, but it wouldn't hurt me that much if five pics out of hundreds should go through the queue. I even send myself some through the queue (all were deleted except two and that were a lot. I think over 10 posts in 2 month as Contributor :$).
And yeah, scorerboards are good, but it wasn't only BrokenEagle who did work :<.......

reiyasona said:

Correct. That's why I think that flagging should be encouraged for posts that were uploaded by users with unrestricted upload permission.

Maybe we could link the amount of posts that are randomly pushed to the mod queue to the amount of deleted uploads. This would create a dynamic spot sampling system similar to the logic behind the calculation of the upload limit.

Examples:

• user with unrestricted upload permission uploads 100 posts -> 0 get flagged and deleted -> 0/100 + 0.05 -> 5% of future uploads get pushed to the mod queue
• user with unrestricted upload permission uploads 100 posts -> 5 get flagged and deleted -> 5/100 + 0.05 -> 10% of future uploads get pushed to the mod queue
• user with unrestricted upload permission uploads 100 posts -> 10 get flagged and deleted -> 10/100 + 0.05 -> 15% of future uploads get pushed to the mod queue
• user with unrestricted upload permission uploads 100 posts -> 20 get flagged and deleted -> 20/100 + 0.05 -> 25% of future uploads get pushed to the mod queue -> trigger alarm -> mod evaluates the situation (possible removal of the unrestricted upload permission)

1. You are right. Flagging should be more often done. There is a lot of flagging going on lately, but nearly everytime these flaggers get screwed in the comment section of the post (:>).
About your last paragapagh: That would go hand in hand with the "5 out of 100 posts have to gothrough the queue". And if flagging comes into play, then this is a extension of BrokenEagle's and my idea, since 5 posts have to go and get a closer look^^.

And yeah: Contributors should be trusted. But indeed not fully. To have a little device going on in the background is still better than let them have to move freely around. I mean...a soccer couch is also trusted by the guys who lead the team, but is still monitored and if they screw over to many times, the coach gets fired.

Sacriven said:

I've spend 3 years to get this privilege, you know. (At least this is what I get after reading that post)

And that's the epitome of sickness of current system.

I don't think it's fair that the mistakes of a few contributor will affect other contributors as a whole.

AND HOW EXACTLY would it affect those "good" contributors, hmm?
If they're really good, then few of their posts will be accepted by moderators. Nothing more.
What are you so afraid about?
You didn't think that after your promotion you're finally allowed to post everything you wanted earlier - but were afraid it wouldn't be accepted - did you?

Jarlath said:

So you're saying that instead of just moderating most uploads, the approvers now not only have to moderate all uploads in the moderation queue, but then have to actively view ALL of the uploaded posts that bypassed moderation?

NO
Once again:
1. every user would get assigned a percentage number ranged from 0 to 90
2. this number will be a strict result of their previous uploading (and approval) history and will be updated accordingly
3. the moment user uploads new art the site will generate random number from 0 to 100 - if it's higher than user's the post will have to go through moderation queue, if not then it will be autoaccepted.
4. flagging system remains as it is

I'm not seeing the benefits to that, save to people who wouldn't have been picked as Contributors to begin with.

The most important benefits are:
1. the best uploaders (at 90%) will still get their feedback by seeing how their uploads manage to get through mod queue (or not...). Analogical reality check might happen to "the authors who are always accepted (because contributor(s) are uploading them since forever)"
2. the number of posts needed approval by mods will be more or less the same as now
3. there will be more frequent small stepped progress possible by you as an user. No more spending XX years to earn priviledge to be contributor. No more big drama when someone accuse you for bad posts and will try to demote you.

As someone with unlimited uploads, there are times when I mean to kick something to the mod queue, but forget to check the box to do so. Reading through this, I think I'm going to do a search and flag some of my own subpar stuff, because I know there's quite a bit of chaff.

I"m not opposed to having a certain percent of uploads just being hard-randomed into the queue at all; especially after seeing some incredibly low-quality comic submissions that squeak by from Touhou, Kancolle and LoveLive.

richie said:

AND HOW EXACTLY would it affect those "good" contributors, hmm?
If they're really good, then few of their posts will be accepted by moderators. Nothing more.
What are you so afraid about?
You didn't think that after your promotion you're finally allowed to post everything you wanted earlier - but were afraid it wouldn't be accepted - did you?

It seems I misinterpreted some of your tl;dr stuffs. What I got is that you recommend some percentage that act as a quota for "queue-bypassing posts". In other words, limiting the amount of post indirectly. But if it is so,

I'm gonna straight here. Yes. I don't like my uploads getting limited for third time. If you're talking about quality, then you got the wrong guy. I've learned my lesson back then, exactly one year ago. There is no way I'd let anyone disturb our privileges that we got through dedication and hard work. Besides, all contributors were already judged by several moderators for their worthiness, but that doesn't mean they must be PERFECT all the time. The world isn't like black and white only. The point is, even contributors make mistake and sometimes several contributors abuse the bypass system.

I admit that the system that you implemented above is good, but shouldn't it be applied to only select few? To only "rogue" contributors? Like, probation period or something? That way, I can still accept.

Also, aren't you a bit forceful here? It seems that you're trying to force anything that you think is "good", behind the words "for the site's sake".

Ah, well, that's enough drama for today. If this system somehow managed to pass, then I won't compromise anything more. I'll just quit Danbooru and searching for new focus out there, like Schrobby did.

buehbueh said:

Several users have gotten demotions of various types that I've seen, but their behavior was more significant. Kikimaru held contributor status for a short time before getting demoted for not uploading what the staff wanted

Three fucking days.

We must avoid not only the reality of subpar contributor uploads, but the very perception of there maybe being subpar contributor uploads. Even if the former is untrue, the latter can cause unrest within the ranks as we've seen in this thread.

How do we avoid this perception without some kind of verification system, whether it's a random sampling, a probation period, a vote of no confidence, or various other methods that have been mentioned in this thread?

Whatever we choose, it will need to be robust and transparent enough to assure all users that the system of privileges on Danbooru is fair and that those who have those privileges continue to deserve them.

Sacriven said:

Ah, well, that's enough drama for today. If this system somehow managed to pass, then I won't compromise anything more. I'll just quit Danbooru and searching for new focus out there, like Schrobby did.

This sounds like you know why Schrobby doesn't contribute for nearly three months and maybe longer anymore..?
But I agree with richie here. The ideas don't sound to bad and are pretty much the same I also had (that's why I think the ideas are good ^o^). No seriously: What is the real harm when some post should go through the queue? I honestly don't believe that Contributors should be off the hook since there are some questionable posts. I guess there are better Contributors like other which you can see in the amount of deletion and I'm pretty much at the end of that which more than 45 posts (stupid water taps uploads and failing similar function) but the posts that I put on the queuethat i really want to have a second look at were deleted and that are more than ten.
So I wouldn't object to some kind of control. And like I said: Control. It is not mistrust but more what every company does. And if there are too many failures then there will be consequences.

BrokenEagle98 said:

The quality criteria for flagged posts is different from the quality criteria for approved posts:

1. Namely, I've observed that posts have to be of bad quality to be successfully flagged and deleted.
2. Also, I've observed that posts have to be of good quality to be successfully approved.
3. This leads to posts of fair quality being uploaded... not bad enough to flag, but probably not good enough to have been approved

I think that this touches on a deeper issue, which is: When we say that Danbooru is a "repository of high-quality anime-style art," how high of quality do we mean? Is good art admissible, or only great art? Where is the cutoff? If a post has no chance of hitting the Popular page, is it worth uploading? If it can't score at least 10 within 24 hours, should it be automatically deleted?

This is a large, philosophical issue, and I don't have confidence that a system of random quality checks will solve it. First, because the randomness gives no guarantee that the offending posts will be the ones sent to the queue; and second, because it seems like an effort to extend Danbooru's asocial mentality (which works well to keep us focused on art and to avoid most forms of drama) to an extreme: Using automated mechanisms to shuffle users around so that no one has to actually talk to each other and say that they've been too lenient on certain copyrights, artists, or art styles. Going from 5% of your uploads being randomly sent to the queue, to 10%, tells users nothing about how they should improve. I'm not opposed to random quality checks (and I certainly don't see it as an insult), but I don't think it would do much to solve the problem.

I'm not in favor of a vote of no confidence system either, seeing as how we had an entire thread of no confidence against a certain user last year that led to changes in the moderation process, but no probation actions taken against that user. The no-confidence approach seems like more drama than it's worth.