Let's try a new kind of thread, different from what topic #7934 may offer. This time, it won't be about upload feedback, but upload advice.
Just as a foreword, I do feel like a lot of the feedback given in that thread is much of the same old, where inexperienced curators will often upload what they feel to their eyes is good, and they can't really "fathom" why their upload would be deleted. There are reasons some things might go unapproved, maybe because of a lack of popularity for the copyright or art style, but then there are reasons that to us unrestricted uploaders, that are obvious as day why something might be unapproved in the gallery.
So I think establishing some sort of better recommendation guidelines about this will help clear some of the smoke, more than how far howto:upload's published guidelines and criteria will ever get you.
Before you ask anything, some general advice
Because I don't want to repeat what's already been said multiple times on the internet. I'll be recommending this article to read.
It's one of my favorite articles on the internet, as it describes pretty well the fundamentals of art and artists' mastery of them. More importantly, these fundamentals are what we often use to gauge the quality and content of art (as approvers and gallery gardeners/moderators). And as artists, experienced and aspiring alike, this is also the bar by which we even grade our own work.
Once you've read that, I'd like to just mention some talking points regarding booru that may lead to you having more success within the pending gallery (and hopefully may even bump you to the unrestricted uploads permission).
- An image has to be interesting for us to likely be able to approve it. Just because there's nothing wrong about an image doesn't mean there's anything right about it. You can cherry pick images that you think are worse to us, that are active in the gallery, but that says nothing about a deleted image you might have curated.
- Composition and tone play more of a role than you expect. Sometimes, even more than that of anatomy or perspective (albeit they all play a crucial part). That's why you should strive to upload interesting things that make use of all the tools given to an artist. It has to catch your eye; Don't make it a habit to just upload boring stuff that you think just barely makes the cut.
- Uploading what's "popular" only gets you so far. Although there are a lot of approvers on the site that will approve what is the current flavor of the month/season/what have you in anime-style art land, don't make it a main focus, as that will pretty much turn into a honey trap. Just because one character or copyright gets approved a lot because of the bandwagoning, doesn't make it any excuse to upload less-than-preferable curations to the server.
If anything else comes to my mind, I'll be sure to update these later.
I'll also throw in a small snippet from the guide I've talked about and written in topic #14451 that discusses general approaches to pixiv, the site that pretty much all regular uploaders here go to to curate art. I've given it a short rewrite in Dtext. You can click to expand below.
Pixiv advice
Pixiv is the site you should be most familiar with as an uploader. It's where the vast majority of the gallery's images are sourced.
Pixiv also has an extremely navigable English interface. All of the options make sense, the UI generally makes sense, and Pixiv tries its' best to promote artists by way of a sensible ranking system and also rich searching and recommendation features.
If you have Pixiv premium, well congrats! Your life will be many times easier in a number of regards. Make sure to put all your favorite artists in a special folder, and you can even make your life easier notifications and follow-wise. And you can get used to searching by bookmark count, which is useful for finding new, popular content that otherwise just hasn't made it to the gallery yet.
If you don't, that's okay too. The script(s) I linked above should help you out, as there does exist a feature to hide the thumbnails of submissions that have a bookmark count lower than the threshold you set. It also shows up as an extra search option that's saved locally in your browser.
(Note that the script will not be available to you if you're not in my server).
General advice
No matter what your interests are, or what kind of art you like, it's easy to find something on Pixiv. Pixiv does such a good job of recommending content that you could be stuck on some of their pages for days. Some things you should try if you haven't already:
- Know how to use the search effectively! Pixiv has a very powerful and intuitive search that isn't hard to use. Here's an example: Artists sometimes tag their copyrights in different languages, so one way to search for all work that matches the copyright you're looking for is to search it in all the different languages at once. Here's a search I like for obvious reasons.
- Know what the milestone tags are. Pixiv has a great number of user-contributed tags following the ○○○users入り pattern. It serves as another way to help you find popular works in the case that you don't have Pixiv Premium. Also, it helps promote the artist's work so tag it too when you can! More info on pixiv encyclopedia (Japanese).
- Follow the ranking! You'll be surprised how much new art you might find and like when you give it a quick glance. I make it a habit to scrub through the top 100 in daily ranking every so once in a while for anything the gallery might be missing.
- Look at older content too! You'll be surprised what you can find.
- If you want particular content you like to be more popular, try gardening character and content tags on pixiv. You can find Japanese tags in Pixiv encyclopedia or within our wiki too (albeit it is not kept up to date as often as it is there).
If you happen to improve and/or become a good uploader after all this, I'll also extend a hand to help make you an even better and more efficient curator, by sharing you the knowledge that I have regarding all kinds of websites and the like through the full guide described in topic #14451. After all, I could keep all these tips to myself, but I think that my knowledge can be your knowledge, and your power. And I do want to see you succeed (well, as long as you're an uploader I like, wink).
What you're welcome to ask here
I've already gone into perhaps too much detail about how we critique uploads and the like, but now I'd like to describe the sort of questions you can ask in this thread.
Almost all questions regarding uploading are welcome, but just remember that we might not respond to everything. Any input from other users is appreciated as long as you're being genuine and your advice is constructive.
Per similar rules in topic #7934:
- Don't ask about uploads that are already on the site. This is not a second upload feedback thread like topic #7934. Ask about your deleted curations there, not here.
- Don't ask loaded questions. That is, no questions of a form similar to "Why do my uploads not get approved, but other unrestricted uploaders get to upload crap?" We're not here to answer those kinds of questions.
- Do ask questions you think will be helpful to you and other users. You are welcome to ask any of the approvers how they grade certain works, where they give exceptions (such as with western-inspired art or with other niche content), and how they treat the moderation queue and/or pending gallery.
- We might not respond in a timely manner. If you feel like your question wasn't really answered or skipped altogether, you're welcome to pose it again, but do know your limits.
- "Quality Checks" (or QCs) are totally fine, but try to keep it to a minimum; ask what you're barely unsure about. In our server, we do it all the time; We basically ask other approvers and unrestricted uploaders if such and such post is okay to upload, or if we're confused about how a file has changed if it has an md5 mismatch. Here's a chat example:
Show
Unbreakable - Yesterday at 12:43 PM
pixiv #52301368 qc this for me :ok_hand:
Mikaeri - Yesterday at 12:43 PM
oo
this artist
I think I used to follow
mmm
I'd skip, personally
but if you like it enough you can
I wouldn't flag it, but mmmh
might approve on a feel-good day
Unbreakable - Yesterday at 12:44 PM
Yeah, I'm really on the fence about it
It's cute and all that but there are those minor details here and there that makes me hesitate
Mikaeri - Yesterday at 12:45 PM
mhm
I feel ya
Unbreakable - Yesterday at 12:46 PM
And Watora and Potofu are :green_heart:
Of course, the feedback we give will be perhaps a little bit more detailed than that, but don't expect too much from us.
That's all. Let's see where we can go with this thread.
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