Questionable Approvals

I’ve recently come across flagged posts of dubious artistic quality that I think have been questionably reapproved. I believe that some of these posts bring into question the standards of people who approve posts on Danbooru. I would normally just individually ask the approvers why they did what they did, but the response of the first person I asked was extremely hostile, so I decided to make a forum post to ask if anyone (maybe even the approvers themselves) could figure out why these posts got reapproved instead of possibly provoking more people on an individual basis. These are not all of the posts that fall into the category of being questionably approved, but rather a list of the most outstanding examples.
post #2814963
post #2872748
post #2923644
post #2941700 (and child)
post #2784615
post #2940677
post #2923767
post #2852747
post #2879339
post #2620466
post #2623284
post #2972415
post #2972416
post #2942465

Some of those at least are well enough drawn to easily counteract the not-all-that-bad anatomical errors.

kuuderes_shadow said:

Some of those at least are well enough drawn to easily counteract the not-all-that-bad anatomical errors.

Listing specific posts would be appreciated. In my opinion, all the well drawn posts have extreme oversights in anatomy.

What may seem like "extreme oversights" to you may be minor flaws to other viewers. There's no such thing as a single objective measure of quality, and it's to be expected that some approvers' standards may differ from yours. A lot of these uploads aren't great, but I don't think any are so egregiously bad that they're worth flagging, and none of them come close to the sort of garbage-tier art that certain since-demoted Janitors once approved on a regular basis.

Also, I'm curious what you're hoping to achieve by calling out approvers in the forum since questioning them one-on-one didn't work out so well. If there's an approver whose standards you have a problem with, wouldn't you get better results by privately raising the issue with an admin?

^iridescent slime said it pretty good, but I'm just chiming in to say that all the posts you mentioned look fine to me. post #2972415 and post #2972416 are a bit too 3Dish for my taste, but I don't begrudge the approver for approving them.

wuv_u said:

Listing specific posts would be appreciated. In my opinion, all the well drawn posts have extreme oversights in anatomy.

All except post #2784615 * and post #2852747 to a certain extent to be honest with you. post #2623284 is probably the best image on the list - those things she's wearing over her legs stick out from her body so that isn't the width of her hips. The fact that there's basically nothing actually wrong with that one as a result, though, means that post #2940677 and post #2620466 are probably better examples of what I'm talking about.

*The abuse-tier flag reason probably didn't help this one...

wuv_u said:

I would normally just individually ask the approvers why they did what they did, but the response of the first person I asked was extremely hostile, so I decided to make a forum post to ask if anyone (maybe even the approvers themselves) could figure out why these posts got reapproved instead of possibly provoking more people on an individual basis.

Not everyone sees a perceived issue or even multiple issues stated in flags as reason to warrant deletion of an entire post if the overall quality makes up for that in their eyes. Even then, other approvers seem to take flags as a sign that a post is instantly terrible and not worth second consideration.

It doesn't help that some flag reasons seem to not take the context of the image into account (things like posing or perspective). Some other flag reasons are either short and lazy or long and overdramatic, to the point where it looks as if context is being ignored entirely to imply a mindset of "I don't like this, even if other people do, so I'll flag it and maybe dress up the reason to make sure I don't somehow run into this post again".

None of those listed posts are what I would consider deletion-worthy in my eyes, and aren't even worth flagging, not even as a "check".

iridescent_slime said:

What may seem like "extreme oversights" to you may be minor flaws to other viewers. There's no such thing as a single objective measure of quality, and it's to be expected that some approvers' standards may differ from yours. A lot of these uploads aren't great, but I don't think any are so egregiously bad that they're worth flagging, and none of them come close to the sort of garbage-tier art that certain since-demoted Janitors once approved on a regular basis.

This is essentially how I feel. Specifically "I don't think any are so egregiously bad that they're worth flagging". If there's a post that's actually bad -- and I don't mean the inflated idea of "bad" that flagging can escalate posts into -- I'll delete it if it wasn't already deleted. But if it's a case of a post I don't like, I'll just move along. Simple.

Hmmm, I think we've had this discussion before.

Well, i'm not one to talk. i would have approved almost all of those images if i had the power, since the anatomy/perspective problems are either completely intentional or, pretty minor in my opinion.

Except for 2784615, the armpit design is pretty grotesque and the arms aren't very consistent. But i'd chug that up to it not being in my taste.
Also, post #2942465 could use a rework but it's still passable.

I'm a proponent to only delete/flag posts that are truly unsightly to a majority of people, or that break the other rules.
I mean, if we stopped deleting them, people might be more encouraged to post different types of images, of in different styles. It would allow for more variety of posts on our site. Not just the 96% per page of slim girls.

I generally support flagging, but not when it's done like it happened here. One shouldn'T flag because you are angry at something or someone.
Don't get me wrong: I generally support all flags here, or at least I wouldn't approve the post but not flagging them myself.

But this report speaks volumes:
https://isshiki.donmai.us/user-reports/post_flags/%21CURRENT.html (These reports are publicly available, so I'm not doing anything vilifying)
2 re-approved flags, like in my case, are absolutely normal.
But when it reaches 22 reapprovals out of 28 flags, then you should probably take a step back from flagging.
To find stuff to flag is extremely easy when you know how ( @ion288 figured this out pretty well). But to just rush out to flag is mostly ending it re-approvals.

Some of these are the same ones I brought up in the flagging vandalism thread (may have been the wrong place to raise the subject, I know). I will just reiterate what I said there.

Exaggerating sexual characteristics in art goes back to the stone age. Flaws in anatomy and perspective should not cause high quality posts like post #2940677 or post #2941700 to be deleted. I doubt you can find a post on this site that I cant find a flaw in. Every post must be measured on all its artistic merit (anatomy, line work, coloring, shading, lighting, artifacts, humour, message and even setting etc..).

Although I am tempted to reflag post #2972415 for that awful 3D hair (and what is it with those drawn out navels? Haven't these artists seen a belly button before?).

Personally I wouldn't approve any of those pics; weird twist of the back, weird angle or just too western for my taste. But I can't say anything about my fellow approvers, since it's a subjective work.

Besides that I think every approvers will approve some edge case post while most of the others won't touch it with a long stick. Yesterday I even approve a post that has been viewed by 22! approvers and didn't like it, while I thought it was decent enough.

Personally I often will approve well drawn sketches (while others don't) while rarely approve explicit rated post.

All in all often when if there is some error in a pic it can be compensated if whole thing is well drawn that leads to an (re-)approval

What is meant with "lazy" flag if I may ask?
Is it when the flagger simply writes "quality/anatomy/perspective check" without saying what exactly is off-putting?
If that's the case, then I should add that we are a multilingual website and not all users can speak English and to ask another user every time to write an accurate flag reason isn't that reasonable. And even if: Describing anatomy is pretty hard.
And there is also nothing lost when simply writing "anatomy check": That means Approvers have pretty much nothing to go with and are less biased against a certain feature. Like, when someone says "bad shoulders", then Approvers are focussing first on the shoulders and then the rest. If there is no description, it gets treated pretty much the same as a normal pending post since there is nothing to go with.
At least, that's what I experience when reading a "quality check" flag. I don't know what others are thinking, but I think flag reasons should actually be as open as possible.

So I can't really comprehend the mention against "lazy" flags if it's what I think it's supposed to mean. Judging from appeals, it seems that a flag is only then lazy when there is only written "quality/anatomy check".

ion288 said:

Some of these are the same ones I brought up in the flagging vandalism thread (may have been the wrong place to raise the subject, I know). I will just reiterate what I said there.

Exaggerating sexual characteristics in art goes back to the stone age. Flaws in anatomy and perspective should not cause high quality posts like post #2940677 or post #2941700 to be deleted. I doubt you can find a post on this site that I cant find a flaw in. Every post must be measured on all its artistic merit (anatomy, line work, coloring, shading, lighting, artifacts, humour, message and even setting etc..).

Although I am tempted to reflag post #2972415 for that awful 3D hair (and what is it with those drawn out navels? Haven't these artists seen a belly button before?).

Yes, exaggerated sexual characteristics are frequently seen in art. Just because it happens a lot doesn’t mean that it should be approved if it looks bad, however. I think the main problem here is approvers confusing prominent asses and breasts with actual quality. In post #2852747 you can tell that those thighs are not anatomically possible (unless you’re extremely fat, which obviously doesn’t apply here, since the rest of Peach’s body looks normal). Approvers should not be people who confuse attractiveness for good post quality, in my opinion.

The ironic part is only about 2 or 3 of those are worse than the majority of gununu meme posts that keep getting through.
I don't think I would have approved most of those. If it was me.

Dalamar said:

The ironic part is only about 2 or 3 of those are worse than the majority of gununu meme posts that keep getting through.
I don't think I would have approved most of those. If it was me.

Different styles and types of posts must be judged with different measures. Is a funny but a bit poorly drawn comic of an obscure copyright worse than a completely bland but anatomically correct touhou picture? You can't compare a gununu with a bikini pinup, because people search for and like these two examples for very different reasons.

I don't know if your premise is referring to me, but if so, you didn't get a friendly response from me because your approach wasn't particularly friendly either. If not, then no issue here.

With that said, I'll echo the words of iridescent slime among others. And out of these examples, I would probably have reapproved post #2814963 post #2872748 post #2623284 along with the one I'm listed for (post #2940677) the others, probably not.

wuv_u said:

Approvers should not be people who confuse attractiveness for good post quality, in my opinion.

Out of those I listed, I'm not particularly appealed by any of them because it's not generally the kind of art I'm here for, but they're artistically good enough in my eyes regardless of my tastes.

I see a few of mine there and in fact approved post #2923767 before. Funnily enough, someone else asked about it too so I pointed out that it looks identical to the source and so all these "waist is too slim" flags are kind of silly. Maybe if someone had objected to it being almost a trace of the original but that ain't what happened.

Since you are wondering that's pretty much how it goes for me with most of those uploads. Even without mentioning the vast amount of artwork that gets flagged despite being perfectly in line with a certain artist's/source style, I personally loathe anyone that tries to apply the whole anatomy thing to what's probably the most stylized medium in the planet. Same with people that flag things using comments like "Trash" or "Bad", which made me approve post #2784615 - Whenever I'm lukewarm on an image like that with some favorites behind it, I approve it with the reasoning that if it really is bad enough for the general public then it's going to get flagged again. If my stint as a janitor has shown me anything is that people looooveee reflagging stuff!

That's pretty much it, plus basically fighting a whole lot of "I personally don't like it" or even worse "I haven't seen it before so it doesn't exist" neither of which are relevant to the site's rules. Matter of fact I'm pretty sure I ended up as a janitor because I once mentioned that the site has barely any oppai loli and more varied art would have been nice. Sure, some users don't like it but I don't really care and shoot down flagging attempts like in the case of post #2852747 That image got approved and then flagged and then reapproved and here we are again saying it ain't humanly possible but I can show you this and point out that they look even thicker because Peach is fully sitting on them; It devolves into a painfully pointless discussion of my limited personal experience vs your limited personal experience because people insist on applying generic anatomy rules to characters with eyes the size of my fist.

It's fine not to like things but I think it's about time for the general userbase to accept that maybe "Not my fetish" is not really a flag reason no matter how much you might alter the wording. That maybe we don't really know how much a 150 pound, 6 foot tall women with K cup breasts could bend back because we haven't seen one. I mean what do we even do with Raita's girls for example, an obvious inspiration for post #2972415 and its twin given that leslyzerosix has modeled them extensively before, when they are supposed to look stunningly anime even within their own universe? Do we go "AAAAAAAAAAARGGGH ANATOMY" despite them looking exactly as they should be as envisioned by the artist? What about what must be dozens if not hundreds of images that have been flagged because of "an inhuman pose" like this?

I think it's simply untenable to keep going like that. In the end danbooru's additions depend entirely on user and staff taste though so you are free to add what you like and I'm just gonna keep curating things I like.

DetBarkhorn said:

I see a few of mine there and in fact approved post #2923767 before. Funnily enough, someone else asked about it too so I pointed out that it looks identical to the source and so all these "waist is too slim" flags are kind of silly. Maybe if someone had objected to it being almost a trace of the original but that ain't what happened.

Since you are wondering that's pretty much how it goes for me with most of those uploads. Even without mentioning the vast amount of artwork that gets flagged despite being perfectly in line with a certain artist's/source style, I personally loathe anyone that tries to apply the whole anatomy thing to what's probably the most stylized medium in the planet. Same with people that flag things using comments like "Trash" or "Bad", which made me approve post #2784615 - Whenever I'm lukewarm on an image like that with some favorites behind it, I approve it with the reasoning that if it really is bad enough for the general public then it's going to get flagged again. If my stint as a janitor has shown me anything is that people looooveee reflagging stuff!

That's pretty much it, plus basically fighting a whole lot of "I personally don't like it" or even worse "I haven't seen it before so it doesn't exist" neither of which are relevant to the site's rules. Matter of fact I'm pretty sure I ended up as a janitor because I once mentioned that the site has barely any oppai loli and more varied art would have been nice. Sure, some users don't like it but I don't really care and shoot down flagging attempts like in the case of post #2852747 That image got approved and then flagged and then reapproved and here we are again saying it ain't humanly possible but I can show you this and point out that they look even thicker because Peach is fully sitting on them; It devolves into a painfully pointless discussion of my limited personal experience vs your limited personal experience because people insist on applying generic anatomy rules to characters with eyes the size of my fist.

It's fine not to like things but I think it's about time for the general userbase to accept that maybe "Not my fetish" is not really a flag reason no matter how much you might alter the wording. That maybe we don't really know how much a 150 pound, 6 foot tall women with K cup breasts could bend back because we haven't seen one. I mean what do we even do with Raita's girls for example, an obvious inspiration for post #2972415 and its twin given that leslyzerosix has modeled them extensively before, when they are supposed to look stunningly anime even within their own universe? Do we go "AAAAAAAAAAARGGGH ANATOMY" despite them looking exactly as they should be as envisioned by the artist? What about what must be dozens if not hundreds of images that have been flagged because of "an inhuman pose" like this?

I think it's simply untenable to keep going like that. In the end danbooru's additions depend entirely on user and staff taste though so you are free to add what you like and I'm just gonna keep curating things I like.

Can't we just agree on that approvals and flags are more or less a remark on personal taste. I have the feeling that it develped into a direction that the flagger has always to be right with the flag otherwise you'll get a shitstorm from at least one user and sometimes also moderators.
Yes, there are users that accumulate more flags than others, but it is already pretty low and what I observe mostly one artist (robutts) where I also engage in flagging. But it souldn't be that you have to be always "right" with smething and I think one has grown way too strict with their own flags (hence this topic) and how to reply to flags (therefore the "there are already bad_* tags" argument).

Of course there are still questionable approvals and also bad uploads that completely break the rules. Regarding robutts, I think it is more that this artist's stuff is very close at challenging the "Grotesque" clause in the ToS which reads something like "far outside the realm of human proportions". If that fits: Maybe, but one shouldn't be all to upset of a flag since they also draw in a rather western style.

Anyway, the point is that even if you approve this or upload this or flag this then this isn't really questionable uploading/approving/flagging behavior.
But you get into questionable approval behavior if you are constantly and knowingly approving the worst kind of third-party edits, screencaps or constantly approving images that gets instantly reflagged again but that also had a lot of "poor quality" marks on them. Sure, poor quality marks aren't a call for "don't approve that" but they are giving you a warning that this post in particular has a fatal flaw. If such stuff gets re-flagged then the Approver might be at fault and not the initial flagger (and there currently is one Approver that acts like this).

What I want to remark as questionable isn't really something that has to do with flagging/approving/uploading but with arguing. What actually is the point that one should use the bad_* tags? What is the intention behind this?
I see it as a try to play down on the flag and not wanting to face why the post was exactly flagged and it seems like a try to say that these posts are immune to flags.
But why exactly should the posts under bad anatomy not be flagged?
Because this tag exist. If that's the case then all bad anatomy posts should be undeleted because you have this tag.
No, the point of the bad anatomy tag is to say that the post has bad anatomy but is weighed against the other merits. That doesn't mean it's immune to flags. I mean, to write this in appeals is cool and stuff like that but it doesn't change the fact that Approvers are already weighing the pros and cons for or against a post.
To write such an appeal is uneccessarily throwing oil into the fire, actually. And that's for us Approvers pretty irrelevant fbecause of afortmentioned reasons.

DetBarkhorn said:

I see a few of mine there and in fact approved post #2923767 before. Funnily enough, someone else asked about it too so I pointed out that it looks identical to the source and so all these "waist is too slim" flags are kind of silly. Maybe if someone had objected to it being almost a trace of the original but that ain't what happened.

Since you are wondering that's pretty much how it goes for me with most of those uploads. Even without mentioning the vast amount of artwork that gets flagged despite being perfectly in line with a certain artist's/source style, I personally loathe anyone that tries to apply the whole anatomy thing to what's probably the most stylized medium in the planet. Same with people that flag things using comments like "Trash" or "Bad", which made me approve post #2784615 - Whenever I'm lukewarm on an image like that with some favorites behind it, I approve it with the reasoning that if it really is bad enough for the general public then it's going to get flagged again. If my stint as a janitor has shown me anything is that people looooveee reflagging stuff!

That's pretty much it, plus basically fighting a whole lot of "I personally don't like it" or even worse "I haven't seen it before so it doesn't exist" neither of which are relevant to the site's rules. Matter of fact I'm pretty sure I ended up as a janitor because I once mentioned that the site has barely any oppai loli and more varied art would have been nice. Sure, some users don't like it but I don't really care and shoot down flagging attempts like in the case of post #2852747 That image got approved and then flagged and then reapproved and here we are again saying it ain't humanly possible but I can show you this and point out that they look even thicker because Peach is fully sitting on them; It devolves into a painfully pointless discussion of my limited personal experience vs your limited personal experience because people insist on applying generic anatomy rules to characters with eyes the size of my fist.

It's fine not to like things but I think it's about time for the general userbase to accept that maybe "Not my fetish" is not really a flag reason no matter how much you might alter the wording. That maybe we don't really know how much a 150 pound, 6 foot tall women with K cup breasts could bend back because we haven't seen one. I mean what do we even do with Raita's girls for example, an obvious inspiration for post #2972415 and its twin given that leslyzerosix has modeled them extensively before, when they are supposed to look stunningly anime even within their own universe? Do we go "AAAAAAAAAAARGGGH ANATOMY" despite them looking exactly as they should be as envisioned by the artist? What about what must be dozens if not hundreds of images that have been flagged because of "an inhuman pose" like this?

I think it's simply untenable to keep going like that. In the end danbooru's additions depend entirely on user and staff taste though so you are free to add what you like and I'm just gonna keep curating things I like.

Despite only writing five paragraphs, you've managed to be wrong about many things that you've written.

DetBarkhorn said:

I see a few of mine there and in fact approved post #2923767 before. Funnily enough, someone else asked about it too so I pointed out that it looks identical to the source and so all these "waist is too slim" flags are kind of silly. Maybe if someone had objected to it being almost a trace of the original but that ain't what happened.

First of all, the source material being bad doesn't justify the fan art being bad.

DetBarkhorn said:

Since you are wondering that's pretty much how it goes for me with most of those uploads. Even without mentioning the vast amount of artwork that gets flagged despite being perfectly in line with a certain artist's/source style, I personally loathe anyone that tries to apply the whole anatomy thing to what's probably the most stylized medium in the planet. Same with people that flag things using comments like "Trash" or "Bad", which made me approve post #2784615 - Whenever I'm lukewarm on an image like that with some favorites behind it, I approve it with the reasoning that if it really is bad enough for the general public then it's going to get flagged again. If my stint as a janitor has shown me anything is that people looooveee reflagging stuff!

Just because the result lines up with the intention, that doesn't mean that it's a good piece of art. If I set out to draw an objectively well drawn artwork with objectively bad anatomy depicting a woman with grotesquely large breasts twisting her body in impossible ways, does that mean it's good if I accomplish just that? No. Bad stylization does not justify a bad drawing. Also, if you read howto:flag, it's clearly written that a person can only flag a post once, so individuals are not reflagging posts on their own. Also, if you look at fav counts for deleted posts that could be considered pornographic, you'll see that the number of favorites that a post has is more of an indication of the female sex appeal of the image than the actual quality of the image. Case in point: post #2782795

DetBarkhorn said:

That's pretty much it, plus basically fighting a whole lot of "I personally don't like it" or even worse "I haven't seen it before so it doesn't exist" neither of which are relevant to the site's rules. Matter of fact I'm pretty sure I ended up as a janitor because I once mentioned that the site has barely any oppai loli and more varied art would have been nice. Sure, some users don't like it but I don't really care and shoot down flagging attempts like in the case of post #2852747 That image got approved and then flagged and then reapproved and here we are again saying it ain't humanly possible but I can show you this and point out that they look even thicker because Peach is fully sitting on them; It devolves into a painfully pointless discussion of my limited personal experience vs your limited personal experience because people insist on applying generic anatomy rules to characters with eyes the size of my fist.

I honestly have no clue what you're on about in this paragraph, as 99% of the danbooru populace that actually matters doesn't leave flag reasons like "I personally don't like it" or "I haven't seen it before so it doesn't exist". In addition, your idea of why you were made an approver is completely incorrect. There was no merit to the selection. You simply won the approver lottery. Also, the thighs in the picture you linked hold no resemblance to the grotesque thighs in post #2852747.

DetBarkhorn said:

It's fine not to like things but I think it's about time for the general userbase to accept that maybe "Not my fetish" is not really a flag reason no matter how much you might alter the wording. That maybe we don't really know how much a 150 pound, 6 foot tall women with K cup breasts could bend back because we haven't seen one. I mean what do we even do with Raita's girls for example, an obvious inspiration for post #2972415 and its twin given that leslyzerosix has modeled them extensively before, when they are supposed to look stunningly anime even within their own universe? Do we go "AAAAAAAAAAARGGGH ANATOMY" despite them looking exactly as they should be as envisioned by the artist? What about what must be dozens if not hundreds of images that have been flagged because of "an inhuman pose" like this?

Again, the people on danbooru that matter don't leave flags like "Not my fetish", unless your fetish is low quality anime art. I already responded to everything else you wrote in this paragraph earlier, so I'll leave you to matching my sentences to yours.

DetBarkhorn said:

I think it's simply untenable to keep going like that. In the end danbooru's additions depend entirely on user and staff taste though so you are free to add what you like and I'm just gonna keep curating things I like.

I think what you really mean here is "I don't really care about anatomy or art quality as long as the image has sex appeal in my eyes", because that's what I see in most of your approvals. This also makes you seem very apathetic about holding posts to any sort of standard of quality, which is not a good work ethic for an approver.

To be honest, I think that all lottery approvers except for Flandre5carlet, PhoenixG, CaptainLoony, and Fujishiro should be demoted as soon as possible. They are the only lottery approvers with 1000+ consistently good approvals, but that's a topic for another day.

I save pictures from flags (when I happen across them) when I don't agree with the flags. If the flagger can find some error in the same picture that I agree, then I'll let it get deleted. I personally don't like pictures being deleted with the wrong reason. I also let pictures with actual anatomy errors get deleted as well (left foot on right leg etc.) as they are glaring. Anything else though I give slack because to be honest they are just anime characters. Can you really say what pose they can or cannot do? They could be as flexible as a jellyfish and are able to do all sorts of crazy poses. I'm pretty sure 90% of anime characters are anatomically incorrect whether structure or pose. I also give slack to artist style too as I'm not there to judge art direction. I reapproved post #2923767 because it's similar to the source material and is not bad to my standards. These are just some of how I approve, though it probably doesn't matter that much since I'm not that active in approving. What I do want to know is: why so hard on anatomy? The pictures are definitely not as horrendous as this and like I said, 90% of the pictures here have anatomy errors somewhere.