Photoshops are generally discouraged already, but there's no written rule against them. Can we please make an official policy about this and either make it part of the Terms of Service or howto:upload?
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing most photoshops go, but I expect that some people will disagree. So for the sake of argument, I'll try to break things down into categories to see what we can agree on.
Nude filters. Already banned, but I'll mention it anyway for completeness.
Image macros and motivators. These are already effectively banned, but it's not actually mentioned in the rules anywhere.
Wallpaper edits (e.g. post #603009). These are usually terrible at worst, and unnecessary at best.
Significant alterations to the content of an image, including:
Fixing perceived flaws (e.g. post #477980). I know that some people will argue in favor of these, but I don't think it's a good idea to encourage people to upload 'improved' versions whenever they see something they personally dislike about a picture.
Adding / removing a fetish. This usually involves turning a futanari picture into non-futa or vice versa. Sometimes it's crap like making a character pregnant, adding diapers, etc. These things are retarded and if there's one thing we ban I hope it's this.
Colored images. I don't really see the need for these if we have the original.
Decensored images. I'm not a fan of these, but I know a lot of people are. I don't especially mind if it's just removing a mosaic or censor bar, assuming it's well done (which it often isn't). I draw the line at removing convenient censorship (e.g. post #526829, post #583813). That's effectively the same thing as a nude filter.
Detexted images. I guess it's okay if it's just done as part of cleaning up a scan and nothing else is altered. I'd still rather have the original though.
I don't expect everyone to agree with all of this. I just hope we can agree on turning some of the unwritten rules we already have into actual rules, or at least guidelines in howto:upload.
I don't have much to add to your thoroughness, but I agree in the sense that if our function on Danbooru is collecting, organizing, and admiring anime artwork and fanart, that it doesn't make sense to allow people to resubmit them after messing with them. It would be somewhat similar to letting patrons at somebody's art show take down the pieces, add or change whatever they felt like, then putting them back. I'd be for a ban on images altered by somebody other than the original artist.
Well, Danbooru is supposedly for original art from what I understand. I'd be cool with getting rid of everything but the colored images since I enjoy those over the monochrome ones.
Although I do not think nuking entire tags is a great idea in general, I strongly support evazion's idea. Can we also take a look at ban/delete
cap Screencaps are often low quality or irrelevant to the site. duplicate (although some say they are necessary, unsure about this) Joke .gifs waha gif poorly_drawn Is kind of the opposite of what the site is about.
I stand by that the origin of the image shouldn't matter, it's visual quality that matters and being picky on the origin and whether it is original or not is being overly excessive to extreme levels. There are enough images where if someone hadn't tagged it photoshop, you'd have no clue it was photoshopped, so I think a clear cut ban is flat out stupid.
Specific categories I'm in opposition to clear cut bans on are nude filters, character changes (don't lump that with head swaps, as one can do a character change without a head swap), outfit changing, and colored.
There are plenty of images that'd fall under the category of colored that shouldn't be banned. There are plenty of images we've gotten off pixiv where the original artist only provides a line art template leaving it up to other artists to color in the image. There are also plenty of images of where the original line art is from a page of manga, and the person uses that as the base to do a really good job of coloring in the character, not simply just overlaying colors on the original lines but redoing the hair, eyes, shading, etc.
As for outfit changing, there are those that as I said before you couldn't tell if it was really photoshopped except by someone putting the photoshop tag on the image. The first example you provide for the category doesn't even have anything visually wrong with it. If you're banning it because it's a photoshop, then you're not judging it based on visual quality, but on origin. Origin is fairly insignificant, because there are plenty of images here where the origin of the image is unknown, if this photoshop appeared without the original to compare to, there would be no questions on keeping it or not, and the photoshop tag would likely not even be on the image. In the end you're weeding out images that don't need to be weeded out.
Anyways I don't really have any defense on character changing, but if it's visually fine I don't see what's the point of banning them. There are images that have characters from one series parodying a scene from another series, even going so far as to depict them in an art style and appearance that makes them look like characters from the series they're parodying. Someone editing a scene to make characters that can be similar to become other characters from another series isn't much of a different step, the only difference comes down to origin in the end, which as I've said shouldn't be a criteria in determining whether an image is good or not.
No. Nude filters are dumb, adding/removing fetishes is dumb. Decensored usually looks terrible. Other than those, everything you mentioned I find either too broad or just outright not something I want banned.
Granola: duplicate is kind of a meaningless tag at the moment, in that it's used as a signal to janitors/mods rather than as an actual content tag. So banning it doesn't make sense. I disagree with banning either poorly drawn or cap.
Log said: I am entirely against deleting large portions of the site or making content bans based on generalized statements.
@evazion: I'm on the fence about colorations, as sometimes they're high enough on my personal quality scale that I can't dispute their right to be on Danbooru. Detexting is fine with me, as long as the original artist did it.
Also, your point about "improved" pictures would probably have a stronger leg to stand on if the example you used wasn't such a huge improvement that it deserves to stay regardless. (Seriously, the original artist should be taking notes.)
I agree with everything else on your list, though, with the caveat that things along those lines tend to die in the mod queue anyway.
And, as a rider to all this, I propose something related: that no users of any level below albert's should be able to reapprove their own posts. Otherwise, it thoroughly defeats the purpose of the unapproval system. Contributors and above bypass the mod queue, okay, I understand that. But the unapproval system was created with the intent of helping police the bad quality posts slipping through the cracks. Janitor+ users having the ability to guarantee their own posts a spot regardless of reasonable objections reeks of power abuse.
Look, I'm not asking that we nuke a bunch of posts. I'm asking that we at least agree on what is generally allowable and what isn't. The majority of newly uploaded photoshops are not even approved, so it's not like this is anything new. Frankly it's ridiculous that we have so many unwritten guidelines that aren't mentioned in the rules anywhere. We really need to get on the same page about some of these things, especially now that there are so many new people with approval powers.
0xCCBA696 said: No. Nude filters are dumb, adding/removing fetishes is dumb. Decensored usually looks terrible. Other than those, everything you mentioned I find either too broad or just outright not something I want banned.
Come on. Even wallpaper edits? I'll compromise on some things, but I really hope we don't allow that bullshit.
Regarding character changes, outfit changes, head swaps, etc: these are all mostly unnecessary variations on an image. They're often altered just because some guy on the internet likes a certain character, or has a fetish for pantyshots or something so they photoshop it in. It's dumb for the same reason that adding / removing fetishes from a picture is dumb.
Plus, there's already precedent about not approving minor variations on individual game CGs. The same reasoning should apply to photoshops. We don't need slight variations on a picture if we have the original.
Someone editing a scene to make characters that can be similar to become other characters from another series isn't much of a different step, the only difference comes down to origin in the end, which as I've said shouldn't be a criteria in determining whether an image is good or not.
In many cases someone literally just recolors the hair and calls it a different character. It's stupid and unnecessary when some guy just colors a character's hair blue and calls it zomg Rei or Cirno or whatever (e.g. post #443981, post #260806).
evazion said: I'm asking that we at least agree on what is generally allowable and what isn't.
The litmus test by which we should judge a photoshop seems pretty obvious to me: look at the image and ask "If I hadn't seen the original, would I still know this was a photoshop?" Strictly speaking, that should be all that's required, but that leaves the door open for a flood of well-done but trivial edits like hair color changes, so let's add one more question: "Would this take more than five minutes to do in Photoshop?"
With these questions in mind, let's consider the types of edits under discussion:
Nude filters.
Decensored images.
Image macros and motivators.
Wallpaper edits
Static images made into animations
These are almost always either trivial edits, poor-quality edits, or both. I wouldn't be particularly upset if they were banned.
Colored images.
These are not particularly trivial edits, and the ones uploaded to Danbooru are usually quite good. Under no circumstances would I ban these.
Detexted images.
Significant alterations to the content of an image, including:
o Fixing perceived flaws. o Adding / removing a fetish. o Head swaps / character changes. o Changing outfits. o Other random edits.
Aiya. I don't particularly like any of these things, but while they're often poorly done, trivial, and silly, there are some good ones, post #603009 being a decent example. Encouraging users to upload them is certainly a bad idea, and they should be judged with a keen eye towards triviality, but I don't see the sense in banning them.
sgcdonmai said: I'm on the fence about colorations, as sometimes they're high enough on my personal quality scale that I can't dispute their right to be on Danbooru.
I'm not fond of them because I don't think that being in monochrome is a flaw that needs to be fixed. That said, I'm not especially against them either.
Also, your point about "improved" pictures would probably have a stronger leg to stand on if the example you used wasn't such a huge improvement that it deserves to stay regardless. (Seriously, the original artist should be taking notes.)
Well, it was the most recently uploaded one I could find. See post #126575 if you want an example of a bad one.
I'm not keen on allowing these because I'm sure some people will argue that doing things like 'shopping the dicks out of a futa picture is an improvement. I don't mind making an exception for the few good ones we already have as long as there's a guideline telling people in general not to upload their stupid dubious 'improvements'.
Janitor+ users having the ability to guarantee their own posts a spot regardless of reasonable objections reeks of power abuse.
I agree. I've seen pictures that have been unapproved then self-reapproved despite blatantly violating the ToS. It annoys the hell out of me.
I'd say put a note about how photoshops and other modified images are taboo and subject to a higher than normal quality control in howto:upload (perhaps also mention that most die in the queue), but not to outright ban them. As has been proven, there are indeed some of these types that are quite good and really deserve to be here.
Nude Filters, Macros, Motivators, fetish addition/removal should all be banned outright, and essentially are at this point, so we should just stick them in the rules to make them officially official.
Most of the rest should not be banned outright, but understood that if they are not very high quality they can and will be deleted outright. Basically, if you can tell its been photoshopped, without looking at the original, it should not be on the site.
Sorry for not reading quite everything by everybody. Just two notes:
1. Caps are occasionally very helpful at explaining the origins of memes (cf. gununu), pastiches, and the like. If some people want to nuke caps, I would ask them to be very careful.
2. Evazion barely mentioned cleaning up scans. Now if you tell an unexperienced person like me that "Photoshops are banned", that person might very well think that cleaning up is prohibited. Technically, a raw scan is closer to the original print than a cleaned-up version is, even if the case seems to be vice versa.
What about lower res duplicate images? They are generally deleted straight away, but I can't really find any clearly written rule that it should be deleted.
Some lower res dupes get deleted even while it has better quality than the higher res original, which can be a poor scan/jpeg artifact etcetera.
I'm not really against most of this, though I'd say it is probably too heavy handed. I mean as it is, any obvious bad photoshops usually get screened out by the mod queue, and those that slip through can usually stand on their own.
Also I don't quite see how colorizations are a bad thing, especially when they are often posted by their own artists after having posted the uncolored version. So long as the monochrome version is there, it's not really taking anything away by having a colored version as well.
evazion said: Frankly it's ridiculous that we have so many unwritten guidelines that aren't mentioned in the rules anywhere. We really need to get on the same page about some of these things, especially now that there are so many new people with approval powers.
Part of the purpose of the review system, though, is to avoid the need for broad bans like these.
Quality control is already handled by the mod queue; broad bans ought to be reserved for stuff that is absolutely always low-quality, or stuff that is clearly unsuitable for Danbooru regardless of its quality. Some of the ones you mentioned might fit, but I'm not convinced edited images in general fit into one of those two categories; even if most are bad, some are still worth keeping. I'm not seeing the argument for why we can't just let the crap ones get rejected and accept the few good ones, the way it's supposed to work now.
Do you feel that low-quality edits are slipping through moderation too often? Or that they're coming in such large numbers that it's a burden on the mod queue?
Maybe there could be a list of guidelines somewhere for stuff that many people frown on or which is likely to attract a lot more scrutiny, but I'd be against banning edits of images completely.
(Also, while you probably assumed this, even any guideline like that ought to make an exemption for edits or variants made by the original artist. If the artist themselves makes three versions of an image, all good-quality, why should we accept one over the others?)
I am, of course, in favor of banning every single thing mentioned in the top post except detexted magazine scans (which you made a tentative exception for anyway). They should have the original as parent however. But 99% of the time they're just reposts from moe.imouto so it's not like banning them here makes them inaccessible. Still not in favor of deleting them though.
Many of the items listed warrant deletion when seen, some are already banned, and almost all of them have a tendency to die a lot in the mod queue.
My most hated ones are nude filters (already banned), decensored images, and fixing perceived flaws.
I don't actually expect anything will come of this thread, though. Too easy to just talk in circles on this. I have no doubt that the photoshop tag is pretty much the worst repository of shit on this site right now, but between the "but I like it" and the "never delete!" factions, we won't get anywhere.
Granola said: Can we also take a look at ban/delete...
Let's keep this specific to the OP's concerns - it'll be a long and complicated thread as is.
sgcdonmai said: Also, your point about "improved" pictures would probably have a stronger leg to stand on if the example you used wasn't such a huge improvement that it deserves to stay regardless.
You're viewing this the wrong way - if the original image is fucked up, it shouldn't be uploaded. If it "needs" extensive fixing, it's not danbooru quality.
Even if someone makes a "better" image, that's not really relevant - danbooru is not for such things. There are many photoshop imageboards and other places with no quality controls in place where such work can be shared. You can even link it in the comments. Just don't post it.
