Can we please ban photoshops?

While I completely agree with Soljashy's above comment, I would like to point out that Glasnost formulated the clearest theoretical basis for action that has been brought up in this discussion so far:

glasnost said:

[T]he two factors that should go into determining whether a photoshop belongs on Danbooru are quality and triviality.

...This one being probably number two:

Bapabooiee said:

[A major concern:] the original artist's name is still used in the tags, causing content on the site to become "muddled-up" between original work, and third-party edits (...).

True. An (exceptionally good) edited work is actually a derivative work, similar to a heavily altered remix in the field of music. Credits go to both the original artist and the 'shopper, else is wrong.

EDIT:

The more I think about this, the more Jxh2154 makes sense -- and, on the other hand, the more complicated it gets. Sorry if I sound pseudo-academic...

Much of the problem is made up by a fundamental difference between western and Japanese author's rights cultures. The Japanese seem to especially respect the integrity of individual works of art. That has more to do with moral principles than with making money. In the west, over the decades, franchisable things, such as "logos, characters, names, and distinctive likenesses thereof", have become the crucial point of copyright.

The existence of Danbooru is largely based on the idea that the credits information of (certain types of) Japanese works wildly shared on the Internet should be easily available to everybody. This is a reaction against 4chan-type imageboard culture. What is that culture, then? It is a kind of postmodern folklore, enabled by the Internet and various data processing technologies -- such as "photoshopping".

Folklore was there millennia before copyright. In folklore, knowledge of the author is the exception rather than the rule. Instead, works appealing to different audiences cherish, spread, and keep being modified.

Basically, we are discussing what to collect, organize and share: works that can be unambiguously copyrighted to one or more authors, or high quality products of a new wave of folklore still poorly understood.

If we want exact author and source information, the latter task is vastly more complicated than the former.

So, will anything happen as a result of this discussion? Has anyone reached a decision on whether to disallow the things stated in the original post?

I doubt anything dramatic will happen, but at minimum going with what fencedude said we could probably go ahead and list Macros and Motivators as banned since they already are, it's just that it's unsaid.

We could probably also list that fetish addition edits are also banned as well, though I'm not sure about the reversal, since I think we tend to be much more lenient on edits that remove them from what I've seen.

Motivators had a formal ban I'm not sure how it managed to never be documented, forum #3390.

sgcdonmai said:
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.

I don't see how this is at all related to the topic at hand, but: no, absolutely no. People are chosen for the positions of power because they are trusted in one way or another to be able to use that power responsibly. If wrong people are chosen, the problem is in the selection process, not in the idea of having people appointed to posts where they can do more. There are already so many ways for us to fuck up the site completely it's not even funny. We're not Australia, please don't insult us with such childish and utterly pointless restrictions.

I do not see that proposal as "utterly pointless" at all, else I would not have made it.

Contributors' power to bypass the moderation queue is seen as an acknowledgement of the trust placed in their judgement of what is and is not Danbooru quality. Despite this, we still have the unapproval system. That tells me that the administration of the site acknowledges the fallibility of even trusted users.

To put a finer point on it, such an abuse has happened in the past. I won't drop any details, but there was such an issue. Other users have also noted similar occurrences. It is not without precedent; again, were it not so, I would not have even made the suggestion.

To this point, I don't think anyone should be able to reapprove an unapproved post if they have uploaded it.

I don't really know about this but if we cannot implement the above idea, then maybe the reapprover's name should be shown. We already see who approves posts now.

The reapprover's name replaces the original approver's name already.

Log said: Motivators had a formal ban I'm not sure how it managed to never be documented, forum #3390.

Added it to howto:upload.

If this belongs here..

post #241116 is claimed to be a photoshop by the first poster.

Sorry to bump this now, but I figured pool:1391 photoshop in itself is a good argument to banning certain photoshops.

I think you're clutching at straws to be honest. Most of those images in that pool seem to easily fall into the group where were it not for being labelled a photoshop, they would not be recognizable as a photoshop without the original around. If the original image isn't around, you would have no grounds to call it a photoshop. In the end banning them would be nothing more than a witch hunt relying on random people claiming such and such an image is a photoshop.