Policy on Doujinshi

So I've been wondering about this for a while. What exactly is this site's stance on uploading doujinshi? I've received multiple conflicting accounts, so I think it would be a good idea to clear this up.

I've heard from some users that it's okay. From others I've heard it's not (more specifically that this isn't a manga archive or something along those lines).

Even among the site's rules, there's a contradiction.

In the terms of service, it says:

Uploading entire manga or doujinshi chapters is discouraged. Individual pages can be uploaded if they meet the quality criterion.

But on the howto:upload page, it says that doujinshi (especially long ones) are conditionally accepted.

Some clarification would be appreciated.

There is a flag reason that filters out posts that are randomly posted from a doujin without context.
Such a flag reason came through yesterday, since I can't find this post anymore, although the flag also mentioned tht it is poor quality.
But regarding Doujinshi uploads: I guess we have so many uploads and images that it doesn't really matters if there is one doujin post more or less.
Anyway, if it isn't done by a larger scale, I don't see a problem for now.

At this point I think that part of the ToS applies more to commerical manga, like one piece or naruto, than anything else. Entire doujin have been uploaded on the site for years with no problem.

I think it might be trying to say that uploading doujinshi should be done in moderation, much how western style art and self artwork are handled. It's not strictly banned, but it's probably to prevent the site from getting bogged down from someone dumping the entire contents of doujin repositories.

It does kinda make sense. If there's already another easily accessible site with a bunch of well tagged full doujins posted on it, why would they need to be reposted here, too? The only reasons I've seen people talk about are either getting easy contributor status or free translations, both are something I've seen mods shake a finger at.

Hoobajoob said:

The only reasons I've seen people talk about are either getting easy contributor status or free translations, both are something I've seen mods shake a finger at.

And there are barely any translators here willing to do an entire doujin, much less the really dirty ones with insipid dialogue. Scanned doujins aren't as commonly uploaded as they used to be.

I think the mods do a good job examining uploaders' habits... uploading a lot of doujinshi is a blatantly obvious and cheap tactic to contributor status, especially if not every page has that much merit to them. I suspect the only exception to this is if they're really good doujinshi, but even then.

And yeah. There was another higher up user I believe that said that danbooru isn't primarily a site for reading manga -- there are much better sites for that.

On that note, I'd like to ask a quick question -- is it okay to upload full-color digital one-shots from H magazines? I've been considering it, since there's a few one shots I'd like to translate but I don't wanna go through the effort of typesetting and all that then upload them to sadpanda. I could just ask a friend, but it's really not my thing. I suspect there might be some already uploaded though if I search for them, so that might already answer my question.

As far as I know, if one user is only or mostly uploading comics/doujinshi/manga then they probably will be promoted to Builder But they won't get the Contributor status or it is very hard at least.

Mikaeri said:

On that note, I'd like to ask a quick question -- is it okay to upload full-color digital one-shots from H magazines? I've been considering it, since there's a few one shots I'd like to translate but I don't wanna go through the effort of typesetting and all that then upload them to sadpanda. I could just ask a friend, but it's really not my thing. I suspect there might be some already uploaded though if I search for them, so that might already answer my question.

As long as it looks good by the standards of this website, then it should be okay. Sadpanda's a bitch anyway.

Hmm... Do you think it might be necessary to elaborate on the wiki about this stuff? To prevent people from wasting their time if they're trying to achieve Contributor status, I mean.

...I'll admit I'm guilty of doing this (though I was also genuinely interested in the doujins I was uploading), but I quickly stopped when I thought I was breaking the rules.

In any case, elaboration might be a good idea, for the sake of people who might want to upload doujins in the future. Discourage them from trying to get free translations or Contributor status, and focus on uploading quality.

But that's just my opinion.

tapnek said:

As long as it looks good by the standards of this website, then it should be okay. Sadpanda's a bitch anyway.

Heh, you are definitely not alone in thinking that. It's great for some things, but it has its' flaws.

I'll consider doing some later if I have time. I'm preparing a script beforehand so I can get to quickly adding notes right after I upload them.

MB295 said:

Hmm... Do you think it might be necessary to elaborate on the wiki about this stuff? To prevent people from wasting their time if they're trying to achieve Contributor status, I mean.

...I'll admit I'm guilty of doing this (though I was also genuinely interested in the doujins I was uploading), but I quickly stopped when I thought I was breaking the rules.

In any case, elaboration might be a good idea, for the sake of people who might want to upload doujins in the future. Discourage them from trying to get free translations or Contributor status, and focus on uploading quality.

But that's just my opinion.

Perhaps we could elaborate on that in help:users but getting contributor seems to largely be on a case-by-case basis. A high variety of high quality and popular uploads by lesser known artists helps a lot towards that goal. Or 'updating' the art of less popular artists for completion (which I do sometimes).

I suppose you can just observe how some users got contributor status: Elektronik is a good example. You can also cite me since I'm a recent addition to the contributor team. Otherwise, we could have a help:tips to unrestricted uploads status or something like that, which might outline some of the ways you can help out the site with uploads and retain a high approval rate. There are users that have been around the site for a while and constantly upload, but they haven't been promoted to contributor status… assumably because the quality of their uploads isn't completely trustworthy given the borderline quality uploads. I won't name them, but you can probably find out who they are.

Mikaeri said:

Heh, you are definitely not alone in thinking that. It's great for some things, but it has its' flaws.

I'll consider doing some later if I have time. I'm preparing a script beforehand so I can get to quickly adding notes right after I upload them.

Perhaps we could elaborate on that in help:users but getting contributor seems to largely be on a case-by-case basis. A high variety of high quality and popular uploads by lesser known artists helps a lot towards that goal. Or 'updating' the art of less popular artists for completion (which I do sometimes).

I suppose you can just observe how some users got contributor status: Elektronik is a good example. You can also cite me since I'm a recent addition to the contributor team. Otherwise, we could have a help:tips to unrestricted uploads status or something like that, which might outline some of the ways you can help out the site with uploads and retain a high approval rate. There are users that have been around the site for a while and constantly upload, but they haven't been promoted to contributor status… assumably because the quality of their uploads isn't completely trustworthy given the borderline quality uploads. I won't name them, but you can probably find out who they are.

It is better to keep that open for Contributions to this site, so that no misunderstandings will happen and let work users (Builders) together with the moderation team.
As you can see by this years's promotion activity, I think this is more than ok and on that section, we dont need a seperate guideline. We have howto:contribute, howto:tag, howto:rate, help:dtext (for Translations maybe important) and some other howtos.

Provence said:

Nah, not a good idea. An absolutely bad idea to make something like that. That will only cause a commotion, because users are thinking that they are fulfilling this role quite well, but in the eyes of the moderators, they don't.
It is better to keep that open for Contributions to this site, so that no misunderstandings will happen and let work users (Builders) together with the moderation team.
As you can see by this years's promotion activity, I think this is more than ok and on that section, we dont need a seperate guideline. We have howto:contribute, howto:tag, howto:rate, howto:dtext (for Translations maybe important) and some other howtos.

Eh, yeah, I agree with you there. Contributor status is something you're going to have to show your worth for patiently -- no point being blatantly obvious about your intents. I forget that howto:contribute exists sometimes, although that page largely helps out for members that are potentially looking for builder status. Some of the same tips apply to potentially getting contrib though. I aggressively groomed the hell out of my own uploads and contributed to as many of the places I could, so I'm definitely more of an outlier (as in, don't look at me for an example to get contributor unless you're crazy like me).

I'm still grateful to Wypatroszony for my early promotion and I'm definitely not thinking of squandering it anytime soon. I worked my butt off pushing my quota to the absolute limit every day!! Even during finals week! Aargh!!

We've discussed this before, a few years ago: topic #9402, and topic #10710 (towards the end).

I still think the best way to handle this is Doujinbooru, but that's probably not gonna happen.

Ok, I did a bit more reading and thinking about this matter.
MB295 linked an interesting passage here in the "TOS"http://danbooru.donmai.us/static/terms_of_service:

Prohibited and Restricted Content

You may not upload any of the following:
Manga: Uploading entire manga or doujinshi chapters is discouraged. Individual pages can be uploaded if they meet the quality criterion.

First I read simply over it and didn't bother, but we have here a hard ban and that passage is in the rules, i.e. the page we always have to follow, no matter what our wiki pages are saying.
So this is an administrative matter and should be taken care of by the Moderators and Admins.
The goal is simply to clear if the passage in the TOS should be changed or not (i.e. it remains a hard ban).

Since there are some doujinshis fully uploaded, I guess there is something to talk about. Like two kure_masahiro doujins and also some from the artist cozyquilt.
And there, two mods should share their opinion regarding this, because they've (re)-uploaded an Doujin:
@dean_exia and @EB .

Off course also the Admins @albert @NWF_Renim @Type-kun @Hillside_Moose .

Sounds incredibly strict, like a legacy policy... I really think it should be changed, otherwise we'd have so many good uploaders, including MB295 themselves, in the red.

This is at least the tenth thread we've had about this over the past 10 years. We didn't resolve it the last 10 times and we won't this time either. Quoting myself from topic #10710 (which Fred1515 already linked):

evazion said:

That's the problem. This topic has been discussed repeatedly and at great length since the early days and still nothing has been officially decided. Just look at all these ancient threads:

• topic #9402
• topic #6193
• topic #5744
• topic #5465
• topic #3215
• topic #2590
• topic #1539
• topic #111

Now we're rehashing this topic yet again and the same thing is going to happen that always happens: we're going to talk about it, the thread will die with nothing decided, then random contributors and janitors are going to keep operating by their own personal rules.

As a result we've reached the point where people think that not only is any random doujin allowable, but that hard translations and even Chinese->Japanese->English thirdhand translations are okay. This is madness.

No one is willing to commit to any definitive statement, so we continue with the status quo that doujinshi are "discouraged". Which is to say, contributors keep uploading them and approvers keep approving them, so it's not discouraged at all.

Ugh, talk about the eons of history.

Might as well just take matters into their own hands now, and just change the TOS to reflect the status quo. Well, more specifically, to make it more clear.

How does this sound?

Manga: Uploading entire manga or doujinshi chapters is discouraged, unless every page has valuable artistic merit that meets the quality criteria. Individual pages can also be uploaded that meet the quality criteria.

My opinion is not really any different now from what I stated in topic #9402. The uploads from Kure Masahiro and Yuran I assume you are referencing are perfectly fine since it's high quality artwork of standalone value on every page. The ToS restriction is meant to prohibit mass uploads of long-running manga series where regardless of the quality of the artist we would have hundreds of pages that aren't approval-worthy.

To say that we have no chance in actaully resolving anything this time around, won't really help.
I see we are not a Doijin board, so we shouldn't upload every Doujin we come across on Exhentai or comparable sites. The tagging is also exhausting, but that is something different.
I guess the problem is where we should draw the line between that amount of Doujin is ok and which is not. See, the problem is not the quality of Doujins, this should be treated like any other uploads. It is how much doujins would actually water down the "normal" images which are not comics.

Then there are also doujins that aren't really comics at all, but more a compilation of pictures, like pool #11470. To make a hard ban about uploading this whole doujin is indeed madness. Those are normal images.

So I think it really depends if an user is overexaggerating with uploading doujins. It doesn't happen that often, too. So ok, I see the conflicting parts and I say that if you upload an entire doujin, the scrutiny should be higher. That means in the first place for approving, but maybe also flagging entire doujins should be easier if multiple pages don't meet the standard.

Long story short: That what Mikaeri said :3.

It is impossible to draw hard lines when subjective elements such as: 'discouragement' or 'quality' are put in place. It means cherry picking is present.

Also I keep getting the feeling most people here treat Doujinshi as purely fan manga (i.e. comic with multiple pages/chapters). Long running series of 4komas fall under the same category. Or pretty much any form of independent work.

If you make a statement that Danbooru is not a doujin board, then neither should any form of independently created work be uploaded here.

In those linked topics a lot of good arguments are raised from both sides (for and against) but as evazion pointed out: There is no definitive statement, mainly because nobody is also formulating a specific goal. Consider for a moment: What seems to be the actual goal? I keep reading lots of suggestions, tools and things. But nobody formulated a specific goal to pursue.

Just a few examples for Danbooru which are currently present:
Example goal: Prevent upload abuse like spam -> Tool/method: Upload restriction system.
Example goal: Users can search for specific images -> Tool/method: Search system + Tag system + rules to enforce mandatory tagging for uploaders.
Example goal: Users can translate images -> Tool/method: Note system.

TL DR: Rules are methods to aid/sustain a specific goal. Don't focus on the rules first, but formulate a goal and then find the desired methods to achieve that goal.