Uncensored vs. Higher Res: Which Should be Parent?

According to help:post relationships, the choice of parent post between identical images is governed by a priority system. Between any two identical images, the highest resolution is always the parent. Between two images of identical resolution, the least censored one is the parent. Between two equally censored images of identical resolution, the least compressed one is the parent.

This has been in place in the wiki since 2021 and was added by nonamethanks. It has been consistent site policy ever since (asset #44311966, asset #44311957, forum #419212, etc).

Recently, it has come to light that some people in discord have been giving the advice that resolution only takes priority over censorship when the difference in resolution is very big. When the difference in resolution is small, so it is said, you may make a uncensored smaller res version the parent. (Some people have even said that censorship takes priority always over resolution, but that appears to just be a simple misreading of the wiki.)

I don't think that advice is ill-intentioned and I'm not trying to lay blame, but the advice is, strictly speaking, wrong. That's not what the wiki says. That's not agreed to in any forum thread. That's contrary to statements from both admins. That's a new rule that has been invented by discord and is nowhere to be found on the actual site.

Anyway, there's two issues here.

First: should there be room for subjective assessments of which post is better?

In my view, the main purpose of our parenting rules is to prevent endless arguing from moronic builders who desperately want their name on the parent. We very frequently see people fighting to get their name on the parent, for some dumb reason, and it's very useful to have a very rigid, as-objective-as-possible system for determining which should be the parent. If the rules leave it up to discretion, then the inevitable result will be people tag-warring for pages of versions over parenting because one builder thinks their 1000x1000 uncensored version should be parent and another builder thinks their 1200x1200 censored version should be parent, and you can't really say either of them is wrong. It would end up being left up to either mod intervention or the whims of whichever group happens to be active on discord at the time.

"But what if this leads to absurd results, like an uncensored png being child to a extremely compressed, uncensored jpg?" Who cares. No, really. Which post is parent doesn't really matter at all. I'd rather have a rigid set of rules that sometimes places the "better" image as child then leave room for inevitable endless ego-driven builder tag warring. People will still be able to find the version that's "better" to them. On this topic, I'll point again to asset #44311966 which I agree with.

Second: which should have priority, uncensored or higher res?

The other major purpose of the parenting rules is to help direct users to the "best" version of the post. When this topic was brought up in discord, almost everyone agreed that uncensored versions are the "better" versions that most people want to see, and the strong majority was in favour of changing the rules so that uncensored is higher in priority to resolution. This on the grounds that a) the uncensored version is closer to being the "true" image that the artist intended, since file compression destroys less of the original artist's intent than censorship, and b) most gooners care more about seeing genitals than having more pixels.

I don't have strong views on this, but if I had to pick, I agree that uncensored images are probably the preferred images for most users. Personally, I would prefer to favourite a smaller res uncensored version over a larger censored version. So I'd be in favour of changing the priority to make uncensored images preferred.

u ncensoredd

CoreMack said in forum #419253:
"But what if this leads to absurd results, like a massive png being child to a tiny, compressed, uncensored jpg?" Who cares. No, really. Which post is parent doesn't really matter at all. I'd rather have a rigid set of rules that sometimes places the "better" image as child then leave room for inevitable endless ego-driven builder tag warring. People will still be able to find the version that's "better" to them.

agreed, which is why the higher resolution post should always be the parent, since it's always the better image

almost everyone agreed that uncensored versions are the "better" versions that most people want to see, and the strong majority was in favour of changing the rules so that uncensored is higher in priority to resolution

danbooru isn't a porn site so i don't think it matters what gooners think. it's a site for archiving anime images. high resolution images are always going to be "more complete" since they have more details. the argument is basically that a few pixels of dick and vagina are more important than all the pixels everywhere else in the image, which is ridiculous if you think about it

also i'd even argue that the censored image is the more complete image. images with text are considered more complete even if the text covers part of the illustration. that's because the "text" is part of the art. a cover page isn't just some random text someone added on top of the cover illust, it's the design the artist chose so it's part of the work. so basically the argument is that the censor the artist chose for the image is not part of the artist's creative decisions despite being part of the artist's creative process. imo it's a bad argument

like just think about it for a moment. if you are a japanese artist who has to censor your dicks and vaginas anyway, that is going to change how you draw them, won't it? basically the artwork was meant to be displayed WITH censor. artists draw knowing that they are going to have to censor it later. it's part of the process, so i don't think the censored version is inferior to the uncensored in any way, at least not enough to warrant putting the uncensored image as the parent just because gooners NEED to see 10 more pixels of pussy

...

to be clear i'm not talking about post #5883886 which is the entire image blurred. i wouldn't even call this a censor. it's an image sample so people go to the artist's fanbox or whatever. i'm talking about censor like post #10410210 vs. post #10410093 which is just for complying with pixiv

Personally, I feel that the most unaltered version of a post should be the parent, and since one can argue that uncensored posts are the most unaltered version of a post since it doesn't have any modifications added to it to adhere to strict Japanese censorship laws and whatnot, this leads me to believe that uncensored posts have higher priority than censored posts, even if the censored post has a higher resolution than the uncensored one, a sentiment that appears many others share here.

I do see why some would argue the censored post with higher resolution should be the parent though since it is bigger than the uncensored post, but unless the uncensored post has only like 250x250 resolution while the censored post has 2500x2500, I would still pick the uncensored post as parent.

Myth-of-Stars said in forum #419260:

Personally, I feel that the most unaltered version of a post should be the parent, and since one can argue that uncensored posts are the most unaltered version of a post since it doesn't have any modifications added to it to adhere to strict Japanese censorship laws and whatnot, this leads me to believe that uncensored posts have higher priority than censored posts, even if the censored post has a higher resolution than the uncensored one, a sentiment that appears many others share here.

I do see why some would argue the censored post with higher resolution should be the parent though since it is bigger than the uncensored post, but unless the uncensored post has only like 250x250 resolution while the censored post has 2500x2500, I would still pick the uncensored post as parent.

in that case shouldn't textless version be the parent as well since it's the most unaltered version of a post?

Some missing context is required: CoreMack and 123kid had a small edit war and DMail exchange concering the parenting between post #10822173 and post #10822493. The current guidelines (specifically: not concrete rules) place resolution higher than level of censorship on which post becomes the parent. My opinion and statement here was that the resolution wasn't egregiously different that it would be fine to leave the uncensored one as the parent. Cue calling the wiki article into question because of that.

A few opinions I've shared about this:

• As above, the resolution isn't egregiously different that considering the pixel size is whatever and when two criteria are close by, it becomes somewhat of a vibes pick. This subjectivity is reflected in a lot of places across the site, including our ratings.

• Both censored and uncensored in this case are still the complete picture. 123kid (and others in turn via upvote reacts) argued that censorship makes it less complete.

• The "rule" (it's not really one, at least not right now) is that the higher resolution is the parent. I agree with this. I don't agree with it being an absolute though. Absolutes is how we get clown cases of parenting like a bloated file size due to adversarial noise or builders insisting their artifacted compressed Twitter JPEG should somehow be the parent of a clean BlueSky JPEG because "muh 48 pixels larger".

There's a reason it's called guidelines and not absolute policy. Nevermind that builders would be annoying about if we had a concrete rule or not, those images don't say much. "I feel like" is not "it is this way". "Almost always" is not "always". Sometimes you will run into certain outlier cases and that's what a hard rule can't solve for. These are mostly for uploaders, not for browsers.

In an ideal world, I would love if we swapped the ordering so uploaders would bias uncensors as parents, but we don't live in an ideal world, where artists are releasing 1200px JPG uncensors on Twitter and 4000px PNG pointless censoring on Pixiv, yet here we are today now taking to the forum because some people believe even in such a scenario, that compressed image should be the parent absolutely. Stake on the wording in the wiki largely is about cases where they're close enough in size; in practice, when the size is far more different, uploaders bias the bigger picture regardless of what censors are on it. You can see this from a simple browse.

That's why I don't think it's right to call them "rules". There are a lot of things on this site that are considerably subjective; post relationships is as much a guideline as ratings are, and both see the same amount of disagreements on fine details intentionally left vague depending on who you ask (forum #333293).

Or, as someone put it better: it's a difficult topic to create a hard rule on, and that's why it's better to leave it subjective even at the cost of stupid builder arguments which they'll find literally anything to argue about. Resolution becomes absolute? Now you have builders arguing that a few pixels of their completely blurred out image is better. Censorship becomes absolute? Now that image for ants at a MelonBooks JPEG sample size is somehow better and more complete than a 5000px image where the censorship is a single transparent black bar or even just a little scribble (I'm talking about on the level of post #10746985).

From what I've seen observing post changes, DMail exchanges and complaints both on the forum and Discord, this isn't as much of a point of argument as portrayed. It is largely a gentleman's agreement or one party not bothering to kick a fuss because it truly doesn't matter in most or all cases, especially close ones. Practically, I see that most uploaders prefer the uncensored version to be the parent when they are close by in resolution (+/- ~1000px) but will set the censor as the parent if the size difference is more egregious (anywhere from 2x bigger or more) and don't deal in absolutes.

WRT forum #419261, trapster: this is actual policy for textless version to be the child post. It's called version for a reason. Things like covers should be parent to cover images but it never got written into the wiki every time it was brought up.

It depends.

Sometimes you have a 4000x6000 image thats censored and uncensored is 720x900, the larger is better then. Other times there is an uncensored image that is pretty close in res and quality as the censored version, maybe slightly smaller, picking uncensored makes sense then.

trapster77 said in forum #419261:

in that case shouldn't textless version be the parent as well since it's the most unaltered version of a post?

Yeah, I realized I shot myself in the foot after I hit "submit" and thought to myself, "wait, textless version is a thing.", but textless version is a variant of an image and I agree that the text version should be the parent of the textless post since it follows the order the variants are organized in, but in the case of censored vs uncensored though, I still think uncensored is more better unless the censored one has a vastly higher resolution than the uncensored.

That's basically the tl;dr of what I brought up, what I agree with, and how it's currently done in practice. I've seen very little argument arising out of doing it that way, at least from what I'm aware of. I don't think it's wise to conclude this to an absolute. Builders are expected to use their words, think like human beings and resolve conflicts like this between each other, though I know that's somehow particularly difficult for us purples.

trapster77 said in forum #419259:

to be clear i'm not talking about post #5883886 which is the entire image blurred. i wouldn't even call this a censor. it's an image sample so people go to the artist's fanbox or whatever. i'm talking about censor like post #10410210 vs. post #10410093 which is just for complying with pixiv

This sentence just shows you are working based on a flawed assumption. Whether you like it or not, post #5883886 is censored. However, so are post #7379247, post #10216979, post #9694676, post #9740533. If you can't draw an objective line where censorship ends and "sample-ness" begins (and no, you can't), then your whole point is moot since we're back to a subjective argument again.

trapster77 said in forum #419261:

in that case shouldn't textless version be the parent as well since it's the most unaltered version of a post?

You're absolutely correct! In fact, we should be putting unfinished and making-of posts as parent, since they are closer to the original state of the artwork (which was a blank canvas).

Freshblink said in forum #419264:

It depends.

Sometimes you have a 4000x6000 image thats censored and uncensored is 720x900, the larger is better then. Other times there is an uncensored image that is pretty close in res and quality as the censored version, maybe slightly smaller, picking uncensored makes sense then.

I agree with this sentiment, but unfortunately it becomes difficult to quantify in cases like post #10822173 where it is truly pretty close (and the censorship isn't even that bad TBH).

CoreMack said in forum #419253:

First: should there be room for subjective assessments of which post is better?

Should there be? When it comes to censored vs uncensored, I think yes.
Is it a viable approach to deciding the parent in practice? For the reasons you and others mentioned, I don't think so, since it'll just end with people fighting again.

For same-or-similarly sized posts that are both censored or uncensored, there's a lot of factors that go into it (jpeg artifacts, recompression, yuv444 vs yuv422 vs yuv420, even bsky's 2000x vs Twitter's 2048x), so it's not really viable for there to be hard rules there (trust me, people tried). For censored vs uncensored, I think the related factors are simple enough that it's possible to make an objective decisionmaking process that's pretty good in most circumstances.

In my opinion, based on my experience, I'd prefer higher resolution to be the parent. Censorship often isn't comically egregious, but artists posting uncensored but significantly smaller versions is (again, in my experience).

WRS said in forum #419267:

That's basically the tl;dr of what I brought up, what I agree with, and how it's currently done in practice. I've seen very little argument arising out of doing it that way, at least from what I'm aware of. I don't think it's wise to conclude this to an absolute. Builders are expected to use their words, think like human beings and resolve conflicts like this between each other, though I know that's somehow particularly difficult for us purples.

Unfortunately unlike say Wikipedia, assume good faith goes out the window here.

But the gentleman's agreement is the best approach, some sort of consensus for parent child in case by case basis.

WRS said in forum #419262:

My opinion and statement here was that the resolution wasn't egregiously different that it would be fine to leave the uncensored one as the parent.

But this is exactly the problem with the "vibe based" approach to parenting. The image that started this argument is a perfect case in point. In my view, going from 4096x2455 to 4696x2815 is a quite significant increase in resolution. That is not a nominal increase, that is not an artist making an image 5 pixels wider, this is a significantly superior image. That's an extra 3.16 million pixels, that is a 31% increase. On the vibes based system, I would have still reverted 123kid's parenting.

WRS says this difference is insignificant so the uncensored version should be parent. I say it's significant so the censored version should be parent. Who is right? If we start tag warring over it, are we really supposed to have no recourse but to threaten each other with negs in DMs until someone gives up, with no ability to fall back on any actual rule?

We should be looking at it the other way as well. How significant is the censorship in post #10822493? Not as much as the resolution change in my opinion. I see no reason to go against the guidelines in this case. I think post #10822493 should be the parent.

My two cents on the matter is simple: the most unaltered, complete version should be the parent. An artists finishes their work and then goes on to censor it afterwards to bypass guidelines. I don't see how a censored version can be considered the most complete version of an artwork.

On a personal bias, since the topic is censorship and therefor mostly concerns R18 artworks, when I browse R18 art I really don't care that much about how many pixels are in a picture but censorship is something you just notice.
In the example given, post #10822493, the censorship is visible, it's a fact. The uncensored version is also not of such bad quality that the censored version should take priority.
I do think there is a grey area where the case could be that the uncensored version is of very low quality and the censored one is a much higher quality with just a tiny bar censor. But those cases are probably in a minority and should be judged case by case, no need to have an iron rule for every little possible scenario.

Personally I think even in fairly big differences in resolution (like unless the uncensored isn't even highres), uncensored should have priority to be parent, so I would support a change of the guidelines, regardless of the question how much guidelines vs rules they are.

123kid said in forum #419303:

My two cents on the matter is simple: the most unaltered, complete version should be the parent. An artists finishes their work and then goes on to censor it afterwards to bypass guidelines. I don't see how a censored version can be considered the most complete version of an artwork.

Unfortunately this doesn't really work. By the very same logic, a higher resolution one is also "more complete". For a proper highres one to exist, it has to be drawn at that resolution and later downscaled. Just like censorship this removes information. Now obviously it is somewhat less destructive when the difference isn't that large, but it is still "non-original" in a very similar way.

ANON_TOKYO said in forum #419305:

Unfortunately this doesn't really work. By the very same logic, a higher resolution one is also "more complete". For a proper highres one to exist, it has to be drawn at that resolution and later downscaled. Just like censorship this removes information. Now obviously it is somewhat less destructive when the difference isn't that large, but it is still "non-original" in a very similar way.

By that logic it is simply not possible to have a deciding factor when it comes to R18 works then. Censorship is an alteration of the original work and so is downscaling.
So, in the end it simply comes down to what one personally cares more about: uncensored or amount of pixels. Everyone will decide differently on that matter and forcing another to accept your opinion as the right one is just silly.

123kid said in forum #419307:

By that logic it is simply not possible to have a deciding factor when it comes to R18 works then. Censorship is an alteration of the original work and so is downscaling.

And that logic would be correct.

So, in the end it simply comes down to what one personally cares more about: uncensored or amount of pixels. Everyone will decide differently on that matter and forcing another to accept your opinion as the right one is just silly.

Well yaeh the argument posed in this thread is that it might be worthwhile to decide which one prevails just to avoid bickering, even if it isn't the most correct one all the time.

CoreMack said in forum #419299:

But this is exactly the problem with the "vibe based" approach to parenting. [..]

In some ways I agree, but it generally tends to be less problematic than nailing down superiority to metrics in the asset page absolutely.

WRS says this difference is insignificant so the uncensored version should be parent. I say it's significant so the censored version should be parent. Who is right? If we start tag warring over it, are we really supposed to have no recourse but to threaten each other with negs in DMs until someone gives up, with no ability to fall back on any actual rule?

Just to be a bit pedantic: can be, not should be, so even I'm noncommittal on this matter because it doesn't really matter which one becomes the parent to me. Zoomed out and a casual scroll later they look the same to me, especially on a phone.

If it's difficult to create an all-encompassing criteria here and now, we could just come to a consensus regarding these two specific posts on which one becomes the parent. When two users disagree on something, usually the proper course of action is to bring the matter to the forum for outside opinion or consensus, much like what's happening here today. There's already the forum post to discuss it.

I'm not sure there will be much success or headway about post relationships in the way that's desired from the original topic, but if we need some kind of resolution to the posts that started the problem, we can at the very least vote on which post should be the parent. It's somewhat on brand WRT some discussions about proposals regarding the post index.

Thoughts?

WRS said in forum #419324:

I'm not sure there will be much success or headway about post relationships in the way that's desired from the original topic, but if we need some kind of resolution to the posts that started the problem, we can at the very least vote on which post should be the parent. It's somewhat on brand WRT some discussions about proposals regarding the post index.

Thoughts?

This is starting to sound a bit like CoreMack and I were bashing our heads in who gets to have the parent and this is not the case.

I really don't mind which one is the parent. I only changed the parent back because I thought it was correct. And when CoreMack DMed me asking why I did that, I brought the matter to the forum to ask about it. That's all that happened. If there is no consensus about what is the right way, I don't mind if the higher res is the parent. It ain't that deep. Though, again, in my opinion uncensored should take priority.