Danbooru

Posting your own art

Posted under General

I got a dmail just recently about a user who is posting their own art. Before I sent them a note about it, I wanted to get our exact wording. Well, our wording leaves wiggle room and I'm not sure if it's for the best or not:

"Uploading one's own art is looked down upon. This is because it's generally thought that artists are biased when it comes to judging the quality of their own work. Only in very limited cases are such posts accepted, and posting sub-par creations of your own can result in being penalized. Understand the risks before considering posting your own work. More suitable sites to upload your own art to include Deviantart and Pixiv."

Bolded parts are various indications that the rule is not a yes/no, absolute concept.

I wanted to do this without calling anyone out, but since I have no reason to believe they're doing it maliciously, mentioning them hopefully won't be construed as criticism of the user: user:reef1600

98% of the time, leaving wiggle room isn't an issue because almost everyone who posts their own art is either a mediocre artist or a drama queen regarding criticism, and they get themselves banned quickly enough. But these images aren't bad (unless you hate Touhou, as I know some of you do), putting aside that reef is much too ambiguous to be an unqualified artist tag.

How good is good enough for an exception, though? We don't even define what an exception entails, but the door is left open to their existence. So... whats the call? I've always been in favor of a hard ban, simply because it's one of only two fair ways way to do it, and the only other fair way (complete allowance) has been rightly rejected time and time again as being a drama magnet and conflict of interest (what happens if a Contributor is the one uploading their own art, for example?). But I won't enforce a ban that is seemingly contradicted to some extent by our stated rules, so it needs discussion.

Updated by Not One Of Us

I think that we should require anyone who uploads their own art to go through the moderation process.

And I agree, that art isn't bad. Not the most amazing stuff I've ever seen, but well within the bounds of acceptability.

On the other hand, we could just ban self-uploading entirely, and if someone wants to get their art up bad enough, I'm sure they can find someone to submit it for them.

But regardless, it has to go through moderation, and if a Contrib wants to upload their own art, they can damn well get demoted to do so. One or the other.

Edit: Oh yeah, and any whining/drama queening about stuff not making through is an automatic ban.

True that most artists are biased about the quality of their art. If it's actually good, go for it. They could just test it by posting one picture that they think is their best work. If it passes, continue, and if it fails, stop.

Dogenzaka said: True that most artists are biased about the quality of their art. If it's actually good, go for it. They could just test it by posting one picture that they think is their best work. If it passes, continue, and if it fails, stop.

The problem with any approach like this is that it relies on 1) uploader restraint and 2) someone knowing about this right off the bat. It's not likely they'll understand the dynamic from the get-go. It needs to be something very clear.

Mark artists who post their own art as ineligible for contributor status if they're going to continue posting their own art but other than that I could really care less about who posts what.

jxh2154 said:
How good is good enough for an exception

Presumably, that would be "Danbooru quality", whatever that is. There's no reason to hold self-uploaders to a higher standard than others; the standard of quality we already have is high enough. I can see how Contributors uploading their own stuff is a tricky situation, but Contributors could just as easily upload bad stuff for a whole variety of other reasons. We trusted them enough to give them the position; if their eye for quality falters significantly, just demote them.

So I say leave it the way it is. Unless there are people uploading their own horrible art all the time and I just haven't noticed it, then a outright ban would be a heavy-handed solution in search of a problem.

I say definitely discourage it because a lot of artists simply aren't very talented (yet), and get offended when their work is criticized and/or not accepted.

On the other hand if they can get by with uploading their art and it all passes the queue, than there really is no problem since it's passing the "mod test". I would support the idea that artists shouldn't be able to bypass the mod queue though.

Basically I guess I'd say discourage the practice for Priv- ban the practice for Contrib+.

If it goes through the mod queue it's probably fine (and I can't imagine it comes up enough to seriously burden the mod queue -- if someone is obviously uploading huge amounts of their own work and it's getting rejected by the queue, well, that problem is self-correcting by the very nature of the queue system.) I can see the argument for discouraging it, but I don't think it needs to be banned.

Contributors probably shouldn't be allowed to bypass the queue, yeah. I can see glasnost's argument, but honestly, how closely are Contributors watched? Is anyone going to notice if someone with a thousand uploads puts up five or six really bad things they did themselves? This seems like a case where it'd be really easy for someone who otherwise uploads good stuff to screw up in their judgment.

Also, is there a way a Contributor can choose to deliberately submit something via the mod queue, for cases like this?

I'm sure there are at least some artists out there who can accept hard criticism, so if they want to take a gamble with the queue then I say let them. The other people who are immature enough to stir up drama about their pictures not getting approved are likely the same people who don't read the rules anyway, so I'm not sure how much a hard ban would even help the situation.

Basically, I think it's fine the way it is and agree with what glasnost said. It doesn't seem like it's a widespread enough problem for an outright ban, so just let them know it's a discouraged practice. If a Contributor ever gets caught uploading their own art just demote them.

Xabid said:
Also, is there a way a Contributor can choose to deliberately submit something via the mod queue, for cases like this?

They can upload, and then flag it with a reason along the lines of "User-art, please moderate". I've seen contributors do this for other reasons in the past.

It's not perfectly satisfying though, because by its very nature flagging imparts something of a negative light on the image. The mod staff should judge the image independently of the fact that it's flagged, but the stigma and subconscious connotations of the flag might still exist.

"Needs to go through moderation" is a good enough reason. To hell with any connotations of negativity by default. Flagging is a tool, nothing more, nothing less; if one needs any positive, neutral, or negative connotation, one ought to look at the stated reasons for the flagging.

Personally, I'm in favor of keeping things as-is. The way I've seen things moderated here, a sufficient level of quality will circumvent the "discouraged" - and in some cases, disallowed - part of the rules. I think that's the way it should be.

So from reading this thread, it sounds like people suddenly want to swing completely in the opposite direction - complete allowance. Because that's exactly what "the queue will take care of it" means.

Well, that's basically what that phrasing came down to. It's "looked down upon" and discouraged because 1) artists generally don't know if their own art is good, 2) it is an absolute drama magnet and 3) there are much better places to upload your art, where people will see it and critique it, and a community of artists exists.

But! If you upload an image on danbooru, it should be judged on its own merits. We have a set of rules for moderating and that goes for art you drew or art someone else drew, at least as far as I'm concerned. The above is simply a policy, not a rule.

I think the line of "very limited cases" is more a law of averages than anything (cause chances are, the art is bad).

I wouldn't say a swing in the opposite direction, my opinion is basically as it always has been. I'm generally against it, because it's usually bad. Artists overestimate themselves and take criticism poorly and end up causing unnecessary drama. Self-posted art should be discouraged as it always has been.

If someone bends the rules and posts their stuff though and everything passes the queue, it's not like I would notice or really mind in that case. Not to say we should endorse it

I am very much against self-posted art going unmoderated though.

jxh2154 said:
So from reading this thread, it sounds like people suddenly want to swing completely in the opposite direction - complete allowance.

I'd prefer it forbidden, but as the thread pointed out, it's troublesome for the minority of decent artists it'd make you miss then (when they can't find an uploader).

That said, that's not my business but as a janitor+ I'd be worried to see more crap in the mod queue because of that shift. Regardless of the quantities to expect, the good/bad own art ratio is still bound to stay pretty terrible. Lots of annoyance for little gain.

jxh2154 said:
So from reading this thread, it sounds like people suddenly want to swing completely in the opposite direction - complete allowance. Because that's exactly what "the queue will take care of it" means.

Again, if people uploading their own art is actually a bigger problem than I realize, then making some actual rules regarding it may be an unfortunate necessity. I'm not a mod or janitor, so I tend to let my eye pass over obviously bad posts that are still in the queue without giving too much notice as to who uploaded them.

But if we do make a rule, then it's almost certainly going to result in some good art (like reef's, which I think is mostly Danbooru-quality) not being uploaded. Unless we're also getting a very substantial gain in terms of bad art not being uploaded, I don't think that's a good trade-off to make.

From the point of view of a good artist, it's kinda silly that you'd have to talk to someone else to upload your stuff for you. (Although, I am actually doing that for a couple artists who have asked me/permitted me to upload their stuff on here.)

I don't see why we can't keep this nice and simple.

If a user uploads good pics, they should be approved. If not, they will be deleted. If he keeps uploading bad pics/creates drama, he should be demoted/banned. Who posted what should be irrelevant.

After all, it's regular users and not artists uploading their own stuff that are responsible for 99.99% of bad art and drama on the site. I think we're giving the issue more attention than it deserves (better than giving it less though, I guess).

スラッシュ said: From the point of view of a good artist, it's kinda silly that you'd have to talk to someone else to upload your stuff for you.

That's if you accept Danbooru as a natural place for artists to upload their own work a la Deviantart of Pixiv. I don't, personally. As an artist, Danbooru is not the place I'd go to self-publish. It's a secondary source pretty much by design.

At any rate, I suppose there's nothing to actually do from the direction this thread went, other than to not send Reef a PM about it because it's now considered totally fine. Meh, I shrug...

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