All right, I'm out on uploads - the auto-approval is crap

Provence said:

Worload is not too high. It's ok. But then I'm only one of few Janitors who goes through the queue next to @Ephyon and I also think @Not_One_Of_Us so I'd be nice to hear from them if the workload is really too high and works as an argument against sending some posts from Contributors randomly to the queue. But still, 5% (-> 5 posts out of hundred don't increase the work that much, if at all)

I go through the queue every night more as routine than anything. It's not really that much of a hassle at all, but then again, I've long since disengaged from participating in much of the rest of the site.

Jarlath said:

So you're saying the reason most (80%) posts sit in the queue for days of they're not from a favorite artist or copyright is either a) most uploads are crap which occasionally get pity approved since they're not approved in hours or b) approvers are ignoring them? That's the impression I'm getting here.

Or do you think that the complaints that the OP and about the moderation process / contributors which appear every few months are baseless? There wouldn't be so much pushback about the Upload for Moderation requirements for regular users or the proposed one for Contributors if there wasn't the expectation based on experience that posts would wait forever (up to the point that they show how many approvers ignored them) in there.

Well, since Not One Of Us is active, most unapproved uploads are indeed crap. That's pretty cut and dried^^. Maybe not all, yeah, but he approves more than just KanColle and Breasts. If you look through the deleted posts, than you'll see that they are bad.
The question should be why the mod queue is rarely used. Or if it is used, why the Janitor does not give feedback (breaks rule, poor quality, no interest).

Actually right now the top page of the deleted posts actually contain quite a few posts that look rather good to me. Certainly better than quite a few of the images that have shown up on my subscriptions from people with unrestricted upload priveleges. (At risk of emulating the OP, how is post #2468428 better than post #2464862?)

Oddly these images seem to actually have an unusually high number of reviews.

kuuderes_shadow said:

Actually right now the top page of the deleted posts actually contain quite a few posts that look rather good to me. Certainly better than quite a few of the images that have shown up on my subscriptions from people with unrestricted upload priveleges. (At risk of emulating the OP, how is post #2468428 better than post #2464862?)

Oddly these images seem to actually have an unusually high number of reviews.

The latter's not a popular copyright. That's why I thought that Contributors should be free to exercise judgement in uploading things that may be good, but not yet popular or even well known. That's what I try to do with artists who don't necessarily show up in the top 1000 searches here, at least.

Ephyon said:

I go through the queue every night more as routine than anything. It's not really that much of a hassle at all, but then again, I've long since disengaged from participating in much of the rest of the site.

And that's what a meant by confirming workload if people like Ephyon are basically giving up on the rest of Danbooru to deal with the queue.

Provence said:

Well, since Not One Of Us is active, most unapproved uploads are indeed crap. That's pretty cut and dried^^. Maybe not all, yeah, but he approves more than just KanColle and Breasts. If you look through the deleted posts, than you'll see that they are bad.
The question should be why the mod queue is rarely used. Or if it is used, why the Janitor does not give feedback (breaks rule, poor quality, no interest).

So there's an excuse for posts like post #2464480 to get deleted due to lack of interest? That's how I'm interpreting that "did not like enough to approve". That doesn't give nearly enough feedback to fix Uploader habits, if that's what needs to be corrected.

We agree on the need for feedback. Why don't we see it more often? That's why I argued for removing "didn't like enough to approve" in the first place. Replace it with something more useful like "did not like the copyright or content" instead.

Well, I think that @Ephyon did not mean that the mod queue takes too much time. It's more like the only thing on Danbooru that he keeps a look at. If not, then I'm very sorry for misunderstanding the post because if it is meant the way I understand the post, then some more posts would not effect too much.

About kuuderes shadow's comparison: Not good. Flag the other image and hope that the other one gets approved by appealing it. That said: In this case, I thought I clicked "approving". Apparantly not. So I did it now^^.

But I think we lose focus again about how and if at all Contributors need more monitoring than just the flagging option.

Provence said:

Well, I think that @Ephyon did not mean that the mod queue takes too much time. It's more like the only thing on Danbooru that he keeps a look at. If not, then I'm very sorry for misunderstanding the post because if it is meant the way I understand the post, then some more posts would not effect too much.

About kuuderes shadow's comparison: Not good. Flag the other image and hope that the other one gets approved by appealing it. That said: In this case, I thought I clicked "approving". Apparantly not. So I did it now^^.

But I think we lose focus again about how and if at all Contributors need more monitoring than just the flagging option.

And the desire to blame Contributors for uploading sub-par artwork is there because it seems to take forever to get a response on something in the mod queue. The animosity wouldn't be nearly as intense if there wasn't the constant feeling of seeing someone (a Contributor) cruise by in the express lane all the time, while you always spent three days in line.

I'm still I favour of having mods go into every Contributor's uploads to review them, as that would need less recoding than a random "upload a random 5 put of every 100 uploads" addition to the codebase.

I have my doubts about the math.

Say 5% of a user's uploads go to the queue. Assume you need at least 400 tested uploads to get good confidence that the approval rate is meaningful. In fact I would suggest mandating it to prevent kneejerk reactions from a string of 20-30 bad uploads that may not mean much in the larger scale of a user's uploads. That means you'd need 8000 uploads before you get useful data. Assume 100 uploads a day (maybe on the low side admittedly) and that's 80 days you have to wait. Nearly 3 months.

Say you get some feedback and you decide to adjust your uploads. Now you have to wait another 3 months to decide if your uploads have actually gotten better.

So if we're going to do this then a rate of 15% is more useful since then the turnaround is about a month, likely less if they upload more. That would mean 15% of everyone's uploads are now going to the queue. This would undoubtedly clog it up. It would give even more power to the few janitors/mods who like to go through the entire queue versus those who just spot check it.

I'm not against the idea but I'd like to hear more discussion on concrete numbers.

I'm coming in with not having read the whole thread (slow reader), so I may miss some things that have been touched on or asked:

I work the queue from the back end and make sure each image runs by my eyes. I try to analyze the images quickly as I do feel overwhelmed by the quantity that is uploaded. The bad images aren't the problem, really, those I can make quick judgments on - it's the stuff that's borderline.

I have a preservationist mindset when it comes to art and culture, so I have to combat this when trying to judge art quality while working the queue. Obviously, this results in me being the most... lenient when it comes to approvals. That makes even the bad have value in my eyes, but I recognize the focus of this site, so those I can pass over quickly. The stuff that's borderline? Almost entirely mediocre? That is more difficult to judge. I have to take a look at the images from various ways - the composition, the anatomy, coloring, shading, foreshortening, general appeal - and that's not even including checking for compression artifacts, image source, possible differences in a parent or child post when they may or may not be duplicates...

At the high point I remember, the queue had at least a dozen pair of eyes run over it. Now it's down to it seems, at best, four people. Personally, I don't think that's enough, but nothing I can do about that.

I've honestly stopped using the reviewing system for mods completely. Instead I do a search for status:pending images at the front, and eyeball for the pending ones that stick out as high quality, and do that at least 3-5 times a day. The amount of time it takes to do a complete sweep of the entire queue is beyond what I can do these days, but I can do quick looks and try to catch at least 10 images a day for approval, and so far it's been efficient.

Contributors do have it pretty cushy compared to those users who don't have the benefit of the doubt set on them yet. Maybe my original idea for dealing with bad contributors wouldn't work, but I don't like the idea of people not being given prior warning if their standards seem to waver, before getting demoted, which is why I supported having a discussion about it. In which case maybe it's better to encourage people unhappy with some contributors right now to leave some feedback on those who they feel need to work harder, as long as they're constructive about it, to at least spur the reactive ones on.

Provence said:

Well, I think that @Ephyon did not mean that the mod queue takes too much time. It's more like the only thing on Danbooru that he keeps a look at.

Precisely. I've considered giving up the Janitor position since I no longer engage with much of the site, but this is out of disinterest, not lack of time. I keep doing the queue precisely because it's a simple thing that takes me only about fifteen minutes and I do as a sort of wind-down routine before going to bed.

albert said:

I have my doubts about the math.

Say 5% of a user's uploads go to the queue. Assume you need at least 400 tested uploads to get good confidence that the approval rate is meaningful. In fact I would suggest mandating it to prevent kneejerk reactions from a string of 20-30 bad uploads that may not mean much in the larger scale of a user's uploads. That means you'd need 8000 uploads before you get useful data. Assume 100 uploads a day (maybe on the low side admittedly) and that's 80 days you have to wait. Nearly 3 months.

Say you get some feedback and you decide to adjust your uploads. Now you have to wait another 3 months to decide if your uploads have actually gotten better.

So if we're going to do this then a rate of 15% is more useful since then the turnaround is about a month, likely less if they upload more. That would mean 15% of everyone's uploads are now going to the queue. This would undoubtedly clog it up. It would give even more power to the few janitors/mods who like to go through the entire queue versus those who just spot check it.

I'm not against the idea but I'd like to hear more discussion on concrete numbers.

Well, that would mean: Contributors can bypass the mod queue in 15% of all cases and some need to go through the queue because with a lower amount of pending uploads, it is not really possible to judge one Contributor's uploads. Can't say that I'm object to this and honestly, it should work this way.
With concrete numbers: It gets difficult. With 15, I don't think that we threaten the Contributor status too much. Maybe 20 would also work...?
As or your concern about too mighty Approvers: I don't think that this is a problem. I think that Ephyon and Not One Of Us are "good enough" (sound stupid, but I hope you get what I mean^^).

But I think other people should also say something. Espacially from people who are long-time Contributors since such a change would "hurt" these users most.

While I feel a lot of mediocre Touhou/Kancolle art makes it through purely on the strength of their copyright popularity rather than artistic merit, I've never thought it severe enough to take drastic measures.

And while I feel opposed to a forced queue of every contributor (Admittedly of which there are increasingly many with a spate of promotions), I don't think I'll be hurt much if at all by such an action. Occasionally there is an image that completely falls through in score/favorite (Near 0) but those are few and far between because I uphold myself to high standards.

I can't honestly comment on the quality of other Contributors however, as I focus exclusively on the quality of my own uploads and tagging them as best I can with no regards to others.

CodeKyuubi said:

I can't honestly comment on the quality of other Contributors however

I can with Apollyon. It's very obvious he's into ass and boobs to the point where it's serious business for him, but some of this uploads tend to have questionable anatomy and they don't go through the queue.

I should acknowledge that I haven't paid as much attention to the Mod Queue as I should. Sometimes there are other things that have to be prioritized over the site, and sometimes I honestly just don't want to get involved as before. But I do actually want to get more approvals in.

tapnek said:

I can with Apollyon. It's very obvious he's into ass and boobs to the point where it's serious business for him, but some of this uploads tend to have questionable anatomy and they don't go through the queue.

Then continue flagging the uploads you take issue with. I will not compromise what sort of content I favor (since this is at least twice you've brought up me liking ass and boobs in the forum for whatever reason) or what I upload based on your one post or anyone's one post in this thread, but at least you're being honest and using an option available to you.

However: I do think that it's silly that my overall upload quality is being called into question, in this thread, and years after I've stopped uploading as frequently. Even more so as I still notice the same handful of users that seem to like what I upload enough to quickly follow up on artists/copyrights/characters that I show any remote involvement with here.

So from personal observations and the selective concern people want to show towards site quality, I don't think my uploads need to be brought up any further in this thread.

^Calm down, buddy.

Now almost every single important figures of Danbooru feel conflicted and uneasy because of this thread. This is something. We need a definite measure ASAP, otherwise sooner or later it'll turn into a riot.

Provence said:

But I think other people should also say something. Espacially from people who are long-time Contributors since such a change would "hurt" these users most.

Alright, I am normally not interested in ranting, but since you asked for it...

I see contributors as people that fall into two classes of uploaders: (1) those that put quantity over quality in their choices for uploads, and (2) those that put quality over quantity. My personal aim has always to be in the second category. I just don't have the time to sit on the front page of Pixiv mashing F5 for hours on end, nor am I relying on, or want to rely on automated scripts to do any decision making for me. My daily upload volume has been, and continues to be admittedly low: averaging 1-5/day, and I'm not always uploading every day. At that rate, I stuck out grinding through the queue for nearly a year in hopes of earning the trust of someone for the promotion. The queue is a stressful hassle for anyone trying to upload something they feel confident in what they are sharing with the site. While it may be easier to have your upload approved if the copyright is popular like Touhou or Kancolle, you have to deal with fierce competition with other uploaders. I've clocked some uploads appearing on Danbooru in under 10 seconds of appearing on the front page of Pixiv. I'm grateful of the trust I've been granted as a contributor, and for that, I try not to abuse the privilege. I know this site is neither Hentai Foundary nor Deviant Art, and I feel pretty confident in knowing just what kind of style and content is desired on this site.

I may be biased having unrestricted uploads, but my concern is that any proposed changes will only seek to benefit the high-volume, highly-popular copyright content uploaders, and hurt those trying to provide positive contribution to the site in low numbers, especially the low popularity copyrights. Like everyone who has had to deal with the queue, I know that the approvers are real people with real lives, and that the number actively committed to managing the queue---along with their personal interests---changes over time. I would really hate to be forced to deal with the queue again, even if there is some kind of better, more transparent system for adding and removing approval rights. I hate guessing who likes to approve what and hoping they don't decide to skip out on their duties the day I decide to upload. These days, I try to hunt for things the mainstream uploaders skip over. Right now, I enjoy not having to waste away at specific times of the day hoping to snatch up one of the "top 10 pictures of day" pictures to have to get the attention of the busy staff. I enjoy the fact I can upload content on similar style to the popular copyrights and note its growing influence on Danbooru (e.g. Overwatch art). I rely on the scores and the comments people leave behind as feedback to what I upload. As a low-volume uploader, if people do not like what I am uploading, or if I get zero or low scores, I do pay attention and adjust my criteria for future uploads. That is how I personally strive to be better uploader, though obviously does not speak for other uploaders. If whatever new system that comes out of this mess only seeks to reward mass uploading and squelch my limited time and efforts, then my interest in the site will wane, and I'll likely discontinue contributing.

D1ce said:

I may be biased having unrestricted uploads, but my concern is that any proposed changes will only seek to benefit the high-volume, highly-popular copyright content uploaders, and hurt those trying to provide positive contribution to the site in low numbers, especially the low popularity copyrights. Like everyone who has had to deal with the queue, I know that the approvers are real people with real lives, and that the number actively committed to managing the queue---along with their personal interests---changes over time. I would really hate to be forced to deal with the queue again, even if there is some kind of better, more transparent system for adding and removing approval rights. I hate guessing who likes to approve what and hoping they don't decide to skip out on their duties the day I decide to upload. These days, I try to hunt for things the mainstream uploaders skip over. Right now, I enjoy not having to waste away at specific times of the day hoping to snatch up one of the "top 10 pictures of day" pictures to have to get the attention of the busy staff.

This. So much this.

There's a lot of sides to this... those that don't want any kind impingement to their privileges whatsoever... those that wouldn't mind as long as it was fair... and those without privileges that want to see something other than apparent inactivity when a contributor upload bypasses the queue only for it be later flagged and deleted.

Maintaining the status quo will only serve to discourage non-contributors as this thread has shown. Imposing any kind of immediate restriction on contributors without due cause will only discourage those contributors who worked long and hard to earn that privilege, also as this thread has shown.

Maybe a compromise is in order...?

This is just a suggestion, but maybe a graduated system of restrictions could be used...

Level 0 would be as it currently stands with the unlimited uploads permission. However, if a certain number of queue-bypass uploads are flagged and then subsequently deleted within a certain time period, then that user would be moved to Level 1 restrictions.

Level 1 would send a certain random percentage of queue-bypass uploads back to the moderation queue. If they prove themselves again by having under a certain amount of deleted uploads, then they'll be moved back to Level 0. If however their deleted uploads exceeds a certain amount, then they would be moved to Level 2, and so on and so forth.

The above gives a general idea for the system, although the specific details would need to be fleshed out if it were to be accepted. Note that I did not include user uploads specifically sent to the queue as counting negatively towards the user. This shows judgement and an honest asking for a second opinion, neither of which should be punished, else why would a contributor choose to send a picture to the queue if it'll affect them negatively either way if it gets deleted.

The above is just a suggested compromise between both sides. If anyone has a better idea, please share it with the community.

BrokenEagle98 said:

There's a lot of sides to this... those that don't want any kind impingement to their privileges whatsoever... those that wouldn't mind as long as it was fair... and those without privileges that want to see something other than apparent inactivity when a contributor upload bypasses the queue only for it be later flagged and deleted.

Maintaining the status quo will only serve to discourage non-contributors as this thread has shown. Imposing any kind of immediate restriction on contributors without due cause will only discourage those contributors who worked long and hard to earn that privilege, also as this thread has shown.

Maybe a compromise is in order...?

This is just a suggestion, but maybe a graduated system of restrictions could be used...

Level 0 would be as it currently stands with the unlimited uploads permission. However, if a certain number of queue-bypass uploads are flagged and then subsequently deleted within a certain time period, then that user would be moved to Level 1 restrictions.

Level 1 would send a certain random percentage of queue-bypass uploads back to the moderation queue. If they prove themselves again by having under a certain amount of deleted uploads, then they'll be moved back to Level 0. If however their deleted uploads exceeds a certain amount, then they would be moved to Level 2, and so on and so forth.

The above gives a general idea for the system, although the specific details would need to be fleshed out if it were to be accepted. Note that I did not include user uploads specifically sent to the queue as counting negatively towards the user. This shows judgement and an honest asking for a second opinion, neither of which should be punished, else why would a contributor choose to send a picture to the queue if it'll affect them negatively either way if it gets deleted.

The above is just a suggested compromise between both sides. If anyone has a better idea, please share it with the community.

I still think that status quo is okay with minimal manual interventions. By gaining their status, contributors have already proven themselves. Randomly throwing their uploads into queue now will be perceived as punishment for no reason - because it's what it is.

That said, I can live with that idea, too. It's actually a decent compromise that will not affect good-quality uploaders while allowing some community control over contributors just by flagging, without having to bring anything up on the forums. Though I can tell that it will require work to implement, so the idea should be fleshed out first.

@NWF_Renim @Hillside_Moose join too, please. This discussion is starting to get out of hand.

Why does this thread remind me of Communism?

I'm aware there are Contributors who got in simply because they knew the staff, but last I checked they've since been demoted to Builder or below. The remaining Contributors left should be in due to merit, at least in theory. Flag bad posts as needed, and if you really think someone's quality is slipping inform one of the staff and we'll look into it.