Flag Vandalism

We don't need to regulate what flag reasons are used, but providing suggestions on how to flag and when not to flag is useful. Especially since a generic "quality check" reason is pretty useless, IMO, and something that deserves feedback on the flagger's record or a dmail if used on a bunch of posts in a day, or on a consistent basis. It's a waste of time at that point unless there's an error so egregious that anyone with two eyes (or less) could spot.

Otherwise we're wasting moderators' time and effort if they spend 5-10 minutes looking over a picture only to pass the buck to someone else who does the same thing. That's time which could've gone to approving new posts in the queue wasted, as well as the time of whoever might want to appeal the flag

Plus, flagging is supposed to be feedback per topic #13113 - without information on what needs to be corrected, that's worse than useless.

So a howto would be good - it doesn't have to be a thorough course, but at least it should provide basics beyond we what's in the flagging popup.

Jarlath said:

We don't need to regulate what flag reasons are used, but providing suggestions on how to flag and when not to flag is useful. Especially since a generic "quality check" reason is pretty useless, IMO, and something that deserves feedback on the flagger's record or a dmail if used on a bunch of posts in a day, or on a consistent basis. It's a waste of time at that point unless there's an error so egregious that anyone with two eyes (or less) could spot.

That's topic #13151 all about. Majority users already agreed to use tag "bad proportions/anatomy/etc." instead of flagging if it isn't egregious or cringeworthy. But it seems not all users were reading that topic.

Jarlath said:

Otherwise we're wasting moderators' time and effort if they spend 5-10 minutes looking over a picture only to pass the buck to someone else who does the same thing. That's time which could've gone to approving new posts in the queue wasted, as well as the time of whoever might want to appeal the flag

Plus, flagging is supposed to be feedback per topic #13113 - without information on what needs to be corrected, that's worse than useless.

So a howto would be good - it doesn't have to be a thorough course, but at least it should provide basics beyond we what's in the flagging popup.

Pretty much this.

Jarlath said:

We don't need to regulate what flag reasons are used, but providing suggestions on how to flag and when not to flag is useful. Especially since a generic "quality check" reason is pretty useless, IMO, and something that deserves feedback on the flagger's record or a dmail if used on a bunch of posts in a day, or on a consistent basis. t's a waste of time at that point unless there's an error so egregious that anyone with two eyes (or less) could spot.

I think I said so before: If I think that the problems are so enormous, I go with a simple quality/anatomy/proportion check. Becsuse like you said: Everyone should notice it then when it gets deleted. But such flags should become the exceptions, there you are completely right with me. But a hard ban...eh, nope :-/. And again: I can only speak for myself.
An example with such generic flag reason would be post #71595.

Sacriven said:

That's topic #13151 all about. Majority users already agreed to use tag "bad proportions/anatomy/etc." instead of flagging if it isn't egregious or cringeworthy.

But that's assuming the post you linked to 4 hours earlier doesn't fit the criteria you named (which it kind of does, but not to a big extent).
And I personally don't buy that 'tag is as good as flag for some things'. If something is bad proportions and it gets flagged for bad proportions, then the potential flag is not at fault, the art is.

Am curious what would be the result if the uploaders were prompted to type why they upload something borderline and how often would it be 'it's good' or something to that extent. And how often would that be causing an uproar like flagging is. (By any means, never implement anything like this, no reason to annoy fair uploaders). Just food for thought, because yapping and demanding at flags is easy, but thinking the other way around, not as much.

Provence said:

I think I said so before: If I think that the problems are so enormous, I go with a simple quality/anatomy/proportion check. Becsuse like you said: Everyone should notice it then when it gets deleted. But such flags should become the exceptions, there you are completely right with me. But a hard ban...eh, nope :-/. And again: I can only speak for myself.
An example with such generic flag reason would be post #71595.

Who said anything about a hard ban? But tagging "the shoulders look way too small for the body, well beyond just bad proportions" is pretty short and to the point. That's useful feedback for the person whose upload got flagged too, as well as the mod staff.

It's far better than "16 moderators reviewed this post, 16 did not like this post enough to approve" message you get if the art fails moderation, especially if the flag was very vague and generic as the types we're looking at for the flag vandalism thread.

Just as we're not going to hard ban anyone uploading their own art, we don't need to ban short responses for flagging. But if they're useless for determining what's wrong, and a user constantly uses that same reason to flag posts, it deserves a dmail or a feedback to guide them back to the light.

Saying "useless" is pretty much the same as "don't do that" if you want to give a feedback. If that wasn't what you want, then sorry.

But flagging is a bit more than just a mere feedback to the user. It's about Danbooru as a "high-quality" place. Sometimes this goes hand in hand, sometimes they fall apart for example older posts. I highly doubt that albert need feedback for these old posts today for himself :P. And a "Quality check" says "don't do that". Sometimes this applies to the uploader but also to the approver (if there is one).

Wypatroszony said:

But that's assuming the post you linked to 4 hours earlier doesn't fit the criteria you named (which it kind of does, but not to a big extent).

My bad, I got mixed up between bad anatomy with bad proportions, if that's what you mean.

Wypatroszony said:
And I personally don't buy that 'tag is as good as flag for some things'. If something is bad proportions and it gets flagged for bad proportions, then the potential flag is not at fault, the art is.

I'm not talking about the flag system itself, but the flag reason. One-liner flag reason like "bad proportions" or "bad anatomy" for me personally, is bad. What I enforces in this case is "if a flag has a reason that points the flaws of a pic in it, it will help Janitors saves much time rather than scanning the pic itself for flaws". I do this to lighten the workload of Janitors and Approvers alike, for I know very well that everyday they must deal with upload queue, flag queue, deletion appeals etc. More time = More efficiency.

Wypatroszony said:

Am curious what would be the result if the uploaders were prompted to type why they upload something borderline and how often would it be 'it's good' or something to that extent. And how often would that be causing an uproar like flagging is. (By any means, never implement anything like this, no reason to annoy fair uploaders). Just food for thought, because yapping and demanding at flags is easy, but thinking the other way around, not as much.

I kinda don't get it what the first statement means, but it seems the general consensus here is that if some pics have bad anatomy/proportions/etc but doesn't affect the overall quality of image (or at least their context) and not egregious or cringeworthy, it's alright to upload it.

Provence said:

Saying "useless" is pretty much the same as "don't do that" if you want to give a feedback. If that wasn't what you want, then sorry.

But flagging is a bit more than just a mere feedback to the user. It's about Danbooru as a "high-quality" place. Sometimes this goes hand in hand, sometimes they fall apart for example older posts. I highly doubt that albert need feedback for these old posts today for himself :P. And a "Quality check" says "don't do that". Sometimes this applies to the uploader but also to the approver (if there is one).

The question is "don't do what" with some posts. If I can't see the difference easily, how do I stop doing whatever I'm doing wrong?

I've had at least ten uploads that failed with "3 moderators reviewed this, 3 did not like this post to approve". If an upload gets flagged with "quality check" and times out with the above message, does it mean "stop uploading this artist", "don't upload My Little Pony x KanColle crossover pictures", "the line work is too rough to meet site criteria", or "you suck"?

That's why I'm in favor of a Howto which provides a tad more guidance, just as the Howto:upload page does. Feedback without information is little more than useless noise at best, as you can't learn what to stop doing without knowing what was bad.

Plus, it makes the approvers job easier - if I flag a post with "inferior scan of post x" or "JPEG artifacts", the approver wastes less time on the post and can deny it or approve it with less headache. Unless you can say every approver likes puzzles and trying to figure out what was bad about a "quality check" flagged post, I'd argue that even a little more explanation like "QC - scan artifacts" or "quality - poor coloring" is a better flag than "QC" .

Jarlath said:

The question is "don't do what" with some posts. If I can't see the difference easily, how do I stop doing whatever I'm doing wrong?

I've had at least ten uploads that failed with "3 moderators reviewed this, 3 did not like this post to approve". If an upload gets flagged with "quality check" and times out with the above message, does it mean "stop uploading this artist", "don't upload My Little Pony x KanColle crossover pictures", "the line work is too rough to meet site criteria", or "you suck"?

That's why I'm in favor of a Howto which provides a tad more guidance, just as the Howto:upload page does. Feedback without information is little more than useless noise at best, as you can't learn what to stop doing without knowing what was bad.

I think that is up to you then.
You was apparantly uploading an image that was worth being flagged and then deleted which means not even the most lenient janitors approved it. So yeah, the error is then by your upload and not the flag. And that means you should analyzing the post.

Provence said:

I think that is up to you then.
You was apparantly uploading an image that was worth being flagged and then deleted which means not even the most lenient janitors approved it. So yeah, the error is then by your upload and not the flag. And that means you should analyzing the post.

And if it looks like other posts, then what? Unless I'm a jobless hobo who can spend days viewing one post over and over without worrying about real life, I won't know where to begin analyzing unless a moderator gave more feedback.

And judging from my deleted posts, that's something that never happens. So yes, flags with a bit more detail would be useful. Otherwise, I'm going to chalk it up as flag vandalism without any feedback if neither flaggers or approver give reasons for a delete. Even a bad_anatomy or art_error tag on the post is better than a unhelpful "quality check" flag reason.

It'd be nice to see some administrative feedback here, but I've yet to see a red name show up. I'm going to guess they're as busy as approvers are.

Provence said:

I think that is up to you then.
You was apparantly uploading an image that was worth being flagged and then deleted which means not even the most lenient janitors approved it. So yeah, the error is then by your upload and not the flag. And that means you should analyzing the post.

That's not the point of his post. I think he wants to say that guidelines is very important to keep users in check.

Jarlath said:

And if it looks like other posts, then what? Unless I'm a jobless hobo who can spend days viewing one post over and over without worrying about real life, I won't know where to begin analyzing unless a moderator gave more feedback.

And judging from my deleted posts, that's something that never happens. So yes, flags with a bit more detail would be useful. Otherwise, I'm going 6o chalk it up as flag vandalism without any feedback if neither flagger's or approver give reasons for a delete.

It'd be nice to see some administrative feedback here, but I've yet to see a red name show up. I'm going to guess they're as busy as approvers are.

I guess you could always ask then if you don't find any clues
.
And stop overexaggerating. Too find flaws in a picture doesn't take much time and apparantly you haven't done it yet, since you're not a jobless hobo. Same for Janitor work: That is something you haven't done and you are just assuming. You have to take a bit personal responsibility for your uploads then.

And we have moderative, not administrative feedback.
Read Wypatroszony's post. Should have some weight, I guess.

Provence said:

And we have moderative, not administrative feedback.
Read Wypatroszony's post. Should have some weight, I guess.

Not to be a nitpick, but it seems he misunderstands a bit. We're talking about flag reasons, not the system itself.

Sacriven said:

Not to be a nitpick, but it seems he misunderstands a bit. We're talking about flag reasons, not the system itself.

Well, I'm just using this little sentence here:
"then the potential flag is not at fault, the art is."
-> The uploader has to take responsibility for their upload, I guess?

Provence said:

Well, I'm just using this little sentence here:
"then the potential flag is not at fault, the art is."
-> The uploader has to take responsibility for their upload, I guess?

Yep. Being responsible doesn't mean we only takes blame from our uploads. Sometimes we also defends it. I think that's why the seemingly trivial "flag reason" thingy become such an uproar. Each of us trying to be responsible, but in different way.

Plus, if the reason isn't one which I can easily figure out, it's something I'd mentally loved harassment and move on.
Hell, the flag that triggered this thread is a type which was not listed in the "flags are not to be used for" section of the popup.

There's nothing in the current flagging popup that mentions "do not use flagging for things you don't like" - a howto:flag wiki article could fix this by expanding on the Reason to Flag section as well as "Don't flag for trivial reasons or things which can be tagged, including the following"

If we had that Howto, I suspect whoever said "Pure girl shouldn't be lewded tbh." may have paused before using that flag reason. Or they may have ignored it anyways, and then could get corrective feedback from some person who could point them at that article.

And if it makes flagging more precise, that'd be great too.

To make it short:

post #2482492 (flag history): this is flag vandalism
post #2482547 (flag history): this is not flag vandalism

Jarlath said:

There's nothing in the current flagging popup that mentions "do not use flagging for things you don't like" - a howto:flag wiki article could fix this by expanding on the Reason to Flag section as well as "Don't flag for trivial reasons or things which can be tagged, including the following"

If we had that Howto, I suspect whoever said "Pure girl shouldn't be lewded tbh." may have paused before using that flag reason. Or they may have ignored it anyways, and then could get corrective feedback from some person who could point them at that article.

And if it makes flagging more precise, that'd be great too.

+1

reiyasona said:

To make it short:

post #2482547 (flag history): this is not flag vandalism

+1

Short and to the point. I like that flag reason. It's concise but has enough data to work from, and that goes well beyond the scope of the bad_anatomy tag.

Is this thread for reporting flag vandalism, or just discussing the definition?

post #2496673 got flagged with "..."

fossilnix said:

Is this thread for reporting flag vandalism, or just discussing the definition?

post #2496673 got flagged with "..."

Hopefully the approvers note who flagged that and keep an eye out for a pattern.