So we are at the point where having a picture viewed by four janitors in three days is considered average again.
Maybe it's time to recruit more?
Posted under General
Megamet said:
So we are at the point where having a picture viewed by four janitors in three days is considered average again.
Maybe it's time to recruit more?
Agreed, this is getting ridiculous.
I probably shouldn't say anything since I'm just a Member but this is crazy.
A lot of actually good art is getting deleted and ignored because there aren't enough janitors to approve them and appealing them does nothing for the same reasons, too many appeals and too few janitors.
I say the whole approval system needs to be changed but that might be a bit extreme.
I too am hoping to see more approvers on the site -- I think it is a little bit of a crux compared to the other imageboards that we manually vet all of the uploads from members without the unrestricted uploads, but I won't disagree that it has led to a generally high degree of quality. It's just that the workload is starting to outpace the available volunteer labor.
Regarding myself though, I'm too early to ask for anything like approval permissions. In the first place, I don't even have unrestricted uploads and even I think my deletion rate is fairly high so far (at around 4% according to the report). I'm putting the effort in to improve it, but I think it'll take some time.
Best of luck finding those who can offer themselves up though!
I've been asked off-hand before by a Janitor, and my answer remains the same. I honestly don't have the time to act as a proper Janitor, and I imagine this is so even for current Janitors. Heck, I don't even upload as much anymore, despite thousands of images sitting in backlog to be uploaded from my hard drive.
A Janitor not only needs a lot of time on their hands, they can't be too picky about images or have too high a standard for quality. However, while I am not qualified to say, those who want to be Janitors can probably talk with the higher-ups about being a Temporary Janitor (Or whatever it's called) where you're essentially an intern who has to prove that he has what it takes to be an approver for a certain period of time.
One caveat to the janitor thing is that there have been more and more people getting unrestricted upload privilege, which bypasses the need to send images to the queue, but also at the same time opens up the possibility of becoming over-lax with the quality of one's uploads.
There definitely needs to be an addition of active janitors on the site, if the posts deletion appeal thread seems to be any indication. I would have to believe the admins, mod and janitor teams are already aware of the issue, so maybe the problem is finding qualified janitors for the gap now?
albert used to have a process for test janitors years ago but I don't think he's used that for quite a while now. It's quite simple what needs to be done: a mod or admin just needs to step up, go through the list of top uploaders, and promote some people. The top uploaders list shows plenty of active users that are well-qualified to be approvers.
I think the current automatic process (described in topic #13212) might have to be revised as well. It doesn't provide nearly enough new blood to cover the losses lately.
feline_lump said:
I think the current automatic process (described in topic #13212) might have to be revised as well. It doesn't provide nearly enough new blood to cover the losses lately.
Thanks for linking that. I actually wasn't aware of the current automatic process for janitor selection, but now that I do I kind of want to offer some thoughts and suggestions on it. I don't think I will post a new topic since I think this topic is still highly relevant, however.
First off, let me outline some key things I've found in that discussion:
I think it's a good system for what it is aiming for, but there are a few flaws with it:
So there are some focuses I want to outline:
What I want to suggest is that maybe we have a sort of "selective approval" report just like we do for existing users and contributors. However instead of using uploads or favorites as the sole metric, why not we use things like tag gardening, positive comment feedback, or positive flags as metrics? This way we'll at least be able to curb some of the mod queue while at the same time putting our most active users to use. Tag gardeners constantly look through posts for anything relevant to tag while being able to approve an image; users with positive comment feedback are oftentimes the most receptive and friendly users to the site and offer helpful feedback; and users with a high positive flag rate are known to have a keen eye for good art (although as I'm aware the current flagging system is highly exploited as mentioned in topic #13177)
Now this sort of selection process is not without its' flaws. A user with approval privileges, even without unrestricted uploads, can just have a friend pick out art he wants to be on this imageboard and then just approve whatever he desires with that 50 image daily limit (or more of there are more friends/sockpuppets). However, I think this would be easily noticeable and would (probably should) lead to a huge warning, demotion, or in special cases, a ban.
But I think there are other things we can also do to make this a more acceptable process, such as perhaps making the permission more restrictive -- so that users aren't compelled to approve whatever they see and just like, without consideration of the many aspects of an entry's quality. Perhaps there should be some sort of an approval limit, maybe like 30-50 approvals a day depending on the user's activity. And the limit could increase or disappear altogether as there is positive reception over such a certain user's approvals. Maybe we can even reward them for going through the deletion appeals thread (topic #8554) and approving deleted entries that the score suggests that they should not have. Although I did say that "what's popular is not always good", I think that score does have at least some relevant connection with image quality.
Just my thoughts on this, but I hope some of these ideas may be useful to someone.
Updated
Oh man, I actually wanted to take a longer break than a bit more than one week from Danbooru, but then I saw this topic and apparantly, I had to approve quite a bit now; the mod action page is now 2 pages bigger. And while not every approval may be the best and some images are overly borderline, there were some decent images (especially Pokémon images; I like these little guys :3).
@Ricetaffy
I don't know how often the automated recruitment is done per year, but I can tellyou that if it is run, your first point falls apart:
The Janitors are not chosen by the score of the favorites. Albert even stated directly that they won't chose people who only have favorited the "best" images on Danbooru. That concern was brought up by kittey back then on Github and albert responded that way. It is like you said: The median score has to be between 3 and 10. I think it can vary a bit and according to that, it seems logical that the user who should become a Janitor are chosen manually, i.e. there is someone looking over their favorites.
That should also lighten up your second concern about the comics. While it is true that users who mostly upload comics do have a hard time to become a Contributor, I believe (i.e. I'm not certain) that this also counts for comics. But if your second point is true, then I have to say that there a lot of images that are comics and they are in the moderation queue. "Normal" pictures are still the majority, but it would definitely not hurt to have a Janitor that goes frequently through the queue and looks over the comics. For example the quality and more importantly how decent the language is. I think nobody want a horrible comic in the English language and the Translators don't want to see a comic with poor Japanese.
So it would be great if there were a Janitor that can judge both: Language and art quality. I can't fill this role properly, but I can judge German and French comics in that regard, but the majority of comics is written in Japanese which is the realm of said Translators.
And for your second concern: Chosing users manually and relying on other data
That is a very good idea.
There was once a Janitor who was chosen some months ago, but they weren't active at all.
Yes, it is possible to judge their activity ccording to their favorite list, but this is pretty vague. So I did something at the beginning of November which was creating a list of users and I took multiple things into account: Upload actitivity and quality, translation activity nd how good those were and the favorite list and the quality.
There is also another problem with positive feedback: It is true that users with good feedback are doing great things for this page. But should that qualify to be able to approve posts? I think not. This is too vague since pos. feedbacks can be handed out for multiple things, like contributing in the forums. Now it is not a bad thing off course, but it doesn't really say something about the sense of quality. They could have for example 60% deleted posts themselves. But I don't say that it should be excluded: It should also be clear what the user get their feedbacks for. If they are good at contributing or translating, then this is a good point in my eyes and I'm willing to report those users again to the moderation if it is necessary.
Like I said I reported four users to the moderation and two (Randeel+Nitrogen09, mostly because the total picture of image quality is coherent in my eyes) of them were chosen but for now, there is apparantly "enough".
As for flags: That is something I am a bit wary about. Flags don't essentially say something about the user's sense what should belong to this site but what doesn't or shouldn't. It is the negative point of what "I" want to see of approvers: Being able to judge what does belong to this page and this is harder to "decide" than to say that another image doesn't belong to this page. One Janitor should also be able to look at borderline posts and another point is that users with approval permission are free to flag an unlimited amount of images.
Long story short: Translating and Image quality are a big yes in my eyes, while positive feedbacks to some degree and the flagging record is a big no (from me), because it is the opposite of what Janitors should do. Although my flagging record is quite high with nearly or over 900 flagged posts and by far not all were "succesful".
About your last paragraph: Nope.
I don't want to see a limit of approvals. At least not for experienced Janitors.
But I still like this idea: If we recruit new Janitors, then they could be at first be Test Janitors. Especially because the choosing process is still very vague.
But for expereienced Janitors, this would fill the Deletion appeal topic with a ton of deleted posts. We would run behind the amount of uploads and we end up only undeleting posts because we weren't able to approve them.
So this idea is good, but should only be chosen for New (Test) Janitors to see if their judgement is trustworthy.
As for "experienced" Janitors: There is the option to flag. But note that Member users can only flag once per day and the users higher without approval permission can flag 10 images per day (Gold, Platinum, Builder are treated the same).
Short: I hope I could lift the fog a bit since there are indeed some problems about the moderation process, because it is so vague to "outsiders".
@Log
That would be great. Maybe you can talk a bit about the topic with Wypatroszony because I always report users who are worthy for promotion to him. Maybe you two can find some users I didn't notice together?
@Provence
Before I respond in full, I just wanted to say thanks for such an elaborate response.
Provence said:
I don't know how often the automated recruitment is done per year, but I can tellyou that if it is run, your first point falls apart:
The Janitors are not chosen by the score of the favorites. Albert even stated directly that they won't chose people who only have favorited the "best" images on Danbooru. That concern was brought up by kittey back then on Github and albert responded that way. It is like you said: The median score has to be between 3 and 10. I think it can vary a bit and according to that, it seems logical that the user who should become a Janitor are chosen manually, i.e. there is someone looking over their favorites.
That should also lighten up your second concern about the comics. While it is true that users who mostly upload comics do have a hard time to become a Contributor, I believe (i.e. I'm not certain) that this also counts for comics. But if your second point is true, then I have to say that there a lot of images that are comics and they are in the moderation queue. "Normal" pictures are still the majority, but it would definitely not hurt to have a Janitor that goes frequently through the queue and looks over the comics. For example the quality and more importantly how decent the language is. I think nobody want a horrible comic in the English language and the Translators don't want to see a comic with poor Japanese.
So it would be great if there were a Janitor that can judge both: Language and art quality. I can't fill this role properly, but I can judge German and French comics in that regard, but the majority of comics is written in Japanese which is the realm of said Translators.
Ah, I see. If I'm understanding this correctly, you are right in that regard. I don't primarily read Japanese manga (well, I do, but just not what this site offers) but I do agree on the fact that there should be standards for good language use, save for engrish and ranguage where the posts' uses of poor translations is unintentionally (or even intentionally) humorous.
And for your second concern: Chosing users manually and relying on other data
That is a very good idea.
There was once a Janitor who was chosen some months ago, but they weren't active at all.
Yes, it is possible to judge their activity ccording to their favorite list, but this is pretty vague. So I did something at the beginning of November which was creating a list of users and I took multiple things into account: Upload actitivity and quality, translation activity nd how good those were and the favorite list and the quality.
There is also another problem with positive feedback: It is true that users with good feedback are doing great things for this page. But should that qualify to be able to approve posts? I think not. This is too vague since pos. feedbacks can be handed out for multiple things, like contributing in the forums. Now it is not a bad thing off course, but it doesn't really say something about the sense of quality. They could have for example 60% deleted posts themselves. But I don't say that it should be excluded: It should also be clear what the user get their feedbacks for. If they are good at contributing or translating, then this is a good point in my eyes and I'm willing to report those users again to the moderation if it is necessary.
Like I said I reported four users to the moderation and two (Randeel+Nitrogen09, mostly because the total picture of image quality is coherent in my eyes) of them were chosen but for now, there is apparantly "enough".
As for flags: That is something I am a bit wary about. Flags don't essentially say something about the user's sense what should belong to this site but what doesn't or shouldn't. It is the negative point of what "I" want to see of approvers: Being able to judge what does belong to this page and this is harder to "decide" than to say that another image doesn't belong to this page. One Janitor should also be able to look at borderline posts and another point is that users with approval permission are free to flag an unlimited amount of images.Long story short: Translating and Image quality are a big yes in my eyes, while positive feedbacks to some degree and the flagging record is a big no (from me), because it is the opposite of what Janitors should do. Although my flagging record is quite high with nearly or over 900 flagged posts and by far not all were "succesful".
I agree with you on these fronts. Though I was a little hasty with the way I worded that, but it's as you said -- I mean the sort of positive feedback that suggests that a user knows what's approval-worthy and not approval-worthy. Translations and good discussion habits are good and all, but they don't mean very much to the approval process. And again, thanks for clearing up things about the flagging process. I barely (if ever) use the flagging feature because I don't browse this site thoroughly enough to see what's worth or not worth flagging. Most of the time I just follow up on my favorite art and then take a few glimpses here and there throughout the day to see if there's anything else I like.
But yes, I think it would definitely be a good idea to at least consider using other metrics for users and selectively giving them approval privileges, which brings me to that last point.
About your last paragraph: Nope.
I don't want to see a limit of approvals. At least not for experienced Janitors.
But I still like this idea: If we recruit new Janitors, then they could be at first be Test Janitors. Especially because the choosing process is still very vague.
But for expereienced Janitors, this would fill the Deletion appeal topic with a ton of deleted posts. We would run behind the amount of uploads and we end up only undeleting posts because we weren't able to approve them.
So this idea is good, but should only be chosen for New (Test) Janitors to see if their judgement is trustworthy.
As for "experienced" Janitors: There is the option to flag. But note that Member users can only flag once per day and the users higher without approval permission can flag 10 images per day (Gold, Platinum, Builder are treated the same).Short: I hope I could lift the fog a bit since there are indeed some problems about the moderation process, because it is so vague to "outsiders".
Ah, I meant for just newly appointed test janitors. Experienced janitors already know how to do the job, thus they have the title and that responsibility. It's just that again, its a concern if we appoint new janitors and it turns out that their judgement is sub-par (they approve images that get flagged or end up with a negative score, etc). Then the higher ups (mods, janitors, admins, etc) have to clean that stuff up.
Once again, thanks for such an elaborate response, and also clearing up some of my misunderstandings. You are right though, that it does seem that the approval process is a bit of a mystery… I wonder if there exists some sort of meta-wikipage for this kind of thing, how janitors are appointed and the like aside from help:users.
I only recently got promoted to Builder status by Wypatroszony, so everything still feels so new to me. It is refreshing, however, that these ideas are being considered.
Well, I would totally subscribe if there is a testing time for new Janitors. That way, we can easily filter out users that aren't active (if they are chosen by this automated thing after some months) and most of the time, new Janitors don't have such a high approval amount, so it is easy to look over their approvals. If the moderation isn't satisfied, they can flag some of these user's approvals and kick them out.
But it is only a thought experiment and doesn't help much if we can't hear the opinions of the moderators and the administrators.
But from the basics, it would ensure quality control and one could see if a Janitor could go haywire.
I only recently got promoted to Builder status by Wypatroszony, so everything still feels so new to me.
:3
Congrats.
Won't take too long that you are promoted to Contributor if you continue like this. I'll fight for you :P.
Provence said:
Well, I would totally subscribe if there is a testing time for new Janitors. That way, we can easily filter out users that aren't active (if they are chosen by this automated thing after some months) and most of the time, new Janitors don't have such a high approval amount, so it is easy to look over their approvals. If the moderation isn't satisfied, they can flag some of these user's approvals and kick them out.
But it is only a thought experiment and doesn't help much if we can't hear the opinions of the moderators and the administrators.
But from the basics, it would ensure quality control and one could see if a Janitor could go haywire.:3
Congrats.
Won't take too long that you are promoted to Contributor if you continue like this. I'll fight for you :P.
Yeah, I'm actually kind of curious what the higher up mods and admins have to say, and if there will be any new considerations for users to have janitor/approval permissions. I was a bit afraid that my ideas would sound a bit far-fetched, but I wanted to at least offer them and take the criticism as needed.
And thanks! Yeah, it actually came as a surprise to me -- one of my friends actually jested to me that it'd take at least one or two more months of consistent uploading, but I spent a lot of time here… I guess that's how it turned out. I'll do my best, although finals will keep me busy for the coming few weeks.
I thought the quality check was unusually strict... So it's a matter of lacking enough janitors, and not that the quality isn't good. Well, I think I might've screwed up with some of my choices, but it seems some of my deleted uploads have been accepted...
I got promoted out of the blue (which was surprising, considering the amount of deleted uploads skyrocketed from 8 to 30-ish, and I only just returned this past month) by Wypatroszony, and I feel compelled to help out. Unfortunately, I have very high standards... I don't like questionable or explicit artwork, so that's most likely to be passed up by me. If that's not a problem, then I'd be more than happy to help out. Winter break is coming up, so I'll have a lot more free time to look over uploads.
Though now I'm uploading comics, and you guys are saying those who upload mostly comics aren't really great candidates, or something like that. Whoops. ^^;
The Janitors aren't that strict. At least not me :3. So it is no miracle that if the most lenient Janitor is taking off for some time, that there are some appeals more. The Janitors are only so strict as the most lenient one.
But regarding this, there is an issue which might be that some users should be asking around more often in topic #7934 rather than creating such a topic or they could directly contacting a Janitor. But they shouldn't beg (there might be other consequences; one should read the user record wiki.) but they should ask. I still have one DMail sitting around here because a user did ask me.
@Monobrobe
I guess I've worded my sentence wrong then. Comics won't really help you if you ONLY upload them. I can still report these users, but it isn't very likely that they'll get promoted. If you have a good mix, then it might even help you, but it will never hurt you if they are not deleted.
And regarding your del. ratio: You serious? That is still less than I had with the same amount of uploads (nearly 1.000 :3).
But yeah, I can't be too promising, but there are more than one user under my radar for getting reported to a moderator :3.