Adding "artist commentary" to uploads

Provence said:

See the edit above.
If I don't know if something is useful, then I can't think that they are useless or useful for the post.

That said: It wouldn't hurt if the commentary is added by default or if this isn't an option: Don't blame anyone for being lazy.

My modus operandi when it comes to this is unless you have reason to not add the commentary then add it. Personally I can understand basic Japanese and at least get the gist of just about everything that shows up in commentaries, but someone who really doesn't get anything should be uploading it all the time. If in doubt, add it. Particularly if it's a single image rather than a set (where the commentary could be referring to a completely different image to the one you uploaded.

edit: wow this thread is moving fast.

Provence said:

Also: I don't think that it is the Translator's duty to give the commentary, I only say that they have a better judgment when a commentary should be added or not.
That said: Nobody has to give a commentary but if someone thinks that a commentary is useful for the post, then it should be added. And Translators have a better judgment, since most commentaries are in Japanese. That is all here from me.
That's why it is guideline: It is nice to have a commentary, translators are more suited to add it since they know that the commentary provides useful information, but it should not be mandatory.

See, the thing is though, that the translator isn't responsible for adding in the initial untranslated commentary -- that's on the uploader. We don't go out proactively going into image sources and grabbing it unless we already had the intention or interest to do so in the first place.

More often than not they should care about whether commentary gets added in or not -- most good commentary provides extra value to a work. Check out pool #11797 for example. I had to retroactively add that commentary back in for most of the images I didn't upload. Translators (or better yet just people that know the language) know whether it is useful only if it's there. You can't expect them to know if commentary is useful a priori.

It shouldn't be mandatory, but it should be highly suggested.

Well, only one click is needed to add the commentary if using the bookmarklet.
Still, if I compare this with tagging, then the differences are obvious: Tagging is "Tag what you see". So one should only the tags that are visible and the tags that you know are useful for the post (i.e. no misuse)
For the commentary, it is quite comparable: If I don't know what they've said, I just leave it out but if they may provide useful information, then it can always be added later and no harm is done. That also implies that it is no one's duty to add the commentary. Just think of it as a volunteer task.
That said: Tagging is mandatory while adding the commentary shouldn't be. It would be nice, but it also doesn't help if the content is just gibberish (Tagging does help always) and the request tags gets bloated up.

Provence said:

Well, only one click is needed to add the commentary if using the bookmarklet.
Still, if I compare this with tagging, then the differences are obvious: Tagging is "Tag what you see". So one should only the tags that are visible and the tags that you know are useful for the post (i.e. no misuse)
For the commentary, it is quite comparable: If I don't know what they've said, I just leave it out but if they may provide useful information, then it can always be added later and no harm is done.
That said: Tagging is mandatory while adding the commentary shouldn't be. It would be nice, but it also doesn't help if the request tags gets bloated up.

That's evazion's concern though, that it can't be added later. There's no surprise about the population of entries with bad id whose commentary has already pined for the fjords. The suggested modus operandi would be to add it anyway, even if you don't understand it. Especially if you don't understand it.

Of course tagging is mandatory, but evazion is right in that danbooru preserves art. Shouldn't commentary account for the same? You can't refute that translated commentary doesn't add to an image's artistic or creative value.

EDIT: And for the record, what I mean when I say uploaders are 'lazy' I mean that they just don't care about commentary when others might. Not a whole lot of thought goes into the uploading process when you're just focused on getting out images with only the 20 or so basic gentags.

Provence said:

Well, only one click is needed to add the commentary if using the bookmarklet.
Still, if I compare this with tagging, then the differences are obvious: Tagging is "Tag what you see". So one should only the tags that are visible and the tags that you know are useful for the post (i.e. no misuse)
For the commentary, it is quite comparable: If I don't know what they've said, I just leave it out but if they may provide useful information, then it can always be added later and no harm is done. That also implies that it is no one's duty to add the commentary. Just think of it as a volunteer task.
That said: Tagging is mandatory while adding the commentary shouldn't be. It would be nice, but it also doesn't help if the content is just gibberish (Tagging does help always) and the request tags gets bloated up.

Only one click is needed for the uploader to add the commentary, you mean.

Someone else adding it afterwards, as you seem to be suggesting should be the approach, requires someone to go onto the original page, check whether the commentary is worth uploading, open the add artist commentary box on danbooru, and copy across the title and the description separately. Which is a lot more effort, and all because the person who added the art is either too lazy or too scared that they will add a commentary that does no harm but provides little of value? The "no harm done" situation is it being added when it isn't necessary. Not adding it when it is of value is certainly not "no harm done".

^ seconded. Well said, kuudere. I also forget it's more of a PITA to copy over commentary outside of the upload page. I also have to get the internal links too, which is another annoying thing.

Not really.
If it is no duty for anyone, then nobody has to put any effort in adding the commentary
If someone doesn't have to put any effort in something, then it is voluntarily.
If someone then wants to add the commentary, then they are doing that on their behalf.
That means that it is no extra work for this person, because of the preconditions.

That said my reasoning is only following how the artist commentary is treated right now on Danbooru. That doesn't mean that it is my own opinion, but I only echo what I read out of this guideline and I gave some examples how the commentary appears to be treated based on an example with the user Sacriven who always adds an (untranslated) commentary.

One could change it and there are reasons to do so and make it mandotory. But I wonder what the Moderators have to say to this.

Provence said:

Not really.
If it is no duty for anyone, then nobody has to put any effort in adding the commentary
If someone doesn't have to put any effort in something, then it is voluntarily.
If someone then wants to add the commentary, then they are doing that on their behalf.
That means that it is no extra work for this person, because of the preconditions.

I'm going to assue that what you're trying to say got lost somewhere there because that final line does not in any way follow on from the earlier three and is utter nonsense anyway. Then again, the first line appears to be entirely dependent on said final one...

(edit is just fixing a spelling error)

Provence said:

Not really.
If it is no duty for anyone, then nobody has to put any effort in adding the commentary
If someone doesn't have to put any effort in something, then it is voluntarily.
If someone then wants to add the commentary, then they are doing that on their behalf.
That means that it is no extra work for this person, because of the preconditions.

That said my reasoning is only following how the artist commentary is treated right now on Danbooru. That doesn't mean that it is my own opinion, but I only echo what I read out of this guideline and I gave some examples how the commentary appears to be treated based on an example with the user Sacriven who always adds an (untranslated) commentary.

One could change it and there are reasons to do so and make it mandotory. But I wonder what the Moderators have to say to this.

Sounds to me like you're a hardliner on adding absolutely no commentary to your uploads then. Not sure what kind of circular reasoning this is though.

Of course it's extra work if we want to do it. There's no easy way to copy over the commentary to a work in one fell swoop unless it's from Twitter, then in which case you just copy paste the text body of the tweet. You really sound like you're trivializing the problem, which in one way or another sounds like an insult to the people who actually do add, use, and appreciate commentary in their works :P

I might be one of the few that regularly do translate commentary when given the chance while browsing. There's been a few times where I've translated commentary from other uploaders (such as Sacriven, who you've often mentioned) but only because it was there; if it wasn't, I would probably not bother to look through the original source. Why you're asking us "translators" to bother doing it because we care so much, versus the uploaders that only have to checkmark a single box during upload, bothers me.

You're putting the problem into someone else's hands because of a current guideline that can change at any time. A guideline we're discussing right now. Quite honestly, if we went by such a phrase hardline as you seem to suggest, then someone should be vetting the hell out of all my uploads' commentary. Because a lot of them are really useless, but I added it anyway because I clicked one extra checkbox. And it's become sort of habitual.

It seems you're misunderstanding me a bit. I'm really only echoing the guideline as it is right now, only to show if we really understand that correctly.
Because if we want to change something, we first have to understand what this "something" actually means and that is this guideline. And a guideline is not a rule, i.e. it is no duty to anyone :P.
That said: I'm uploading according to this guideline absolutely correct and if someone thinks that it should be added (I took Translators as an example since they mostly translate that, too), then it is fine. But so do other users as well who are adding the commentary with any content. Both looks correct to me.
So...according to this, do you really think that this guideline needs to be changed? Because if it is changed, then we have to look at some scenarios:
1. If there is a set of images, like 5 images in one pixiv post, should every post get the commentary?
2. If there is an English commentary on DeviantArt and the same artist uploads the same post on Pixiv and both versions gets uploaded: Should we add commentaries seperately or is it enough to only add one, because those images will be in a parent-child relationship. Same with Twitter/Pixiv couples or any other.
3. Posts of a higher resolution, like the posts someone gets when they are uploading a reward from Patreon.
4. What if the artist does a revision on their commentaries. Should the older be deleted and replaced with the latest version or should we keep it and make a tag like the md5_mismatch that indicates a change. Here it's not the image but the commentary.
5. Similar to point 2&3: Should the commentary be added to any post that is visually similar to the parent post? An excellent example would be the post relationship of post #2437576 (Rating Q, NSFW)

Maybe there are other scenarios that I'm overlooking for now :3.

But ok, I've never really added a commentary so far. Maybe one or two if I really didn't get the image's content. That begs the question: Are commentaries really useful if they are added to any picture? It surely doesn't harm anyone but is there also a point to it if we have over 90% untranslated (number is an overexaggerated example)?

Provence said:

It seems you're misunderstanding me a bit. I'm really only echoing the guideline as it is right now, only to show if we really understand that correctly.
Because if we want to change something, we first have to understand what this "something" actually means and that is this guideline. And a guideline is not a rule, i.e. it is no duty to anyone :P.
That said: I'm uploading according to this guideline absolutely correct and if someone thinks that it should be added (I took Translators as an example since they mostly translate that, too), then it is fine. But so do other users as well who are adding the commentary with any content. Both looks correct to me.
So...according to this, do you really think that this guideline needs to be changed? Because if it is changed, then we have to look at some scenarios:
1. If there is a set of images, like 5 images in one pixiv post, should every post get the commentary?
2. If there is an English commentary on DeviantArt and the same artist uploads the same post on Pixiv and both versions gets uploaded: Should we add commentaries seperately or is it enough to only add one, because those images will be in a parent-child relationship. Same with Twitter/Pixiv couples or any other.
3. Posts of a higher resolution, like the posts someone gets when they are uploading a reward from Patreon.
4. What if the artist does a revision on their commentaries. Should the older be deleted and replaced with the latest version or should we keep it and make a tag like the md5_mismatch that indicates a change. Here it's not the image but the commentary.
5. Similar to point 2&3: Should the commentary be added to any post that is visually similar to the parent post? An excellent example would be the post relationship of post #2437576 (Rating Q, NSFW)

Maybe there are other scenarios that I'm overlooking for now :3.

Well, we don't right now. The guideline for uploading commentary right now is really really subject to misinterpretation, especially given the sentiment some of us here have echoed that since most of the uploaders don't understand Japanese (or Chinese, Korean, etc) they don't add in the commentary. Now lets take you for example: if you saw a funny commentary in English or German, wouldn't you be more inclined to include such commentary in your uploads (and if it's German maybe provide a short translation)? I think most people who like sharing things would. But if you don't understand, of course you'd be less likely to add it in. We can't trust uploaders to know whether commentary is useful or not. You can debate that all you want, but it's a fact that most of us don't understand the foreign languages in these commentaries. If we did, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Anyways, right now isn't about correctness, or shouldn't be. I think we've spent too long on dawdling on whether uploaders who don't upload commentary are lazy or not because of the "I don't understand this shit" issue, so we should just assume the precondition for now that uploading commentary is HIGHLY recommended, ESPECIALLY if you don't understand it (as kuudere and I have said). Sacriven is the only other uploader I know who consistently follows such a notion out of all the major uploaders we have as linked in forum #124137 (commentary reports).

So I think both the uploading page should change (have include commentary checked by default) and the guideline should change. So let's talk about the scenarios you've listed.

• 1. This depends on whether it's a twitter collection (まとめ) or another sort of collection. My rule of thumb is that if it's useful and offers more than "This is Twitter matome" in addition to every picture being unique, then I add it to every entry in the collection.
• Case in point with post #2517063 and post #2557078. They're sourced from the same collection on pixiv but are not variants of each other. Another example would be post #2565048 and post #2565049
• If the images aren't unique in the collection, then I just add it to the parent: post #2570196 (could find a better one, but for now this should do). However, I don't always do this. If the commentary does add significant value to the image then I add it to both: post #2546598.
• 2. We can probably edit in both. If the artist posted different captions to pixiv/seiga/nijie then we can always separate them out -- it's not like there's limited space.
• 3. Add in the caption from the lower res/lower quality if there doesn't already exist an original caption from wherever the higher resolution/quality sourced image was sourced. I did this with post #2570036 (note the twitter upload is not present).
• 4. This has happened before with post #2559243 and post #2559287. In this case he actually reupped a larger res version and updated the commentary, but in the case that it does change and the entry still stays the same then probably. It's a here and there thing though, really. This is difficult for entries with inner site links in the commentary since RaisingK fixes those actively: example. I assume there would have to be some change to the way his bot works to catch things like that. Maybe it's an easy fix, not sure.
• 5. Covered in one of my sub points in #1.

I've addressed these for now, but more case studies might pop up if they come across my mind. This seems to make up the majority though.

EDIT: While I'm at it, I'd also like to request a new feature (and maybe I'll mention this in another major thread) but can we have some sort of a "Copy Commentary" button just like we do for copying notes for builders? I don't like having to have two windows open to copy 2-4 things into each other when it seems like there could be some sort of script or site built-in function for builders to just do it in one fell swoop. I'm thinking it could work like a dialogue box where you put all the post #'s you want to copy an entry's commentary into and have a checkmark for if you want to overwrite commentary (in the case that it's already there, but you wish to update it). This would help a lot with updating commentary since from time to time I revise some of mine and have to copy it over multiple entries.

My answers:
1. In general, no. If the images are an obvious series (such that they are parts of a series-based pool or get parented to one another) then the first image should get the commentary (example: post #2502539 I put the commentary in the first of the 3 images, all of which are part of the same manga). If you understand the commentary and see it applies to a specific image, or if the images in the set are extremely similar and you are only uploading one of them then it should be added to that image. If you don't get what they are saying and it could apply to all you might want to add it to all of them. A lot of the time these commentaries are not actually related to any specific picture* in which case I generally just leave it.**
2. Commentaries should preferably be added separately, particularly if the commentaries are not the same. I've never done this sort of upload, though.
3. As 2.
4. Just update the commentary if you spot the change. With MD5 mismatches if the difference is significant the new one gets uploaded as well, whereas you wouldn't want both versions of a commentary. Usually changes are just a little bit extra added on the end anyway.
5. This example would fall under what I mentioned in 1 - put the commentary in the first image.

*Or are just bland "This is a twitter collection for x month" or "these are one hour draws" or "rakugaki"...
**A slight variation of this is when the commentary is a list of titles/details for each of the pictures in the set. I generally leave these out but would it be wrong to instead put the title given for the image in the commentary for that image, and thereby only including the relevant part of the actual commentary in the section?

Just realized that if you use the bookmarklet when uploading from Nicoseiga:
There is no option to inclide the commentary.

kuuderes_shadow said:

• 2. We can probably edit in both. If the artist posted different captions to pixiv/seiga/nijie then we can always separate them out -- it's not like there's limited space.

I've done that before myself, with post #2387146. Not sure if that's the preferable format, but it's all I could think of.

EB said:

I've done that before myself, with post #2387146. Not sure if that's the preferable format, but it's all I could think of.

Well, it is what help:artist commentary says to do. I don't know if there's a prettier way to do it.

Anyways, I went ahead and updated that page (help:artist commentary) to be more relevant. Feel free to review the changes, but I think the current guidelines I've changed it to reflect the current status quo amongst users on commentary. Now it's just a matter of how do we convince more uploaders to include commentary in their uploads, or make it the default option…

EDIT: Also updated help:upload notice so that more users notice it when uploading.

Mikaeri said:

Well, it is what help:artist commentary says to do.

Huh, I hadn't seen that. So I was unknowingly in line with guidelines already posted. Nice.

Mikaeri said:

I don't know if there's a prettier way to do it.

Commentary tends to look fine. It's more that the titles look a little awkward since you're forced to put them all on one line and the sources are bolded in addition to the actual titles.

RizzL tends to do that for his uploads for some reason -- he did the same thing for post #2536139 and post #2573243 (nicoseiga, same caption different title). I assume it would be good to include both for most of his work, although it can (and probably will) look unsightly.

It's another one of those... 'edge' cases? It's a little inconsistent, but maybe we might need to draft some sort of guideline for that thing in addition to the above.

Type-kun said:

What we DO need is a way to easily pull commentary from the source when the post is already uploaded. I've made an issue about that some time ago, it waits for its time.

This has bothered me for a while too. But I just looked at it and it seems not so hard to add, so I'll take a shot at it.

Provence said:

Just realized that if you use the bookmarklet when uploading from Nicoseiga:
There is no option to inclide the commentary.

Currently Pixiv, Twitter, and Deviant Art are the only sites that can automatically get the commentary. I'll try to look at other sites when I get the time for it.

Wow, this topic expands very quick.

Be like me, adding commentaries but didn't bother to add commentary request. Mostly because I forget though, for there is no "Add commentary request" checkbox on initial tagging box.

I do the same thing. RaisingK's bot adds it anyway, so it's not like it matters that much. I doubt commentary request is that seriously used anymore given how populated the tag is. We could just link to topic #7805 in the commentary request and translation request wiki pages if someone seriously wants to see something translated, I think.