The moderation process is another complex issue that's outside the scope of this topic.
If that discussion is needed, to fix problems where they don't really exist, then we can have it somewhere else.
albert said:
From a user's perspective, with the current arms race, I think uploader information is not useful. The problem is uploader does not work like bookmarking or retweeting. A post can only have one uploader, and currently that is determined by who got to it first. Is that information useful? All it really tells you is that the uploader was in a position to check Pixiv during rush hour, or they have access to tools that expedite discovery and uploads. If you want to find good art, there are better ways to find it than searching by uploader.
It's just a byproduct of history that uploader information is so prominent. I find it interesting that E-Hentai doesn't even display this information unless you go digging for it, and it isn't even exclusive because it will list multiple uploaders for the same comic. Another uploader may in fact get more downloads because they bothered to translate the title or add artist info.
Completely agree. This is why I keep mentioning that the uploader name is incredibly trivial, contrary to what many in this thread will continue to argue. Never have I thought to search under another user's name for content unless I'm moderating it, or I'm interested in seeing their tagging and uploading habits. Other than that, I literally don't care, and I'm not supposed to care.
So all uploader information is useful for is an incentive to get people to upload. But isn't that strange? People who upload just to get credit...this is a perverse incentive that encourages behaviors that are antithethical to the site (flooding, mintagging, camping).
With regards to disincentivizing uploads, I don't really see it. All it really disincentivizes is mintagging.
Pretty much as I said in forum #141778. It's the wrong incentive to promote, especially for a site that places a lot more emphasis on who tags a work rather than the one who provides it. We yell a lot about new users that mintag something that we know would've been more diligently taken care of had it been uploaded by a more prominent user, going so far as to write them negatives or even issue temporary bans when instead we should at least be helping them and not making them feel so frustrated with the system. All they want to do is to just 'share' something without feeling like an idiot.
It's rush hour. I have a bunch of art I want to upload. Under the proposed system, in order to get proper credit, I will have to spend time on each post describing it accurately with tags. Maybe someone else will upload something in your queue before you. Too bad? This is how a majority of users feel when they try to upload something. At least now it's more equitable.
Honestly, that's what I find so surprising about many of these responses, especially users in support of it say. Here's the thing, and let me copy this from my write-up:
Note: this is written in markdown, not Dtext
Most users that are Member-level to Gold-level are fully aware of the site's functionality and features that allow them to search posts, favorite stuff, and make basic edits. However, what they rarely care about is the dynamic in which new posts show up, that are different from the way posts show up on their respective art communities (pixiv, nicoseiga, etc). Not a lot of them know enough (or really care enough) to go through these sites themselves or follow the artists themselves, and if they do, it's a notably trivial thing. It isn't uncommon for users to take that route of getting practically all their anime-style art from danbooru, reddit, discord servers, or other repost sites, because some of these native source sites make it difficult for new users to.
Let's talk about these users for a second. These people are also the ones that care the *least* about who gets credit on a post because most people don't *care* who uploads what as long as its up, and as long as its well tagged. And that should be the way things are -- when you as a *consumer* are simply using the site to digest content, you shouldn't look at what people upload to find content you like because that is both ineffective and **irrelevant**. The only reason you might care is if someone starts submitting bad quality or inappropriate content and that needs to be pointed out.
Take me for example. Want to know what I like? Just search `fav:Mikaeri` or `ordfav:Mikaeri`, and it is a much better representation of that than what I upload. Hell, want an even better representation of what I like? Just eavesdrop into my favorite groups. That's where I kinda stash everything I *really* like.
I favorite a lot of the stuff I upload because I treat my uploads as if I didn't upload them. **If you only see `user:Mikaeri` then naturally you miss out on all the stuff that I would've wanted to upload**. Just take a look at `fav:Mikaeri -user:Mikaeri`.
I say this because I want to establish this crucial point that I believe isn't far from being totally right: **Next to nobody should care about who uploads what, long as it isn't garbage or tagged like garbage.**
In fact, the only reason to have an "uploader" field is if a user uploads his own edits of an image (or their own image if it's a self-upload) and that must be properly determined if nobody knows where else exactly it come from, or where some derivation of it comes from. There are alternate approaches to this and it, to me, is fairly trivial.
There is a legitimate criticism here: an uploader could just copy the tags from an inferior version that was uploaded earlier and already tagged. In practice I'm not sure how bad this really is: the original tagger already got credit on the earlier post; the new post is well tagged; the new uploader gets credit for taking time to find a better version and associate it with the sample version. In any case I think it's still better than the current situation.
Also I'm not sure how common it really is. There were 27,000 uploads from Pixiv since December. Only 3,500 of them are marked as having children. And not all of those are necessarily dupes.
I refer to this as "1upping" in my guide. Frankly, unless you introduce some sort of post versioning (where posts that share visual identity but differ in resolution/image quality are merged into the same post), this problem will always exist. It's not that big of one, but that's something hiding the uploader name can't necessarily solve in and of itself. Only post versioning would do that.
Months ago, the route would be, for some approvers, to just replace inferior uploads from Twitter/Pawoo with their superior counterpart from pixiv/seiga/nijie, but this had its own fair share of problems. I've been extremely vocal about it (to the chagrin of a number of staff members), but that's a discussion for another day. But this was not what you could call any sort of "post versioning".
But, continuing on.
With regards to taggers not wanting public credit: there's already a privacy flag that we could use to hide this information. But I also want to flip it on its head: how many users are there that don't want to upload something because they don't want visible public credit? Probably not many, but I just want to point out we're making a lot of assumptions because we're so used to the status quo.
Ah, I forgot to mention that too -- there's plenty of content I would love to upload and share but don't want my name visibly on it. This was the major problem for me months ago when I was cleaning up pixiv samples -- I did not want to upload content I didn't like, but I didn't think anything could be done because an upload always had to have someone's name attributed to it.
But this basically summarizes my concerns. Again I'm thinking that this sort of system is counterproductive to what we should be doing as users who archive and curate -- there are plenty of other feel-good avenues that require a lot less effort put in than booru, and the only reason to do so here otherwise is because perhaps it just looks better to put your name on something that has a lot more permanence.
So, really, it's something that has dissuaded me from contributing any further. If you ask my honest opinion, then here's what I see.
Nobody cares about uploader names except other uploaders.
Like, really. Even taking into account EH, while EH does have an uploader name, a lot of the time it's kind of pointless as some of the same series and story arcs, the galleries that have some sort of relation, have different uploaders. My translation group (aside from Scrubs) lets any member who they feel has contributed the most in a single release upload it (unless they don't want it). Nobody takes it that seriously unless you're following a user that consistently puts out good scans of content that's either less often curated or hard to provide. And that's rare and in-between.
When I think about it, even all the stuff I upload on my account for Scrubs I would rather attribute to my group than my name myself.
EDIT: Let me add to this. The reason why EH might attribute a lot more credit to an uploader is because it is more difficult than just finding a few images in a gallery and then submitting it to the gallery. A lot of EH contributors take the time out of their life to provide raws, scanlations (teams upon which spend hours doing this tedious work), ripping content from sites that make it difficult to find... And a number of them simply just pay out of their pocket to a download site like DMM or DLsite to provide their content. Or, more recently, Patreon/Enty/Fantia/Fanbox.
But going back to the main point -- again, literally nobody cares except other uploaders. And maybe moderators if they're looking for someone to promote, but we're not removing uploader names entirely, we're just hiding them (at least this is my perception for now). Nobody cares if a post shows up five seconds earlier or five seconds later, as long as two things apply:
- It's not garbage. (bad quality content)
- It isn't tagged like garbage.
