Can we get some more approvers please?

There are currently only about twelve approvers that regularly check the queue. I know there are others that approve a bunch without using the queue but uploaders dont really see that. Would it be time to start a drive to promote more?

A few suggestions:
@☆♪
@kittey
@Blue_Trident
@Elektronik
@Cyberia-Mix
@Tapper
@Soundtracker
@upupu
@4get
@recklessfirex
Any others?

There are currently 78 accounts with approval rights but many do only the bare minimum to keep their privilege. Particularly the "lottery winner" non-builder+ approvers, there are currently 13 (12 if you dont count Squishy) of them, making up 16.6% (13/78) of the accounts that currently have approval privileges. (You can view the list of these approvers @ https://danbooru.donmai.us/users?commit=Search&search%5Bcan_approve_posts%5D=true&search%5Bmax_level%5D=31&search%5Bmin_level%5D=20&search%5Border%5D=date&utf8=✓)
Only four of them have more than 1500 approvals after having had approval rights for more than a year (except squishy). Perhaps we should consider this experiment a failure and start revoking their privilege. Im not against non builder approvers per say but it should be based on merits, not chance.

I'd be all for more approvers if the current queue load is too much of a daily regimen for the active approvers. The last thing we need is more people burning out. Though I'd like to hear them chime in on this, as they are probably more aware of how much a daily load it is.

One thing that could potentially be useful though is some kind of readily apparent indication of how much approval coverage there is. This could be done via some kind of metric system that takes into account the amount of approver activity (approvals, disapprovals, deletions, undeletions, etc) there has been over the last 1-2 days (since 3 days is the deletion window). This would be useful for uploaders, as it would indicate how many approvers they can expect to review their uploads. It could also be useful for approvers, for example if an approver sees there is a low number of active approvers (like during the holidays), then they could expand the amount of posts they normally look at (since as I understand it some may only look over tags they like). They could also possibly take that into account and maybe be more lenient in their approvals. Maybe... <_<

Useful links

• Active approvers
• Inactive approvers

I don't feel it's an incredibly huge load. I can actively look at all new posts as they come in. I like to check the queue at least a few times a day, I don't know if that's normal. On an active day I usually pull up new posts around once an hour, albeit for a limited number of hours after the day's responsibilities.

If I don't touch it for a few days it quickly volumes up to 15 or so pages. Most of it though is just complete garbage and most good things are already approved. I do personally though like to give every post its time, not just the new ones, to avoid missing those diamonds in the rough and so new users get a chance. Maybe I'm the only approver that uses the queue by making an action on every single post, I think the numbers show it.

I'm a little wordy with this one, sorry. My point is I think the current load is pretty manageable and most things worth approving are approved and then some.

Are there examples of posts neglected to be approved that should be? Is it just that there are approvers much more active than I am doing the bulk of approvals and are getting burned out? Maybe people are approving things within the first minute something is posted and that's where the bulk of approvals are from?

I check the queue a few times a day and always leave an action on every post, although I only check a post out if the thumbnail alone interests me so I don't approve as much as some people, I don't think the "burden" is too big though unless you miss a day or two which makes it quickly build up as chinatsu said.

I wish there was some kind of "remind me later if this post is about to get deleted" button in the queue because on some posts I feel unsure about approving it and rather wait and see if someone else wants to do it but don't want it taking up space in the queue so I just click "No Interest" as usual.

Unbreakable said:

I wish there was some kind of "remind me later if this post is about to get deleted" button in the queue because on some posts I feel unsure about approving it and rather wait and see if someone else wants to do it but don't want it taking up space in the queue so I just click "No Interest" as usual.

Create a favgroup and dump them all in there, then from time to time search through that group with (-)status:deleted?

Bumping this thread because I think this is an important issue. To respond to what chinatsu said, it’s not that the current load seems to be too big, but that it’s 3 people doing over half of the approving. According to https://isshiki.donmai.us/user-reports/approvers/2018-08-05_v4.html Qpax, PhoenixG, and nonamethanks approved 5986 posts combined in the past month, while everyone else on the list approved 5371 posts combined in the past month. If one of the three aforementioned users goes inactive or goes on vacation or whatever, then that creates a huge hole to fill for the two remaining approvers. As for approvers who aren’t builder level or higher, I agree with what ion said. I don’t think they should be allowed to keep their privileges, as most of them are not doing much work. Only two of them have 1000+ actions on posts that were in the queue in the past month, and one of them (thraxus) has only approved one image in the past 3 months. I don’t agree with letting users retain privileges that they won by chance if they aren’t even going to use them with any frequency. I know that what I say doesn’t mean that much here since I’m just member level, but these are just my thoughts on this.

maoko said:

Bumping this thread because I think this is an important issue. To respond to what chinatsu said, it’s not that the current load seems to be too big, but that it’s 3 people doing over half of the approving. According to https://isshiki.donmai.us/user-reports/approvers/2018-08-05_v4.html Qpax, PhoenixG, and nonamethanks approved 5986 posts combined in the past month, while everyone else on the list approved 5371 posts combined in the past month. If one of the three aforementioned users goes inactive or goes on vacation or whatever, then that creates a huge hole to fill for the two remaining approvers. As for approvers who aren’t builder level or higher, I agree with what ion said. I don’t think they should be allowed to keep their privileges, as most of them are not doing much work. Only two of them have 1000+ actions on posts that were in the queue in the past month, and one of them (thraxus) has only approved one image in the past 3 months. I don’t agree with letting users retain privileges that they won by chance if they aren’t even going to use them with any frequency. I know that what I say doesn’t mean that much here since I’m just member level, but these are just my thoughts on this.

As I've mentioned, I look at everything in the queue.

I think it's a wrong assumption to say that because a few approvors approve the bulk of posts that that adds any additional work for someone else, it just shows they either obsessively use the queue or have lower standards.

So consider a user like me or Unbreakable are actually clicking approve or disapprove, how would one mass approver lead to us doing more work if we use the queue in that manner?

Standards have been creeping upward recently, at the behest of borderline-quality posts, so I feel that having more "safety net" approvers is not a bad thing. There should be as few posts as possible that would be deleted if uploaded for approval, but never flagged if bypassing approval.

maoko said:

I don’t think they should be allowed to keep their privileges, as most of them are not doing much work...I don’t agree with letting users retain privileges that they won by chance if they aren’t even going to use them with any frequency.

How would you know how much work they are doing, though? Maybe they're looking at the queue every day and simply not finding much that is worthy of approval. The moderation process isn't just a matter of rubber-stamping everything that gets uploaded.

feline_lump said:

Standards have been creeping upward recently, at the behest of borderline-quality posts, so I feel that having more "safety net" approvers is not a bad thing. There should be as few posts as possible that would be deleted if uploaded for approval, but never flagged if bypassing approval.

So are you saying we should add more approvers with the intent of them approving less quality posts? Let's not. A wider variety of tastes, including people who like gay content or gundum—which would be found from their favorites I guess—is something that could help, but people just to approve bad quality stuff I can't get behind. Approvers that would just be a rubber stamp to block any flag based on quality or anatomy would be a bad thing.

iridescent_slime said:

How would you know how much work they are doing, though? Maybe they're looking at the queue every day and simply not finding much that is worthy of approval. The moderation process isn't just a matter of rubber-stamping everything that gets uploaded.

The inactive approvers report mentioned by BrokenEagle98 up there lists approvals as well as disapprovals. If they’re not finding much worthy of approval, they should be clicking the disapproval button more often. If they can’t even be bothered to do that, approval rights should instead go to a user who cares more.

chinatsu said:

So are you saying we should add more approvers with the intent of them approving less quality posts? Let's not. A wider variety of tastes, including people who like gay content or gundum—which would be found from their favorites I guess—is something that could help, but people just to approve bad quality stuff I can't get behind. Approvers that would just be a rubber stamp to block any flag based on quality or anatomy would be a bad thing.

Actually, that was the whole point behind the lottery system for handing out approval privileges. It weeded out folks whose uploads and/or favorites had too high of a score. The idea behind that was to find users to approve the borderline art, because there are more than enough (if not too many already) approvers who will already approve the good stuff.

Also, "less quality" is always relative to the person doing the judging. Take a look at any of the other Boorus and you'll see that we're doing hand-over-fist better than them, but as for myself, I think that the quality standard can be too high sometimes and I occasionally/often see what I would consider to be a worthy post slip through.

kittey said:

The inactive approvers report mentioned by BrokenEagle98 up there lists approvals as well as disapprovals. If they’re not finding much worthy of approval, they should be clicking the disapproval button more often. If they can’t even be bothered to do that, approval rights should instead go to a user who cares more.

+1

kittey said:

The inactive approvers report mentioned by BrokenEagle98 up there lists approvals as well as disapprovals. If they’re not finding much worthy of approval, they should be clicking the disapproval button more often. If they can’t even be bothered to do that, approval rights should instead go to a user who cares more.

That's assuming everyone uses a disapproval button. I rarely do because I moderate from a massive search string instead of the moderation queue. I don't enjoy the mod queue's layout and opening every image to click its nope button ain't happening.

chinatsu said:

So are you saying we should add more approvers with the intent of them approving less quality posts? Let's not. A wider variety of tastes, including people who like gay content or gundum—which would be found from their favorites I guess—is something that could help, but people just to approve bad quality stuff I can't get behind. Approvers that would just be a rubber stamp to block any flag based on quality or anatomy would be a bad thing.

I want to be clear that I don't think bad posts should be protected, it's average posts. Posts that are being flagged obviously aren't in the category of "posts that would not be flagged if they bypassed the queue". Based on the user feedback thread, it's becoming increasingly common for posts to be rejected in the queue because they're "too average/not interesting", whereas using that as a flag reason would be inanity. I'd like there to be more approvers willing to close that inequality, though not to the point where we have a repeat NOoU situation.

People who can evaluate a wider variety of content would be good too, of course. Especially so for male focus, as it's a very large segment of fanart yet is mostly kept afloat by a few veteran users.

To add to the debate about approvers that aren't builder or higher and go off of what BrokenEagle said... Judging from older forum posts, past isshiki reports, and just looking at what they approve, the non-builder+ approver experiment has been a real mixed bag, but almost all negative. We have non-builder+ approvers who don't even approve or disapprove anything, one who flagged every single one of their approvals at one point in the past after being warned about it, one who's sporting a 23% approval deletion ratio, one who had the most approval deletions every week in July of 2018 despite having 1,000+ fewer monthly approvals than people who had fewer deleted approvals, and one who left actions on ~10,000 posts over the duration of three months this year and only approved one of them. The only non-builder+ approver that proved to be a beneficial promotion was PhoenixG, and he got promoted to builder recently. I think that if we promoted some or all of the people listed in ion's original post, it'd be a much better fix for the approver issue than the non-builder+ approver fiasco. I also agree with feline lump in that we need more baseline-quality approvers.

ion288 said:

Any others?

What about Moonspeaker? He seems very committed.

imo the real thing that reduce the workload is people stop posting shit post. Sometimes I just want to facepalm and stab my eyes when some crappy quality post passes the queue. /rant

While I do think that my quality bar is a bit lower than the rest of the approvers (I do approve sketches if it looks good), there some things that almost spend no time on it and just press "no interest". Like certain tags and explicit.

I'm not against having more approvers, but we should have more with different taste. Or else we just having more approvers fishing in the same fishing pool and who camp the queue the hardest will get the most approvals.

PhoenixG said:

I'm not against having more approvers, but we should have more with different taste. Or else we just having more approvers fishing in the same fishing pool and who camp the queue the hardest will get the most approvals.

This I think is spot on. I feel like there's enough approvers that approve "generally", but there's a lack of approvers that would approve things (like male focus, for example) that are of very good quality but are skipped because they're not something the majority has a fetish or interest for.