What is the deal with the mass flagging of screencaps? I'm seeing it all the time in the mod queue, mostly for images that either look fine to me, or are at least well above the threshold where flagging seems appropriate. Looking at the last year alone, it seems almost fully 80% of screenshots posted have either been flagged or deleted, many also being down-voted or rejected for "breaks the rules" or "poor quality" for no real apparent reason (comparing to other uploads of similar apparant quality that regularly get past the queue). If you include posts older than one year the number of screenshots rejected is a bit less than 50% (even after tons of ancient screencaps keep getting dredged into the queue and rejected as well, pushing this number up. That seems to indicate a fairly recent and fairly large change in our reaction to them.
Even if a screencap gets past the queue, it seems a few members are methodically going through and flagging just about all of them for "Stitched screenshot of below average quality." or "Very bad quality screencap." or something somewhat hyperbolic along those lines. Sometimes the reason is simply "screencap" which is completely invalid as a flagging reason. I'm not going to defend every screencap, many are aren't too great, and most are below my approval threshold. Also except to say that many weren't that bad for the time, ancient 12 year old postage stamped sized screenshots are kind of hard to defend. On the other hand though, I'd say the majority of what gets flagged and pushed back through the queue, doesn't really feel like it deserves to be there.
I'll admit to not having been active in the forums for the last few years, but after a quick search, I don't see anywhere policy was changed with regards to screenshots. In the wiki, aside for a few late additions by some of the same people doing the flagging asking for an image's complete pedigree, things seem the same as I remember them, as well. There is nothing on howto:upload warning against or discouraging screencaps,help:third-party edit still says that stitched images (which are primarily screencaps) are "generally accepted", contrary to what appears to be the current reality. I'd argue that stitches, moreso than straight screencaps are beneficial in that they provide full access to a view that isn't easily available even from the source material.
I guess I'm asking for some clarity here on policy. Have we changed our official stance on screencaps? As things are it seems silly to try and approve them knowing they'll be flagged again anyway. In what matter are screenshots on the whole poor quality? Are we setting a different bar for them compared to other images? Are a few users simply targeting a few users who happen to post them? If we are in practice changing our policy (and come to a consensus on that), the wiki and howto pages ought to be modified to reflect this. If we aren't, we ought to change our feedback and flagging to reflect policy.
A few examples of flagged and deleted images that don't feel like they warranted flagging or deleting:
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