Subjective Non-interest leading to deletion of art issue (Mainly Male-focus)

Hello, new user here. I have been learning about Danbooru for the last week, so I could start uploading art of my favourite characters here.I read everything there is to read about the rules, but it seems that wasn't enough to prevent my posts from pretty much just getting ignored, and in 1 day, I'm expecting most will be deleted. I'm hoping to reach a solution through this discussion.

I was initially on-board for everything, danbooru seemed like everything I wanted in an image hosting site and I was excited, however, it seems like I misunderstood, and the reason that there's way less "Male-focus" art is because the approvers just aren't interested in it, especially Yaoi/Bara/Explicit content, and I don't mean to assume, but it is understandable if all of them were Hetero male fans, but I find it unfair for both them to judge these types of posts and more importantly, any new uploader that might want to upload anything of that sort will be fated to be discouraged when their art is mostly ignored for three days and then deleted.
I think years of the same treatment of "Male-focus" posts getting the short end of the stick has lead to all fans and fandoms of male characters to almost abandon this place. I really hope the guidelines can address this problem and somehow find a solution for the posts to be judged fairly for quality and not just content.

I would love to be a part of the community here and get to have one place where all my favourite artwork is uploaded, while also be nice to encouraging fans who have similar tastes to upload here without getting most of their posts deleted.
I also realize that in the wiki it says that the Mod Queue is not free of flaws, but I honestly feel like this flaw is too big to ignore, it is practically preventing countless fans and fandoms to contribute to Danbooru, and while it is not the major source of fanart, it isn't like Yuri has 12 times the amount of fanart compared to Yaoi like Danbooru presents it. This is more likely than not the result of human bias.

Just like there is a lot of smut for female characters, there is A LOT of male smut too, and some characters like "Napoleon Bonaparte from FGO" have at least 50% of their fanart being explicit content (compare the amount of art he has on Pixiv(550) to here (80ish).. I really doubt any straight guy would enjoy looking at that, but that means that lots of good quality art is lost just because of that "disinterest", and not because it is lacking in quality like the site claims to judge artwork.

I don't like to generalize because everyone is different, but generally just as you'd expect a straight Female/Gay man to not like Yuri, you cannot expect a straight man/ Lesbian to like Yaoi. As a solution, I suggest to promote some user(s) to approvers with varied tastes that can judge "Male-focus" art fairly, including Yaoi/Bara and all the subgenres.
I'm not familiar with the technicalities, but can't a queue that shows only "Male-focus" posts be possible? That could help make the work look less daunting, and it could help approvers only look at what they're interested in to judge fairly, be that male-focus or female-focus (that probably isn't a thing, right?)

As an example to illustrate my points, I'd like to compare posts that were uploaded close to each other like post #3532489 and post #3531189, I think quality-wise it's obvious which is better?
I'm really sorry for the lengthy post, it took me an hour to type this and I tried to address all the points I noticed in about 10 days here, and I thank you for your time reading it. I just would really, really like to join this place peacefully.

TDLR; as a certain user on here put it: "I guess it’s a vicious circle of non-interest: there aren’t that many images like that on Danbooru → few users interested in that come here → even less of those users are promoted to approvers → less images like that are approved → repeat cycle." I really hope we're able to find a solution to this "vicious cycle".

Previous forum post in the upload feedback thread with “a certain user’s” (my) response below.

One thing I forgot to mention was that it seems like not that many approvers are active at the moment, so it’s harder than usual to get non-mainstream posts approved.

Looks like some of your non-yaoi male focus posts got approved in the meantime.

kittey said:

Previous forum post in the upload feedback thread with “a certain user’s” (my) response below.

One thing I forgot to mention was that it seems like not that many approvers are active at the moment, so it’s harder than usual to get non-mainstream posts approved.

Looks like some of your non-yaoi male focus posts got approved in the meantime.

Ah, I didn't know if it was alright to mention users or not.
I just noticed, you were right. I'm still hoping the explicit content to be treated the same way though..Only one day left for them to be deleted.. My chances seem rather slim, and according to the rules I shouldn't re-upload them.I guess I should get used to the deletion appeal thread..

I am curious though, what is your thoughts on the matter? I appreciate you explaining things for me but are you with or against finding a solution for this? And if yes, any ideas?

"yaoi -otoko_no_ko -crossdressing -shota rating:e status:active approver:any age:<2yo" -> 9 posts.
"yaoi -otoko_no_ko -crossdressing -shota rating:e status:deleted approver:none age:<2yo" -> 45 posts.
That means out of 54 posts by normal members upped in the last 2 years 9 got approved.

meanwhile on unrestricted uploader land:
"yaoi -otoko_no_ko -crossdressing -shota rating:e status:active approver:none age:<2yo" -> 154 posts.
That means unrestricted uploaders upped 154 posts in the last 2 years without actually needing an approver.
You would guess those posts wouldn't be active if they went to those tags approval ratio of 17.7%.
for posts above 2017-01-01 some of those unrestricted are:

+---------------+------------+-------+
| name          | ups_on_tag | total |
+---------------+------------+-------+
| CharleyDodger | 113        | 4342  |
| Zettamorose   | 19         | 7904  |
| Manatsu-92    | 10         | 1190  |
| mnichu        | 6          | 3842  |
| WhatTheFox    | 6          | 340   |
|               | 6          |       |
| Anonymous9000 | 5          | 1074  |
| oecchi        | 5          | 4138  |
| keonas        | 5          | 14900 |
| aclcher       | 4          | 766   |
| Omegamagnum   | 3          | 4262  |
| kiyah123      | 2          | 3995  |
| bad_mongo     | 2          | 2829  |
| inkuJerr      | 1          | 11456 |
| Elfaleon      | 1          | 12497 |
+---------------+------------+-------+

This happens in many other tags, for ex on gigantic breasts age:<2yo:
approval from the queue: 174
deleted after being on the queue: 214
flagged after approval: 7
unrestricted / skipping queue: 174

you can see the same happens as well here.

I assume the cause of this is approvers being allowed to use ever increasing standards and also increasingly being more polarized by their tastes. And finally also decreasing number of approvers every month.
The only chance you have to get bara approved is fighting to get unrestricted with highly popular pictures or somehow getting some approver revolution somehow.
Anyway my personal guess is there isn't much point fighting the bara case because most of the users are males, and even on the explicit subgroup of pictures more likely to get males even more. So as from my point of view bara has near 0 popularity on male users which would be incompatible with the taste of most of the small number of yaoi liking males (prefer other body types).

fredgido said:

----

Could you err, please explain in simpler terms? I didn't understand anything from the first part of your comment.
What do you mean fighting to get unrestricted? As in my account?

Bara is actually targeted for mostly a (gay) male audience, the point is these posts have really low popularity here is because of fans being unable to upload art they like which leads to no fans coming to the site (twitter is filled with artists and many fans). That can be remedied over time if we get our art approved on here.
Everyone can like whatever they want, but that shouldn't affect what gets uploaded here if we're judging only on quality. I don't like Yuri, for example, but should that mean that no Yuri gets posted on here if I were an approver? I feel like the "quality" rules are just there to hide that discrimination against male-focus.
Pardon my choice of words, I'm not a native English speaker, I hope I don't upset anybody.

I posted stats that prove the only "bara like" yaoi posts active because active because of by being uploaded by unrestricted upload users, not because of being approved.
I showed who those were.
I showed that other tags suffer the same problem.

Not sure if you know what I mean by unrestricted... There are users that upload without the need for approval, unrestricted upload users.
Yes if you want to be more sure of a post not being deleted is getting to post without the need for approval.

I suggested it but getting unrestricted nowadays is more hard than ever so...

I am also not english native anyway.

CuteBara said:

Bara is actually targeted for mostly a (gay) male audience...

Thought it was of mostly yaoi fangirls. At least it is so in japan?

I just wanted to add that the very first line on the moderator queue page is "As a general rule, you should only approve of posts that you personally like.". I would never approve Bara content since I have exactly 0 interest in them, in the same vein I would never approve any guro and scat content since those disgust me, it's only natural for me to approve what I like and ignore the rest even if it's the most well-done art I've ever seen.

fredgido said:

Thought it was of mostly yaoi fangirls. At least it is so in japan?

No it's not. From the wikia: "A genre of homoerotic media, usually manga and often pornographic, made by gay men for gay men in Japan. (Internet slang) Gay male media of a similar style and aesthetic, regardless of the creator's gender or ethnicity."

While we're on this topic I want to explain that comparing it to gigantic breasts isn't really fair, because bara is just a term for "muscular character" and not really an impossible fetish, though it does have it's fair share of oversized stuff, it isn't the main thing (basically all my posts containing the tag bara)

I guess being in the bara fandom for too too has really blinded me to how people don't know much about it.
I don't know what to say other than that I think it's popular enough to deserve to get the chance to be uploaded on here. There is a lot, and I mean a LOT of art to pull from twitter and pixiv. I'm sure more and more people with varied tastes would be interested in this place if it actually only judged art based on quality and not content.

Unbreakable said:
it's only natural for me to approve what I like and ignore the rest even if it's the most well-done art I've ever seen.

I just found out about those fetishes.. Just ew.
I do understand where you're coming from, it's perfectly understandable like I mentioned in my original post. If I were an uploader I would have very little interest in female art/especially yuri.

But do you really think that's fair? Shouldn't we be promoting people that actually like it so they can judge it fairly instead of just dismissing it? Because at that point we're not judging quality anymore and just presenting our interests.

Just imagine yourself in my shoes..Bara is just a genre of yaoi for gay people. Just like Yuri is for hetero males, and Yaoi is for females. Wouldn't having approvers that like these genres be healthy for the site's quality control?

CuteBara said:

Ah, I didn't know if it was alright to mention users or not.

You can generally quote and refer to anything that’s publicly visible.

I'm still hoping the explicit content to be treated the same way though..Only one day left for them to be deleted.. My chances seem rather slim, and according to the rules I shouldn't re-upload them, so what I do if the reason is "not enough approvers?" I doubt that is an acceptable reason. Just put them in the appeal thread?

From what I can tell, explicit content seems to be getting approved less in recent years, compared to the early days of Danbooru. A few approvers seem to strongly prefer safe content over explicit content.

You can put them in the appeal thread, but you should start with a few that you consider most well-drawn. You might also want wait until we have a few more active approvers again. You don’t need to give a reason when posting in the appeal thread because by posting there, you imply that you think the posts are good enough.

Never re-upload posts. That will only get you in trouble.

I am curious though, what is your thoughts on the matter? I appreciate you explaining things for me but are you with or against finding a solution for this? And if yes, any ideas?

Eh, I try to avoid posting personal opinions on topics that have a high chance of derailing from the initial issue, since that how the Internet rolls.

[one hour time skip]

I had written a bunch of theorizing about why yaoi/bara isn’t popular here, but I decided it didn’t matter and chucked it.

Personally speaking, I’d approve some yaoi/bara if it’s well-drawn and doesn’t have any dicks in it, even if I have zero interest in it. But I’m not an approver and I probably won’t be because I leave uploading to other users and thus don’t have the apparently required upload history.

Besides magically procuring approvers interested in yaoi/bara out of thin air, I don’t have any solutions. Sorry.

fredgido said:

CuteBara said:

Bara is actually targeted for mostly a (gay) male audience...

Thought it was of mostly yaoi fangirls. At least it is so in japan?

Yaoi (called Boys Love by publishers) is targeted at girls and generally features bishounen characters and idealized, unrealistic stories devoid of LGBTQ issues (like most yuri). Bara is for gay guys and generally features manly men, including overly manly men, and is more realistic, often including LGBTQ issues (like rezu/bian manga, though those seem to be merging with yuri recently), AFAIK.

kittey said:
From what I can tell, explicit content seems to be getting approved less in recent years, compared to the early days of Danbooru. A few approvers seem to strongly prefer safe content over explicit content.

Just look at post #3533405 and post #3533391 (Female Explicit).. I got those by just going to the main page.. Approved in less than 30mins.. While the art I uploaded has (in my opinion) higher quality and the same explicit content, yet is treated differently like post #3532394 post #3531176 etc.
Even my safe posts are still pending 2 days later, I don't even understand why post #3532391 , post #3531195 and post #3531197 (just chibi art)

kittey said:
Personally speaking, I’d approve some yaoi/bara if it’s well-drawn and doesn’t have any dicks in it, even if I have zero interest in it. But I’m not an approver and I probably won’t be because I leave uploading to other users and thus don’t have the apparently required upload history.

Besides magically procuring approvers interested in yaoi/bara out of thin air, I don’t have any solutions. Sorry.

I do understand because I cannot stand looking at pussy either, but I still don't find it OK for posts to be deleted just because they have dicks in them instead of pussy.
I really don't know how users are promoted to become approvers, but would it really be that hard to make a thread for such interests and pick out a bunch of trusted users to promote to approvers for only male-focused art since most seem unable to look at it?

CuteBara said:

Just look at post #3533405 and post #3533391 (Female Explicit).. I got those by just going to the main page.. Approved in less than 30mins..

No, I won’t look because I have some tags on them blacklisted. Looking at just the post information, though, I can tell you that they haven’t been approved. There were uploaded by unrestricted uploaders and didn’t have to be approved. If the “Information” area of an active (not pending) post doesn’t list an approver, it was an unrestricted upload.

Even my safe posts are still pending 2 days later, I don't even understand why post #3532391 , post #3531195 and post #3531197 (just chibi art)

The first has horrible image grain. It seems intentional but looks bad.
The second I’d approve.
The third one’s simplistic chibi style isn’t that popular and such posts often only get approved if they’re of popular series since some don’t consider them “high quality art”.

I do understand because I cannot stand looking at pussy either, but I still don't find it OK for posts to be deleted just because they have dicks in them instead of pussy.

Well, Danbooru is a community project and all content is provided and managed by volunteers in their free time. You can’t force anyone to assess stuff they refuse to look at. That’s a limit of Danbooru.

I really don't know how users are promoted to become approvers, but would it really be that hard to make a thread for such interests and pick out a bunch of trusted users to promote to approvers for only male-focused art since most seem unable to look at it?

Generally, approvers are selected by recommendation and upload history. I guess that’s what makes them “trusted”. There isn’t really any other application process. Anyone who begs to be promoted will certainly be ignored.

CuteBara said:

I really don't know how users are promoted to become approvers

As far as I can tell it used to be a mixture of being suggested to /liked by a moderator, being liked for favs/uploads by albert or being an already top contributor (on uploads/tags/translation/etc contributions) in other areas.

But nowadays it looks it is just having lots of uploads and a low deletion ratio ( aka be on a race against other members to upload only very safely liked stuff by everyone, also bonus for being on a new account after learning how danbooru works so keeping your record clean).
https://danbooru.donmai.us/mod_actions?commit=Search&search%5Bcategory%5D=8&utf8=%E2%9C%93
you can see that for a year you had unbreakable and seulbae promoted for overall good users and uploading a lot with low deletion ratio, kuvaq and maoko the same as before but as they were kinda of "not new accounts" ( just my impression, don't hold me accountable for this) , and finally squishy that got the eye of an mod with his ( as far as I can tell) uploads and appeals.
https://danbooru.donmai.us/user_feedbacks?commit=Search&page=1&search%5Bbody_matches%5D=Lost+approval+privileges&utf8=%E2%9C%93
meanwhile 27 users lost approval rights for inactivity last year.

Summing up you lost 27 approvers and kinda got 3 "new" approvers, 2 of which hold quality standards high, as that is why their reason for being promoted in the first place.
Mods have no interest in making anyone approver because not being present at all, past drama with post quality flagging and witch hunting and they just don't wanting extra responsibility, that is my reasoning.

Honestly looking from the outside it just seems like a mess. If they don't want the extra responsibility why is this place the way it is now?
Wouldn't it be easier to flag bad posts and delete them rather than approve every new post? That seems like less pressure, work and bias. Users who continuously post bad stuff would get banned.
The system the site is using seems dated, and very subjective and biased to the point where new users like me don't seem welcome at all.
Well, not that I know that much about anything, but that's my impression of things.

It is true though that it seems most of the art that I think looks bad or is explicit is uploaded by unrestricted users and does not go through the approval process like Kittey mentioned.. I don't know how to feel about that to be honest.
I guess all I can do for now is upload non explicit artwork of my favourite male characters and see where it goes, it's a pity because there's a lot of good stuff that I will have to ignore if that's the case, but I guess at least there will be something on here for the bara community.

CuteBara said:

Honestly looking from the outside it just seems like a mess.

Welcome to Danbooru. Enjoy your stay. :D

Wouldn't it be easier to flag bad posts and delete them rather than approve every new post? That seems like less pressure, work and bias. Users who continuously post bad stuff would get banned.

No. Just no. Since you’re new here, let me tell you that flagging posts is pretty much equivalent to Drama.

If you want a ’booru that allows pretty much everything and only cleans up the most egregious garbage, you should choose another one that’s not Danbooru.

I guess all I can do for now is upload non explicit artwork of my favourite male characters and see where it goes, […]

A quick suggestion: try to be as objective about the image quality as possible. It’s a common trap to be biased towards an image because you’re a fan of the depicted character.

kittey said:

Well, Danbooru is a community project and all content is provided and managed by volunteers in their free time. You can’t force anyone to assess stuff they refuse to look at. That’s a limit of Danbooru.

Just wanted to add, that this is just about it. Approvers first just approve the stuff they personaly like, so stuff like the thing that Unbreakable mentioned is stuff that won´t get approved that often, as only a few people like that and alot of people have blacklisted anyway.
Second I think that you just need to have a bit of luck. Sometimes my stuff gets approved in less than a minute, and sometimes it only gets approved if I post it into the deletion appeal thread, just because some approvers don´t even see it in the first place (I think).

What I mean is, that not all of your stuff lookes that bad, CuteBara, as I looked at it right now, but also maybe the "right" approver didn´t see it at all. I´m sorry that I can´t really provide any solution for this. Maybe we first have to tackle the problem that the amount of approvers dropped the last week, as less people are active.

kittey said:
No. Just no. Since you’re new here, let me tell you that flagging posts is pretty much equivalent to Drama.

A quick suggestion: try to be as objective about the image quality as possible. It’s a common trap to be biased towards an image because you’re a fan of the depicted character.

I see, well I can imagine that it could be that way I guess.
I think that unrestricted users kinda have it too easy though with this system, since flagging is avoided and quality is not checked, unless I'm missing something.

Yes I do admit I have fallen to that before, especially for characters that don't have thousands of artworks so each new one feels like a treasure you want to protect, but I will try my best to focus on the highest quality available, thanks for the suggestions and tips, it's very appreciated.

If you want a ’booru that allows pretty much everything and only cleans up the most egregious garbage, you should choose another one that’s not Danbooru.

Any suggestions? There's actually a bara booru, but it seems like it's registration is closed and somehow the latest posts don't even have sources? What is this crap.

Guaro1238 said:
sometimes it only gets approved if I post it into the deletion appeal thread, just because some approvers don´t even see it in the first place (I think).

It would make sense that if many approvers blacklisted things I tag that my posts would be ignored.
Blacklisting is only for upgraded accounts though, right?

What I mean is, that not all of your stuff looks that bad, CuteBara, as I looked at it right now, but also maybe the "right" approver didn´t see it at all. I´m sorry that I can´t really provide any solution for this. Maybe we first have to tackle the problem that the amount of approvers dropped the last week, as less people are active.

Thank you for trying to help, I really appreciate it.
Some final questions that could help me deal with the situation:
1) Can I appeal a deleted post at anytime after it's deletion? What is generally not regarded as bad behavior to appeal deleted posts? If parent posts are deleted can all it's children be restored if the parent is approved?
2) Is there a way to expect or check if there are more approvers than usual or ones that could approve my posts?
I guess what I'm asking is, when is the best time to appeal my deleted posts? How to do that to not look bad, and how frequently should I do it?

CuteBara said:

I see, well I can imagine that it could be that way I guess.
I think that unrestricted users kinda have it too easy though with this system, since flagging is avoided and quality is not checked, unless I'm missing something.

Yes I do admit I have fallen to that before, especially for characters that don't have thousands of artworks so each new one feels like a treasure you want to protect, but I will try my best to focus on the highest quality available, thanks for the suggestions and tips, it's very appreciated.

Any suggestions? There's actually a bara booru, but it seems like it's registration is closed and somehow the latest posts don't even have sources? What is this crap.

Gelbooru.

DeusExCalamus said:

Gelbooru.

Huh, that does seem interesting, though a little more messy than here.
Does it automatically upload everything that is uploaded on Danbooru though? I was surprised to see all my posts already there..

CuteBara said:
1) Can I appeal a deleted post at anytime after it's deletion? What is generally not regarded as bad behavior to appeal deleted posts? If parent posts are deleted can all it's children be restored if the parent is approved?
2) Is there a way to expect or check if there are more approvers than usual or ones that could approve my posts?
I guess what I'm asking is, when is the best time to appeal my deleted posts? How to do that to not look bad, and how frequently should I do it?

1. You can appeal a post anytime after it is deleted, but you should really only do so once. If the parent post is part of comic that is deleted, it is likely that the other parts will also be approved when it does - for other cases not so much.

For your closing statement I would guess that appeals should probably done on a weekly or biweekly basis - but never for the same set of images twice. The 'official' appeal button can only be used once per day - so keep that in mind.

CuteBara said:

Huh, that does seem interesting, though a little more messy than here.
Does it automatically upload everything that is uploaded on Danbooru though? I was surprised to see all my posts already there..

Correct. Gelbooru pulls most of Danbooru's stuff in automatically, though there's some stuff (the ugoira/etc) that I think aren't well supported. I might be wrong, it's been ages.