Rethinking ratings

I've been thinking about ratings lately. I've noticed in myself and seen mentioned by others a change of the rating habits, towards the less strict end of the spectrum. Thus I think it'd be good to reconsider our rating criteria and write down whatever we decide.

I think we agree danbooru isn't, and will never be worksafe, safebooru or not. Even if all we had were pictures of Kinomoto Sakura and butterflies, it's still not something I'd be comfortable browsing at work. Therefore I think we should drop all pretenses of worksafeness and adopt a scale based on, uhh, intent, for lack of a better word. I see it going like that:

• Safe -- pictures devoid of erotic content. In addition to the obvious (ie. fully clothed people), it'd also include depictions of lingerie, down to nudity, as long as it's clearly not erotic. We already have a sizeable number of pics under rating:safe+nude, and I think it's a perfectly sensible classification. Examples of safe pics: post #443754, post #443744, post #438483, post #443750

• Questionable -- pictures with some amount of sexual content going, but not outright porn. Might include people as much or more clothed than in rating:s, if there are visible innuendos. Might also include depictions of sexual activity, implied or semi-implied, as long as they're not ostentatiously pornographic in nature. Thus post #389536 would be rated questionable in the new scheme. Other examples include: post #443159, post #437034.

• Explicit -- pictures where it's made clear that putting it in is what it's about. Examples: post #443682, post #443134, post #442879.

In effect, the new system would shift everything a bit more towards the explicit end, and separate content into three layers: safe for people not interested in any sexual content whatsoever, questionable for those who don't mind, and explicit for porn-goers. The big change is that we completely drop "what would onlookers think" from the picture, and that the old explicit category gets split into porn and non-porn. Especially the latter is important to me, since I don't mind sex, I just hate porn. Thus browsing with rating:e blacklisted makes me miss many good pictures rated explicit, either because of being borderline or just plain misrated. I believe formalising the guidelines and letting a bit more content out of rating:e would help.

And to give a better picture of what I mean, here are some pictures (rightly) rated as explicit, which I believe should be changed to questionable in the new scheme:

• post #442851 -- non-ostentatious, not even all that much implied
• post #378855 -- clearly a work of art, you could hang it in a gallery
• post #443680 -- almost everything is implied
• post #311623 -- and something from the other side of non-ostentatious nudity

This all seems rather reasonable to me.

Ok WTF?

This is the second time I've come to the forums expecting to see new posts only to have this marked as unread, AGAIN.

What the heck?!

Probably because I was editing for typos, and the software's behaviour in this case is less than ideal.

Sounds a lot like how I rate already.

I think this is generally an excellent idea especially since ratings are currently borderline meaningless. This would instill some meaning to them, especially for blacklisting.

Even so, the sheer amount of images we'd have to go through makes any change to the rating system somewhat prohibitive.

No, no, a thousand times no. That is just a projection of your own internal censor. It'd be next to impossible to get everyone to conform to it, and the only one who would benefit is you. The current system is more useful to far more people.

LaC said:
No, no, a thousand times no. That is just a projection of your own internal censor.

Of course, eye of the beholder and all that. Just like the current system is, or any other system you could think of where we attempt to categorise decency.

The current system is more useful to far more people.

Why's that?

Its worth noting though that if post #389536 is questionable, then a lot of yuri sex is going to end up being Questionable, not Explicit.

Yes, and solo play, and some less-blunt straight sex. That's by design.

Disagree. Telling me that post #389536 is not porn is like telling me that my eyes are pink. It's just not happening.

It would be easier to just change the "genitals = auto-explicit" rule to allow for tasteful nudity to migrate to questionable. The rest is fine as-is, IMHO.

My one critism is that this is too subjective, the current system is almost wholey objective such that you can apply an algorithm to it:

if(genetalia or sex) explicit;
else if(frontal nudity or obvious innuendo) questionable;
else safe;

What I'm saying is that everyone is going to have different porn vs. not porn thresholds, and it will be impossible to come to a clear agreement between members.

I agree with 葉月 about the 'safe rating' ideas, but that yuri picture is very explicit. I wouldn't consider stuff like that just questionable.

Other than that I agree.

葉月 said:
Of course, eye of the beholder and all that. Just like the current system is, or any other system you could think of where we attempt to categorise decency.

The current system is based on objective properties of the image, so it's quite easy for people to conform to it even if they don't understand its rationale.

Why's that?

Safebooru, for one thing. Many people use it, and your proposal would make it next to useless.

Kayako said:
It would be easier to just change the "genitals = auto-explicit" rule to allow for tasteful nudity to migrate to questionable. The rest is fine as-is, IMHO.

I second this, personally.

Now that I think about it, LaC has a good point - naked pictures on safebooru would kinda defeat the purprose of browsing safebooru.

"it'd also include depictions of lingerie, down to nudity, as long as it's clearly not erotic." striking nudity, and revealing (exposing lots of skin) lingerie may be a good idea.

I definitly don't agree. IMO safe pics MUST be safe-safe otherwise normal. I don't think we should give on something like "What the hell. Let's change the rating criteria, like if it all were NSFW" 'cause that's not true. It's not a matter of if you feel comfortable browsing at work, but a matter of if it is or not SAFE for work.
Somehow, I feel that your new criteria, is vanishing the borders of safe and questionable. I know that it's difficult sometimes to add the correct rating, but maybe the current criteria only need little adjustments instead of creating a new one.

-1. I really can't accept post #389536 being "less explicit" than post #443682, for example. I disagree with about half of your examples, overall.

Basically I agree with LaC -- the current system works fine and has clear-cut criteria, and there's no reason to change it.

Agree with LaC too, actual system is good as it is.

I think that the difference between this system and the system we currently use is subtle enough that subjectivity and the fact that we have hundreds of different people rating would steamroll right over any daylight between the two and nothing would change.

In other words, I don't think it's a difference that can actually be implemented by the community at large.

The most radical part is the blurring of the border between explicit and questionable. I find some merit in the idea, in fact I'd actually like it if that could be made reality, but it's too difficult and arbitrary to enforce as a rule, so I have to vote against.

I say to just leave things as they are. Yes, blacklisting rating:explicit could miss some good posts, but that's how blacklists are. Plus, you and I have similar opinions regarding explicit material, and yet while I have no blacklist right now, the vast majority of my favorites are still safe/questionable. I'm seeing all the explicit images, and there are still relatively few I'm interested in. Not enough to warrant redoing the system, at least.

Anyway, we have howto:rate and there seemed to be general agreement with it.

Edit: I agree with the idea that there's no such thing as a truly, literally worksafe danbooru, not even safebooru, and aiming for one is misguided. But I don't think that would change much regardless of what system we adopted.

(Edit2: a couple hours later for a missing word, if anyone is wondering why this gets bumped)