Nuking children

BUR #15848 has been rejected.

mass update female_child rating:g -child -> child -female_child
mass update male_child rating:g -child -> child -male_child
nuke female_child
nuke male_child

These tags were made mostly without consensus back in topic #21339. It was mainly three builders taking it upon themselves to do it with not much input from others or from higher-ups. A BUR was created to get them implicated to child afterwards, but it failed despite mostly positive responses because turns out these tags were just being used for loli/shota posts people didn't want to tag loli/shota, which made the admins not want to deal with it. It ended with loli/shota becoming qualified for use with rating:s (forum #216609) because people kept tagging sussy images as child. In the same post, evazion expressed his disapproval of the gendered child tags overall, stating:

evazion said:

Frankly I wish people had never made the female child tag to begin with. It's just a really bad look to use the word "child" on anything remotely lewd. And it gets even worse when you start categorizing pictures of children by age and gender and what they're wearing. That makes even the most innocent posts look suspect.

These tags have ended up in a sort of purgatory where we don't really want them, but there has been reluctance to actually nuke them. The problem is they're still regularly being misused on loli/shota images. Another topic was made three months ago requesting the implications again (though unformally), in which the admins stated how much trouble they are:

nonamethanks said:

It was already bad enough with child, now we have three different tags acting as landmines that need to be routinely cleaned.

evazion said:

Danbooru is a porn site in the eyes of most outside observers, and a porn site with a tag for little girls immediately sets off red flags. It's hard to say this tag is for innocent images when so much of it is soft loli content. And it's hard to keep the tag clean when the whole idea of "I want to search specifically for pictures of little girls" inherently attracts people who don't have the purest of intentions.

[...]

Danbooru is actually banned in multiple countries over content that is considered to be loli by their standards, but not by ours. A female child tag that is less than 100% safe is basically asking to be banned in more places. Just the word "child" on a porn site sets off red flags.

[...]

The way we (and other sites like Gelbooru and E-Hentai) deal with this is by trying to keep this stuff off the radar. But that's hard to do when we have tags like female child and male child explicitly labeling characters as underage, and being used as backdoor soft-loli and soft-shota tags.

[...]

Let me put it this way: A few years ago, E-Hentai nearly shut down entirely over fears over the legality of loli/shota content ([1]). That was after they were already forced to hide everything behind Sad Panda a decade ago because of pressure from advertisers. A couple years ago, Gelbooru had their server seized over a single image their hosting provider found questionable ([2]). As a result they were forced to hide this type of content by default, despite resisting having any kind of content restrictions before.

These are the kinds of risks we face. None of us want to censor content. But none of us want to get shut down either. Which is why every site is eventually forced to either ban risky content entirely, or implement restrictions to keep it under control. Even 4chan has long banned all loli/shota content outside of /b/.

The female child and male child tags didn't exist up until about six months ago. Before then, things were usually either tagged loli/shota, or they weren't tagged at all. That was safer in many ways because things were either out of sight, or they weren't labeled as children. Explicitly labeling content as underage is what gets us into trouble. There's no way around that.

Anything labeled as child that's not 100% safe is a risk. And my definition of safe is going to be much stricter than most people's. There's tons of stuff like post #5898241 or post #5856671 that are currently rated G and that aren't overtly lewd, but that I just know are lowkey lolicon or shotacon bait and that people are going "Uohhhhhhhhh! 😭😭😭" over it on Twitter.

This puts me in a difficult position, because I don't want to hide more content than I have to, but I don't want people coming to Danbooru and searching child and see hundreds of mildly suggestive images either. This leaves me with the choice of either nuking these tags, hiding these tags, or making the ratings for these tags much, much stricter, which would probably still entail hiding anything rated Sensitive or higher.

Ultimately, as happens all too frequently, that topic went nowhere. Given the status of these tags and the admins' opinions on them, I am proposing this BUR which will nuke the male_child and female_child tags while adding child to the rating:g ones that are missing it. There are around 4k such posts. These two tags seem to be the biggest issue. I'll make an alternative BUR to nuke all three, should that be the more desired outcome.

Note that these do not address the child on child tag. I'm not entirely sure what we want to do with that.

BUR #15849 has been rejected.

nuke female_child
nuke male_child
nuke child

Alternative.

I think child is good for 100% safe and innocent posts (like pictures you would show to your parents), just like it was originally intended to, but the female child and male child tags kinda messed it up with the rating:s posts being tagged with child.

I said in another thread that child on child while being completely valid as a for it intended use, has a bad name, especially considering the observations made here. The only practical idea I can see being used here is splitting it into loli with loli, shota with shota and loli with shota (I believe someone made a shota on shota tag sometime ago, but it was pretty much a pet tag at the time).

As I had mentioned in the previous thread on this issue:

That really touches upon the crux of the issue here: the resistance to tagging loli (and shota) and, if they have to tag something, tagging anything other than it, whether it be just straight-up tagging child in sexual contexts, tagging onee-loli/onee-shota/onii-shota on is:nsfw without the corresponding tag, or evading with non-age-specific tags such as flat chest, chibi, or petite (ignoring the wiki in the process), because they want to maintain open access to the art being tagged. Heck, one could even argue that, with the earliest topics on this issue in mind, that the reason why child as a tag exists is explicitly to act as a means of getting soft-loli and soft-shota through the door (alongside flat chest). Even before the tag existed, you had folks questioning and expressing their dislike of the usage of 'child', 'kid' and similar words 15 years ago for all the reasons evazion has mentioned for the last six months, and there was even an apparent controversy with a so-called loli_safe tag.

All of that in mind, it just shows that the tag in question has been poisoned from the very start, with roots rotting away at the website as we speak. It even speaks to how undertagged child as a tag genuinely is, as properly tagging it was never the original focus.

The first BUR is flawed by way of it only mass updating rating:g posts from female child and male child, meaning that perfectly acceptable posts such as post #6064841, post #6041396, post #5510003 and post #6021092 would find themselves missing child despite many similar posts already having the tag.

mortalkombachan said:

I think child is good for 100% safe and innocent posts (like pictures you would show to your parents), just like it was originally intended to...

It was fundamentally never intended to be that; after all, it was only recently rating:s became a valid rating for loli/shota posts, as Talulah noted. That's what people have tried to turn child into, a 100% pure tag, because that's the only way a tag like that could be allowed to exist, but then you run into what you could consider the final kicker;

...even if we managed to get a scenario where all depiction of children in child/female child/male child/every-other-gentag-with-child were rating:g-tier, we'd still have posts in child is:nsfw due to taggers tagging it on NSFW posts if they appear to the side, as illustrated by post #3410029.

Many tag with maximalist tag-what-you-see principles - so if they see a child, they'll tag child. You'd have to consistently maintain the tag to ensure it remains 100% pure rating:g, and even with current maintenance, the child tags consistently see loli/shota content being tagged. And you'd be removing tons of valid rating:s posts, because of sussy adults, ala post #6118161.

There's only one solution, and that's nuking all these tags (because I doubt renaming the tags will help). Several folks in the last thread already agreed on this.

mortalkombachan said:

I think child is good for 100% safe and innocent posts (like pictures you would show to your parents), just like it was originally intended to, but the female child and male child tags kinda messed it up with the rating:s posts being tagged with child.

I'm not necessarily opposed to keeping it, as we had it before and it seemed not to be the end of the world. The concern is over people putting it on NSFW posts—including posts like this, where it isn't the child being sexualised—could still look bad.

I said in another thread that child on child while being completely valid as a for it intended use, has a bad name, especially considering the observations made here. The only practical idea I can see being used here is splitting it into loli with loli, shota with shota and loli with shota (I believe someone made a shota on shota tag sometime ago, but it was pretty much a pet tag at the time).

My only qualm with that is that it doesn't really work with SFW posts, though between the fact that child_on_child rating:g has only six posts and the concern that tagging something like that even on truly SFW posts looks weird, it may be the best choice.

Damian0358 said:

The first BUR is flawed by way of it only mass updating rating:g posts from female child and male child, meaning that perfectly acceptable posts such as post #6064841, post #6041396, post #5510003 and post #6021092 would find themselves missing child despite many similar posts already having the tag.

I'm aware it's not perfect, but I'm leaning more toward the mentality of "anything not rated G should not have the child tag to begin with". If the posts are "perfectly fine", I'd say they should just be rated G. This may not be how the tag is currently used, but I don't think continuing to tag children in NSFW images is a great idea.

Talulah said:

I'm aware it's not perfect, but I'm leaning more toward the mentality of "anything not rated G should not have the child tag to begin with". If the posts are "perfectly fine", I'd say they should just be rated G. This may not be how the tag is currently used, but I don't think continuing to tag children in NSFW images is a great idea.

Then, referring back to the evazion post quoted, of the three options he gave, you're opting in for "making the ratings for these tags much, much stricter, which would probably still entail hiding anything rated Sensitive or higher," while I'm going with "nuking these tags [because j]ust the word "child" on a porn site sets off red flags." We even had folks back before the tag even existed saying how using the word "child" would be a bad idea.

If that's the stance you want to take, then, if the first BUR passes instead of the second, you would logically do a BUR that would mass update the tag and remove everything non-rating:g from it, correct?

Damian0358 said:

Then, referring back to the evazion post quoted, of the three options he gave, you're opting in for "making the ratings for these tags much, much stricter, which would probably still entail hiding anything rated Sensitive or higher," while I'm going with "nuking these tags [because j]ust the word "child" on a porn site sets off red flags." We even had folks back before the tag even existed saying how using the word "child" would be a bad idea.

If that's the stance you want to take, then, if the first BUR passes instead of the second, you would logically do a BUR that would mass update the tag and remove everything non-rating:g from it, correct?

Just to be clear, I'm more leaning toward nuking them entirely. If I could vote on my own BURs (why was that removed again?) I'd meh the first and upvote the second. But because the latter may be more contentious (especially wrt TWYS), I'm providing both options.

That being said, I do think removing child from non-G posts should be done afterwards, if that's the route we decide to go. I didn't include it in the initial BUR as I didn't want people to get hung up on that line and prevent it from going forward.

Talulah said:

Just to be clear, I'm more leaning toward nuking them entirely. If I could vote on my own BURs (why was that removed again?) I'd meh the first and upvote the second. But because the latter may be more contentious (especially wrt TWYS), I'm providing both options.

That being said, I do think removing child from non-G posts should be done afterwards, if that's the route we decide to go. I didn't include it in the initial BUR as I didn't want people to get hung up on that line and prevent it from going forward.

Good to know and to mention so that those voting for the first BUR know which route it would lead the tag towards. But that then raises the question of misrating. For both female child and male child, and for child too, is anyone going to actually go through these tags and tag-rate posts to make sure the BURs don't accidentally remove even more posts that would validly be under a rating:g-only child tag? And going back to the maintenance point, how many are going to make sure that the post in question is not only valid for such a child tag, but whether the user who rated the post rated it correctly to begin with (based on the stricter standards to be anticipated, as evazion noted)?

[...]
Let me put it this way: A few years ago, E-Hentai nearly shut down entirely over fears over the legality of loli/shota content ([1]). That was after they were already forced to hide everything behind Sad Panda a decade ago because of pressure from advertisers. A couple years ago, Gelbooru had their server seized over a single image their hosting provider found questionable ([2]). As a result they were forced to hide this type of content by default, despite resisting having any kind of content restrictions before.

If advertisers are the main concern, would it be better to keep these tags active but also to blacklist them by default like rating:g / furry? Gelbooru's solution for loli was pretty much the same as a blacklist, and this solution would automatically hide the posts from the general pool as they are tagged.

wakaba_hiiro said:

If advertisers are the main concern, would it be better to keep these tags active but also to blacklist them by default like rating:g / furry? Gelbooru's solution for loli was pretty much the same as a blacklist, and this solution would automatically hide the posts from the general pool as they are tagged.

As the second half of that post you're quoting indicates, it wasn't solely advertisers, but also legal concerns. Blacklisting is done client-side so it probably would not help.

Is there really no better solution to the situation than nuking a sizeable tag that people use to find cute SFW art with nothing to replace it? If the word "child" is the problem, then wouldn't reworking the loli/shota tags to encompass SFW posts and restricting posts with those tags above rating:g from member level users be viable?

不失者 said:

Is there really no better solution to the situation than nuking a sizeable tag that people use to find cute SFW art with nothing to replace it? If the word "child" is the problem, then wouldn't reworking the loli/shota tags to encompass SFW posts and restricting posts with those tags above rating:g from member level users be viable?

Making those tags apply to SFW posts is a non-starter:

nonamethanks said:

Sorry for the reality check but tagging safe for work underage characters as "loli" or any other variation or derivative of the term is out of the question, especially after all the payment processing troubles as of late.

Referring to SFW posts as "loli" or "shota" looks even worse than doing so for NSFW posts. The sad reality is that there's not really a good way to go about tagging children on a site full of porn that doesn't make it look bad. This topic has been discussed as far back as 2007 and nobody could come up with a good solution.

I mean if calling SFW posts as "loli" is bad then there is not much of an option other than nuke. Options are either obscuring them with Japanese variants such as gaki/shoujo/shounen or nuking them and using pools/specific tags for your 'uooh' searches.

I don't see anything wrong with the child tag, but keeping it is a huge liability as international laws keep changing and e.g. boorus getting DNS-banned country-wide (happened to gelbooru in France).

If we keep these tags, they should at least be hidden for anonymous users.

The mention of how tagging SFW posts as "loli" or "shota" being out of the question makes me wonder about the onee-shota, onee-loli and onii-shota that were created as a result of topic #20382. While nuking those tags would be entirely out of the question, if we're going with the "no using loli or shota in SFW contexts" shouldn't these tags be renamed to something less liable?

Damian0358 said:

The mention of how tagging SFW posts as "loli" or "shota" being out of the question makes me wonder about the onee-shota, onee-loli and onii-shota that were created as a result of topic #20382. While nuking those tags would be entirely out of the question, if we're going with the "no using loli or shota in SFW contexts" shouldn't these tags be renamed to something less liable?

The "risque, sexual or romantic fashion" bit in their wikis should preclude the use of these tags on General posts, which what is actually meant by SFW in this context.

blindVigil said:

The "risque, sexual or romantic fashion" bit in their wikis should preclude the use of these tags on General posts, which what is actually meant by SFW in this context.

I know, but that hasn't stopped about 80 or so General posts collectively being tagged one of the three tags, whether it be because people don't read the wikis or whatever other reason.

Damian0358 said:

I know, but that hasn't stopped about 80 or so General posts collectively being tagged one of the three tags, whether it be because people don't read the wikis or whatever other reason.

The consistent refusal to properly tag loli/shota even on obvious images is an issue that is connected to and exacerbated by the one in this topic.

But it's worthy of its own discussion.

Damian0358 said:

The mention of how tagging SFW posts as "loli" or "shota" being out of the question makes me wonder about the onee-shota, onee-loli and onii-shota that were created as a result of topic #20382. While nuking those tags would be entirely out of the question, if we're going with the "no using loli or shota in SFW contexts" shouldn't these tags be renamed to something less liable?

I was opposed to these tags to begin with. If we really wanted gendered age difference tags it should've just been something like older male/older female + hetero/yuri/yaoi.

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