Rating posts with self-harm_scar

Edit: Just stating my actual positions upfront because I was misunderstood several times in this topic and I'd rather not have this damage my reputation going forward:

• I was concerned allowing self-harm scars in G would undermine G's purpose as being (in theory) appropriate to show to anyone in public.
• I think it makes sense to rate any self-harm scar as S, but understand why that's not feasible.
• I agree with the guidelines nonamethanks provided below and will base my rating decisions on them.
• I do not think we need to change how we currently rate self-harm scars.
• I do not think we should "coddle" users or use the rating system to protect users from triggers.
• I certainly do not think there is anything wrong with depicting happy people with self-harm scars.

Please keep in mind when reading that all of my statements were attempts to get correct information about how to rate self-harm scars and make it available on the forums, not attempts at trying to change the system.

End Edit

I recently had a conversation with another user about how to rate self-harm scars. They claimed that visible acts of self-harm should be S, but scars resulting from those acts can be rated G. This was surprising to hear because self-harm is something that can hit close to home for many people and can even be triggering for some (I don't mean just getting upset; I mean actually being triggered). Because of this, I assumed even the depiction of scars specifically relating to wrist cutting and the like would disqualify a post for G. When I asked for evidence (since there's nothing on the forums discussing this), I was told the conversation took place on Discord.

I believe the user is telling the truth, but I don't want to just take the word of a single user about something important like this, and since I can't view the Discord conversation, I don't know how many users participated or whether there was any input from mods and admins. Since this involves the rating of posts, I felt this should be discussed in the forums to provide transparency and so other users have some reference for rating these posts without having to use Discord.

Our conversation can be read here and here.

Regarding specific examples, I can understand images like post #6410030 being rated G because the scars are barely visible, but other posts with more extensive scarring such as post #5848749 and post #6088801 were also rerated as G (despite the user agreeing that extensive scarring should be rated S). I would think we would be treating this similar to cleavage in which any amount could justify an S rating. Even though cleavage technically isn't 100% S or above, acting as if it is helps keep the boundaries from being pushed too far (forum #215101).

Can anyone verify what was discussed in the Discord conversation and whether higher-ups gave any input? Or share your thoughts on how these posts should be rated?

Response from the thread I originally posted this in:

BobTheBuilder_v1 said:

Regarding the posts, I would never consider post #5848479 for S, the scars are incredibly minuscule, lack special attention, and I can’t even see them on mobile without zooming in. post #6088801 I find less so because of the deeper-drawn scars and other details (tears, dead eyes, tattered clothes) but the lack of any outward blood, fresh injury or camera focus does not fully convince me. Feel free to quote me in your new thread, I’ll be asleep by the time you make it.

Also, you might want to interrogate @sabisabi and @HyphenSam as well.

There's a self-harm_scar tag? Don't tell me we should tag every time Luffy's facial scar or Zoro's ankle scars are visible, since those were self-inflicted.

Blank_User said:

Can anyone verify what was discussed in the Discord conversation and whether higher-ups gave any input? Or share your thoughts on how these posts should be rated?

Response from the thread I originally posted this in:

Not going to speak on conversations I'm uniformed about but I will give my opinion since you're soliciting them.

All scars come with implied violence, but unless there is blood or they are in the process of cutting I think an otherwise G image should stay G. Something like post #6410030 shouldn't be rated up neither should facial scars or any other type. If someone is sensitive about the issue and absolutely doesn't see it they can blacklist the tag same with other sensitive topics like suicide or self-harm in general.

Maybe this tag should imply the broader self-harm though? Would make it easier to blacklist.

Something like post #6617423 or post #5893348 should absolutely be rated S. See howto:rate: Depictions of thoughts of suicide or self-harm (including gun to head).

In general, if self-harm scars are presented as the focus of the picture or one of the most evident traits of the characters, I would say they should be rated S.
If they're barely visible like with post #6410030 it makes sense to rate them G, and I can see the argument for post #6088801 because you actually can't tell whether they're self-harm scars, they don't follow the usual pattern, but post #5848749 is an example I would rate S because of their presence.

zetsubousensei said:

All scars come with implied violence

There's a big difference between a scrape on the face or knee, and scars that are obviously the result of someone cutting their own wrists.

Mavado said:

There's a self-harm_scar tag? Don't tell me we should tag every time Luffy's facial scar or Zoro's ankle scars are visible, since those were self-inflicted.

Those scars were self-inflicted to show toughness and to escape from a trap, respectively. They were not inflicted because of any underlying psychological issues, which was what self-harm scar was intended for. Also, you would only know they were self-inflicted from canon knowledge, which is something we usually try to avoid taking into account when tagging.

nonamethanks said:

Something like post #6617423 or post #5893348 should absolutely be rated S. See howto:rate: Depictions of thoughts of suicide or self-harm (including gun to head).

Exactly what I was thinking. That was the main reason I thought they didn't belong in G. Thank you for setting the record straight.

I think they should almost always be rated S at minimum, including post #6088801.

Nameless_Contributor said:

I think they should almost always be rated S at minimum, including post #6088801.

While we're supposed to consider each post individually, the artist of post #6088801 has quite a few other self-harm scar posts, so it was probably meant to be seen that way. Even without that context, I think one could reasonably assume they are self-harm scars. This assumption should be enough for an S rating even without being 100% certain.

Nameless_Contributor said:

I think they should almost always be rated S at minimum, including post #6088801.

Went through the self harm and wrist _cutting tags and added about 200 posts and I think a lot of it falls into S regardless due to costumes and/or horror imagery. Would agree for that one.

nonamethanks said:

There's a big difference between a scrape on the face or knee, and scars that are obviously the result of someone cutting their own wrists.

I guess it's another unpopular opinion time but:
If they're fresh yes, but these scars last years and if the image is otherwise G I don't see why it should bump up post #6332643 doesn't otherwise show signs of mental distress, granted I haven't played her game and she seems to be the one who prompted this discussion.

post #5796898 and all other works of this OC feature old scars that are never the focal point of the image, same with this Miku post #4086889 who's scars are heavily faded. People, even a fictional character screwing up in high school shouldn't be considered nsfw.

Now posts like post #1830510 or post #4378741 show clear distress and mental health issues and I think if boxcutters, knives, nooses, pills, and crying + eyebags are all enough to bump an image just not the scar on an otherwise healthy girl.

zetsubousensei said:

I guess it's another unpopular opinion time but:
If they're fresh yes, but these scars last years and if the image is otherwise G I don't see why it should bump up post #6332643 doesn't otherwise show signs of mental distress, granted I haven't played her game and she seems to be the one who prompted this discussion.

Now posts like post #1830510 or post #4378741 show clear distress and mental health issues and I think if boxcutters, knives, nooses, pills, and crying + eyebags are all enough to bump an image just not the scar on an otherwise healthy girl.

The discussion was prompted by three users (as far as I know) deciding in Discord that self-harm scars can be rated G without bringing it to the forums (and probably without mod or admin input), not about any specific character. The reaction of the character is also irrelevant; the presence of these scars in an image brings attention to the topic of self-harm. These scars are enough to bring a post to S because bringing up the topic of self-harm is potentially triggering on its own. Many art blogs, YouTube videos, and other media will provide content warnings for this kind of material for this very reason. If the G rating is to be 100% safe, we have to make sure people don't accidently stumble upon those triggers when searching for rating:g or using donmai.moe. We can't predict how badly they'll be affected, so it's better to keep them in S.

zetsubousensei said:

post #5796898 and all other works of this OC feature old scars that are never the focal point of the image, same with this Miku post #4086889 who's scars are heavily faded.

The scars are in plain view in both of those posts, so your argument doesn't really apply there. The artist could have easily chosen not to draw the scars. Including them was a deliberate choice (especially with Miku, who is usually not depicted with scars) and I'm certain the artist wanted other people to notice them. For post #6410030, I agree with the G rating but that's partly because of the fact that the scar could easily be mistaken for a wrinkle. I don't actually think any self-harm scar should be in G, but I also know they can easily be missed in some posts and it would be unrealistic to expect them to stay in S. Your two example posts, however, do not share that excuse.

Regarding the NSFW part, rating self-harm scars properly does not mean we are applying the ratings to the people themselves. It is never necessary to show the scars, just as it is never necessary for a character to wear revealing clothes.

Blank_User said:

The discussion was prompted by three users (as far as I know) deciding in Discord that self-harm scars can be rated G without bringing it to the forums (and probably without mod or admin input), not about any specific character.

This didn't happen in some secret Discord cabal group DM, it happened in the relevant channels for discussing things like this on the Danbooru server. Outside of the 3 users, multiple other people including moderators also added bits and pieces of opinions, advice and suggestions. There's of course the problem of discussing policy on the Discord, but it has been explained in this thread now.

The reaction of the character is also irrelevant; the presence of these scars in an image brings attention to the topic of self-harm. These scars are enough to bring a post to S because bringing up the topic of self-harm is potentially triggering on its own. Many art blogs, YouTube videos, and other media will provide content warnings for this kind of material for this very reason. If the G rating is to be 100% safe, we have to make sure people don't accidently stumble upon those triggers when searching for rating:g or using donmai.moe. We can't predict how badly they'll be affected, so it's better to keep them in S.

While obviously care should be taken, like @zetsubousensei says, this is exactly what we have a blacklist for. You can't everyone-proof the site.

Your two example posts, however, do not share that excuse.

They're not excuses, they're reasonings as for why they think the scars being the reason for rating S is overkill: yes they're an important detail of the image, but they're small, definitely not the focal point.

It is never necessary to show the scars, just as it is never necessary for a character to wear revealing clothes.

This is a bit of a weird argument to me and I don't really see how it's related either. No, technically it's not necessary to show the scars, true, but that doesn't justify such a level of absolutism regarding the ratings.

Blank_User said:

If the G rating is to be 100% safe, we have to make sure people don't accidently stumble upon those triggers when searching for rating:g or using donmai.moe. We can't predict how badly they'll be affected, so it's better to keep them in S.

This strikes me as a misguided application of the rating system. Not everyone who uses safebooru or rating:g is trying to avoid personal triggers. Someone who might be triggered by self-harm scars but otherwise has no issues with nsfw content would still risk stumbling across such posts during normal searches. Locking otherwise innocuous posts out of G does nothing to protect this specific subset of users.

If you're then going to ask that those users rely on the blacklist, then I have to ask what the point of excluding them from General was, why aren't the rating:g users being asked the same? This only really protects specifically people triggered by posts related to self-harm that are only looking at General posts. It's a niche of a niche. What's next, are we going to say all guns should be excluded from General because it could trigger someone who's been traumatized by gun violence, ignoring everyone that isn't exclusively looking at General posts?

The rating system doesn't exist to protect people from their triggers, that's a fool's errand. People with triggers should be expected to use the blacklist like anyone else that doesn't want to see specific subject matters. You can't protect anonymous strangers from everything that could hurt them on the internet.

岩戸鈴芽 said:
They're not excuses, they're reasonings as for why they think the scars being the reason for rating S is overkill: yes they're an important detail of the image, but they're small, definitely not the focal point.

I was referring to my own argument for why a specific post can feasibly be rated G despite the presence of a self-harm scar. Also, post #5848749 doesn't have the scars as the focal point either, but are still visible enough to qualify for S as nonamethanks said. I'd rate the post #5796898 as S for the same reason. Maybe post #4086889 can get away with it, but I would still rate it as S for at least being a borderline case.

This is a bit of a weird argument to me and I don't really see how it's related either. No, technically it's not necessary to show the scars, true, but that doesn't justify such a level of absolutism regarding the ratings.

That argument was to counter the idea that we were somehow categorizing people as NSFW. At the time, I was thinking of a statement on the forums (I don't remember which topic) explaining that some characters should be expected to not have many posts in G because they are usually shown wearing sexy/revealing clothes.

blindVigil said:

This strikes me as a misguided application of the rating system.

I'm not saying we should use the ratings system as a substitute for the blacklist. But couldn't one argue that any post depicting thoughts of suicide but are otherwise G can also be blacklisted instead of being rated S? Couldn't illegal drugs also be blacklisted instead? There has to be a reason those specific items were included in howto:rate.

I didn't address S+ users being triggered because trigger-proofing Danbooru is not my goal. My goal is to make sure that the rating guidelines for self-harm scar are consistent with our treatment of similar content. I assumed that anything hinting at a heavy topic such as realistic self-harm would be S+ by default. If this is such a hush-hush topic in a public setting, with trigger warnings being common when it is brought up, wouldn't anything implying it be antithetical to the G-rating? I know a lot has been discussed about payment processors and sexual content, but wouldn't they also have an issue with self-harm scars? I do understand your point about being triggered by gun violence, but somehow I don't think it would be as much of a dealbreaker for payment processors.

I'm going to follow nonamethanks's guidelines and rate obviously visible self-harm scars as S when I see them. I do think it would be too impractical to enforce S on all self-harm scar posts, but S should definitely be the norm. I acknowledge that most of us are in agreement that fresh scars and self-harm acts should be S, with the main disagreement being how strict we should be with healed scars. As I said in the first post, I think treating them the same way we treat cleavage in G and S posts is a reasonable method. That is, we should allow people to rate them as S but ignore the most minor cases if they get rated as G.

It's shrimple:
If the scars are allusions to suicide, tag it s.

Absolutism doesn't work for any tag.

Hi hi hi, finally had time to read this thread.

The thing Blank seems to be forgetting is that Danbooru does not exist to coddle its users. The blacklist function will always be there for users to freely use as they wish. If users who exclusively use donmai.moe don't want to see self-harm imagery, then they can blacklist it. Going with the "well it's triggering, so it has to be rated S" thing is... personally, kind of way off the mark.

There are several images on this site that portray self-harm scars in a way with zero visible suicidal connotations. post #6190233 and post #5586822 immediately come to mind. On your logic, these otherwise completely SFW, wholesome, kosher posts would be rated S because the idea of a previously suicidal person going out and living a happy life is potentially upsetting.

Blank_User said:

I didn't address S+ users being triggered because trigger-proofing Danbooru is not my goal. My goal is to make sure that the rating guidelines for self-harm scar are consistent with our treatment of similar content. I assumed that anything hinting at a heavy topic such as realistic self-harm would be S+ by default. If this is such a hush-hush topic in a public setting, with trigger warnings being common when it is brought up, wouldn't anything implying it be antithetical to the G-rating? I know a lot has been discussed about payment processors and sexual content, but wouldn't they also have an issue with self-harm scars? I do understand your point about being triggered by gun violence, but somehow I don't think it would be as much of a dealbreaker for payment processors.

I don't know why you would just assume that payment processors would care specifically about scars implying self-harm. Payment processors are upset about all the porn on the site, especially of subjects that resemble minors, they couldn't give two shits about scars. If this site had no porn but still had all the posts featuring violence, I would bet you we wouldn't be having a problem with them like we are now.

We didn't start including violent imagery in our rating system because it was upsetting processors, but because most people agreed that violence shouldn't be treated as "safe" content, because it's not considered as such in the real world (double standards of content rating boards notwithstanding).

sabisabi said:

Hi hi hi, finally had time to read this thread.

The thing Blank seems to be forgetting is that Danbooru does not exist to coddle its users. The blacklist function will always be there for users to freely use as they wish. If users who exclusively use donmai.moe don't want to see self-harm imagery, then they can blacklist it. Going with the "well it's triggering, so it has to be rated S" thing is... personally, kind of way off the mark.

There are several images on this site that portray self-harm scars in a way with zero visible suicidal connotations. post #6190233 and post #5586822 immediately come to mind. On your logic, these otherwise completely SFW, wholesome, kosher posts would be rated S because the idea of a previously suicidal person going out and living a happy life is potentially upsetting.

Again, I'm not trying to make Danbooru trigger-free, nor do I think we should enforce an all S+ policy on these posts. But we need consistency in how we deal with this kind of material. Wasn't one of the purposes of the G rating and donmai.moe to give users the ability to view or show other people images freely in public without risking making them uncomfortable? I'm concerned allowing even the happy images in G with clearly visible scars would risk undermining that goal given how taboo self-harm can be in some communities. If the scars are hard to see, then maybe it could still be viewable in public and thus still be rated G. I think the main thing we're disagreeing on is how visible we should allow scars under G to be.

The reason I mentioned triggers so much was because I thought suicide and self-harm posts were put under the S guidelines for that reason, and the application of ratings for self-harm scar posts I observed seemed inconsistent with that.

blindVigil said:

I don't know why you would just assume that payment processors would care specifically about scars implying self-harm. Payment processors are upset about all the porn on the site, especially of subjects that resemble minors, they couldn't give two shits about scars. If this site had no porn but still had all the posts featuring violence, I would bet you we wouldn't be having a problem with them like we are now.

We didn't start including violent imagery in our rating system because it was upsetting processors, but because most people agreed that violence shouldn't be treated as "safe" content, because it's not considered as such in the real world (double standards of content rating boards notwithstanding).

Good point. I asked because I wasn't completely sure where their priorities lie besides sexual content. I assumed it would roughly match societal attitudes, but I forgot that the moral standards of the private companies that own them won't necessarily be the same. I also forgot companies supposedly making these rules "for the children" wouldn't necessarily focus on everything inappropriate for them.

Edit: After some thinking, I realized I may have misunderstood what was meant by allowing users to have a truly safe experience. I was thinking of how you would probably never see something like self-harm scars in kids' media, and thus it would never be appropriate for G. But Danbooru was never intended to be viewed by kids in the first place (I mean, we allow middle fingers and profanity in G, too). If the user wants to show images to their kids, they can adjust the blacklist to their liking, as most of you pointed out. They'd be responsible for whatever content their kids see on the site just like any other page on the Internet. I don't think that could be called a safe experience except in terms of sexual content, but if that's how Danbooru is defining it, then I'm okay with it. I do feel like the blacklist feature could be improved to facilitate this, but I'd need to learn more about how they actually work first and it's outside the scope of this topic anyway.

Also, I get the sense from some posts in this thread that some of my statements came across as infantilizing people with self-harm triggers or considering depictions of happy people with self-harm scars as inappropriate. That was not my intention and I apologize if that was the case. I was just trying to understand how to rate self-harm scars and wanted to make sure I got accurate information that any user can access. I got what I wanted (input from several users, even an Admin) and I think I understand things better now. I'll still rate them as S if I'm not sure whether the scarring is mild or out of focus enough for G (like any other G/S conflict), but I won't treat it as an automatic S+ anymore.