Posted under General
As I am correcting non safe pictures that where taged safe I have started to wonder about the definitions in howto:rate. I realise that the rules are meant to be open and generalised but I'm also worried that I will rate incorrectly.
Therefore I shall provide a few posts that I am uncertain about and let you suggest where I shall draw the line.
post #556862
post #530033
post #117126
post #542680
post #1281
Updated by 葉月
post #556862 - safe
post #530033 - safe (potentially arguable, but I'd tag it safe)
post #117126 - safe
post #542680 -safe
post #1281 - questionable
I'd rate the 2nd, 4th, and 5th ones as Questionable, because those would definitely not be SFW content.
I also notice the fifth one is marked as Explicit. But I would rate it as Questionable, as it doesn't really show any genitals. post #196241 is a good example of a case like this.
For #1, I'd probably go for Questionable, since I can't look at it and definitively say "this is a safe image to look at in any scenario". I
And #3 seems borderline, so I'm not really sure. My rule of thumb is "if you can't definitively say the image is Safe, you should probably rate it as Questionable". But I would still have to lean more towards Safe - but I am sure there are others out there who would perceive it as inappropriate, so I might be wrong.
That's my take.
Edit: Just so you know, these ratings were based on what I think their SFWorkiness would be like. eg, if a person was standing behind you at work if you happened to be looking at those images.
Updated
Bapabooiee said: because those would definitely not be SFW content.
rating:s != sfw. Anime fanart, even wholesome stuff, is almost never safe for work, unless you work in an anime store.
This is a very important point. I didn't realize the wiki mentioned the word "worksafe". I've changed that as it can be misleading.
sgcdonmai said:
If it's not supposed to be (at least reasonably) worksafe, then what's the point of calling it "safe"? Or Safebooru, for that matter?
That's what I was thinking, because it was touted that Safebooru was the SFW version of the site, and only contained rating:safe posts - which implicitly implied that rating:s posts were work safe. So that's a little confusing.
But jxh has a good point, though, since I don't think I've ever really heard of anyone ever using Danbooru/Safebooru at work. So I suppose the SFWorkiness of an image shouldn't really be a priority, and that a post's rating should be more-inclined towards how safe the content is for people browsing the site in their ideal circumstances (eg, at home, or a place without any kind of policy to dictate what you can look at).
In any case, I'm kinda torn, here. But I'll just continue rating posts as normal (I tend to avoid rating borderline cases like the ones presented in this thread).
EDIT: I spend a metric forever editing it for readability, so it's kind of out of place with the most recent replies. But it does answer many points raised there, it just doesn't fit textually
3 and 4 safe, 1 is borderline, rest questionable. I'd like to point out this in particular means the last one is not explicit. Just because there's a hint of pubic hair visible it doesn't make things explicit. Even full frontal nudity isn't explicit by itself, as long as it's not ostentatious (or particularly loli, which IMHO lowers the bar for what counts as ostentatious considerably).
When rating, keep in mind that child-friendliness or work-safety are not the purpose of the system, for the simple reason that danbooru never will be truly safe for kids[1] or work, and trying to make it so is a stupid waste of time and resources. Instead it's a means to classify content into three distinct groups depending on what the people browsing are interested in:
1. Completely clean stuff with no sexual overtones whatsoever (for safebooru users)
2. Somewhat or even heavily erotic stuff for people who don't mind sex, but without porn polluting the list
3. The rest
All of the above are targeted at sane adults[2] who understand that sometimes, when two or more people love each other, they will fuck each other senseless, and aren't offended by that. There's also the unfortunate yet unavoidable problem that 3. lumps together plain porn with, shall we say, "explicit erotica", for lack of a better name. I'd gladly banish the former while leaving the latter, but there's no technical or even intuitive criterion to distinguish the two. For instance, I personally consider all of kaieda_hiroshi's explicit works awesome and amazingly tasteful, even though they're full of bodily fluids, and there's just no way to define it. So as much as I'd rather not, we have to live with porn being here, and the only solution is to exercise unrelentingly strict quality control.
So, uh, that turned out to be rather long, but I've wanted to bring the topic up for some time now. It's been bugging me that so many questionable posts are misrated as explicit.
[1] See [2] for my opinion about the whole idea of doing that all.
[2] I'm also okay with unusually mature kids and even horny 13-yo full of hormones, as long as the latter STFU and keep to fapping. I'm heavily opposed to idiotic legal limits as a crutch for the inability or unwillingness of parents to raise their kids and explain sex to them properly.
@ sgc and bapa - I think the point jxh was making was that if a coworker walks in on you looking at a picture of a little cartoon girl, the damage is done whether she's naked or not. Both of you said you'd rate #3 safe, but I doubt either of you could look me in the eye and tell me you honestly thing that's a safe-for-work image. Safe is for images that aren't explicitly sexualized; that's the definition in its most basic form.
I'd say s,q,s,s,q personally.
葉月 said:
1. Completely clean stuff with no sexual overtones whatsoever (for safebooru users)
2. Somewhat or even heavily erotic stuff for people who don't mind sex, but without porn polluting the list
3. The rest
Ding. That pretty much sums it up perfectly, 葉月.
And I'm also going to have to retract my statements in my original post about the SFWorkiness of the images. I don't really use the SFWorkiness of any given image as the basis for my ratings, but I suppose since this is my first time actually publicly discussing ratings, it was natural to just drag that aspect in for whatever reason.
Updated
#1 - Questionable. Lingerie is shown in an erotic context and there's no way that's safe.
#2 - Questionable. Torn bra and torn panties while lying on a bed in a suggestive pose = not safe.
#3 - This is the only one of the lot I'm having difficulty with. No details of genitalia (e.g. cameltoe) are visible, and the pose is not sexual, I'd have to go with Safe.
#4 - This is, like, the poster child for the phrase "artistic nudity". Cute fairy sleeping in a forest, and she happens to be nude; no boobage or vag visible. Definitely safe. I'd feel safe putting this as my wallpaper or screensaver.
#5 - Would be safe if the height was 85 pixels shorter. As it is, though, that conscious decision by the artist to draw pubic hair pushes it firmly into Questionable.
If there was an in-between rating, like "Safe-ish", I'd apply it to number 3. But that's not the way Danbooru works.
tl:dr q, q, s, s, q.
葉月 said:
So, uh, that turned out to be rather long[.]
I just wanted to say I enjoyed reading your little essay. So much common sense and tolerance summed up by the scary resident let's-kick-some-fapper-ass mod of Danbooru! I might have slightly different tastes concerning "explicit erotica" and call it just "porn" (while simply passing by and immediately forgetting much of what you call "plain porn"), but I agree with your general idea. *applauds*
sgcdonmai said: I really have to disagree with that policy, jxh. If it's not supposed to be (at least reasonably) worksafe, then what's the point of calling it "safe"? Or Safebooru, for that matter?
Because rating:notreallysociallyacceptablebutnotatallpornthoughyourmommightdisagree is really long.
"Safe for work" is a very problematic concept because nobody thinks of it the same way. Safe means only what it's used as on Danbooru, just like a lot of other words.
Edit: I think that anyone would classify the fairy image as questionable shows that there's a misunderstanding of what "safe" means here. Skin does not automatically equal questionable.
Updated
I would say the first four are probably safe and the last is definitely questionable, but the only ones I would be ''completely'' certain about (to the point where I'd definitely change them if I came across them rated as anything one-step in another direction) are the last two, which are definitely safe and questionable respectively.
The first three are all potentially borderline, and I wouldn't change them if I saw them as either safe or questionable.
But when in doubt, it's generally best to err on the side of 'questionable'. The most common uses of tags, I think, is to go safebooru and view only safe things (which amounts to saying you want nothing even remotely unsafe, not even borderline) or to just remove explicit images (which means you're already with borderline stuff, but would prefer to avoid the really explicit stuff when possible.)
In both those cases, it makes sense for anything borderline to fall into 'questionable'. Even with guidelines, tagging is always going to be at least a little subjective when dealing with edge-cases... so 'safebooru' will always mean saying that you're all right with missing out on some potential borderline stuff, while '-explicit' will always mean that you're all right with seeing some stuff that you would've preferred not to.
Obviously it's best to tag things as well as possible, but when you're not sure, that's a good guideline.
Updated
I think of "safe" as "completely innocent" and often overreact accordingly (in thought, not deed--I'm not going to completely disregard howto:rate) for things like ass, cleavage, impossible clothes, and lingerie.
post #569577 is questionable to me, because of the tie between apparently bare breasts. The loopy expression doesn't hurt, either.
post #566690, too, for the topless sideboob
Explicit is a much easier distinction to make, though the "full frontal nudity plus public hair isn't explicit if no visible genitalia" bit has tripped me up once before.
RaisingK said:
post #566690, too, for the topless sideboob
No, definitely not. It's not sexual no matter how you look at it. Bikini is accepted as an outdoors outfit, and this one isn't revealing, so it's safe. Our safe most emphatically does not mean "a puritan wouldn't find it objectionable". If we have any puritans browsing the site, they're sadly out of luck, because they're not the target audience.
RaisingK said: post #569577 is questionable to me, because of the tie between apparently bare breasts. The loopy expression doesn't hurt, either.
post #566690, too, for the topless sideboob
These are both very firmly, unquestionably safe to me.
