Thinking long term, if users are so interested in inflating their upload count, then maybe further gamifying the site with a generic point system (wherein things like tag updates are treated as equal to uploads) would level the playing field more.
It'd be pretty hard to accurately assign points to tag updates. If you tell the system to give one point per tag added then people could just add a bunch of tags to inflate their points. And removing tags can be useful if they are wrong or misspelled.
DakuTree said: Rating defaults to Q, E if "R-18" tag exists.
The rating system cannot be automated. Hell, us humans often have trouble agreeing which rating a picture should be. Add to that the fact that many Pixiv taggers put an R-18 tag on things we would definitely label as Q:
And then there are manga-mode images, in which the different pages can merit different ratings and tags (e.g. progressive undressing of character or collection of unrelated images), but this bot would label them all the same.
You might say "well the wrong tags or ratings can be fixed later" but that's creating more unnecessary work for taggers.
I'd vote for a blanket ban on uploading bots of any sort. Images should be seen by a human who decides whether to upload it. Even a great artist can upload a terrible sketch for a laugh.
We all know that it's your site but please don't take away even more useful/interesting information because it might be making half a dozen people peeved and disorderly.
Good art deserves a coherent social context that enables debate ("What is this image doing here?") and reflection ("Why are they posting these specific images?"). I can't speak for other uploaders, but every image I post is a statement. (Not an original statement, of course, but I believe that the messengers do play a part in giving meaning to the message.) Mandatory anonymous uploading (and editing?) would turn us into a silent huddle of faceless archivists. No gold stars or search privileges can make up for that.
Edit: I'm not against making the uploader a little less prominent in the post view and mouseover. How about adding a "Creator(s)" field to the "Statistics" section of any post with an artist tag? The row that reads "Posted: X days ago by Y" could be replaced by an "Uploader" field (located below the "Creator(s)" field). In the mouseover, the "Creator(s)" could be displayed instead of the "user:Y" field.
I'm also against indiscriminately removing usernames and the ability to search by them (even if I won't be directly affected by it). A lot of people subscribe by poster, and it's often a nice way to find similar images since a lot of users tend to focus on certain topics or copyrights. It's a quick and easy fix, but it also wouldn't do much to to solve misbehavior. Either the user will be contrib+ and it won't affect them at all, or the user will lose the benefit of being credited, and if this thread has been any indication leave, and take any future contributions away with them.
I do think the points system has a lot of potential though. You could even incorporate things like leaderboards, challeges and achievements (something like a fitocracy model). I have a feeling many established members would find these annoying or undesired cruft (and admittedly they are somewhat silly for an image repository), but if people want to play games (and they already are), and would be motivated by that sort of thing, we might get a better response in terms of post quality and enrichment. The hard part would be encoding things in ways that make sense and won't be too easily exploited especially by means that would harm quality.
Shinjidude said: I do think the points system has a lot of potential though. You could even incorporate things like leaderboards, challeges and achievements (something like a fitocracy model). I have a feeling many established members would find these annoying or undesired cruft (and admittedly they are somewhat silly for an image repository), but if people want to play games (and they already are), and would be motivated by that sort of thing, we might get a better response in terms of post quality and enrichment. The hard part would be encoding things in ways that make sense and won't be too easily exploited especially by means that would harm quality.
Danbooru is only for image repository, not a competition ground. Since the bot or script (it's actually pretty useful if used in tag gardening and updating revisions) is now the prominent uploader and due to its fast and semi-automated mechanism (though lazy taggers are able to outspeed it), the points system will become pointless eventually. I'd rather check the dashboard for something similar to achievements.
albert said: I've been considering hiding the uploader for posts from public (non-moderator) view. Meaning you wouldn't even be able to search for them and there would be no reliable way of comparing upload counts between users. In my opinion this gets rid of the perverse incentive of minimal tag first uploads, but would let mods still track and promote prolific uploaders.
I don't think this is a big enough problem to warrant this sort of change. But if it did go through I would leave the names open to janitors on up, rather than moderators on up. Janitors should be able to see whose posts they're dealing with. (Janitors on up may be what you meant anyway.)
If my uploads weren't attributed to me, I'd quit uploading. 1.4% of the posts over the past year were mine. Sure, some of them would've been uploaded by someone else if given the chance, but not all of them. Maybe no one will miss me, but I can't be the only one motivated by improving my own record instead of by pure altruism.
By definition, this sniping problem is limited to images that would've been posted by someone else anyway (and within minutes, no less). Why should we let the crying of replaceable Pixiv-rush campers affect everyone else?
I do recommend fixing the tag-edits count though. I don't care about it at all because it isn't qualitative enough. Perhaps having it increment with every tag added and decremented when someone removes that tag is a good start. Mass tag renames shouldn't penalize. I also think it would be cool if I could check a tag such as caustic_lighting for a ranking of which savvy users have it in their repertoire; though such a feature might not have enough mileage.
Dbx said: I do recommend fixing the tag-edits count though. I don't care about it at all because it isn't qualitative enough. Perhaps having it increment with every tag added and decremented when someone removes that tag is a good start. Mass tag renames shouldn't penalize.
That's not going to work, if someone goes around vandalizing posts and someone else reverts the edits they end up with a net edit count of zero.
Log said: That's not going to work, if someone goes around vandalizing posts and someone else reverts the edits they end up with a net edit count of zero.
Vandalism is still a bannable offense and I don't see how its incidence would increase.
When a removed tag is restored, the original person who added the tag would need to be credited, of course, to prevent point stealing.
Indeed, cleaning up after a vandal isn't rewarded, but that's by design so points aren't generated through something like a broken window fallacy. I think fixing problems (e.g. banning users) isn't something suitable for turning into a game. You don't want people creating problems to game the system either. Currently, is stopping vandalism motivated by increased tag edit count? Do you think vandalism will go unfixed under this new system?
Not everything can be perfect, and I haven't even given thought to its implementation performance.
I was going to say that this is a lot of extra baggage for something like this (we don't even keep voting statistics forever), but I guess it's all retained in the post's tag history. May still be a fair bit of extra work to potentially have to sort through the history and update potentially many users' tag edit count either up or down. I suppose it's conceivable though. It is somewhat better than simply counting the number of tag edits. I always felt like I was unintentionally cheating when I would take 3 or 4 passes in adding tags to a new post.
albert said: I've been considering hiding the uploader for posts from public (non-moderator) view. In my opinion this gets rid of the perverse incentive of minimal tag first uploads, but would let mods still track and promote prolific uploaders.
I agree with jxh, EB, Shinji, RaisingK and the others on this, this isn't nearly as important an issue to warrant such a useful and core Danbooru feature to be removed in order to address it.
albert said: Thinking long term, if users are so interested in inflating their upload count, then maybe further gamifying the site with a generic point system (wherein things like tag updates are treated as equal to uploads) would level the playing field more.
This sounds good, and it might also work for notes and wiki edits too, so all important contributions to the site are rewarded. I'm not sure how a system like that could be set up exactly though, and how importance would be weighed.
Albert's point system idea (see Fred's quote above) sounds fascinating, but requires lots of consideration.
I see the core problem in rewarding quality vs. quantity. Just to name a few examples:
adding good translation notes should be regarded worth more than adding general tags
artist and character tags should probably be regarded worth more than general tags (recognizing an unnamed character is more useful than marking blue_eyes)
how valuable is wiki work?
Even if it is possible to establish a point system taking into account both the types and scopes of individual edits, there are dangers of intentional and unintentional misuse. For instance, writing undesirably huge wiki articles and subsequently correcting one's own typos (all in good faith) could earn someone an unreasonably high point count. The staff would have to monitor how, exactly, to-be builders have earned their points.
I'm honestly not too sure what to think about this. Personally I'm for any option that just removes the whole issue entirely. If it's a bot, removing the upload status entirely, or something completely different, they all end up with removing the problem. People shouldn't need incentive to upload. There is no incentive to tag, or to translate, yet we probably have more people that do that than we have uploaders. If people really need incentive however, the point system is an idea, but is something that would have to be overcomplicated to actually work well.
The option I brought up earlier of simply being able to null the user status on posts where this happened still seems like it would be a better idea. The sheer thought of such an option being there in the first place would probably deter users from doing it. The incentive would still be there, but without the whole "I'm going to minimally tag just to get first" problem.
albert said: I've been considering hiding the uploader for posts from public (non-moderator) view. Meaning you wouldn't even be able to search for them and there would be no reliable way of comparing upload counts between users.
This was already discussed here and the conclusion is that it will probably create just as many problems as it will solve. However, only hiding uploader at some places might give better results. Here is a quote from my post at the previous page(forum #81773): "I specifically said that at least removing "by user xxxxxxxx" at a post's page and "user:xxxxxx" in the thumbnail mouseover tooltip won't hurt at all. You will still be able to check the post's tag history and see who uploaded the thing and how much tags he added. And all other functionality will also stay. All it will do is remove the simple way of boosting someone's ego by having their nickname at an easily visible place. To me, this does sound like a compromise. I'm not sure how much it will help, but it certainly won't hurt either."
DakuTree's idea of nullifying uploader status on some posts is also worthy of consideration. Here is the quote(forum #81754):
DakuTree said : Another idea would be to simply be able to set a post manually to "Uploaded by Anonymous" or something similar if it is minimally uploaded. Could be limited to mod+ and posts where it happened could be found with the same list that was suggested earlier. It would deter people from doing it if they knew it would happen.
It can even work alongside my suggestion as a two-level deterrent. User's name won't be displayed at an easily visible place and if someone still continues to upload with minimal tags, then problematic posts could be completely unlinked from his profile.
Gamifying the system might work, but it requires a lot of deliberation and may also bring new problems. So I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not.
If you upload for a motive other than helping Danbooru grow, you're uploading for the wrong reasons. Racking up an upload or tag count is great for showing your contributions, but that's all it should be. There's no need to fight over "FRIST!!!111one1" on uploads, or to start any drama over people taking first with automated uploading. If someone beat you to it, you still got your tags in, which means you helped. (It's still a dick move on their part, but what can you do. You can warn people for it and make it clear that it's frowned upon, but other than that I can't think of much. A thread for reporting undertagged posts/non-tagging uploaders would probably help if people actually participate.)
Sure, it feels bad if you contribute but never get a promotion, but it's not like it stops you from helping or reaping the benefits of using Danbooru, whose database you helped maintain by contributing.
As for DakuTree's bot, it needs work (due to aforementioned issues with tagging and rating as well as art standard), but the concept is totally fine.
Hinacle said: You've given one person a record for this supposedly pervasive issue in the past year. A cursory glance at their last few months of posts shows an improvement after that. The one time you tried the normal solution to this problem it worked.
I would like to try this more. As a successful incident it establishes the possibility of setting a trend, it's absolutely viable and can be rolled out right now entirely using systems that are already in place.
Completely getting rid of the uploader is a bad idea for various mentioned reasons, but making him less prominent should help. Like Flopsy wrote place an artist link where the uploader is now and mention the uploader after the score. The mouseover should also have the artist after the tag list. This might very well prevent artists from thinking the uploader plagiarized them.
I like the point system Albert mentioned. Not really image related, but a nice motivation game. It sure would generate quite some work, though.
The new userlevels Pyrolight suggested are very interesting. Especially one for good uploaders AND taggers would be a nice incentive for uploaders to tag more. Maybe executive for contributors who tag well? Motivation never hurts.
