Anime-relatedness of 4chan memes on Danbooru

Shinjidude said:

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For example when I was more diligent at clearing the mod queue, I would pretty much auto-hide comics and doujin, since I felt the individual strips very rarely passed muster in isolation.

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I don't know if that means things are more set in stone now than they once were, but in any case they don't seem to have changed much from what they had always been, even if the description of them may not make perfect sense to a newcomer.

Although this is something of a side-point from what this thread was originally started to discuss, this was also something I do think should have some sort of specific mention in the rules.

It's pretty obvious there's a different standard for the doujins and webcomics, based at least as much upon quality of content as aesthetic quality, yet it's never mentioned as such. In fact, it's still listed as "conditionally accepted" that Danbooru even accepts doujins at all. Meanwhile, doujins and comics have become a steadily increasing portion of Danbooru's content, and an increasing reason why someone would want to come here. (It's certainly the reason why I keep a tab open to check every day...)

Even if the rules as stated will never be perfect, isn't it still worth updating that portion of the rules?

That rule in specific guideline was an example of something I'd personally apply above and beyond the typical consensus. I know that I wasn't the only person who would hold comics and doujin to the same standard as everything else (that it must stand up as good art on its own), but there were other approvers who would accept them for what they were (maybe as you say that's becoming more frequent than in the past). Posting comics was never against the rules, it was just that many of us approvers would place them under greater scrutiny (hence the "conditionally" acceptable).

That specific rule was never quite 100% agreed upon, so that's why it never got into the official rule page (I presume). I'll also mention that I generally didn't do much with the wiki, and would typically leave others to make sense of the forum discussions and semi-codify things there. Personally I feel there are better places to post and read comics, and that Danbooru was originally meant to collect art instead, but it's not against the rules, and other people like and approve them, so I don't have a particular problem with it being here. My only fear is that like one sees with super popular trens like Touhou, someone might feel an otherwise borderline or unacceptable image ought to be approved just because it's "part of the set".

As for updating the rules to reflect reality, I don't personally have a problem with it, though I'd feel more comfortable if there was more input and consensus from other well established members. If there was ever one thing about policy in the past, it was never unilateral (unless Albert as owner wanted to allow or enforce something). I wouldn't likely support making the rules much more restrictive than they are now though, as that would be hard to enforce and fly in the face of the flexibility Danbooru has always had.

Shinjidude said:

That rule in specific guideline was an example of something I'd personally apply above and beyond the typical consensus. I know that I wasn't the only person who would hold comics and doujin to the same standard as everything else (that it must stand up as good art on its own), but there were other approvers who would accept them for what they were (maybe as you say that's becoming more frequent than in the past).

One of the reasons I like lurking through the comments, though, is that it tends to be an innate filter for the decent doujins/comics, since the good ones are the ones most heavily discussed. The porn, meanwhile, rarely gets comments.

It's always been an attestation that Danbooru isn't a porn site, but that was a fairly hollow one early on, (when there was little other reason to come here,) and it's become more and more true.

Personally I feel there are better places to post and read comics, and that Danbooru was originally meant to collect art instead, but it's not against the rules, and other people like and approve them, so I don't have a particular problem with it being here. My only fear is that like one sees with super popular trens like Touhou, someone might feel an otherwise borderline or unacceptable image ought to be approved just because it's "part of the set".

As for updating the rules to reflect reality, I don't personally have a problem with it, though I'd feel more comfortable if there was more input and consensus from other well established members. If there was ever one thing about policy in the past, it was never unilateral (unless Albert as owner wanted to allow or enforce something). I wouldn't likely support making the rules much more restrictive than they are now though, as that would be hard to enforce and fly in the face of the flexibility Danbooru has always had.

This is, in fact, proof of that Eternal September effect at play - the more doujins there are here, the more people who come here for doujins, rather than porn. Yes, Danbooru was never officially a porn site, but if there was no other reason to come here, then all you get are the people who want to look at porn. Add a lot of doujin uploads, and you get people who actually filter out the explicit stuff. (I've even been seeing commenters whose comments imply being a woman, and everything!)

(And for what it's worth, I originally came here from a Touhou board because I heard this was a good place to look for Touhou stuff. I only started keeping a tab open when this place had daily or semi-daily webcomics to look forward to.)

But that's also part of what motivates me to speak up, here. If it's nothing but "whatever the janitors feel like" as the rules, it makes it basically impossible to make an appeal for anything. (Like that example of when a person tried to get an image of a woman with massively oversized breasts deleted on the basis of violating the rules, and just having the rules change under that person's feet.) It makes it extremely difficult for anyone to have any say on where that Eternal Septembering is going to strike next.

Some rules will always be fuzzy and subjective and impossible to nail down with definite yes/no answers.

This thread has meandered on for 20 days at this point, covering many different topics, so I'm locking it now.

Flag individual posts and let the janitors/mods decide. Should individual mods show persistently bad decision making, that would be a separate issue. There's nothing to be gained from the discussion going on here, because there is simply never going to be a perfectly reproducible test for determining if an image is "anime enough", especially not with literally dozens of people being in a position of interpreting those rules at any given time.

The rule is intended more as a statement of purpose/general guide, just like a lot of our really broad, high-level rules (as opposed to clear-cut rules like "no megami/nyantype nude filters"). But down at the day-to-day, post-to-post level, the decisions are very human, very inexact, and it's going to stay that way until we can replace everyone with robots.