Self-uploading artist policy discussion

buehbueh said:

I suspected a person of this recently and then posted a feedback asking them to refrain from self-uploading. They messaged to say they weren't the artist. I was going by the use of comments on every one of the post for a commission for the artist and the fact it was 10 in a row. Had there been a hard ban rule I would have made a worse call. What this taught me was that even the biggest red flags are not a guarantee of a positive result.

That problem is pretty easy to circumvent (or the resulting one is pretty small)
1. If this guy was really the artist, then everything is ok and they will get a Feedback. Maybe not a ban, that would be if it's excessively.
2. If the guy who uploads this kind of art, then a negative feedback is ok if the art is bad (or a neutral for advertising this artist's art (for Spam maybe). So they will receive something eventually, even when they say they're not the artist^^.
3. If the art is decent, then like I said above: It's most unlikely that an artist who considers himself "good" goes with another name to bypass this obstacle. If not: The art is good enough to stay then here and the self-uploader won't get detected.
I.e. the negative site is in my eyes pretty much non-existent when there is a little message in the TOS or the upload-page about self-uploading is considered "a bad thing".

Although the point of non-enforceable nature of the situation has been made, it still wouldn't be a bad idea to put something on the uploading page and the TOS.

On the uploading page it could even be a statement like "By uploading you are signifying that you are not the creator of this art," and so on with the rider that if a person does self upload then they could be banned, their works deleted, etc.

The points have already been touched upon here: self-uploading is nowhere near subjective, and the worst of them will get salty about why people are haranguing them or why their posts aren't being approved/have low scores/aren't favourited as much as others and so on ad nauseum.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of places where a person can upload their own stuff, and many of those places don't have any quality checks or gatekeepers, so all the better. Danbooru obviously is not one of those places, and it honestly shouldn't be.

This wouldn't be as much of an issue if the people uploading their own work were actually decent most of the time. But when I look at the deleted uploads for people that self-upload, that is not the case the majority of the time. And as Apollyon noted, it's becoming more frequent, not less.

Short form - if you want to self upload art you drew, there's places like Tumblr DeviantArt, and Pixiv to do so. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to leave that warning in the TOS and upload pages, and refer them to the upload articles if they need more details. Maybe name-drop those sites in the TOS as well, for self uploading.

Provence said:

It's not about the quality. That was cleared here before. It's only about the uploader. That means: Flagging because of this is a no.

You say that "Flagging because of this is a no", but people in this thread were already talking about flagging and removing such posts. If we ever officially adopt this, then people will use it to "hunt the infidels and burn them at the stake", no matter what was the original intention behind the rule or how good the accused posts are.

A note saying "uploading your own artwork is strongly discouraged" at the upload page is fine, similar note in the wiki is also fine. But outright ban, especially if it's included in the ToS, will create way more problems than it solves.

Jarlath said:

Short form - if you want to self upload art you drew, there's places like Tumblr DeviantArt, and Pixiv to do so. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to leave that warning in the TOS and upload pages, and refer them to the upload articles if they need more details. Maybe name-drop those sites in the TOS as well, for self uploading.

This is a good idea. Cutting down any reasons to feign ignorance on the matter can help.

MyrMindservant said:

You say that "Flagging because of this is a no", but people in this thread were already talking about flagging and removing such posts. If we ever officially adopt this, then people will use it to "hunt the infidels and burn them at the stake", no matter what was the original intention behind the rule or how good the accused posts are.

This was covered in forum #114799 and forum #114821. I did suggest that an extra note could be added regarding older self-uploaded posts of actual quality being allowed to stay.

And if people were actually that active in maintaining rules to the point of hunting down posts retroactively, there would be a lot more done here. But I don't see that happening.

Apollyon said:

This is a good idea. Cutting down any reasons to feign ignorance on the matter can help.

That's what I've been saying since the first page - we can't necessarily outright ban it (even if it could be enforced consistently), but waiting for a hypothetical future release to allow tagging sections of a page for direct hyperlinks and not even dropping simple warnings on the TOS or the upload page isn't helping anyone. And those text additions are simple changes we can do now to help reduce infractions - of it's in your face in the upload page (even as a short sentence), then it's easier to enforce rejections or deletions of bad self-uploaded art, as there isn't the excuse of ignorance to fall back on.

Apollyon said:

And if people were actually that active in maintaining rules to the point of hunting down posts retroactively, there would be a lot more done here. But I don't see that happening.

It does happen occasionally, as evidenced by the nude filter kerfuffle in the last few months, but not to a "purge" level probably because most users can't mass-flag things and get tired of it after a few days.

I'm against a no self-upload rule. As has been said, such a rule is trivial to bypass. I don't see how the rule would improve things. I imagine it won't significantly reduce the number of instances in which people...

• don't read the rules
• knowingly break the rules
• upload crap
• approve crap
• become unreasonably argumentative

Can someone give a number of self-upload posts that don't pass approval? I bet it pales in comparison to the number of non-self-uploads that fall off the queue. Mind you, this is not where I set the goal posts, as I don't fully understand what is trying to be solved. Too much flooding of the mod queue? Too many unworthy approvals?

All of the above problems already have their countermeasures. If the countermeasures are lacking, fix them instead of factoring in the uploader field which ought to have no bearing on the worthiness of content.

A likely reason why more decent art doesn't get self-uploaded is because the practice has been discouraged for so long. I'd like to see that changed.

OOZ662 said:

It does happen occasionally, as evidenced by the nude filter kerfuffle in the last few months, but not to a "purge" level probably because most users can't mass-flag things and get tired of it after a few days.

Nude filter did get purged then unpurged. There are only like a dozen nude filters not deleted anyway.

It is a bit weird how nude_filter shows 1.4k posts but only had like one to five per page. I didn't think deleted posts counted toward tag post count.

Dbx said:

A likely reason why more decent art doesn't get self-uploaded is because the practice has been discouraged for so long. I'd like to see that changed.

Considering the argument a self-uploader attempted to start just 1-2 pages back? No. And as mentioned before, there's several other sites artists can upload their works to. There's no need to loosen a rule because people don't want to take advantage of sites better suited for them (whatever their reasons are: not knowing of said sites, not reading the rules here, or blatant ignorance). That's just spoonfeeding at that point.

This isn't about trying to improve the overall quality of self-uploads, it's about people still breaking a rule that discourages doing that. The only compromise I'll make to this is having a clear, concise statement on both the Upload page and the TOS that more or less tells users "If you are an artist, take your artwork to more suitable sites".

So...since there was real decision (according to Apollyon in post #2451460). Although there were some interesting posts regarding this topic: post #114821 for example
So I think it's appropriate to call one of the admins here: @albert @NWF_Renim @Hillside_Moose @Type-kun
So the question is what they think and if there should be a little message in the TOS regarding this topic.

Last I heard, consensus was that it's okay if the art is objectively good, otherwise a clear no. In other words, people who got 'the skills' get a pass. (Basing this off that one time a few years ago I brought up a case of self-upload and everyone said 'it looks good, I don't mind'.)

Edit: Consensus might be too strong a word, there were only two replies to the thread. Nevertheless, links.

post #1608310
topic #10292

I'm inclined to officially ban the practice since it seems we can't go a month without drama, either from artists or the user base. If the art's good, it'll find its way here anyway, and there's some actually good artists that lurk Danbooru but don't post their own art because doing so is pretentious.

Hillside_Moose said:

I'm inclined to officially ban the practice since it seems we can't go a month without drama, either from artists or the user base. If the art's good, it'll find its way here anyway, and there's some actually good artists that lurk Danbooru but don't post their own art because doing so is pretentious.

Fair enough.

I'd like to think I'm a decent artist, but the reason I haven't tried uploading anything is because my art is merely okay, but not great, and I'd hold myself to the same standards that I look for when I upload. Unfortunately, not many inexperienced artists can be objective of their own art, which leads to many cases of self-uploading being egregiously bad.

Something I've been working on of late.

Work on those arms. They feel a bit too small in size. I could say stuff about her ribcage being too wide but this is not the thread for that nor is that even finished.

CodeKyuubi said:

Something I've been working on of late.

Hmm, just the image hot URL? If you don't want to post your profile I'd like if you at least send me a dmail of it. I don't like this piece but I think others could be promising.

As per people retouching and uploading the works of other, for instance coloring as you point out, I think that should at least get the colorfag, photoshop or derivative_work tag. Also anyone who uploads their own work or a work they modified should make it clear (perhaps "own_work" or "uploader_artist" or some other such tag could be used?) this is what they've done and not play slick by not doing so. First and foremost there should be a much less lenient policy for uploading an own-work and not saying, and for own-works published, they should be subject to the scrutiny described in other posts ITT.

I stand by what I said earlier - make a dedicated notice along the lines of "THINK TWICE" at upload page, with a link leading to rules section dedicated to self-uploading and how it is triple-checked for quality. If author still decides to upload after that, they lose any right to complain and will get banned if they try to dispute disapproval.

This is technically impossible until issue #2598 is fixed, but a link to rules can be made nonetheless, just not to the specific section.

That said, banning self-upload is an option too, but I think that can lead to even more drama.

Going to support Type-kun's proposal. I would rather see that implemented first to see if it has any impact on reducing the problem before going ahead on implementing an outright ban. If it fails we can then go ahead with a ban.

I'm against a hard ban as well. It's not the kind of thing that can be detected automatically and you can imagine a similar amount of drama if a self-upload gets deleted regardless of its quality.

Frankly, if an artist uploads their image to a community site like this, they're just asking for criticism. If they get it they can't act surprised. If you don't want the threat of negative criticism then don't upload it here.

I can add some notes about how Danbooru is not a place to find positive criticism for your art and to expect negative reactions.

albert said:

I'm against a hard ban as well. It's not the kind of thing that can be detected automatically and you can imagine a similar amount of drama if a self-upload gets deleted regardless of its quality.

Frankly, if an artist uploads their image to a community site like this, they're just asking for criticism. If they get it they can't act surprised. If you don't want the threat of negative criticism then don't upload it here.

I can add some notes about how Danbooru is not a place to find positive criticism for your art and to expect negative reactions.

I'm fine with that. Also paraphrasing the howto wiki with the "strongly discouraged" part would help.