The Contributor Status

Now, this might become a very controversial topic (or maybe not, but let's see :P).
Well, as the title suggests, it is about the Contributor status (or the "Unlimited Upload" permission).
More specificly: The removal of this permission to certain users.
There are two approaches to this topic:
1. Taking a look at this list, we have very, very much Contributors: Contributor List
Now I'm not going for the deletion rate or the negative score rate, since some of our Contributors put their uploads on the mod queue themselves, others are flagged. But the amount is pretty small.
It is simply the amount of uploads and the time that has passed during their last upload or acitivity on this page.
This idea came up when I saw that albert demoted several Janitors from their position, simply because they were inactive (I was told that by a moderator here in a DM exchange). Here is the feedback page
This starts with the user Coconut. There is also a feedback list with the same content, but as a neutral feedback.
Now the Contributor status is a priviligy just like the Janitor status. If someone gets their abilities removed because they weren't approving, then why not the same procedure with Contributors: "If they don't upload in XX years, their permission will be removed."

Other thing is: Today, it is pretty difficult to gain this permission. Some users need over 500 uploads with a very small deletion rate to get this permission. Other users who have this permission gained that probably man years ago and have only uploaded less than 100 post as to this date. I know they have uploaded good uploads in the past, but is this amount really ok today when there are high standards to get this status.

The last point is: Users that are uploading but are more or less rushing their uploads. This has to do with tagging AFTER they uploaded an image. Now as a Contributor, one user should know that there are tagging guidelines. And if they are lazy, they are violating these tagging guidelines. Maybe because of misuse, or because of laziness. And tagging is a pretty big section on Danbooru and pretty important. Now if they have unlimited upload permission, bad tagged uploads are getting more more. So this approach will pu pressure on these Contributors and if they should lose this priviligy, then they have an upload limit and need to work on their tagging if they want to gain back this permission.

So...2-3 ideas to this subject. And I think controversial...so are there any ideas, objections or other opnions to this^^?

Provence said:

Now, this might become a very controversial topic (or maybe not, but let's see :P).
Well, as the title suggests, it is about the Contributor status (or the "Unlimited Upload" permission).
More specificly: The removal of this permission to certain users.
There are two approaches to this topic:
1. Taking a look at this list, we have very, very much Contributors: Contributor List
Now I'm not going for the deletion rate or the negative score rate, since some of our Contributors put their uploads on the mod queue themselves, others are flagged. But the amount is pretty small.
It is simply the amount of uploads and the time that has passed during their last upload or acitivity on this page.
This idea came up when I saw that albert demoted several Janitors from their position, simply because they were inactive (I was told that by a moderator here in a DM exchange). Here is the feedback page
This starts with the user Coconut. There is also a feedback list with the same content, but as a neutral feedback.
Now the Contributor status is a priviligy just like the Janitor status. If someone gets their abilities removed because they weren't approving, then why not the same procedure with Contributors: "If they don't upload in XX years, their permission will be removed."

Other thing is: Today, it is pretty difficult to gain this permission. Some users need over 500 uploads with a very small deletion rate to get this permission. Other users who have this permission gained that probably man years ago and have only uploaded less than 100 post as to this date. I know they have uploaded good uploads in the past, but is this amount really ok today when there are high standards to get this status.

The last point is: Users that are uploading but are more or less rushing their uploads. This has to do with tagging AFTER they uploaded an image. Now as a Contributor, one user should know that there are tagging guidelines. And if they are lazy, they are violating these tagging guidelines. Maybe because of misuse, or because of laziness. And tagging is a pretty big section on Danbooru and pretty important. Now if they have unlimited upload permission, bad tagged uploads are getting more more. So this approach will pu pressure on these Contributors and if they should lose this priviligy, then they have an upload limit and need to work on their tagging if they want to gain back this permission.

So...2-3 ideas to this subject. And I think controversial...so are there any ideas, objections or other opnions to this^^?

I'm of the mind that as long as you tag your images in a reasonable amount of time, and you upload regularly, it's kosher. Especially since I've often tagged to minimum tagging requirements while trying to do an upload, only to have said upload sniped by someone who didn't. The minimal tagging criteria doesn't say that the tags have to be attached at time of upload, just that they're there in the image... and because the system doesn't enforce it, you get those situations.

I would recommend looking at Contributor status primarily with an eye to a) regular uploads, and b) decent quality uploads. Beyond that, if someone's using tagme on a regular basis.... well, that would be something that I'd look at, as that is even lazier than just sticking with minimum criteria.

I always tag the pictures after I upload them to prevent from getting sniped. Of course, I always tag it at least on average-level criteria.

That's why I'm a frequent visitor of 'How do I tag this' topic.

The tag history system was changed years back to accommodate tagging after posting with few to no tags, not that I condone the practice since I stand by that integrity in uploading is more important than having your name attached to an image unscrupulously.

It used to be that every edit would show itself in history, but now, as long as it is within a certain timeframe (2-ish hours?) by the same person, the tag histories will be merged to appear as if they were all tagged before uploading. There was also a huge thread about it before in which previous admins (iirc) expressed that as long as the images were uploaded to Danbooru, who or how did not matter.

Tldr; DB officially condones after-post-tagging, so no point dredging this up again.

As for inactivity, I would offer a tentative agreement.

CodeKyuubi said:

The tag history system was changed years back to accommodate tagging after posting with few to no tags, not that I condone the practice since I stand by that integrity in uploading is more important than having your name attached to an image unscrupulously.

It used to be that every edit would show itself in history, but now, as long as it is within a certain timeframe (2-ish hours?) by the same person, the tag histories will be merged to appear as if they were all tagged before uploading. There was also a huge thread about it before in which previous admins (iirc) expressed that as long as the images were uploaded to Danbooru, who or how did not matter.

Tldr; DB officially condones after-post-tagging, so no point dredging this up again.

As for inactivity, I would offer a tentative agreement.

I don't mean that. I mean Contributors that are tagging so few, that they might receive or have already received a feedback. And when you look through the post changes, they really don't do a lot of tagging work. So the question is: If such a user receives such a feedback and does not improve, should they be demoted to Builder level without the unlimited upload permission.

And @Sacriven You're tagging your uploads to a good amount. That's not what I meant^^. I meant Contributors that are not doing any tagging work at all after uploading and leaving the upload in a bad tagged state.

The whole concept of contributor user is flawed.
1. If we acknowledge someone to be reasonable enough to post only good pictures, then why is he denied to have rights for accepting those posted by other, basic users? (*)

This leads to absurd situations like posts not accepted by moderators but fav'd or even outright appealed (unsuccesfully) by contributors - if only contributors had found and posted that picture earlier it would be accepted without problems right? So the outcome - if something is accepted or not - depends not by the quality of post, but by who the poster is.
Another absurd - if you are basic user and you find a picture, let's say of moderately good quality but you know that some contributor is harvesting the topic/author the wining solution is to leave it alone and wait for him to do the job. This is especially true if most similar posts are done only by contributors. I've seen many times when an artist was widely accepted only because one contrib liked him - but when suddenly someone else tried to do the job, the post was denied. Whoops.

And yes, I remember the shitstorm happened when albert one night decided to give contributors accepting posts privilege. The biggest problem with such decision was - except its suddenness - the fact that there were lots of questionably quaility or even "false" contributors then (buliders didn't exist then).

2. There is no real feedback. If you're contributor+ all your posts are simply accepted, regardless how shitty they could be, and if not only natural born Don Quixote starts crusade flagging them tenaciously you and a half of danbooru will live in sweet delusion of how great contributor you really are...until you get someone from the top reaaaly angry and get suddenly axed. Drama ensues.

I could also write (or rather repeat myself) what to do to improve situation, but I've made this post already big enough and tldr; noone cares.

(*)In fact, people generally tend to be slightly biased with picture they've posted (it's only natural as they invested some work and time to find and properly tag it) so the privilege of accepting posts done by others should be cheaper and thus more often granted than the privilege of auto acceptance of their own posts which should be much more elitist and rare.

So you're saying that every Contributor should have Approval powers...
Approving and contributing are two different things. You can follow only the best artists on pixiv. That will make you a good contributor, but not a good approver since approver have to do more than just uploading. They have to judge other people's uploads and not all contributors are big Pokémon fans as I am for example. So Approver should acknowledge/approve a bit more than they would normally upload. At least I see the approver status this way and act this way when approving.

About the second paragraph: That IS exactly what we're here about, although you're giving a new aspect. And yes, I agree with you here that if the quality is bad of one Contributor's uploads, they should be demoted if that happens in large scale. Just like approvers get their power removed when they approve bad work...although apparantly that has never(?) been enforced.

So for short there are four aspects:
1. Inactivity (not on Danbooru in general, but in uploading)
2. Low upload amount since today it is pretty hard to get the Contributor status
3. Bad upload quality in big amount
4. Bad tagging work on their uploads.

richie said:

The whole concept of contributor user is flawed.

2. There is no real feedback. If you're contributor+ all your posts are simply accepted, regardless how shitty they could be, and if not only natural born Don Quixote starts crusade flagging them tenaciously you and a half of danbooru will live in sweet delusion of how great contributor you really are...until you get someone from the top reaaaly angry and get suddenly axed. Drama ensues.

I could also write (or rather repeat myself) what to do to improve situation, but I've made this post already big enough and tldr; noone cares.

(*)In fact, people generally tend to be slightly biased with picture they've posted (it's only natural as they invested some work and time to find and properly tag it) so the privilege of accepting posts done by others should be cheaper and thus more often granted than the privilege of auto acceptance of their own posts which should be much more elitist and rare.

There is a feedback system for bad or otherwise substandard posts - it's called flagging. Anyone can do that, not just builders and contributors. Enough posts get tagged which are legitimately bad (versus someone having a vendetta), and there may be action taken by the Admins. It's not just Albert anymore who can promote or demote Contributors or Builders.

It's clear that consistently bad uploads and bad tagging are a problem and perfectly valid reasons for demotion, but I'm not very sure about inactivity and low upload amount. What problems do those cause?

Sure, there's no reason for users that have uploaded nothing for a year or more to have the contributor status, but there's no real reason for them not to either. It's not like someone is going to suddenly come back and flood the site with crap.

That being said, it does seem pretty strange that there are almost 90 contributors that have uploaded in total less than 100 posts each. Some even have no posts at all. How did that happen?

Well, it is a permission. Just like the janitor status. So why should I have a permission for an acitivity I don't follow? This scoops out the Contributor status since everyone who has this can now stop uploading and has no consequences to fear. Therefore not making any improvement to Danbooru.
As for people with few uploads...well, I would call it a bit fairness. There are people with less than 100 uploads. Now, in early time, people received a feedback for uploading 50 uploads, but that in my eyes is still to low to judge a user's taste or perception.

Provence said:

Well, it is a permission. Just like the janitor status. So why should I have a permission for an acitivity I don't follow? This scoops out the Contributor status since everyone who has this can now stop uploading and has no consequences to fear. Therefore not making any improvement to Danbooru.
As for people with few uploads...well, I would call it a bit fairness. There are people with less than 100 uploads. Now, in early time, people received a feedback for uploading 50 uploads, but that in my eyes is still to low to judge a user's taste or perception.

Yeah, I am left scratching my head at how some users have gained privileges. For example user #436280.

chodorov said:

Yeah, I am left scratching my head at how some users have gained privileges. For example user #436280.

Well, this is the Janitor position. topic #11837 is more relevant on that matter.

What's the actual reason for demoting inactive uploaders, though? The idea of Contributor status, I think, is that the user has shown that their own standards / judgement are good enough that (almost) anything they post would be approved, so there's no need to bother approvers with it or limit the rate at which they can upload. (The mod queue and rate limit being tools to limit the amount of crap that enters the site from users who are not trusted that way.) If a Contributor hasn't uploaded for a while, does that mean their standards or judgement have degraded over time? I don't think that makes much sense.

If the issue is that some Contributors are uploading crap, that issue should be addressed directly. Just because someone hasn't uploaded for a while doesn't mean they're going to start uploading crap when they get back. Likewise, users who are currently uploading crap shouldn't be protected from demotion just because they continue uploading crap.

Provence said:

Well, it is a permission. Just like the janitor status. So why should I have a permission for an acitivity I don't follow? This scoops out the Contributor status since everyone who has this can now stop uploading and has no consequences to fear. Therefore not making any improvement to Danbooru.

IMO looking at it from the perspective of "consequences to fear" is unnecessarily heavy-handed.

Sometimes people's lives change, e.g. change in employment situation, and they don't have as much time to spend on the site for a while. It could even be as extreme as spending a year or two in an area with little or no internet access for whatever reason. These things happen, but they aren't necessarily permanent. At some point the user may have more time to spend on the site again. If you come back after being unable to spend time on the site for a while and find you've been stripped of the privileges you had before, that's likely to be a negative motivator, i.e. you'll feel your effort was wasted and you'll be less likely to start being "useful" to the site again.

If you pay for a Gold account, you don't have to keep paying to keep it. You shouldn't have to keep contributing at a certain rate to keep your Contributor account either. Do you really think there are a significant number of people here who contributed a lot just to get free privileges and then stopped? I don't.

If the requirement for activity is just having logged in in the last 2 years or something, that's not actually going to make people do anything more useful. If there's a stricter requirement, people will do a sloppy job to meet it or just give up and contribute nothing at all. Either way hurts good contributors who take a break from the site and come back.

In the end, you can't force people to care. But the majority of the people who make it Contributor do care, so don't treat them like prisoners you have to keep in line.

☆♪ said:

What's the actual reason for demoting inactive uploaders, though? The idea of Contributor status, I think, is that the user has shown that their own standards / judgement are good enough that (almost) anything they post would be approved, so there's no need to bother approvers with it or limit the rate at which they can upload. (The mod queue and rate limit being tools to limit the amount of crap that enters the site from users who are not trusted that way.) If a Contributor hasn't uploaded for a while, does that mean their standards or judgement have degraded over time? I don't think that makes much sense.

If the issue is that some Contributors are uploading crap, that issue should be addressed directly. Just because someone hasn't uploaded for a while doesn't mean they're going to start uploading crap when they get back. Likewise, users who are currently uploading crap shouldn't be protected from demotion just because they continue uploading crap.

IMO looking at it from the perspective of "consequences to fear" is unnecessarily heavy-handed.

Sometimes people's lives change, e.g. change in employment situation, and they don't have as much time to spend on the site for a while. It could even be as extreme as spending a year or two in an area with little or no internet access for whatever reason. These things happen, but they aren't necessarily permanent. At some point the user may have more time to spend on the site again. If you come back after being unable to spend time on the site for a while and find you've been stripped of the privileges you had before, that's likely to be a negative motivator, i.e. you'll feel your effort was wasted and you'll be less likely to start being "useful" to the site again.

If you pay for a Gold account, you don't have to keep paying to keep it. You shouldn't have to keep contributing at a certain rate to keep your Contributor account either. Do you really think there are a significant number of people here who contributed a lot just to get free privileges and then stopped? I don't.

If the requirement for activity is just having logged in in the last 2 years or something, that's not actually going to make people do anything more useful. If there's a stricter requirement, people will do a sloppy job to meet it or just give up and contribute nothing at all. Either way hurts good contributors who take a break from the site and come back.

In the end, you can't force people to care. But the majority of the people who make it Contributor do care, so don't treat them like prisoners you have to keep in line.

The Gold status is NOT a permission. You can't really do something with that that are influencing posts of being deleted or not. To flag is something everyone can do.
So this whole comparison with that is not good.
Instead, compare it with the approver permission. So the question is: What is different between those two permissions. Read the introduction post with the link to the feedbacks.
But of course I can do that: Contributors should contribute. That's why they have earned this permission. Btw. with that logic of yours: If they don't want to contribute...then what is the point of having these users as Contributors in the first place. Because if you say so, then they simply don't care about this permission. But contributing is an activity.
Like I said: Same reason as to why Janitors where demoted (I was told so)
So I guess @albert should say something if you have a point and why Contributors are treated differently.

Provence said:

The Gold status is NOT a permission. You can't really do something with that that are influencing posts of being deleted or not. To flag is something everyone can do.
So this whole comparison with that is not good.

The comparison with Gold wasn't my primary point, but I think it is relevant if you look at the Contributor status as a reward, which was the way I interpreted some of the things you said. I apologize if that was a misunderstanding. If you look at it as primarily a way to give highly-contributing users tools to contribute more efficiently - which I do think is the main point - then yes, the comparison to Gold users isn't very relevant.

However, please don't write off everything I said on account of that one analogy. The first two paragraphs of my post (before I quoted you) are entirely from the perspective of Contributor status as utility (not reward), and I think most of the rest of what I said also still applies if you ignore the Gold user comparison.

To make shorter what I'm trying to ask/say: What real advantage to the site would be gained from the policy you suggest, that would be enough to be worth the harm caused by demoting previously helpful users who would have later started contributing more again?

Arbitrary notions like "fairness" or equivalence to the way Janitors may be handled (without discussing why that is the case) aren't legitimate reasons, IMO. What matters is how this would help the site and its users. If it wouldn't, or it would hurt even more, it shouldn't be done.

Provence said:

Instead, compare it with the approver permission. So the question is: What is different between those two permissions. Read the introduction post with the link to the feedbacks.

The records you pointed to are demotions from Janitor trials. Those users were given Janitorial privileges temporarily with the understanding that they would be evaluated at the end of a given period to decide if they should become a real Janitor or not. That's different than randomly demoting a user who's had the Janitor status for a long time because they haven't approved anything for a while. (I don't know if that happens or not.)

To be honest, I think it's a little harsh for the Janitor trial demotion to be a negative record anyway, especially if you don't have a choice about being entered in the trial to start with (not sure if that's the case or not), but I suppose that's a little off topic.

Provence said:

But of course I can do that: Contributors should contribute. That's why they have earned this permission. Btw. with that logic of yours: If they don't want to contribute...then what is the point of having these users as Contributors in the first place. Because if you say so, then they simply don't care about this permission. But contributing is an activity.

I'm not talking about anyone who "doesn't want to contribute". I'm assuming that users with the Contributor status do want to contribute, and I think that assumption is largely true, because nobody is forcing them or paying them to be here and do whatever they do. It is however possible that some of them are (maybe temporarily) unable to contribute at the same rate they once did, and I don't think there's any reason to remove their privileges for that.

Provence said:

Like I said: Same reason as to why Janitors where demoted (I was told so)
So I guess @albert should say something if you have a point and why Contributors are treated differently.

As I said, I don't think demoting from Janitor trials is equivalent to what you're proposing, and I don't think paralleling Janitors is a reason by itself anyway. But I would be interested to hear from albert whether normal Janitors are demoted for inactivity, and if they are, why.

I guess there is a misunderstanding. Janitor Trials is also the word you find on the Report page.
http://danbooru.donmai.us/reports/janitor_trials
It's just the name. But if you wonder, look at this: Neutral Feedback (Don't know how it is with these users, but here is from Janitor.
But yeah, this should be pointed out, too, you're right.

And you're right. Inactivity does NOT apply to the quality of posts. That's why I also pointed out the low upload amount. Some Contributors don't even have 100 uploads. That is more fitting for this.
To say demotion because of inactivity is a bit difficult. Well, I still think that being a Contributor is something special and the person who is in that position should care about this. It's like not appearing to work. And as I said: One year or two might not be enough, since one normally should've done something to earn this position, and for being one year absent is few. Otherwise I would say that Contributors like psich should get demoted...

Regarding the inactivity part: You seem to be basing your argument a lot around the idea that a contributor is essentially the same type of user as a janitor, which is not true.

Janitors are more like staff, while contributors are users. If a janitor is inactive, it harms the site by increasing the workload of other approvers. That is like "not appearing to work".

Unlike janitors, contributors weren't promoted because they requested it. They were promoted when someone from the staff deemed their judgment trustworthy enough to bypass the queue, as ☆♪ explained (in most cases at least).

So demoting contributors en masse in the same way as janitors is not equally justified.

Fred1515 said:

Regarding the inactivity part: You seem to be basing your argument a lot around the idea that a contributor is essentially the same type of user as a janitor, which is not true.

Janitors are more like staff, while contributors are users. If a janitor is inactive, it harms the site by increasing the workload of other approvers. That is like "not appearing to work".

Unlike janitors, contributors weren't promoted because they requested it. They were promoted when someone from the staff deemed their judgment trustworthy enough to bypass the queue, as ☆♪ explained (in most cases at least).

So demoting contributors en masse in the same way as janitors is not equally justified.

Well, first off: I'm not really arguing for anything here. It is just an idea and I explain it because there seem to be some parallels between those two permissions.
And while it is true that they were promoted because someone thought they are good, they should have also thought that this promotion is for a longer time. So to promote someone and then being inactive after the promotion seems a bit weird. Like achieving a goal in sports and being recruited by higher up but for the next tournaments you're doing nothing more. Now this comparison isn't 100% applicable, but it should give an idea^^.

But since @CodeKyuubi gave a tentative agreement, I wanted to ask what the reason for that is. Maybe something I didn't think of yet^^.

Provence said:

So you're saying that every Contributor should have Approval powers...

I'm saying that gaining approval powers should be a stepping stone to gain self-approval powers (contributor) status. Not vice versa as it is now.

You can follow only the best artists on pixiv.

You don't need self-approvals powers for that.

Jarlath said:

There is a feedback system for bad or otherwise substandard posts - it's called flagging.

That's your wishful thinking. I've been hanging around for many years, and I don't know if situation when someone was demoted by mods because of bad posts flagging could be counted in double digits. And that even with power mods like jxh or hazuki aboard.
On the other hand I've seen countless cases of flagged and deleted posts done by contributors, janitors and even mods. And they are still holding their positions... or even being promoted.
So no, the only thing flagging does is it deletes one particular post. Sometimes. That's all.

Regarding demotion because of inactivity: in my opinion this shouldn't happen. Though I understand the reasons why admins don't want to keep the inactives. Perhaps some kind of solution would be introducing suspension mode. It would automatically kick after some time of approval inactivity, and could be reversed (ie - return to normal) anytime by simple request of suspended user. This way admins could easily monitor how much actually active approvers are available on the site.

If the question is whether the contributor list should be regularly pruned, my inclination is to leave it alone. They've already proven their uploads don't need to be moderated so in the off chance they come back to the site they shouldn't have to deal with moderation again.

It's different with janitors because there's value in seeing who the active janitors are in case you want to message one for advice, etc. It's also useful to see how many active janitors are available at any given moment.