Flag Vandalism

Hoobajoob said:

All the things I mentioned were just to say it's a medicore picture. The fact it also has a severe problem with the eyes that make her look like sloth from the goonies is what makes the post flag worthy.

If you don't see the problem with the eyes, then look at her chin/nose and the angle it establishes for her face. If you look at the eyes now based on that angle the left eye is on a way higher angle than the other eye. If the eyes were on their own it'd be fine, but the angle of the mouth and chin don't match the angle of the eyes. Either the left eye is too high or the mouth/chin are at the wrong angle.

The problem is that it's just eyes. It's a very minor error, and hardly affects the whole image quality. It's like the proverb "With Only A Drop Of Alcohol, a Pot Of Milk Is Damaged". It's not fair to doom an image just because a very minor error. The proper flags on Danbooru for past months is always about visible HORRENDOUS bad anatomy etc. The fact that a picture is flagged for deletion just because a slightly bad-drawn eyes is already ridiculous, even for a flag.

This is Danbooru, where people shares high-quality anime/manga/western images, not the place for meticulous art critics. If you really think that badly-drawn eyes really justify a deletion, then might as well purge all pics on bad anatomy entirely. There are dozens badly-drawn arms, legs, feet, and limbs there.

The main point I'm making here it that the flag has some kind of merit and definitely wasn't vandalism.

Like I said in my earlier post, "not really a vandalism". I don't know why you still enforce that point even though I already stated it before.

slenderman said:

This is my first ever complaint on this site.

I believe the flag is being abused by someone who think he's professional enough to judge artists' works. I have been noticing it long ago. It's not an opinion, when this particular "user" actually flags an artwork, drew by good artist, with reason such as "One should probably look over this very long stomach and very thin arms. If we also follow the neck, then it is connected to the chest not by a 90° angle, but is slightly crooked" post #2526675.

And then moderators who actually kind of went with it too, by "did not like the post enough to approve it". It is contesting the ability of us contributors (or builders with unrestricted upload) to pick well drawn artworks -- at least when they didn't violate any "code of conducts" of the site, likewise on par with many other artworks. I wish the mods and admins will look into this issue.

Hey, this flag is from me and I can't really see vandalism here.
I could have also written that one should check the post because of its deleted child version which slipped through my queue, too. So instead of saying that, I'd rather give a reason why I didn't approve the child version in the first place :3.

Ah, yeah. That post was the parent of a deleted entry I submitted. Now you mention it, though, I understand why it didn't get approved.

I think it's a valid reason. Once you imagine how the neck is attached to the body when you remove the fur collar, it is a bit too disturbing.

Everyone makes mistakes, its just that that one in particular is too major to let go. Posts that go through the mod queue undergo more scrutinization anyway, and if something is bad in the child its also likely there in the parent.

CodeKyuubi said:

When it's gaudy, in my opinion. It's hard to quantify it, but when you see bad coloring you just know on the spot, "this is terrible."

You mean when something is over-saturated, like if there is just too much shine (more than "normal" shiny skin) or blushing (i.e. it is overly red) for a character?
But since I think that flags should be as precise as possible, and coloring is pretty hard to grasp, I thought it would be good to ask a bit around what "bad coloring" actually means. I always went with non-saturated colors (i.e. when they are more greyish), but is that enough?

You're oversimplifying it; desaturated colors is often a stylistic decision and used to create a bleak look to the piece. If anything, what ought to be judged is the quality of the brushwork itself, not the colors chosen.

Art is very subjective. Even if there is flag vandalism going on, it shouldn't affect the job of approvers/janitors. We are mostly looking for images with disproportionate bodies, technique errors (such as foreshortening errors,perspective errors etc...), generally anything that seems off with the image could be considered a valid flag. Flagging as it was pointed out to me by @provence on post #2472033 is this:

@daniel95312
Nope. Flagging is not only for images that are against the TOS. Although it should be used for any post that you think breaks the rules and are not pending approval.
But flagging also serves as a quality control for images, especially for posts that bypass the mod queue.

This I agree with completely. Don't take a flag on a post you uploaded as a personal attack. If the piece you uploaded is good enough, the mod que should in theory know better than to pay attention to ill-intended flag. Just my two cents.

Gollgagh said:

If anything, what ought to be judged is the quality of the brushwork itself, not the colors chosen.

Can you please explain this a bit more?

slenderman said:

This is my first ever complaint on this site. [...]

If something you uploaded got flagged, then that means someone disagreed that it was a well drawn artwork. That is specifically what the flagging system is in place for, and I'm not sure what you're actually complaining about. Contributors should be immune to flags or something? They're already able to bypass the queue entirely while everyone else waits for up to 3 days, so if anything when one of your uploads gets flagged, all it does is treat it as if it was uploaded by a regular user.

Flandre5carlet said:

If something you uploaded got flagged, then that means someone disagreed that it was a well drawn artwork. That is specifically what the flagging system is in place for, and I'm not sure what you're actually complaining about. Contributors should be immune to flags or something? They're already able to bypass the queue entirely while everyone else waits for up to 3 days, so if anything when one of your uploads gets flagged, all it does is treat it as if it was uploaded by a regular user.

Theoretically. In actuality, if the quality of both the queued and flagged images are similar, it will be at a disadvantage to regular queued images because of the stigma a flag casts on the image.

Regardless, I don't think being mediocre is a good enough reason to flag and delete an image, considering we have tens of thousands of mediocre art for the two popular copyrights, touhou and kancolle, that get a pass on the strength of their copyright and popularity (Which is highly understandable).

I agree with Sacriven and maintain that flagging images should be for 'low quality' images. Minor errors can and should be overlooked as long as it doesn't detract heavily from the image as a whole. This can be variable for some, but that can't be helped. Flaggers should approach images evenhandedly, weighing both the positives and negatives of the image against the average user's standard (The same way Janitors are envisioned to approach images), before applying a flag.

Well, I don't quite agree with your first paragraph. If you mean by disadvantage that the flagger is pointing out the flaws, then I don't know if you should call that a disadvantage (although it is a word thing). They still have the same odds, but moderators are now looking if the flag reason is correct or if there are other things to consider (like the heavily artifacted comic that was brought up by kuuderes shadow on the last page).
Anyways, I agree that one could say that there is a margin of appreciation here and that's why one should not call out vandalism but one should first tolerate the flag and approvals. Tolerate =/= accept which means that if you truly disagree that the image should get approved (if the image is flagged) or flagged (if the image is not that great, note that this is very loose for interpretation). Well, I ask now a second-party user if I see an image that I think isn't that good but also not that bad. So I ask their opinion. Only for images I think are not good, I go ahead and flag it :3.
Of course, if you see a lot of grey area on your flags and that on a certain copyright, artist, user(!), character or artstyle, then you should probably stop it. Then one could also say it is vandalism.

Provence said:

When an image is flagged, reviewers are more likely to look for what's bad about the image, rather than what's good about it.

Edit: If I had to give a simplification, a flagged image is like a negative headline. The contents of the article may be right, wrong, or flawed, but most people don't look too deeply past the headline, taking it at its word. This is why there tends to be conflicts regarding flagged posts. The poster looking at all the good portions to justify the image, and the flagger the opposite, to justify their judgment.

Well, that what you describe is how flags is affecting the Score and the Fav Count of an image. An approver should look past this "headline". I think that this is still true for some approvers. But not all approver are "scared" because of the red border and won't approve this post then.

Flandre5carlet said:

If something you uploaded got flagged, then that means someone disagreed that it was a well drawn artwork. That is specifically what the flagging system is in place for, and I'm not sure what you're actually complaining about. Contributors should be immune to flags or something? They're already able to bypass the queue entirely while everyone else waits for up to 3 days, so if anything when one of your uploads gets flagged, all it does is treat it as if it was uploaded by a regular user.

"Contributors should be immune to flags or something" Well, I actually never said that. Never indirectly said that too to be clear and concise.

My point is that this is contesting us, who actually got promoted due to frequent upload of a range of acceptable artworks (great/good/mediocre, you name it, but NOT of bad quality), making it a certification of us who have knowledge on selecting acceptable artworks and upload them up without violating the "code of conduct of the site" as I mentioned earlier, note the "acceptable" keyword.

Flagged with reasons such as "the stomach is thin", "neck is not connected to the chest in 90° angle (I wowed hard when I saw this as a reason to flag an artwork)" but a handful of other users actually liked and favorite the posts, I am made speechless and confused, to what degree you measure that the stomach is not thin for you, to what extent a little bit off from "connecting at exact 90° angle to the chest" is a problem for you, I have to say might as well flag all the posts from bad_anatomy, bad_proportions, error etc etc.

CodeKyuubi said:

When an image is flagged, reviewers are more likely to look for what's bad about the image, rather than what's good about it.

Edit: If I had to give a simplification, a flagged image is like a negative headline. The contents of the article may be right, wrong, or flawed, but most people don't look too deeply past the headline, taking it at its word. This is why there tends to be conflicts regarding flagged posts. The poster looking at all the good portions to justify the image, and the flagger the opposite, to justify their judgment.

I agree with this because it plays thing psychologically, making the moderators actually and suddenly forgotten about the rationality of evaluating flagged posts, instead more focusing on the minor errors pointed out by the flaggers which weren't an issue in the first place. It works great with media too, like the "headline" you've mentioned.

Every Contributor can have a bad day and upload something bad.
One flag is not contesting anything. It is just there, but nothing else will happen. It will only be a contest against you if you have a ton of flagged posts which is simply not the case.
But then the Contributor should be asking themselves if they should slow down a bit and look a bit more out if they are a target of acceptable quality control/flagging. That is not the same as targeting an user out of hatred/revenge or all those bad things for example.
That said, my flag is not contesting you or your judgement, but it does happen that a post is getting flagged. There might also be users who are flagging their own work for quality control. All that happens.
And high score/fav count is a pretty bad reason to argue against a flag, because it doesn't debilitate the reason for the flag and high scores don't essentially count the quality, but popularity.
Note also that the post is flagged for review. Just like any other pending post and not for deletion. So the goals of flagging is clearly defined in that line. It is pretty new I think, so it takes some time to get accustomed to it.

About the last paragraph: Shouldn't we just make the border blue then like every other pending post? That was suggested from me some time ago. The red border is the first thing you see when a post is flagged. I mean it doesn't really hurt and shouldn't take much effort to just change the colors of the border.

Maybe this topic shouldn't be called flag vandalism, but more a place to discuss jow to use flags and occasionally throw in some weird flags or report them directly to a moderator(?).
That said, this has nothing to do with vandalism, but since the flagging guidelines are still very loose, I want to ask if vector trace is a reason for deletion? (post #2464302 and the child versions).
I think it might be, but what do others think?

Those aren't vector traces, those are cutouts from the original.

Hmm, ok. Then one can dump this question :3

In the end, nothing is solved. Lol.

@Sacriven
?

Just pointing out the obvious. Both faction now in a standstill.