ion288 said:
One of the how to/help pages (cant remember which one at the moment) states that the only reason we havent removed the old inferior quality art is a lack of interest and man hours. I figured I could at least make a dent in that population.
I flagged 130 posts between 2020-04-17 and 2020-05-17 and only four where reapproved, so I assumed I was using the system as intended.
This is mostly true, and probably worth spending some time on, but I'd be a little careful with sensitivity as far as the threshold goes. Part of what irks me is that gap of not yet unacceptable, but not quite approval-worthy (IMO anyway).
If we oversimplify the system, and pretend all posts have a "quality metric" of 1 to 10 with 1 being the worst possible, 10 being the best possible, and true "borderline acceptable" is at 5, I'd say the queue allows mostly everything 7 and above though. After going through a vetting process and being given unlimited upload privileges, you get some 5's and 6's that bypass the system, where an individual uploader's threshold is slightly lower than the mod queue as a whole, or they see special value in something, or whatever reason. They are good enough to be accepted by some vetted person, but not enough that a person would go out of their way to flag them. Then I'd say we have a score of 3 or 4 where there's a bottom level threshold where flagging feels acceptable to me. (obviously these ranges are not to scale, and will be skewed to the top of a distribution, also each individual would place these thresholds differently, and with different criteria, but this is as simplification for illustration).
I feel like when flagging we get a little too many of the 5's and 6's flagged when people are specifically looking for things to flag. They're at the level where they'd probably pass by if they are new, but when looking at things super critically get tossed in someone's the "to-be-flagged" pile. They are generally good enough to pass muster, but not so good someone would go out of their way to approve. I think that's part of the reason why such a low number of the flagged posts get re-approved. There are a ton of under threes that should legitimately get tossed, and then there are some 5's and 6's in there that get tossed out with the bathwater.
I'll re-approve those at the top of the 6 scale sometimes or that stand out to me for some reason or another as worthy of being kept (if I see them, since I'm not always looking at the queue consistently), but there are many that feel into that gap where I feel it's a shame they're in the queue, but not good enough to pass that 7 threshold by my metrics.
ion288 said:
But I cant for the life of me understand why someone would like to see post #12001 on its own. We have literally millions of better images on this site.
I think that mindset is a little problematic. "I don't see why anyone would want to see it" or "we have millions of better images" aren't valid flagging reasons. You have to judge on image quality in isolation. post #12001 isn't a stellar post, but it's good enough to stand on it's own composition-wise. It's a sketch, and would be better with context (and I already passed it over once on account of being a comic), but I don't think it's bad enough to warrant deletion. There aren't any glaring deficiencies in it (if you allow for the one eye not being drawn in, but that's a common trope). It's one of those 5's or 6's.
Despite being selective with who we allow to approve posts or bypass the queue, Danbooru's moderation is actually one that errs a little on the side of inclusion. It's supposed to be (barring egregious exceptions), that any one trusted person likes a post, they can vouch for it to get included. That allows for wider diversity in what would otherwise be included. Flagging as a mechanism is the opposite philosophy where anyone can sort of doom a borderline post by pointing it out. I feel we should be a bit more careful on that side of the equation.
ion288 said:
I do offer my genuine apologies for the language in some of my flags. I used a thesaurus to find synonyms for bad and I see now that it got nastier than intended. Im open to changing my behavior if it disturbs others on the site. I rarely use all my ten daily flaggs because I dont want to burden the approvers.
I appreciate that, I think if we all keep civil to each other it will improve the environment and not lead to clashes as have happened in the past. Also thanks for the DM, I appreciate you listening and being willing to consider my viewpoint.
nonamethanks said:
I don't think burdening the approvers is an issue, as now "disapproved:disinterest" etc can be used in tag scripts to mass disapprove posts.
I agree with this, it's not the absolute count of flags that bothers me, just the rational and tenor behind some of them being erroneous by our rules and standards and the sensitivity of the thresholds being placed.
Oh, as a sidebar, thanks for the tip BTW. I remember there at one time being an easier specific mode for approving and disapproving posts from the post view page, but that it had been removed. Being able to do that with a tag script brings that back, which I would find a nice feature. I was only aware you could search with that metatag, not apply it to new posts.
Lacrimosa said:
There's also a good amount of active approvers.
Percentige-wise, flags make up a very little amount of the daily posts in the mod queue (if you garden pending posts everyday).
Yeah I think in terms of number of approvers, we're pretty decent now. It seems most things get about a dozen or so eyes on them, which should be good enough.