The issue with approvers checking the queue

Hello DEAR community,

if you check the appeal page (https://danbooru.donmai.us/post_appeals) you will notice that a lot of posts get appealed because only a few selected approvers check the posts. One solution to that issue is thought to be just adding more approvers. In fact, we have a huge pool of approvers: https://danbooru.donmai.us/users?commit=Search&page=4&search%5Blevel%5D=37

But somehow, even after the last promotion wave just almost three weeks ago, consisting of six approvers, the issue still persists.
So, it clearly does NOT work when you just make everyone approver. In fact, I see that as heavily misguided as it makes it near impossible to flag an image these days. But it also isn't the solution to this issue of only a few approvers checking posts or the mod queue, for that matter.

I think the solution to this issue doesn't lie in having too few approvers. I think we have more than enough and we don't need more approvers.

I think we have three potential roots for this issue:
1. Unrestricted users get way too much uploaded slots so approvers can't keep up AND/OR
2. The mod queue is too cumbersome
3. Promote restricted users too late (-> promote restricted users earlier)

I personally think the 1st presented issue is the true culprit and that can be fixed quite easily, but at the cost of cutting into restricted users.
All I want out of this is that the wave of new approvers stop immediately. It's not helpful and has other side effects that aren't great for the site, mostly the flagging system.

But maybe there's also another root of that issue I'm not seeing.

I think everyone who has the requirements to be approver should be one. We need more eyes on pending posts, not less. A distributed load is a smaller load for everyone.
I also don't think the answer to having too many posts would be to restrict users so we have less posts. We want more posts, not less.

The mod queue unfortunately hasn't scaled very well recently. More uploads means more bad uploads means larger back of the queue means less approvers go through it means more average posts get missed. I don't know what we could do about that aside highlighting old posts in the queue based on some criteria, or speedy delete posts with X disapprovals so the queue gets smaller faster.

nonamethanks said:

I think everyone who has the requirements to be approver should be one. We need more eyes on pending posts, not less. A distributed load is a smaller load for everyone.
I also don't think the answer to having too many posts would be to restrict users so we have less posts. We want more posts, not less.

That's averting the eyes from the actual core, though. As you can see, having more approvers doesn't solve the perception users have of the approval process. As I also stated, having more approvers makes it near impossible to flag something because someone will swoop in when you have 100 people judging a post. It's causing a loss of quality if we add more and more people to it. We had the same issue in the past as well with fewer approvers. One rotten apple in there can cause a lot trouble when it comes to flagging and it's near impossible to get rid of that. And you can'T always see an user is suited for the role by only looking at their uploads.
It should be questioned heavily if we need more approvers when a supposed need for more comes in the future again or if we have other means to handle the issue I've presented above. I'm really not a supporter of making so many users approvers.

One thing we should keep is disapprovals.
That means, if you presse "No interest" but the post is then appealed in a 30 days window, it won't show up again for that approver.
That way, approvers that actually use the queue don't see the same image twice or even more times.

nonamethanks said:

I think everyone who has the requirements to be approver should be one. We need more eyes on pending posts, not less. A distributed load is a smaller load for everyone.
I also don't think the answer to having too many posts would be to restrict users so we have less posts. We want more posts, not less.

The mod queue unfortunately hasn't scaled very well recently. More uploads means more bad uploads means larger back of the queue means less approvers go through it means more average posts get missed. I don't know what we could do about that aside highlighting old posts in the queue based on some criteria, or speedy delete posts with X disapprovals so the queue gets smaller faster.

Is there a way to view the posts in order of how many Approvers looked at each one? I couldn’t find any in help:cheatsheet. If enough Approvers used such a feature, then maybe those posts would get a fairer shot.

Blank_User said:

Is there a way to view the posts in order of how many Approvers looked at each one? I couldn’t find any in help:cheatsheet. If enough Approvers used such a feature, then maybe those posts would get a fairer shot.

That won't track approvers that only check images by looking at the thumbnails.

Blank_User said:

Is there a way to view the posts in order of how many Approvers looked at each one? I couldn’t find any in help:cheatsheet. If enough Approvers used such a feature, then maybe those posts would get a fairer shot.

There's no way to currently filter by disapproval count that I'm aware of. I opened issue #5863.

i should probably open the queue some more but ehhhhhhhh
>open queue
>7 hits on my blacklist for the worst art known to man
>:PekoraOgey:

Tbh one problem for me with the queue is, that I don't want to click "approve" or "disapprove" on over 1000 images, just so that users can see that I checked it.
It would be easier for me, if there was some kind of "disapprove all on this page" button, so that I only have to click for the images I want to approve.
I'm way to lazy to use Danbooru EX every three days, just to disapprove everything I wouldn't approve anyway, while checking everything else.

What do you mean by unrestricted users get too many "uploaded slots"?

Unrestricted users bypass the queue, am I mistaking something?

Freshblink said:

What do you mean by unrestricted users get too many "uploaded slots"?

Unrestricted users bypass the queue, am I mistaking something?

Unres can throw it into the queue if they want to. I'm not sure why you would, you're just creating additional load on the system for no benefit, but it's an option. In which case, obviously they have infinite upload slots.

Jemnite said:

Unres can throw it into the queue if they want to. I'm not sure why you would, you're just creating additional load on the system for no benefit, but it's an option. In which case, obviously they have infinite upload slots.

If someone unres is doing that, they lack the confidence for the role and should be demoted into a builder lol. I understand if you are self uploading to run it by the queue even if you are unres, otherwise why bother.

> a lot of posts get appealed because only a few selected approvers check the posts

This is forced by a single user who alone makes up around a fifth of the entire modqueue by insisting the site conform to their own understanding of how it should work.

Freshblink said:

If someone unres is doing that, they lack the confidence for the role and should be demoted into a builder lol. I understand if you are self uploading to run it by the queue even if you are unres, otherwise why bother.

If you’re uploading a comic series that is drawn well overall but has one or two pages with significantly lower art quality, it would make sense to send them to the queue. You don’t want to upload low quality art, but you also don’t want to leave missing pages in a comic. Deleted posts are still displayed in series pools, so it’s not really an issue if it doesn’t get approved if all you’re trying to do is complete the comic.

If someone is using it for most of their posts, though, then I agree it’s a sign they might not be suited for Contributor status. Unres users sending things to the queue should be the exception, not the rule.

But that begs the question why they can’t just flag it after uploading. I think that would be fairer since it ensures the Contributor can only flag it once. Otherwise, they could flag it after it gets approved, essentially giving them up to two flags for each of their own uploads.

Thought it'd be useful or at least somewhat interesting to run the numbers just to visualize the scale of the queue.
All the following numbers are based on the range id:6850000.. id:..8400000 Reason being that this is just over a years worth (368 days) of posts counting back from today, and using date ranges gets a bit fuzzy because of timezones.
Note that the numbers can shift a little bit after this post because of changes in post status but they should still be in the correct range.

First of all, while there should be 1550000 entries between these two points, id:6850000.. id:..8400000 status:any only returns 1547430. This probably is because of permadeleted entries, 2570 of them. But this is less than 0.2% of the data which shouldn't matter too much. So we can just continue.

ACTIVE |                       |                        | DELETED  
       |                       |                        |          
       |               +-------V-------+                |          
       |               | INCOMING      |                |          
       |               +---------------+                |          
ACTIVE |               | 1547430 posts |                | DELETED  
       |               |  4205.0 / day |                |          
       |               |     100 %     |                |          
       |               +-------+-------+                |          
       |                       |                        |          

Now Contributors+ have the option to bypass the queue which has happened to about 946289 posts and are still active to this day without any flags. I'll get back to FLAG IN QUEUE in a moment.

       |                       |                        |          
ACTIVE |                       |                        | DELETED  
       |   +--------------+    |                        |          
       |   | CONTRIBUTOR+ |    |            +-------+   |          
       |   +--------------+    |            |FLAG IN|   |          
       <---+ 946289 posts |<---+----------->| QUEUE |   |          
ACTIVE |   | 2571.4 / day |    |            +-------+   | DELETED  
       |   |   61.2 %     |    |                        |          
       |   +--------------+    |                        |          

Now we get to the first moderation queue. These are posts that go through the queue and are either accepted or rejected after three days.
515888 posts were approved and 66503 posts were unapproved. We can then add these together to calculate the size of the FIRST QUEUE.

       |                       |                        |          
ACTIVE |                +------V-------+                | DELETED  
       |                | FIRST QUEUE  |                |          
       |                +--------------+                |          
       |                | 582391 posts |                |          
       |                | 1582.6 / day |                |          
ACTIVE |                |   37.6 %     |                | DELETED  
       |                +---+------+---+                |          
       |                    |      |                    |          
       |  +--------------+  |      |  +-------------+   |          
       |  | APPROVED     |  |      |  | THREE DAYS  |   |          
ACTIVE |  +--------------+  |      |  +-------------+   | DELETED  
       <--+ 515888 posts |<-+      +->| 66503 posts +--->          
       |  | 1401.9 / day |            | 180.7 / day |   |          
       |  |   33.3 %     |            |   4.3 %     |   |          
       |  +--------------+            +-------------+   |          

Now we get to the APPEAL QUEUE where deleted posts get a second chance. Note that posts that have been appealed multiple times count per appeal. *cough*
There have been 22681 appeals (1134 pages of 20 + 1). 11009 posts were accepted, 11672 were again deleted.

       |                                                |          
       |                +--------------+                |          
       |                | APPEAL QUEUE |                |          
       |                +--------------+<---------------+          
ACTIVE |                | 22681 posts  |                | DELETED  
       |                |  61.6 / day  |                |          
       |                |   1.5 %      |                |          
       |                +---+------+---+                |          
       |                    |      |                    |          
ACTIVE |   +-------------+  |      |  +-------------+   | DELETED  
       |   | SUCCEEDED   |  |      |  | REJECTED    |   |          
       |   +-------------+  |      |  +-------------+   |          
       <---+ 11009 posts |<-+      +->| 11672 posts +--->          
       |   |  29.9 / day |            |  31.7 / day |   |          
ACTIVE |   |   0.7 %     |            |   0.8 %     |   | DELETED  
       |   +-------------+            +-------------+   |          
       |                                                |          

Now the FLAG QUEUE where posts are checked again. Note that posts that have been flagged multiple times are counted per flag.
This is where FLAG IN QUEUE comes back. I cannot differentiate between posts that have bypassed the queue and were then flagged, and posts that were flagged in the queue before they reached the 3 day mark (like AI uploads and super trash) because there is no way to filter by userlevel of the uploader, so I'll have to combine them here.
There have been 8963 flags in this period. 6960 posts were deleted after the flag. 1979 were reapproved after the flag. And a few are currently pending at this moment, so they are excluded which is why the numbers don't add up precisely.

       |                                                |          
       |                 +------------+                 |          
ACTIVE |                 | FLAG QUEUE |                 | DELETED  
       |                 +------------+                 |          
       +---------+------>| 8962 posts |                 |          
       |         |       | 24.4 / day |                 |          
       |     +---+---+   |  0.6 %     |                 |          
ACTIVE |     |FLAG IN|   +--+------+--+                 | DELETED  
       |     | QUEUE |      |      |                    |          
       |     +-------+      |      |                    |          
       |                    |      |                    |          
       |   +------------+   |      |   +------------+   |          
ACTIVE |   | REJECTED   |   |      |   | SUCCEEDED  |   | DELETED  
       |   +------------+   |      |   +------------+   |          
       <---+ 1979 posts |<--+      +-->| 6960 posts +--->          
       |   |  5.4 / day |              | 18.9 / day |   |          
       |   |  0.1 %     |              |  0.4 %     |   |          
ACTIVE |   +------------+              +------------+   | DELETED  

Adding the numbers of the queues together, and we get 614034 posts that passed through a queue in some way with multiple flag/appeal instances counting separately.
This comes to 1668.6 posts per day.
For a worst case scenario: assume that our 71 approvers have to do all the queue cleaning work without the help of moderators/admins/evazion. That results in 23.5 posts per person per day.

Maybe some approvers shouldn't be seeing the same post more than once in a short timespan, especially if it's... say, an ion appeal. While I haven't had the experience of being able to bypass or approve the queue, I can still understand in other ways how it could be annoying for an approver to look at the same post more than once. Most won't change their mind having to disapprove the same post again. And the appeal message may not even be accurate because there are probably more approvers that actually check the queue but just don't press buttons.

Another thing is that the pipeline to become an unrestricted user and skip the queue takes a pretty long time. Generally you have a first pass through when you reach anywhere between 600-1000 uploads; and then every other time, you have to wait 2 months for each promotion wave to come through before you're considered again. I have never seen anyone considered for promotions if they fail the first pass, ever.

Just as an example, if I just uploaded and stopped complaining about approvals in the past or ranting about really nonexistent issues besides some occasional frustrations and limitations I have as a restricted to begin with, I probably could've become unrestricted, but even then I would still have to wait instead of someone taking notice of my uploads, thinking they're good enough, and then offering a promotion - since I failed my first pass and have been stuck at Builder ever since. Small mistakes set you back really far, so for high-volume uploaders who are improving, they're still putting strain on the queue. I usually get around 20-30 deletions per wave out of 3000+ uploads and that's enough to keep me in the queue (it doesn't reflect in my current stats because someone mass undeleted my posts before).

So I guess it's really a problem that doesn't scale well on any end, and it's difficult to solve.

• On the approvers side, the number of disinterests doesn't necessarily reflect the number of eyes. They need an easier way to disinterest a lot at once so they can pick out the gems and throw out the rest, and when that one single person sends things back to the queue, they aren't repeating it again another day. I guess the approver candidate pool isn't very big either since each approver wave is considerably small.
• On the uploaders side, two fold: the pipeline to unrestricted is still very long and there's not many suggestions going out for people above the first pass, and the number of new uploaders that don't have high quality uploads is increasing - that's a problem that can't be solved, we can't just will all new uploaders into having approval-worthy standards when a lot of us still think that unrestricted users are a good sense of what's approvable when in a lot of cases that simply isn't true, no matter how many times its reiterated.

I'm not sure I fully agree that we don't need more approvers; more eyes means more diversity in quality standards and what people are willing to look at. The thing is that more approvers won't make the problem go away, it just helps distribute the load of the existing problem.

WRS said:

• On the uploaders side, two fold: the pipeline to unrestricted is still very long and there's not many suggestions going out for people above the first pass, and the number of new uploaders that don't have high quality uploads is increasing - that's a problem that can't be solved, we can't just will all new uploaders into having approval-worthy standards when a lot of us still think that unrestricted users are a good sense of what's approvable when in a lot of cases that simply isn't true, no matter how many times its reiterated.

This is completely based on anecdotal gut feeling, but I do feel that there has been an increase in trash uploads.
Not talking about people making mistakes or who are genuinely trying, but accounts that after registering immediately fill their 15 slot quota with trash and dump it straight into the queue like anything from agus999, blatant ai-generated stuff filled with artifacts, and whatever user #1245505 was trying to do.
Would an initial very low upload limit for new accounts be a way to combat this?

So the moment an account is registered and verified they have a very low upload limit. Let's say in the range of 1-3 posts.
As soon they have single post that is approved and therefore proven they are at least trying, they get bumped up to the normal slot system.
Just as an initial rough filter. This could then give some space to make changes to the normal upload slot system if needed.
And even if they then start uploading trash and then get banned, at least we have an approved post to keep.

Or am I overestimating this issue and is this trying to fix the wrong problem?

GabrielWB said:

Now we get to the first moderation queue. These are posts that go through the queue and are either accepted or rejected after three days.
515888 posts were approved and 66503 posts were unapproved. We can then add these together to calculate the size of the FIRST QUEUE.

       |                       |                        |          
ACTIVE |                +------V-------+                | DELETED  
       |                | FIRST QUEUE  |                |          
       |                +--------------+                |          
       |                | 582391 posts |                |          
       |                | 1582.6 / day |                |          
ACTIVE |                |   37.6 %     |                | DELETED  
       |                +---+------+---+                |          
       |                    |      |                    |          
       |  +--------------+  |      |  +-------------+   |          
       |  | APPROVED     |  |      |  | THREE DAYS  |   |          
ACTIVE |  +--------------+  |      |  +-------------+   | DELETED  
       <--+ 515888 posts |<-+      +->| 66503 posts +--->          
       |  | 1401.9 / day |            | 180.7 / day |   |          
       |  |   33.3 %     |            |   4.3 %     |   |          
       |  +--------------+            +-------------+   |          

90% of all posts uploaded into the queue get approved? That's more than I thought, since approvers always complain about having to wade through tons of shit. Sounds like more contributor promotions are needed.

viliml said:

90% of all posts uploaded into the queue get approved? That's more than I thought, since approvers always complain about having to wade through tons of shit. Sounds like more contributor promotions are needed.

One mans trash is another mans treasure.

I bet 9/10 approvers who saw some of my niche fetish posts are like "WTF" and then Zupi or another approver lets them through.

The fact we got three more users promoted to approver proves to me that the issue is not understood.
Why even bother finding solutions when you can just throw more users into the fire. The site is oversaturated with approvers.