Reworking the rating system

jay19 said:

What about content that features violence and blood such as post #5364149 or post #5343441
Currently those posted are rated safe. While those posted aren't sexual, I would feel a bit more comfortable if I could give them a higher rating then "SAFE"!

Danbooru is an American-run website and American morals apply to it. Going by the usual movie ratings in America, any kind of violence is okay for the general audience but showing any kind of skin is not. So for a general rating, the image can contain as much violence as you want, as long as all body parts – including severed ones – are sufficiently covered. ;)

feline_lump said:

The current howto:rate already claims that "if an image is loli or shota, it lowers the threshold for what is considered explicit significantly" - so I would suspect images in the former category being "safe" and non-loli are technically mistags, […]

Over the years, ratings have been watered down by rating posts more towards safe. Swimsuits and pantyshots used to be Q unless particularly “tasteful”, but nowadays those are routinely rated S. (Blatantly) exposed genitals used to always be rated E, but nowadays those are more and more often rated Q, especially when there’s pointless censoring obscuring a few pixels of it. Some of those still get re-rated to E after some time, though. Example: post #4904239 was rated Q until just now.

pantsukiller said:

How about "Softcore"?

Pretty sure that what that usually means already falls under the current explicit rating.

evazion said:

• Rename the current "Safe" rating to something else. "Sensitive", "Suggestive", or something else entirely.

“Sensitive” is getting my vote.

The only downside I can see with increasing the number of ratings (aside from the effort rerating masses of images) is that at present there are intuitive and obvious ways of searching for every combination of ratings, and with a single search:
no rating tags specified = all ratings
rating tag in search = one rating
-rating tag in search = two ratings

if the number of rating tags increases then this will no longer be possible.

Of course there are easy work arounds using two rating tags (eg. -rating:e -rating:q) but these are more effort. Given how frequently rating tags are used for searching this is not completely trivial.

pantsukiller said:

How about "Softcore"?

Most things in rating:q (and a fair few in rating:e) are softcore.

skylightcrystal said:

Of course there are easy work arounds using two rating tags (eg. -rating:e -rating:q) but these are more effort. Given how frequently rating tags are used for searching this is not completely trivial.

-rating:e,q will be a thing, just like rating:g,s

is:sfw and is:nsfw are also coming, they've been committed but not deployed to the live site yet. See this

HeeroWingZero said:

This sounds reasonable, though I'd like to know how this'll affect safe mode/safebooru domain. Would it be adjusted to General mode, or is there going to be an option to choose between a safe mode like the current one and a separate "extra-safe" mode that's restricted to G posts?

Safebooru will default to the new rating:g. There will probably be an account option to let you set your max rating on regular Danbooru, but Safebooru itself should be absolutely SFW.

Shinjidude said:

Does rating:q remain in the new system? If so, splitting S into "actually SFW", and the remainder isn't a bad idea. I'm not sure about merging "questionable" into the current "safe" or "explicit" though.

rating:q will still exist. Although it could use a better name, since the name "questionable" is also a misnomer. "Questionable" hasn't meant questionable for a long time, the rating has basically come to mean softcore nudity.

feline_lump said:

This is true, but this is in response to the OP saying (among other things) cameltoes and ass focus posts are going to S. That's a definite change from our current standards, and I feel like that's drawing the line a little broadly.

Things like covered nipples and cameltoes should be rated S at minimum, if not Q. The written rules say these things should be rated Q. But people are increasingly not following this. The rating system has basically become "if it has nipples then it's Q, otherwise it's S".

I can understand why people do this. The rating system is easier to remember if it's just "E is for hentai, Q is for nudity, S is for everything else". But this leaves S filled with lewd-but-not-nude content. Rather than fighting people on this, it's easier to just accept the idea that Q is for nudity and split up the S rating. The new G rating would be for 100% SFW content and the S rating would then become the in-between "not lewd enough for Q, not safe enough for G" rating.

jay19 said:

"Sexual" and "Questionable" as ratings? They sound too similar to me.

TheLieutenant brought up how a different site uses: Everyone, Teen, Mature, and Adult.

The word "Teen" is problematic because it can be interpreted as saying that people under 18 are allowed on the site (they're not), or that the characters themselves are under 18.

I'm reluctant to call it "Sexual" because that would lead to a lot of people arguing their content isn't overtly sexual so it should be rated G.

kittey said:

Danbooru is an American-run website and American morals apply to it. Going by the usual movie ratings in America, any kind of violence is okay for the general audience but showing any kind of skin is not. So for a general rating, the image can contain as much violence as you want, as long as all body parts – including severed ones – are sufficiently covered. ;)

Violence should be rated S at minimum, not G. And this is a side issue, but graphic violence and guro should probably be rated Q or E, depending on how graphic it is. The reason that guro is currently rated S is because a long time ago certain users were very insistent that ratings only apply to sexual content. Probably because they didn't want guro in their porn searches. But of course that screws over people who don't want guro in their safe searches either.

You're right though that American morals apply here, so anything showing too much skin shouldn't be rated G.

So, uhm.
What about simple bikini posts, like post #5313778. Looks pretty tame to me.
Would that be s or g?

Sorry if that is clear to everyone else, but I simply want to know that.

Provence said:

So, uhm.
What about simple bikini posts, like post #5313778. Looks pretty tame to me.
Would that be s or g?

Sorry if that is clear to everyone else, but I simply want to know that.

evazion said:
rating:S would be for any kind of ecchi, sexy, risque, or suggestive content, even mildly so. Anything not rated G. Things like revealing clothes, swimsuits, lingerie, underwear, pantyshots, cameltoes, covered nipples, and things heavily focused on the ass, breasts, cleavage, feet, armpits, etc. Basically anything focused on sexy anime girls.

You're right though that American morals apply here, so anything showing too much skin shouldn't be rated G.

Swimsuits are S

blindVigil said:

Swimsuits are S

Thanks.

evazion said:

I can understand why people do this. The rating system is easier to remember if it's just "E is for hentai, Q is for nudity, S is for everything else". But this leaves S filled with lewd-but-not-nude content. Rather than fighting people on this, it's easier to just accept the idea that Q is for nudity and split up the S rating. The new G rating would be for 100% SFW content and the S rating would then become the in-between "not lewd enough for Q, not safe enough for G" rating.

Nobody did ever really fight this, though.
It just kept increasing silently, while everyone was preoccupied with nuking silver hair or other harmless tags.

If anything, this whole mess should tell us to be more vigilant and diligent with rating properly.

Provence said:

Nobody did ever really fight this, though.
It just kept increasing silently, while everyone was preoccupied with nuking silver hair or other harmless tags.

Plenty of users got annoyed over it but nobody wants to hand out feedbacks or bans (of those who can) over it so it was mostly just people complaining on discord.

I think the issue was that the lines between ratings were very blurry. Plus there have been users who actively fought over some artworks being rated s and not q.
"This artwork has cameltoe, therefore it should be in Q"
"But i don't want to see this when i'm looking for more explicit content, it's not explicit enough, therefore it should be in S"

evazion said:

Violence should be rated S at minimum, not G. And this is a side issue, but graphic violence and guro should probably be rated Q or E, depending on how graphic it is. The reason that guro is currently rated S is because a long time ago certain users were very insistent that ratings only apply to sexual content. Probably because they didn't want guro in their porn searches. But of course that screws over people who don't want guro in their safe searches either.

I don't think violence should receive a blanket exclusion from G. Violence depicted minimally and/or comedically exists in many children's cartoons; segregating all posts featuring it to S or lower seems particularly harsh. Examples such as post #4343454 and post #3259472 come to mind where I'd struggle to think of a reason they wouldn't count as G.

Cartoon violence can be rated G. I'm thinking more about the graphic violence currently under guro rating:s that shouldn't be moved down to G, and that should possibly be moved up to Q or E.

evazion said:

Cartoon violence can be rated G. I'm thinking more about the graphic violence currently under guro rating:s that shouldn't be moved down to G, and that should possibly be moved up to Q or E.

Ah; if that's the case then I'm in agreement.

Here are some examples of what I have in mind for the new ratings:

• These would be rated G: favgroup:14537
• These would be rated S: favgroup:14538

There still might be a lot of times where you're not sure whether it's G or S. When in doubt, default to S. It's okay to err on the side of rating things too high. It's not okay to rate things too low. Treat G as the "I'm 100% sure this is safe for work" rating and S as the default "I'm not sure" rating.

evazion said:

• These would be rated S: favgroup:14538

Even many of those I would rate under the new G rating. It just brings up the points Hazuki made during the last ratings rework: Who's work are we making it safe for (an anime studio, a law office, a post office, etc.), and why are you on Danbooru at work anyway?

Hillside_Moose said:

Even many of those I would rate under the new G rating.

For myself at least, I scanned all ~1600 posts from both favorite groups, and I'm pretty much 100% in agreement with how evazion split the ratings.

Hillside_Moose said:

It just brings up the points Hazuki made during the last ratings rework: Who's work are we making it safe for (an anime studio, a law office, a post office, etc.), and why are you on Danbooru at work anyway?

It's not just for people at work. Like, I can't talk about what I do here with anyone IRL because of all of the porn aspects. Plus, there were times where I was at the airport, or some other public setting, and felt uncomfortable browsing on Danbooru. Basically, a completely SFW site would allow one to say, "Look mom/dad/son/daughter/friend/etc, this is a cool site I visit and contribute to because I like this kind of anime art", without any potential awkwardness or possible derision.

Anyways, different strokes for different folks, i.e. people will see value to varying degrees with the new rating system. I personally do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Safe for work" shouldn't be taken too literally. It should be interpreted as content that's safe to look at in front of normal people. Your friends, family, co-workers, classmates, random people on the street.

There's lots of good, perfectly safe artwork on Danbooru that you might want to share with other people. But you can't because the rest of the site is too lewd, even on Safebooru. There are plenty of innocent comics you might want to be able to read on your phone in public. But you can't because you're always one step away from seeing something lewd.

If the new rating is too strict for you, then you don't have to browse at that level. The new rating is so that it's possible for Safebooru to be a truly safe experience.

Another way to look at it is, if you're mainly interested in lewd content, then the new rating lets you filter out all the boring non-lewd content. So it has a use even for people who don't need an extra-safe experience.