Danbooru

Rating definitions

Posted under General

I'd say that's a borderline questionable/explicit case, but I'd put it on the explicit side. If they have to mosaic censor, there was probably something there that would put it beyond questionable. It might be a double standard, but if it were convenient_censoring, I'd have sent it the other way, since it'd be explicitly covered up in-universe.

Bapabooiee said: Any thoughts on post #541460? It's rated as Explicit, but I would lean more towards it being Questionable instead.

Sometimes, I genuinely don't care if it goes one way or the other, and both seem equally valid. I wouldn't bat an eye at the rating either way it went. So... whichever.

葉月 said:
No, definitely not. It's not sexual no matter how you look at it. Bikini is accepted as an outdoors outfit, and this one isn't revealing, so it's safe. Our safe most emphatically does not mean "a puritan wouldn't find it objectionable". If we have any puritans browsing the site, they're sadly out of luck, because they're not the target audience.

I don't see how this is safe. It's a topless woman. She has shapely proportions. It draws obvious attention to her breasts and her ass. It's not overtly sexual, but it's sexual. This is the type of pose you'd see in a gravure video, and those aren't innocent at all.

This is my complaint. How do you differentiate between lightly sexual and heavily sexual? It's a very blurry line.

albert said: This is my complaint. How do you differentiate between lightly sexual and heavily sexual? It's a very blurry line.

With only three levels of rating from post #516994 to thirty cock gang rape monster bukkake? By having broad definitions of what goes where, that's how. There's too much of a range for safe to be restricted to only the most purely innocent, no skin showing, no curves emphasized, no titillation intended images. And half a million images in, I'm not sure we want to introduce additional levels.

jxh2154 said:
With only three levels of rating from post #516994 to thirty cock gang rape monster bukkake? By having broad definitions of what goes where, that's how.

That's my opinion exactly. Making safe some kind of super-strict even-your-grandma-could-look-at-it category is pointless, because it leaves everything else down to the most grotesque monster rape in just two categories.

Besides, it's pointless, as it doesn't make anything worksafe (any pictures, even kittens, are NSFW unless your job is to select kitten stock photos), and it doesn't help linkability either. There are many sites where you can readily see a lot of skin and even some boobs (such as flickr), yet people link to them freely. And if your grandma goes browsing danbooru, I'm still going to assume she's a sane, consenting adult able to understand a thing or two about the world.

About the only thing we could do is establish a checkbox on rating:s posts for "Safe for Safebooru" or something along those lines, and define what qualifies as REALLLLLY safe... but I don't think giving uploaders yet another thing to get confused about would work out too well. And there's still the backlog problem.

And it's still pointless, because it's an entirely legit scenario to use safebooru for "I don't want the erotica to show up, but I'm not some kind of puritan offended by the thought of people being naked under clothes". I don't see how safe-for-work-booru is any more valid, especially given how the latter is not doable, as opposed to the former.

It still wouldn't be "safe for work", mostly because I don't even think that concept is relevant to danbooru. But the point would instead be "Give me images that could almost never be construed sexually at all".

Not that I'm actually advocating it. As I noted I don't think further dividing ratings is terribly practical, even if the idea of greater specificity is nice in theory.

We need a simpler metric then. No visible nipples or genitals or implied sex is safe then, correct? I think this leads to some fairly absurd cases but at least there's no need to worry about whether a picture is sexy or whether a bikini is tasteful.

I think setting a "simpler metric" is part of the problem, here.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that:

  • Safe should refer to images that aren't overtly sexual, nor revealing of characters' bodies. (ex.: bikinis are safe, but often borderline. micro_bikinis are Questionable, at best, and untied swimsuits - such as Shinobu's in post #572140 - should also fall under Questionable.)
  • Explicit should refer to images that explicitly depict nudity (mosaic censors count, convenient_censoring doesn't), or images that depict any overtly sexual act regardless of the subject's state of dress (for example, post #220358).
  • Questionable should refer to everything in-between.

On a related topic: Should the ratings really still exclude the consideration of violent content? Seeing images like post #501242 rated Safe just seems wrong, somehow...

albert said:
We need a simpler metric then. No visible nipples or genitals or implied sex is safe then, correct? I think this leads to some fairly absurd cases but at least there's no need to worry about whether a picture is sexy or whether a bikini is tasteful.

Why do we need a simpler metric? If it leads to absurdities, it's useless. Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. What exactly do you want to achieve by those supposedly simple metrics?

It's a good baseline. Common sense would allow for exceptions in the case of clearly artistic nudity. I'm on the fence about those examples, but I'm willing to slide on them.

However, I would point out the fact that post #571727 is explicit enough to have (in the artist's mind) necessitated a small amount of mosaic censoring.

The problem is your baseline is very harmful to my browsing. I don't want post #571727 lumped together with post #344756. If you do that, you drastically lower the utility of browsing with rating:e blacklisted, which I know I'm not the only one to do. I want to filter out the porn, not everything that might have some sex(uality) in it. Please read my post on the previous page for a more complete explanation.

EDIT: Oh, and whether or not there's any mosaic is completely irrelevant. It's often done just to make sure you won't get any shit, not because there's anything genuinely explicit.

葉月 said:
Why do we need a simpler metric? If it leads to absurdities, it's useless. Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. What exactly do you want to achieve by those supposedly simple metrics?

Because I can come up with a dozen borderline cases. Are post #564098 and post #572140 really questionable? They seem no worse than post #530033 to me which everyone seems to agree is safe. As far as artistic nudes are concerned, I can see how you might rate post #563033 as safe, but what about post #554405? The fact that people keep asking questions about ratings is proof that the current definitions are ambiguous.

I'm in favor of completely removing the question of how sexual a drawing is. Maybe we need to change "safe" to "pg-13" or something.

albert said: Are post #564098 and post #572140 really questionable?

The Shinobu one certainly isn't. The Yuyuko isn't really either. Certainly it seems odd to me for them to be in the same category as post #572876 (where I think questionable is correct).

For that matter I kind of agree with Hazuki that some nudes with genitalia might not need to be explicit, though it's a tricky area.

They seem no worse than post #530033 to me which everyone seems to agree is safe.

That one is borderline, even for me. I genuinely believe that there are some images where two ratings are equally valid. They really are borderline cases.

I'm in favor of completely removing the question of how sexual a drawing is. Maybe we need to change "safe" to "pg-13" or something.

Hmm, what do you mean by this exactly? Change safe as in create a fourth category or just not have "safe" as a rating?

albert said:
Because I can come up with a dozen borderline cases.

But borderline cases will always be there. What good does having simple metrics do us if they only represent useless information no-one cares about? I don't want to filter out naked people, I want to filter out porn. I'm perfectly okay with occasional ambiguities if it generally serves the purpose and lets me look at good stuff without being subjected to the crap. A rating system of "clothed, skimpy, naked" would completely fail to do that, and it'd still be ambiguous, unless you can somehow provide exact guidelines of how much skin can show through before it's skimpy or naked.

I'm in favor of completely removing the question of how sexual a drawing is. Maybe we need to change "safe" to "pg-13" or something.

I still think "pg-13" is answering the wrong question. Danbooru isn't for kids. Saying how "kid-friendly" something is would provide information that just isn't useful, in addition to the general silliness of trying to codify what can possibly harm their delicate flower of a psyche.

Please look again at forum #31052. These are the use-cases that need to be fulfilled. If we modify the ratings, I still want something that will let me blacklist #3 without touching #2. And I know people browsing safebooru because they don't want sexual stuff, not because they aren't aware of people being naked under their clothing.

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