Rating definitions

I think our major problem is that everyone has a different idea for what constitutes a post being "safe" vs "explicit". Moreover Albert and Hazuki (who seem to be rallying the most vocal viewpoints) have conceptions that are entirely incompatible.

Albert as of late has been arguing for "safe" being something very close to SFW (with the proviso that looking at anime girls at work is never going to be a good plan). He relegates lingere and skimpy swimwear to questionable regardless of innuendo. This is a more conservative stance than I remember "safe" ever being treated prior to the advent of Safeboru, and leads to all sorts of subjective assessments to be needed to made without any real objective guidelines. As we have discussed in other threads, subjective decisions without hard and fast criteria are never going to be in agreement across the userbase and will lead to disputes.

Hazuki has been arguing starting from forum #19183 for something in the opposite direction where even tasteful full-frontal nudity is treated "safe". While I can buy the argument that mature people can and should treat nudity devoid of sexual intent differently than pornography, I certainly wouldn't want to come across post #571727 if I was browsing Safebooru with friends or family about.

Albert throws the "simpler metric" up above as a straw man's argument, but in my experience, it's by and large exactly what we have been doing forever. An abbreviated version of howto:rate. The two things to point out of the way he worded it though are that he de-emphasizes the exclusion of "implied sex", and (incorrectly in my opinion) makes it out as to say that judgment calls of tastefulness or sexiness are no longer needed.

Rather those two points are what allow the absurd cases to be handled appropriately. "Implied sex" or innuendo is a very broad brush that can be used to exclude fully clothed subjects with obvious sexual intent or content and requires the poster to take sexiness and tastefulness into consideration.

On the other hand, I wouldn't call lingerie or bikinis or even fully covered non-sexualized nudity as "absurd cases" of rating "safe". If you can see it on a Victoria's Secret ad at the mall or at the beach, or broadcast TV, or anywhere else kids regularly frequent, it obviously can't be all that bad. The sticky point here would be museums displaying full frontal nudity, but that's a place I think where it's the venue that makes it acceptable.

I guess basically my point is that I don't really see what is wrong with the mostly objective system we have been using and have mostly codified in howto:rate.

I'd like to point out that, while I do hold it's possible and meaningful to have nude rating:s, I've never said post #571727 is in that category. I've merely stated that "full frontal nudity" is not enough to make a post explicit, giving it as an example.

I would also note that I'm going to be much more vocal about attempts to rate more questionable stuff as explicit than about re-rating safe as questionable. I don't use safebooru myself, so I'm not directly affected by any rating decisions there, so I'm not going to fight to the last bullet; however I do care about having meaningful ratings that serve some purpose, and as such I oppose superficially "simple" criteria with no clear meaning, as that opens up the way to requesting all nudity to be rating:e or similarly useless classifications.

There have always been nude rating:s posts, it's just that they're supposed to always be covered up and without overt innuendo. I would be against expanding beyond this, since that ventures far beyond the "could reasonably be seen in general public" point I mentioned above. If your point is that it shouldn't be restricted more than this, then I agree for the same reasoning.

It seems your issue is more with the other border, the questionable-explicit boundary. I really don't have any problems with how it's being used right now (safe + toplessness & innuendo, but without blatant sex or genitalia). Personally, my stance has been to try to keep "questionable" as small as possible, both because it is basically is the borderline itself between safe and explicit, and the fact that it's where all unrated (of which there are far too many) posts go.

So long as "safe" is kept relatively clean, I wouldn't necessarily have an issue with expanding "questionable" to include museum-like full nudity or less explicit sexuality. The chief problem I see is the same one I listed for Albert's concept -- it lacks clear objective criteria and necessarily will become a huge quarrel over what constitutes "museum-like" or "less explicit".

Subjectivity is something we deal with a ton on Danbooru, and we usually can't do anything about it. When it comes to moderation, it's an intrinsic property of the job. However, when it comes to something like rules all the members of the site have to agree upon and comply to, it's best to minimize the subjectivity as much as possible. Otherwise there will be hundreds of different borderlines being drawn with no two people agreeing between them.

Both Albert and Hazuki seem to be trying to expand "questionable"-- Albert from the "safe" boundary, and Hazuki from the "explicit". While there is fundamentally no problem with this (though I probably buy Hazuki's argument somewhat more than Albert's), they have the same problem.

If we can come up with a new set of objective criteria to replace the ones we are currently using (keeping in mind common sense and that things like "innuendo" are going to be inherently subjective to some degree), then I would consider a plan on either front. Without some degree of objectivity though, I'd probably consider either one rather untenable.

Shinjidude said:
Personally, my stance has been to try to keep "questionable" as small as possible, both because it is basically is the borderline itself between safe and explicit, and the fact that it's where all unrated (of which there are far too many) posts go.

Ah, I see. My personal stance is to keep "questionable" as big as possible, since that's where all the interesting non-porn stuff goes. Since I filter out porn, I'm vitally interested in not having anything else lumped together with it.

As for objective criteria, my standard ratings blurb I send out to people not putting rating:e where it belongs refers to "ostentatious nudity", which I believe is about as objective as you can get.

It might be as objective as you can get with what you're asking for, but it's really not objective at all which is a problem. All that says is: "If there happens to be nudity, make it 'explicit' if you subjectively decide that it's a bit too conspicuous. If there is no nudity, or you have a very liberal or conservative sense of conspicuity, do whatever you want".

It's certainly not as objective as you can get in a general sense, since what we're getting by with something more objective currently.

Maybe there's a way to work with the current rules to get somewhere closer to what you want? I have to admit, I'm having trouble coming up with good criteria myself that aren't either over-specific or subjective and vague.

I'm not convinced there's necessarily a good way out with anything approaching clear-cut guidelines, as the problem itself is ill-defined. We wouldn't have problems with porn if we didn't have civilisational double standards arbitrarily labelling certain aspects of normal life as taboo. Ultimately, just as you can't fully describe what makes a good quality post, you have to rely on a dose of common sense to distinguish between explicit and non-explicit content.

Sorry to beat a dead horse. Hazuki, I thought I understood what you were trying to say. But I just can't understand how post #573581 is questionable enough for you to go out of your way to change the rating. Is it because they're panties? Because she's lifting the skirt? I really do not understand how it's worse than post #566690.

Yeah, and because it's underwear. I might not have made it clear enough, but I haven't actually advocated underwear being safe (unlike relatively modest bikinis). The difference being you're not supposed to show your underwear in public, whereas bikini is an acceptable outdoors outfit. So my logic goes more or less "bikini + boobs covered just as well as they'd be by the bikini upper piece == safe", but "deliberately lifting the skirt to show the panties == questionable".

Apologies if it's confusing matters more.

We should strive for consistency between members when it comes to rating. Underwear and lingerie by themselves have historically not been sufficient to warrant a "questionable" rating. After reading Hazuki's argument though and comparing it to my "could reasonably seen in public" guideline, it makes sense.

While, like I said, you can see underwear or lingerie ads in public it's pretty much always unacceptable to see a person wearing them exposed in public. Swimwear on the other hand is commonly seen at public beaches and pools.

This would be a relatively clear cut and objective change in policy. It is also something Albert has been campaigning for for some time now. Is relegating basically fully exposed lingerie and underwear to "questionable" something we could all get behind?

A couple issues I can think of with the policy would be how exposed does underwear need to be to require "questionable"? Do pantyshots count given their ubiquity in some series? What do we do with something like strike_witches, where "They aren't panties, so it's not embarrassing", but obviously they are even if it's not?

Underwear is safe to me as long as there're no innuendos involved.
post #522488 could have been s to me if not for Patchy's hand. I don't even mind the angle, as it's part of the picture sort of. And I would have removed the labia tag if I'd noticed it the first time.
For some reason the post was rated s while it should have been q according to tags history. So I switched it back. (Looks like because of this the guy right after me added the masturbation tag. :< I'm not quite conviced about this but oh well.)

On a different note, how about non-showy stuff like post #71076? It's borderline q/e to me but certainly not s.

A thought about the whole 'sfw' and whatnot thing:

It has always been my impression that much of the content here revolves mainly around all of the anime/manga industry. Taking that into effect, anyone who knows so much about anime and manga content and happens to come here will more than likely be old enough to tell what's naughty and nice. I say that because the industry is largely based in Japan. Stuff like that isn't introduced or influenced upon the younger kids here. Mainly the nearing teens will have the capability to accurately search widely across the web for anime/manga stuff and will most likely be able to gain info on Danbooru with the most exstensive internet search/use. I'm not saying its not possible for little kids to access this site, but its very rare and doesn't need to be concerned much.

With that information out of the way, the anime/manga fan will be familiar with their content normalities, so even posts like post #566690 and post #573581 can be considered safe. We have to remind ourselves most of us come from a western society (reluctant on that point) forming a community with content solely based on or influenced from the eastern society. Our rules and standards differ, but if Danbooru wants to be all about anime/manga thats attached to the orignial source of origin (ie. using original Japanese/etc names and cultures), we're going to have to build, establish, and integrate that eastern society here in Danbooru.

Certain content that might not be considered safe here can be considered safe over there. Flashing panties are ever so so common to see in typical anime/manga. And I take it we all are old enough and seen enough to distinguish between artful and suggestive nudity. It's still hard to say for the artful nudity pictures, because some people just aren't comfortable seeing nipples, vaginas, and anuses/butts regardless of the subject at hand. For those people, they should stick to and be refered to Safebooru, while having it filter out the nude tag and any associated tags along with it. Danbooru could also have an option to check which ratings the user wants to view, or more likely (and would be a good idea) to inform the user upon registering that we can filter out ratings using the tag blacklist, since most new people won't know that.

This is just what I've been thinking as I read through this thread. This way we could continue on just like how its been going on without doing too much work trying to implement a new system for ratings. I think it's important that we all contribute a way to help users identify content, ratings, and their control of the site. Other than that, I think the current system has been doing fine just as it has been. We just need to be clear on rating judgements and such, I think it would help to show users examples in the howto:rate.

Also, I'm not being accurate when I say "most of us" and "west(ern)," but this is just me as how I perceive the direction of this discussion. Take it as you will, since I know even many other people around the world can agree on the level sexual or suggestive intent as opposed from love and joke situations in images regarding anime/manga subjects.

Cyberia-Mix said:
Underwear is safe to me as long as there're no innuendos involved.
post #522488 could have been s to me if not for Patchy's hand.

It's way too in-your-face even to approach being safe. If someone's crotch takes up half the screen, it's not rating:s. OTOH, the masturbation tag is gratuitous and wrong. It should be removed.

On a different note, how about non-showy stuff like post #71076? It's borderline q/e to me but certainly not s.

It's not s because it's a very obvious innuendo.

葉月 said:
It's way too in-your-face even to approach being safe. If someone's crotch takes up half the screen, it's not rating:s.

Well, still assuming her hand were elsewhere, I'd find that case less suggestive than post #69577 or post #573581, because in post #522488 there's a setting to make up for it sort of, and so the focus is inferior.
But maybe that's just me.

葉月 said:
OTOH, the masturbation tag is gratuitous and wrong. It should be removed.

Which leads me to an obvious question: is there a way to prevent posts from getting stuck being edited back and forth? I picture this has to be happening with ratings all the time.
Right now I can leave a comment telling that this tag shouldn't be re-added, but people will still be able to.

Guess it's probably been debated to death anyway.

Cyberia-Mix said:
Which leads me to an obvious question: is there a way to prevent posts from getting stuck being edited back and forth? I picture this has to be happening with ratings all the time.
Right now I can leave a comment telling that this tag shouldn't be re-added, but people will still be able to.

There's a little checkbox that allows you to lock ratings (and notes) but it's restricted to priv+ users.

I've always viewed "safe" as unarguably SFW (no nudity or underwear but swimwear as far as you can get away with swimsuit calendars at work), "explicit" as sexual activity, sexually explicit nudity and "questionable" as everything inbetween, with a skew towards explicit for loli images that would otherwise fall under questionable.

Just as a point of interest, an early discussion on the matter is in forum #186.

I could not possibly ever see post #573581 as anything other than rating:s.

I could accept either for post #522488.

Fred1515 said:
There's a little checkbox that allows you to lock ratings (and notes) but it's restricted to priv+ users.

Was thinking about something along those lines. Sweet.

jxh2154 said:
I could not possibly ever see post #573581 as anything other than rating:s.

I could accept either for post #522488.

I don't think I would have tagged either as safe, especially the latter.

Well, my take away from all this is that no one can agree on anything.

Which is fine, I guess. For me at least all I care about is explicit/not-explicit and that's pretty well defined I think.

Umm, help please?
forum #31326

It'd probably be fine as "Questionable", but the recent talks of "safe nudity" just put a niggling doubt in my head.