QCC Rule Change Discussion [Official]
The mod team has opened up this thread to discuss the rule change to QCC's standards on caption only posts.
I want to make a few things clear here. These rule changes apply only to caption only posts. This has nothing to do with manips in general, it has nothing to do with "art stealing" however that topic came up, and any other topic that comes up here will be deleted as it is off topic.
As a starting point, we'll respond to Cradily's observations of the comment thread, since more than a few users have at least brought this up as a good explanation of what people see as "wrong" with the rule.
I'll address 1 and 6 together at the end, as they're the most "nitty gritty" of the details.
2a. The thing is that quality is not judged solely on popularity. That's the point of QCC, and the point of regulations like this. Plenty of people like plenty of different things, that for one reason or another fall below the quality standard of the site.
2b. The change was going into effect regardless, the post on the discord was essentially just a heads up to active users there. Not a discussion about implementation and specifics. The announcement made on the site- You know, the one that we put up here- was the big announcement and heads up to all the users. And we see how the communication with the users ended up. (See- The comment chain of hyperbolic claims about QCC's power and what they were doing, the fact that almost immediately after this announcement people started panicking, spite flagging, and yelling about how this will KILL THE SITE).
I want to be clear here. Since this announcement, QCC and the mods have touched no posts on these new guidelines. The alleged "Purge" everyone sees and fears came from other users taking it on themselves to read QCC's back of the napkin "This is the kind of thing we're looking at" they gave while fighting the firestorm going on as a manifesto instead of a rubric, and other users who took it upon themselves to start spite flagging posts. Nothing flagged like that has been deleted, and the posts which were deleted in the caption only pool fell clearly under the business as usual QC standards.(Poor Quality images including a bitmapped spiral as the entire left side of the image blown up to fit the "panel", one which had no image, just a misspelled text box, one which was an MSPaint spiral, and two others.) When we say that yes, there have been an influx of these kinds of images which fall well below quality, we are not kidding.
3 and 4 play into each other. We've said this multiple times. We look to have consistency in the application of Quality standards, same as we did with the canon hypnosis rule. This isn't any different really. Truthfully, the way QC works period is that nothing is immune from it going back to the start of the site. A post (any post, manip, original art, caption, etc.) can and will be flagged for QC no matter how long it's been on the site, and QCC looks at it the same exact way as they look at something flagged yesterday. The reason we decided specifically to go back over these specifically is because with the new guidelines there are quite a few posts that will fall short of the new standards. Not as many as all the doomsayers would have you believe, but a good chunk.
And the idea is certainly NOT everything will be deleted as soon as the rule change goes into effect. It takes time for QCC to go through posts, especially as many as there are in the caption only tag. It will not be an immediate process. It will likely be a thing that comes in waves as QCC goes back and finds time to review things. Again, mods/QCC aren't machines. They don't look at a list and go yesyesyesnonoyesno. And there needs to be a majority of QCC saying yes or no to a deletion before any action is taken after the flag is put on the post. Flags are not immediate death sentences, and the list of images will not be purged overnight.
We were going to START the QCC check two days after the announcement, going back through the posts basically from newest to oldest. That will take days if not weeks to get through for QCC.
5. And as we've said, again, multiple times- Caption only posts will not be outlawed. Asking for higher quality DOES NOT MEAN that we're removing them from the site. There will be some people who feel alienated by this, yes, because having your content deemed unacceptable hurts. We understand that. But the idea isn't "So get this out of here" it's "So make it better". Despite what a lot of people here seem to think, there is an appeal process for images which get taken down. There are forum threads to ask advice and better your work before you put it up. If some people are too thin skinned about their work being taken down... Well, same as any other artists, there are other places to put your work with less rigorous QC, I'm sorry that that's how you feel.
1 and 6
Alright, so you're asking for the "How does this get judged?" Honestly, it's not much different than how posts are already judged.
Aside from the standards which would apply to any post-
The text needs to be genuinely related and complimentary to the image. This is the kind of thing we were talking about with the whole "Hot Girl-Generic MC" criteria. This is also primarily what we were talking about with the "Lucy from [whatever anime, I don't know animes] not just being Sue from science class". A generic story slapped onto an image which doesn't really have much to do with it is not acceptable. This is a big one, and will generally get things slapped down as is, regardless of the rest of the content.
The rest of these work more along the lines of a rubric, where each thing can be weaker or stronger in a specific post, and depending on how everything works together QCC can judge yea or nay.
If the image is somehow manipped to fit the story better, or to show MC, that's a plus as long as it doesn't mean that the quality of the image suffers enough to make it unacceptable for standard QC.
Grammar, spelling, and formatting are going to be big deciders. Typos and the like are big no no's... To be honest, come on, you should really fix those anyways. Formatting seems to be one that people are really upset about, and ties into another thing. Yes, an image with a big block of text slapped onto the side or bottom of an image is going to have a higher hill to climb to make QC happy. A large block of text on the side of an image, for the purposes of an image site, does make that image's QC stricter. Working the text into the image, using the text/font/placing creatively to get a point across without relying on a bunch of narrative text- that's good. Blocks of text, poorly spaced text, unreadable fonts and colors, plain colored backgrounds because it was easier to just dump a text box? Those are going to need to be higher quality to keep.
Quality of the writing. I know, "It's subjective" but as I've said before, so is the quality of any other art, and it is QC's actual job description to come to an agreement about how subjectively good something is and thus whether it can stay on the site or not. Adding in writing to this really isn't that much of a change, it's just different, and it's a big part of the change we're making- because for a very long time, the quality of the writing... Really didn't come up unless there were really egregiously bad stories. Otherwise, it was basically just a rubber stamp for "Okay MC content, it's good to go". This is a practice that needs to stop.
These changes are not and were never planned to be anything near the cataclysmic disaster that people decided to read into it. The mods have tried to quell and reassure people of that, and in doing so got too busy putting out fires while people were screaming "THE SITE IS DYING" for anyone to get a word in edgewise about the actual content of the change.
I want to make a few things clear here. These rule changes apply only to caption only posts. This has nothing to do with manips in general, it has nothing to do with "art stealing" however that topic came up, and any other topic that comes up here will be deleted as it is off topic.
As a starting point, we'll respond to Cradily's observations of the comment thread, since more than a few users have at least brought this up as a good explanation of what people see as "wrong" with the rule.
Cradily said:
1. Request of clarification of standards for deletion. (Block of text, percentage of text in an image, picture unrelated to text, etc). Possibly after a discussion from all mods and QCC, so everyone is on the same page.
2a. Viewpoint that the community should judge what is good or not. (Some pictures of 'decent' score were deleted).
2b. Not gathering the opinion of the users before the change is made/Desire for more communication from moderators before large changes are made. (Using an unofficial Discord to gather opinions).
3. Standards are too subjective and/or restrictive. (X post is deleted, but Y post is still up). ('No hypno' in image).
4. Against retroactively applying rules, and not giving enough time for users to save images before rules are enforced.
5. Alienating users that come here almost exclusively for captions, or users that can only contribute through captions. View that the writers are being treated as if their work does not matter.
6. Certain deletion criteria seem unreasonable. (Hypnohub is a hypnosis image board. Picture and text is hypnosis-related, but if the text does not identify the correct character it will be deleted). (Having "too much text", but may not be "poorly written"). Usage of blacklist or new tags for these issues.
1. Request of clarification of standards for deletion. (Block of text, percentage of text in an image, picture unrelated to text, etc). Possibly after a discussion from all mods and QCC, so everyone is on the same page.
2a. Viewpoint that the community should judge what is good or not. (Some pictures of 'decent' score were deleted).
2b. Not gathering the opinion of the users before the change is made/Desire for more communication from moderators before large changes are made. (Using an unofficial Discord to gather opinions).
3. Standards are too subjective and/or restrictive. (X post is deleted, but Y post is still up). ('No hypno' in image).
4. Against retroactively applying rules, and not giving enough time for users to save images before rules are enforced.
5. Alienating users that come here almost exclusively for captions, or users that can only contribute through captions. View that the writers are being treated as if their work does not matter.
6. Certain deletion criteria seem unreasonable. (Hypnohub is a hypnosis image board. Picture and text is hypnosis-related, but if the text does not identify the correct character it will be deleted). (Having "too much text", but may not be "poorly written"). Usage of blacklist or new tags for these issues.
I'll address 1 and 6 together at the end, as they're the most "nitty gritty" of the details.
2a. The thing is that quality is not judged solely on popularity. That's the point of QCC, and the point of regulations like this. Plenty of people like plenty of different things, that for one reason or another fall below the quality standard of the site.
2b. The change was going into effect regardless, the post on the discord was essentially just a heads up to active users there. Not a discussion about implementation and specifics. The announcement made on the site- You know, the one that we put up here- was the big announcement and heads up to all the users. And we see how the communication with the users ended up. (See- The comment chain of hyperbolic claims about QCC's power and what they were doing, the fact that almost immediately after this announcement people started panicking, spite flagging, and yelling about how this will KILL THE SITE).
I want to be clear here. Since this announcement, QCC and the mods have touched no posts on these new guidelines. The alleged "Purge" everyone sees and fears came from other users taking it on themselves to read QCC's back of the napkin "This is the kind of thing we're looking at" they gave while fighting the firestorm going on as a manifesto instead of a rubric, and other users who took it upon themselves to start spite flagging posts. Nothing flagged like that has been deleted, and the posts which were deleted in the caption only pool fell clearly under the business as usual QC standards.(Poor Quality images including a bitmapped spiral as the entire left side of the image blown up to fit the "panel", one which had no image, just a misspelled text box, one which was an MSPaint spiral, and two others.) When we say that yes, there have been an influx of these kinds of images which fall well below quality, we are not kidding.
3 and 4 play into each other. We've said this multiple times. We look to have consistency in the application of Quality standards, same as we did with the canon hypnosis rule. This isn't any different really. Truthfully, the way QC works period is that nothing is immune from it going back to the start of the site. A post (any post, manip, original art, caption, etc.) can and will be flagged for QC no matter how long it's been on the site, and QCC looks at it the same exact way as they look at something flagged yesterday. The reason we decided specifically to go back over these specifically is because with the new guidelines there are quite a few posts that will fall short of the new standards. Not as many as all the doomsayers would have you believe, but a good chunk.
And the idea is certainly NOT everything will be deleted as soon as the rule change goes into effect. It takes time for QCC to go through posts, especially as many as there are in the caption only tag. It will not be an immediate process. It will likely be a thing that comes in waves as QCC goes back and finds time to review things. Again, mods/QCC aren't machines. They don't look at a list and go yesyesyesnonoyesno. And there needs to be a majority of QCC saying yes or no to a deletion before any action is taken after the flag is put on the post. Flags are not immediate death sentences, and the list of images will not be purged overnight.
We were going to START the QCC check two days after the announcement, going back through the posts basically from newest to oldest. That will take days if not weeks to get through for QCC.
5. And as we've said, again, multiple times- Caption only posts will not be outlawed. Asking for higher quality DOES NOT MEAN that we're removing them from the site. There will be some people who feel alienated by this, yes, because having your content deemed unacceptable hurts. We understand that. But the idea isn't "So get this out of here" it's "So make it better". Despite what a lot of people here seem to think, there is an appeal process for images which get taken down. There are forum threads to ask advice and better your work before you put it up. If some people are too thin skinned about their work being taken down... Well, same as any other artists, there are other places to put your work with less rigorous QC, I'm sorry that that's how you feel.
1 and 6
Alright, so you're asking for the "How does this get judged?" Honestly, it's not much different than how posts are already judged.
Aside from the standards which would apply to any post-
The text needs to be genuinely related and complimentary to the image. This is the kind of thing we were talking about with the whole "Hot Girl-Generic MC" criteria. This is also primarily what we were talking about with the "Lucy from [whatever anime, I don't know animes] not just being Sue from science class". A generic story slapped onto an image which doesn't really have much to do with it is not acceptable. This is a big one, and will generally get things slapped down as is, regardless of the rest of the content.
The rest of these work more along the lines of a rubric, where each thing can be weaker or stronger in a specific post, and depending on how everything works together QCC can judge yea or nay.
If the image is somehow manipped to fit the story better, or to show MC, that's a plus as long as it doesn't mean that the quality of the image suffers enough to make it unacceptable for standard QC.
Grammar, spelling, and formatting are going to be big deciders. Typos and the like are big no no's... To be honest, come on, you should really fix those anyways. Formatting seems to be one that people are really upset about, and ties into another thing. Yes, an image with a big block of text slapped onto the side or bottom of an image is going to have a higher hill to climb to make QC happy. A large block of text on the side of an image, for the purposes of an image site, does make that image's QC stricter. Working the text into the image, using the text/font/placing creatively to get a point across without relying on a bunch of narrative text- that's good. Blocks of text, poorly spaced text, unreadable fonts and colors, plain colored backgrounds because it was easier to just dump a text box? Those are going to need to be higher quality to keep.
Quality of the writing. I know, "It's subjective" but as I've said before, so is the quality of any other art, and it is QC's actual job description to come to an agreement about how subjectively good something is and thus whether it can stay on the site or not. Adding in writing to this really isn't that much of a change, it's just different, and it's a big part of the change we're making- because for a very long time, the quality of the writing... Really didn't come up unless there were really egregiously bad stories. Otherwise, it was basically just a rubber stamp for "Okay MC content, it's good to go". This is a practice that needs to stop.
These changes are not and were never planned to be anything near the cataclysmic disaster that people decided to read into it. The mods have tried to quell and reassure people of that, and in doing so got too busy putting out fires while people were screaming "THE SITE IS DYING" for anyone to get a word in edgewise about the actual content of the change.
