I can understand not wanting to be offensive unfriendly towards artists. So, to that end, I we should consider making a new tag not to be automatically black listed. The tag can be called "preliminary_art" or something similar and to insure that the site doesn't get flooded with amateur work all the time we can limit it to "x" amount of preliminary art posts by a single artist per day.

I still believe we should have a black list tags for images that were spared expulsion but if the images are earnest efforts by artists striving to improve then there isn't much reason to exclude them at all.

Thats just the nature of having any QC system. People will get their feelings hurt or get demotivated and it will be their choice to stride to get better or give up. As long as a solid critique is given or a specific reasonable reason is stated I don't think it should be to harmful.

My point is that if you slap a tag on it that is understood to be used for pics that were put up for judgment, you're essentially putting a bull's-eye on it, as if saying "trolls, post here". In my opinion, if a pic is successfully saved from judgment, that should be the end of it. I'd much rather come up with a better system of deciding what stays and what goes than just figure out a way to hide pics that make it through our current system. Don't forget, our current system is still broken.

I'm only concerned with sending the right message to new artists that the Hub is an accepting community that supports its members. That's why I still think the "preliminary_art" tag and the post limit of such images would be beneficial. I think that all artist, new or otherwise, should be aware of their current level and limitations. When posting beginner level work they should know that they are doing such and be prepared to accept advice.

It should be the job of the administration to perform any damage control that may transpire in the event of trolling. I think that as long as the images are limited to a certain amount each day per user then we shouldn't have a lot to worry about in terms of flooding. Placing a friendly forum to use discretion when criticizing images given that tag will probably help it all run smoothly.

I think the current system works fine. Perhaps I would expand the circle of "Judges" just so it doesn't seem like it's just you and Mindwipe as the gods of all opinion, add objective criteria (so far as that is possible with something as subjective as art) that you are to follow when nominating something for deletion, but then yielding to the community if the community feels something should stay.

The Wonder Woman image in question I can see the merit in keeping. The anatomy is warped as hell but the theme is solid and the art is not "poor" outside of the weird anatomy. If images like that are what's "on the bubble", then our quality standard will be quite fine. If someone likes an image enough to make a stink over it, what's the harm in keeping it? The community here seems decent enough that it's not like we'll get trolls who exist solely to defend bad art (and doubtlessly you could ban such people if they emerged, right?)

Edit: And is *that* what threw DireKit over the edge? Weird.

Edit 2: I disagree with a blacklist. Again, if our quality standards are moderate enough that you're not going to have to sift through pages of crap to find the good stuff, there's no big deal. I think all of us have those images that interest us more than others. None of us likes *everything* that's put in here, even if it is "quality", I can guarantee that, so there's no reason to tag "bad" art just for the sake of filtering it, since there's a lot of aesthetic nuances that go in there. One man's trash is another man's pleasure, especially to a bunch of weirdos like us :-)

You're thinking about this way too much, Mindwipe. Just try out the tag system thing and see where that takes you.

But that doesn't even solve the issue we're trying to solve. We're looking to revamp our broken QC system. Just adding in a method of hiding pics that have escaped deletion doesn't change the fact that the system needs fixed. Currently, 2 people have the power to overrule the entire system simply by giving a reason why they think a pic shouldn't be deleted. 2 people out of the hundreds that use this site each day.

Simply upping the number of replies needed to save a pic isn't really an option, because it's an arbitrary number in the end and we can't just keep upping it to account for more users. We could take negative votes into account by having people send them via Dmail, but that forces us to dig through a lot of mail. A QC council is another idea, but that has it's own problems in getting it set up and running. Not to mention, it would require everyone on the site to put their trust into ~7 people.

Well, no matter what you do, it's obvious that it's going to require a lot of work. It almost seems like you want to abolish the QC's democracy. Here's another idea I've come up with after reading everything.

1.) Add the "preliminary_art" and the post restriction on said images. I think that should keep new artists happy. (Provided they're humble enough to acknowledge what their work really is.

2.) Define the QC standards even more clearly then they are now. If you do that you can incorporate some sort of strike system in which an images that receives too many will be put up for a QC hearing.

3.) (Optional) Set up the QC council to perform such hearings. You can do this by having applicants contact you or Van via PM(D-mail?) with a list of their relevant standards, likes and dislikes. Depending on the number of applicants (and if you are unable to decide) you can post a list of eligible applicants and hold a vote (publicly or privately) via nomination on the site to decide which applicants can will be on the council. All applicants should be willing to give an email address to other council members so that reach them more easily than in PMs(D-mails?).

That seems like a way to fix a lot of the problem but I await someone else's reply to be sure.

Due to the growing size of members I dont think a democratic/voting system will be worth doing unless someone is willing to do some coding to make poll appear next to an image that allows users to anonymously vote ye or neigh and let everything be automated.

Since art quality is subjective keeping the QC policy democratic may become more troublesome. Council/Janitor system would probably be the best way to go about doing things. Like in politics, once the number of people in a region is too large the people start to pick representatives. To start off we can probably volunteer/nominate some people willing to do it via forums and a vote and either let each member hold the power to delete images on an individual basis or flag it so that if "x" amount of people in the group agree it gets deleted.

I can't think of another solution for this atm either.

Honestly I think any system that is thought of is going to have major flaws of some kind as there is no perfect system and there is no way to make everyone happy.

I don't really have an idea I was just wanting to say that^

I really like the "preliminary art" or "bad art" tag idea; if we look at the spectrum of taste, there are plenty, like myself,, who would be happy with a lower standard of art. I say this understanding that there would still be eliminations of terrible art, such as crappy manips, unclear ideas, and and very poorly rendered images.

as for the worry over trolls, I not only think we are counting foxes before the chicken has laid any eggs, but trolls seem to come in two types: the obvious trolls, and the more skillful, subtle trolls, or in other words, the one's you can catch, and the one's you can't.
If we can catch them, I fully believe in the Admin's rights to reject troll bait, pictures posted with the purpose of causing trouble.
For those we can't catch.... no good system will catch them; either there would be too many restrictions for everybody, the equivalent of a police state, or they're just going to get through, regardless of the system, and there is no valuable way to plan for them.

In this case I think it is wiser to step on toes once than eggshells forever. That may sound a bit cold, but art takes a lot of patience and discipline. It's not just a fun thing that you do and get free praise.

Sure, failing grades are discouraging, but they're a part of life. None of us dropped out of school the first time we did poorly on a math test. We studied and tried harder the next time. Art is the same, and if anybody is reading this who receives a failing grade on one of your submissions, don't throw out your sketchbook! Pick it up, study, and try again! I fucking believe in you!

Firstly, I want to apologize for ignoring this thread for two days. College has me swamped this week and it's driving me insane. This is my first bit of free time since I made this thread.

Secondly, I love all of you for putting so much thought into this. Seriously, you guys are great. I also find it funny that almost every idea brought up has already been one Mindwipe shot down when I brought it up. :P

In any case, I think I got something.

What if judged images simply went with polls? What if, when an image is judged, Mindwipe or I open up an anonymous poll on the best free poll creation website we can cook up with the options to keep or no, then let the results be the results?

This solves the problem of allowing the loud minority to overrule the slightly larger loud minority by removing the arbitrary threshold altogether. It also solves the main problems with the DMail vote idea by allowing the results to be viewed by anyone and by making it so all the results are already tallied for the administration, so we need not dig through masses of dmails and make our own tally.

Depending on how good a 3'rd party pole website we can find, I foresee a small selection of potential problems: if the one who makes the pole can skew the results, then suspicion on the legitimacy of the results will always exist; if the pole website in question is easy to abuse, then the votes may not be legitimate; unless we can make the polls private or accessible only by password or something like that, then we may get vote poisoning from people who don't even use the Hub.

Assuming we can find solutions to these potential problems, what are your thoughts?

I just wanted to clarify something about this. It's logically impossible to write objective descriptions for entirely subjective topics. For example, try describing 100% objectively why you find the color red pleasing/displeasing. In case you're honestly trying: you can't.

Interesting tidbit that sort of proves my point with <<www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08|science>>.

If this were possible, we'd have done this ages ago. Hell, I've tried numerous times, despite myself.

I'd be cool with this.