My Rating Tags Problem.

Well… I’ll be honest, I expected a bit more reaction then none at all.
 
Maybe I should post it as a separate topic. Cause (humor me for a second as I talk to myself in text form) let’s be real this topic wasn’t about a guidelines rewrite attempt, I just threw in an idea that I’ll do it if someone wants to read it, and my opening post is still a mess, and like… people aren’t checking out this topic to see the rewrite attempt cause it’s named “my rating tags problem” and… no one except Princess Luna have really asked for it and… other things that I say to myself trying to explain the sounds of crickets.
 
I’m going to bed. Maybe in the morning I’ll make a separate topic, and if then there’s no reaction then… sure, I wasn’t going to do anything in those 3 days anyway (as text it “sounds” a lot more passive agressive than how I actually wanted to say it, but you know, text isn’t a very expressive method of communication).

@Background Pony #2FF6  
It seems like your giant table isn’t that different from what we have currently, with a few minor changes (some of which don’t make sense, like dirty foal diapers, which have been in the show, being suggestive).
 
I would strongly recommend finding some way to truly condense it, because having such a gigantic thing is a burden, and you need to justify that cost; a few tiny changes here and there aren’t gonna justify it.
 
I like the approach of context conceptually to make it easier, but I think this is really missing the mark and won’t help.

@Princess Luna  
Well, I was never going to go in some super new direction with the guidelines in terms of rating distribution. I just wanted to make them clearer and more logical then the current ones, which are a bit of a mess as I’ve said before.  
I mean, I could’ve putted some more things into “suggestive” (like sexy poses and bedroom eyes), or “questionable” (like “bottomless” and “topless”) and bring them even closer to 2012, but the differense still wouldn’t have been a drastic one. But this never was the goal. The goal was to give clear definitions for tags and organise things accordingly to those definitions. It’s actually could be exactly like the currect guidelines, but done in this format. I just happened to prefer the old ones, so that’s what I went for.
 
Also if any parts don’t make sense - it’s us a mockup. Anything can be changed. (Also some things might just be my oversights or mistakes. I wasn’t tripple checking everything, since it could’ve all just been a waste of time. Mockup only ment to give you a general idea, not to be a full-on working implementation).
 
The main justification is clearity. The list like that only looks like a burned when you’re first introduced to it (which doesn’t do it any favors in a context of presentation), and it does take some time to learn it, but if we would’ve agreed about what goes on in this list and mods would’ve used it for a couple of weeks, they would’ve learned it, and after that it should’ve make things easier for them due to it being very clear and unambigious. And also this list isn’t ment to be used by everyone all the time. That’s why it’s just one level out of three. It’s ment to be more like a referense guide that you consult if all else has failed to give you an understanding how to rate the image.

But, you know. If you don’t think it’s useful and can’t be changed into something useful, then… that’s the end of that, I guess.

@Princess Luna  
Well, actually there’s one more thing I want to ask. If you don’t like the giant list of things, sure, but what about this:  

 
This to me also looks clearer then the current guidelines.

@Background Pony #2FF6  
Grammar errors aside…
 
I think that the added Safe text is entirely redundant, and worse, could easily be misconstrued on things that shouldn’t be Safe (especially the bit about romance).
 
“mature and crude humor” is really broad and would cover all sorts of things; we already cover sex jokes, what would this be trying to cover extra? Toilet humor? Cause without fetishiness, that’s supposed to be Safe…  
The fetish note on Suggestive is just bizarre.
 
“Nudity goes here” would cause massive confusion, as would “sexual preludes” unless it’s specified to be only those two (but even then, are we talking about even a single bra strap loose? And what is heavy petting? That phrase isn’t in common use in many places).  
I don’t see why vaginal secretions and pre-cum are treated as not as bad as cum; keep in mind that vaginal secretions include what women ejaculate, not just drippings of arousal.  
The fetish note on Questionable is again confusing, mainly because of “for sexual reasons”; do you think fetishes don’t count as sexual? Cause if so, that’s semantically contradictory to the very idea that these are the sexual ratings.
 
The fetish note is confusing yet again on Explicit.

@Princess Luna  
Well, damn. I’m actually bummed out about this. I didn’t thought I would be. But sure, okay. That’s the end of that.

@Background Pony #2FF6  
Ultimately, semantics and related subjectivity make ratings hard. I think your approach was too complex and too much based on the existing ratings.

@Princess Luna  
Well, I understand “too complex” and that being a concern (I can crunch through tables no problem, but if it’s too hard for others, I’m not gonna force them to do that). But I don’t get “too much based on the existing ratings” part. I didn’t want to change the ratings, just to make them less ambugious and possibly solve problem that other people have brought up that guidelines are too vague, and also solve my own problem that I don’t get why I can’t tag this questionable. The specification on nudity in the current guideline is very much up to interpretation, and it’s up to mods interpretations not mine, I can’t even get how I should be interpreting it. “Mostly-bare breasts/buttcheeks/crotch on those that normally wear clothes” - is vague and subjective as to what “mostly-bare” means. For me this goes beyond that and should be questionable (and there are other examples, I’m just trying to focus here). But apperantly it’s not. But it also used to be. Or did it. It feels like question of nudity has always been a mess and I don’t get why it isn’t being solved, since it’s what most people are going to be dealing with on this site. I sometimes get a feeling that mods are too concerned with properly tagging fetishes (which are about 4% of total images), while fine leaving nudity up in the air (which is about a quarter of total images). And like a third of my table is about nudity. I think that’s different enough.

@Background Pony #2FF6  
It means over 50% of the surface area of that section of the body (on either side) is not covered by clothing. As for that kind of nudity and Questionable, a nipple has to be appearing to put it into Questionable, at least for boobs; for down below the waist, it actually goes into Questionable as soon as things get very close to the genitals or anus, which is where things can really screw up with trying to rate consistently.  
Old policy, however, was Suggestive for topless (without nipples) and Questionable for bottomless (so the last image of that set would be Questionable, the rest Suggestive, which is…shall we say a little odd).
 
In regards to ambiguity, I think the design/structure of the rating guidelines and how they’re currently and in the past delineated automatically generates it in these areas. We can further specify lines where things cross from one rating to the other to patch out the ambiguity, which is what your point-of-interest thing tried to do, but it itself added heaps of ambiguity in the process.

@Princess Luna  
Okay. Well, if you think that current guidelines work in this regard then could you please explain this:
 
Suggestive: Questionable:  
>>1847348 >>1854900  
>>1849354 >>1854965  
>>1847418 >>1853521  
>>1849354 >>1853871  
>>1858306 >>1839626  
>>1737703 >>1822322  
>>1845257 >>1807761  
>>1838796 >>1567152  
>>1837903 >>1704595  
>>1828097 >>1785274  
>>1816903 >>1814623  
>>1828097 >>1785274  
I can keep going. And keep going for awhile. All of this is only from a couple of last months.
 
And you’re gonna tell me that there’s no problem and everyone gets what current guidelines mean about nudity. Really?

@Princess Luna  

Excuse me, it didn’t hit me right away what you ment.
 
What my table introduces isn’t ambiguity, but a level of error. Explicitly stated level of error. Because, yes, if you just blindly apply ratings accordingly to the table of points of interest, some images will end up having a rating they don’t deserve. I understand that and I understand that that’s a problem, but it’s not an ambiguity. It’s as unambiguous as you can get (has X on the image, gets Y rating). And I know that it’s a little extreme in it’s own way, but leaving things to interpretation like in current guidelines also creates errors, and it’s up to debate which system would’ve created less.

But I’m not trying to defend by system here and change your mind about it. I’ve already moved on. I just don’t take accusations of ambiguity lightly :3

@Background Pony #2FF6  
There is a problem, the guidelines are often not read (which is why I added another link to them up in the navbar) and when they are, people don’t immediately get it (which has been a problem since forever).
 
Your solution even in the full table had multiple areas where “in sexual context” pushed things to another rating, but without any clear way to establish that context; it also preserved the “comical” insertions ambiguity. I do see some improvement with relying more on content in your solution, but ultimately I don’t think it’s worth it to have the full table (and the more condensed forms suffer from extreme ambiguity).

@Background Pony #2FF6  
I fixed it.
 
Now all the ones labeled as “questionable” are labeled as “suggestive”.
 
Since none of them showed nipples or cameltoes, they are therefore suggestive.

@TheMultiBrony21  
The very first one has a bit of the nipple area showing, it actually should be Questionable.

@Princess Luna  
Looks more like a shadow to me. (If you look at the guys artwork, usually when he adds nipples he makes them easy to notice)
 
But hey, I’m not going to argue.

@Princess Luna  
I think distinguishing between “saliva in food context” and “saliva in sex context” or “chocker as a part of clothing” and “chocker as part of a bdsm costume” is not really all that ambugious. I agree about “comical” part, but it’s not something I invented here. It’s an ambiguity that we have to deal with anyway, I just explicitly stated that it does exist.  
But, I think we should get off of the topic of my mockup, because this train isn’t going anywhere anyway.
 
Back to the nudity though. Based on the current rules and the way you’ve explained it, most of those examples from earlier should be suggestive (except for ones with naked butts, cause that’s not “mostly-bare”, it’s full-on bare). But based on your explanation of “suggestive” tag “what you can get away with in public” - those should all be questionable. Cause you can’t really get away with being topless or bottomless in public (unless you are a shirtless guy). And I hope you didn’t ment “get away with if you’re fast/sneaky enough about it”, because then you can get away with showing genitalia and literal sex.
 
I think that what people are taking away from current guidelines is not “mostly-bare breasts/buttcheeks/crotch on those that normally wear clothes”, but “no nipples please”. And that creates a problem where rules say one thing, but people read something different. Because currently guidelines are saying something like “we kinda let nudity in suggestive, but don’t put too much”, but people are reading it as “everything except nipples”, and I think to solve this problem we need to explicitly say where the nudity should go, specifically topless/bottomless (except topless guys). And if you’re about to say that if we state it explicitly people will take it even further - they are already taking it as far as possible. So we either say explicitly that we put it all in suggestive (except nipples), which doesn’t seems right to me, because suggestive is part of a default filter and also historically wasn’t ment for erotica, or we put it in questionable and make exceptions in some cases, when it’s topless but from the back or it’s just bare shoulders, implying that it’s topless and so on. And don’t jump at this as being “too vague”, I’m just trying to figure out where the nudity should go, not how it should be worded.

And I just what to make it clear, I’m not hell-bent on making nudity questionable. If we can just get clarity and stop the situation where people are just randomly putting it in questionable and suggestive, that would already be a win in my book. Because while some people are seeing “mostly-bare” as “no nipples please” and put all nudity in suggestive, others do try to understand what “mostly-bare” means and are putting “more then mostly bare”(as they interpret it) nudity in questionable. And that confusion needs to stop. That’s my main goal here.
 
And then after that’s done, if nudity is in suggestive, then as an aditional bonus I’ll try to argue that it should be in questionalbe. But that’s secondary.
 
edit: I just feel like you mods have to deal mostly with people who want rating to change because they want this or that be in a different rating tag, and people like me who are bothered just by the confusion of it all aren’t coming in all that often. So, I wanted to clarify that.

@Background Pony #2FF6  
Would it help if the relevant lines on nudity and kissing in Suggestive were changed to the following?:  
“Breasts/buttcheeks/crotches that are at least half uncovered on species that normally cover up”  
“Kissing with spit coming out or clear tongue use”

I don’t think we need to touch kissing. I think “tongue-kissing” in current guidelines works alright, for the most part. There is a bit of a moment when kissing+nudity can goes either way, but I think it’s because of the nudity problem. So, let’s just tackle one thing at a time.
 
As for “Breasts/buttcheeks/crotches that are at least half uncovered on species that normally cover up” I don’t think this one will help too much either, because… how should I explain it. Similarly to the wording that we already have, it tries to describe an average use case, the middle point sort of, but I think what we need to do is to describe a cut off point, what is the most extreme thing that can be tagged suggestive. Maybe we don’t need to remove or “re-word” the description of the mid point but just add another sentance about the cut off on top of that. Because when people have an edge case on their hands neither of the wordings says much to them. In my personal case, with both of these descriptions (one from guidelines and the one you’ve wrote here) I would go “well, it does say “more then half is okay”, but is fully nude okay? probably not” and I would put nudity in questionable, but some other person would go and look at what goes in questionable and they see “nipples”, so they go “okay, if no nipples then it’s suggestive”. So we need to either own up to the idea “everything except nipples is suggestive” that people are getting from reading guidelines for questionable or we need to describe a different most extreme use case, a bifferent cut off point.
 
edit: I think most straightforward way would be own up to the “nudity except female nipples” idea and just add it to suggestive guidelines in some way.

@Background Pony #2FF6  
The tongue-kissing thing was partially to do with your assumption of mouth-kissing to be tongue-kissing, and partially because some things like saliva trails aren’t currently covered by the text.
 
Describing a starting point is how all the ratings’ bulletpoints work in general; it’s assumed that once (and only once) something from a higher rating shows up, that things go to that rating. This may just need some general text, however, I do think explicitly saying it’s a range with the “at least” should make it a little clearer what it’s going for.

@Princess Luna  
But why not have both start and end points? I understand that you can deduce an end point by looking at the next “level of rating”, but clearly half of the people aren’t doing that (and I was among those people). Sure, it’s a little redundant, but it seems to me that it will solve the problem. Or, at the very least, why not point out somewhere in the guidelines that the end point should be deduced from the starting point of the next level.

@Princess Luna  
About the mouth/tongue-kissing. I don’t know. In my personal experience you can’t really have an open mouth during a kiss and not have tongues involved at least a little bit. For me there’s either a closed lips kiss or a french kiss (aka tongue-kiss), and not much in between (except cpr).
 
Honestly, do as you see fit in that regard. I think it’s fine as it is and doesn’t seem to cause much trouble, but if you want to cover saliva situation - sure.

@Background Pony #2FF6  
I just mentioned that…  
Would probably be “Keep in mind that content only reaches a higher rating when it has something from that higher rating”.
 
@Background Pony #2FF6  
What about “Breasts/buttcheeks/crotches any more than half uncovered on species that normally cover up”? Does change the meaning slightly, but only by an infinitesimal.