[NSFW] Ratings Guidelines: Potential Changes, Please Give Feedback

The ratings guidelines I feel are the best they’ve ever been, but I want to briefly assess how taggers like you feel about them and clean up some wording that’s giving people the wrong impressions (normally, changes to the guidelines are mostly discussed internally, but it’s good to get more opinions, and connect with the userbase from time to time).  
Please post any concerns about the current or proposed wordings here, and I’ll see about changing the proposal based off of the feedback.
 
Changes show insertions with bold and deletions with strikeout.
 
To preface the Suggestive stuff, keep in mind the idea with stuff from the show being Safe is that if Hasbro thinks something is safe to show to children, we’d be pretty stupid to disagree, so it’s not an exception, but instead a guidepost, scene interps that don’t change anything retain the same rating (part of a general idea of tag what’s in the actual image, and don’t alter it hugely based on outside information, don’t care about which artist made an image, just how they made it).  
First off, in Suggestive, Fluttershy in EqG kind of ruined things on the toe-wiggling clause (hilariously, almost exactly 2 weeks after I added it).  
 
Second, ever since Rarity started getting saucier, Safe/Suggestive on posing has gotten a lot more difficult, cause a pony smiling at you while you can see your butt isn’t exactly much different. I’m open to alternative approaches, but I think the easiest one is to transition to caring about bodily interactions rather than expression and body pose.  
 
Third, I would like it if there could be some refinement on the half-uncovered thing about breasts/crotches/buttcheeks; it’s way easier than before, but I worry it’s losing sight of the real goal, as an image came along that caused some disagreements on how to rate it:  
 
Current idea (Suggestive):  

 
This may be controversial, as these images would probably end up in Safe:  

 
As for Suggestive/Questionable, I think there’s been a lot of inconsistency over how text is treated and it can create some Rule #7 enforcement issues. I’m going to try to add in some specificity.  
Current idea (Suggestive, then Questionable):  

 

 
Finally, the dark ratings are doing really well after the recent changes I think, but I think “murderous insanity” doesn’t work too well, as just a character going nuts is kind of a common thing in even FiM.  
 
Current idea:  

 
This will more clearly cover cases like these:  

No on geting rid of Murderous insanity.
 
Going nuts in MLP is common but nither of the examples you shown wanted to murder anyone.  
Murderous insanity does a good job decribeing a part of semi grimdark.

@warc9  
Tirek threatened to behead Spike in G1, actually, but anyways, could you clarify what types of images you think deserve Semi-grimdark that would need to still be covered by this, or possibly provide ideas on a better wording to more emphasize the “murderous” aspect?

@Princess Luna  

 
Images like this one where there is a murderous intent but no actual blood.

@warc9  
I see, this makes me think the approach is slightly wrong, and instead it should be something like “Insanity with clear murderous desire”.

I have to be honest, I see no reason to change things. Screencaps and clips from the show are safe because the MPAA or whatever ratings agency looked at them declared them safe for broadcast.
 
The minute they’re decontextualised (cropping, editing, re-imagining by another artist or whatever) they stop being screencaps and get assessed under the ratings as appropriate. It is that change of context that matters. Otherwise we’d end up in the situation of either rating daytime television screencaps of a children’s show as “suggestive” or “questionable” or “grimdark”, or rating obviously fetishistic art as “safe”. I see no reason to change a perfectly functional set of tag guidelines.

@Princess Luna  
Yes I think that could work.
 
With this new wording I think this does the job better beacuse it highlights the murder aspect of the insane murder rule while leting normal insanty be.

You already know my opinion, but,
 
@Archonix  

@Princess Luna  
A better idea for suggestive poses like that Pear Butter image might be:  

 
Keeps things that are sexually suggestive tagged suggestive without over-reaching into safe.
 
I’ll also note that those Rarity GIFs would be considered borderline, so mimicking them shouldn’t automatically guarantee a safe rating. @The Smiling Pony said it best on that count.
 
Finally, modify the “murderously insane” clause to be  

 
Alternatively, roll it in with “imminent fatal violence” so that that line reads:  

@Archonix  
At issue is not changed screencaps, we have quite a few of those that are most definitely not Safe (edits, added captions, etc., it’s fairly easy to make a screencap into something Suggestive).  
At issue is that whatever standard we use for fan art, whether the same as for screencaps or not, should be something you can give three random people, along with images to rate, and get near-identical answers; we still don’t have that.  
Caring a lot about artist intent makes this especially hard because people aren’t omniscient nor capable of telepathy, which means we often end up in a situation where artists have relatively innocent intent on par with the creators of EqG, and draw something just as lewd, but it gets rated Suggestive because the particular tagger found it arousing. This is why I think we should be tagging what we can see, not what we know, on ratings.  
That Pinkie in swimwear image is a case where, of 4 staff, 2 said Safe and 2 Suggestive, and the 2 Suggestives were for entirely opposite reasons; is that really no reason to even consider changing anything?
 
@GenericArchangel  
On the Suggestive stuff, it feels like this wording is just a cop-out that ignores the problem by saying the inconsistency is okay instead of providing a reliable way to gauge what’s Suggestive.  
Also, I would really think mimicking something borderline would mean being still borderline, provided the mimicry was very close.
 
Hmm, willingness is an interesting wording to try, but I don’t think we should care about ability, cause images often have very little to them that shows this.

@Princess Luna  
The willingness wording is just an idea, but the point was to exclude images that just show things like Pinkamena with a crazy slasher smile, that shouldn’t really be semi-grimdark. Any similar wording should also do the trick.
 
And I know suggestive is hard to tag- honestly, “I know it when I see it” might not be a bad idea for internal mod usage. I know the Pear Butter image is suggestive, but it’s really hard to say why in a quantifiable way.

I mean, I even considered >>2051017 to be safe and not suggestive, as I didn’t really see the bikini as too skimpy. Of course I also don’t really look at breasts and crotches on females on my own accord. P:
 
Really I still don’t see anything in that image as suggestive, and while I wouldn’t be affected if it was still considered as such, there’s nothing sexual in her body language or expression or anything. Sure it’s skimpier than the show would ever do, but it’s not outside the reigns of reality to me.
 
I think a lot of issues with suggestive (and to a lesser extent, questionable) come from people seeing something as sexual that others might not. Like, I don’t see a skimpy bikini on a character without them acting at all sexually suggestive and instantly assume it’s sexual. Just standing there wearing it isn’t enough. I’m not really sure how to word it, but I think sometimes people think of suggestive as “does this expand dong?” which should not be the case, as that is, naturally, subjective and varies from person to person. Likewise, it should not take into account of “someone can get off to this” as people can get off to fucking anything. Should be just how the image presents itself and nothing more.
 
I think for the most part things have been made very clear, but sometimes there’s that thing that is mildly confusing.

@GenericArchangel  
Hmm, do you think warc9’s image shouldn’t be Semi-grimdark? I’m thinking it should stay at that rating, just barely. This area I’d say is about as tricky as swimwear/underwear, I only brought it up cause people have a tendency to rate just a crazy smile as Semi-grimdark, even further than what warc9 wants to keep there.  
On “I know it when I see it”, actually, that’s the problem, we disagree on when we see it internally; I routinely try to have people give candid ratings opinions free of the guidelines and the results on some images are all over the place; it can be really hard then to figure out what the guidelines should say.
 
@LightningBolt  
Do you have any ideas on wording we could use to capture the apparent intent of the character? I do think one very workable approach is to try to figure out the intent of the characters in the image, rather than that of the artist, as it’s still tagging what you see, just a little removed from concreteness.

@Princess Luna  
Images like that are why I added the ability bit. We’ve got the clear insanity and a weapon being used in a way that suggests violence. If the knife wasn’t there I’d say it’d be borderline, but with the knife definitely not safe. A wording might be on how one demonstrates intent, with things like weapon usage being part of that.

@Princess Luna  
I think making the main tagging focus being the image itself standalone, and while artist intent can say “she’s sexy and waiting for you” or something while she’s just standing there with an innocent smile should be dismissed, it can be helpful for more ambiguous things. So, focus mostly on the image itself, but not entirely dismissing artist intent or words unless it’s contradictory or makes no sense.

@GenericArchangel  
Ah, I see now; I guess rolling it into the threatening bit then would work better than I had thought. Although now I remember that a recent episode had the villains bisect a doll representing Starlight, which is a very slight complication (may need some wording on intensity).
 
@LightningBolt  
Okay…but any actual wording ideas? Like, what should the guidelines say?

@Princess Luna  
Nope, I’m terrible at that.
 
But maybe something about focusing on solely the image itself before looking at outside information?

I’m still waiting for characters getting swallowed whole by a giant monster as part of an adventure storyline to not be tagged as a fetish.

@Princess Luna  
My take from that is an opinion I’ve had for a while now:
 
Just because it is from the show does not automatically make it safe.
 
See, a TV-Y rating is for the episode as a whole, not each individual scene. The overall episode is safe, but certain scenes can use minor innuendos, visual gags, or even outright violence, as you mentioned. The fact that the tag “you know, for kids” exists is proof of this. It might be time to seriously consider tagging specific scenes as semi-grim dark or suggestive, as the case may be. These are very few and far between, but they exist. Like Sombra getting melted, or that one scene from “Rarity Investigates” (you know the one). Cutting a Starlight doll in half? That might actually rate a semi-grimdark- I don’t think it does, but it’s still food for thought.

@cheezedoodle  
This is completely unrelated to the thread’s topic.
 
@GenericArchangel  
I would like to note that ratings for TV and movies are generally done in a manner of being based on the most intense scenes, not the average, although there is some consideration of things being repeated (like PG-13 only allows one F bomb).  
Anyways, I consider that somewhat of an extreme view that really goes deep into prudish territory, but more importantly, I think it would really mess with filtering if screencaps started to be filtered for ratings.  
As for “you know for kids”, its existence only proves that people see some things as being close to the not-safe-for-kids side.  
Ultimately, I think there’s something wrong with us if we’re saying a scene from a kids show is unsafe for kids, yet toy companies and parents don’t seem to have any issues.

@Princess Luna  
It’s not a fixable problem. You can show a dozen people a picture of a naked couple holding hands and you’ll get different answers on whether or not it’s explicit, safe, suggestive, art, documentary, violent, or any number of labels depending on their own views and what else the image contains. You can tinker with the definitions until the end of time but you won’t get any consistent set of objective standards (and responses) because all of the definitions of these tags are themselves subjective, depending on who is reading them.
 
I see no point in altering the tag definitions again. They’ve barely had time to settle from the last change.

@Archonix  
Complete objectivity is certainly unachievable, but I think the current state is too subjective on a few specific cases; it’s really text ratings that’s probably the biggest issue (massive disparities in rating, despite what this thread would have you believe…and this is highly relevant to one of our rules’ enforcement) and why I made this thread to begin with.
 
I should note on “murderous insanity” (and technically the foot focus thing too) that the problem is different in that instead of large disagreements on interpretation, it’s occasional misunderstanding of the specific words.

@Princess Luna  
Every time these tags have been changed, we’ve added more specific cases or altered the wording of existing cases to be more convoluted. We keep changing the tag guidelines and it hasn’t improved anything. This isn’t the fault of the guidelines; it’s because we are dealing with inherently subjective criteria. Changing the wording won’t fix that. Adding more specific cases won’t fix that.
 
In the last year we have revised these tags about once a month, not including minor revisions that were discussed under other topics, in some cases fundamentally overhauling them. In each case they become more complex, with greater specificity, and longer.
 
Now I was happy to go along with this at first, because I thought it would be effective, but at this time I have to say that it is obvious to me that these changes are not effective in the least. The exact same confusion remains, but now there is the additional confusion of increased complexity causing edge-cases to become fractal, and ratings tags constantly changing for an entire year to the point that I have lost track of what they actually say. I’d be tempted to argue that this is contributing to the problem that you’re currently trying to solve.

As someone with a historic penchant for arguing edge cases, I do have to say I think GenericArchangel was on to something, in that the show itself (and in particular, EQG) has begun showing scenes that inadvertently upend everything we thought we knew about where to draw the line. If we keep adjusting the ratings to catch all the borderline scenes, we may well end up in a situation where the suggestive rating is rendered irrelevant not by drawing the line in the middle and splitting it between safe and questionable, but by having “safe” grow to include nearly everything. That’s not a desirable outcome from my perspective, at least not as a result of the show inadvertently pushing the ratings.
 
I mean, think about the show Totally Spies. That cartoon has a reputation for being fetish fuel central, and it aired with a TV-Y7 rating (for fantasy violence). Yes, that is one rating higher than the TV-Y general audience rating MLP operates under, but it’s “material suitable for children 7 and older.” That’s a real big yikes from me, boss.
 
I think making the ratings wholly dependent on the show itself is an unnecessary headache. If we ignore it for a moment and make the guidelines reflect a more straightforward distinction between ratings, unedited screencaps would simply become a general exception to the entire rating system. This would also future proof us against, for example, an on-screen death in the finale or Rarity twerking on someone in EQG, or G5 coming along with a TV-Y7 rating itself.
 
I do approve of the current proposed change in wording on the dark ratings, though.

@Background Pony #017E  
And I typed all of that without realizing I wasn’t logged in. I doubt any of you had trouble guessing who wrote that anyhow :P