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

@Archonix  
Actually, 1 month ago there were changes that reduced complexity, and were specifically meant to do so, and there were two in a row (one killed the “strategically covered” clause in Questionable while making otherwise minor tweaks to a few words elsewhere, and the next massively cut down on the wording used around bulges).  
Most changes to the sexual ratings in the last 6 months have changed wording without adding more specificity; the main growth in complexity was in Semi-grimdark, which had a big overhaul.
 
@Background Pony #017E  
I’ve seen some Totally Spies, but not much, how far did it go exactly? Like, nothing from it would hit our Questionable rating, right?  
I do ultimately think cleaving Suggestive has to happen, and I wouldn’t expect Safe to then still gobble up parts of Questionable afterwards.

@Princess Luna  
Please don’t get rid of suggestive. It’s a useful tag for those of us that really are here for pretty much show-esque content, and if all suggestive (or even most of it) were rolled into safe, it’d be for the worse.

@GenericArchangel  
I thought we used to have a “TV-Y mode” filter to help with that; Equestria Girls is TV-Y7 (and I think the movie would be too), which is part of the trouble here.
 
So, to further go off what Wingbeat said, we are trying to follow what TV censors think (aside of drugs and swearing), and I think if we had concrete knowledge of what EqG couldn’t fit in TV-Y7, we’d have a firm idea of where the Safe/Suggestive and Safe/Semi-grimdark lines are. We’re unlikely to get that information in sufficient amounts, so it’s a guessing game.
 
This is getting into a tangent (to where vore tagging becomes relevant), but:  
Me and Wingbeat had a long chat and figured on the matter of fetish fuel that if all you have to search and filter by are the fetish tags, then you end up with fetishists struggling to search and non-fetishists struggling to filter, because one guy decided an image looked innocent to him or not.  
We need to move towards having more fetish fuel content tags, like “foot focus”, that don’t interact with ratings, and allow more granularity. And Totally Spies is a TV-Y7 show and should be Safe under our ratings, but its kind of content easy to filter.

Imma be bold and predict these changes will happen even if other staff members are against it. People might protest but without luck and after a few weeks nobody will care anymore.
 
Please don’t axe suggestive, it’s an important rating. It adds a more precision. I know rating tags are complicated, but as others have already mentioned, there will always be a subjective part about judging certain cases. That can’t be avoided. I also think constantly tweaking ratings isn’t always helpful. People are used to what they know, and constantly shifting around some details might just create more confusion. I still remember how people mistagged images for months because nobody actually knew the theme in question got moved from explicit to questionable. That included some mods doing tagging as well.

@Princess Luna  
So what you’re saying is, I need to add fetish fuel to my filter to pre-empt this change? I’m okay with that.
 
Also, I thought the current default is the old TV-Y filter, which is why being delicate with suggestive matters. I suppose it’s not the end of the world if a whole bunch of new tags have to be added to filters, but it’d be easier to try and define suggestive better. And, for what it’s worth, we’re heading in the right direction with it- most of what I see tagged suggestive is, in fact, suggestive. The current proposed changes should hopefully solidify things better on both the suggestive and semi-grimdark fronts.
 
A final point: Archonix has a point. I’ve been here for all of three months and it feels like some of the rules have changed significantly while I wasn’t looking. After this big change, maybe we should let it be until this winter, to see what happens and so we can get a better feel for what changes might be useful.

@GenericArchangel  
The current default is more like TV-Y7, honestly. Safe used to be a lot more restrictive (remember sexy socks?) There used to be a TV-Y global rating alongside default that was more restrictive than default, which once upon a time didn’t even spoiler suggestive.
 
Our approach to updating the tag guidelines has always been about making sure what we say and what we do line up. A lot of subject matters are already treated like this. For instance, there is no specific “fat fetish” tag to apply in all cases, but rather tags for things that could fuel that fetish, like “morbidly obese” etc. It is far easier to identify that a character is showing their bare feet to the camera than to figure out why they’re pictured doing it, and that makes it easier to filter, as well. Of course, if the fetish in and of itself is the subject in a meta way, that too can be identified and tagged.

@GenericArchangel  
Please note that Equestria Girls is TV-Y7, which actually does mean it shows things the main show can’t, and under our current approach, anything from EqG is Safe as well.
 
It might help even with no changes, as you may note with Fluttershy in EqG, although we’ll need to tag “fetish fuel” better, cause I feel it’s often missing on things.
 
It’s possible the only part of these changes to even go through will be adding examples to when text is Suggestive and Questionable, that’s kind of a big deal with keeping comments within rating. I actually expected to have to tweak the wording there as well, but it apparently isn’t necessary.
 
@WingbeatPony  
You mean filter, not rating…also, you really shouldn’t be using we/our on that since you’re no longer staff, and instead just clarify that you were around and active on staff for the big changes to ratings that led here. But anyways, you’re right.
 
@Lead Pie  
We normally do internal proposals and voting on them before changes are made, I made this thread in large part because I expected that involvement from more active taggers could help provide ideas on things and guide the direction to go; unfortunately I got less feedback about the current state of rating images, but it definitely seems like Suggestive has to stay around as far as the future state.

@Princess Luna  
Yep, sorry. Used “we” not because I consider myself part of staff, but because I consider myself to be part of the site’s community (and therefore, capable of representing what the site was like, regardless of my prior involvement with staff). Didn’t mean to be misleading

While I don’t find it fetish fuel, the fact that pictures of legs,screencap,safe (653 pics; 655 if safe removed) exists probably implies someone does. Should they be mass tagged as such?

@Background Pony #13AA  
Maybe. It mainly depends on whether we want the tag to be for official media that we think fetishists will like because of what it does, or whether it’s just for anything we think fetishists will like because of what it is.

@Princess Luna  
Actually, clarifying the suggestive/questionable thing like you’ve proposed would be amazing. Not even two days ago I saw an image mistagged as safe, but I couldn’t figure out which category it fell in and so left it alone for someone who knew better to fix. With the proposed changes, it would’ve been obvious, allowing me to fix the tag and move on. That change is easily the cleverest recommended so far.

@GenericArchangel  
Ah, the text examples? It’s good to have some confirmation it’d help, and I hadn’t even considered the problem of people not correcting ratings because they only knew a rating wasn’t right, not where to change it to; I suppose that partially explains why I still somewhat often come across images mentioning sex acts left at Safe.

And it’s looking like the poll is a tie. So, after all the discussion, what happens next?

@GenericArchangel  
I think there’s an awful lot of ground covered for a single yes/no poll to be useful.

@cheezedoodle  
I was considering not having a poll at all for this very reason. At any rate, it provides a little extra information from people who don’t bother posting about their very very general feelings.
 
@GenericArchangel  
Thankfully, the actual posts had some useful information to them to figure out what to actually firmly propose as changes. Basically, adding examples to how to rate text appears to be the way to go, but wording tweaks are iffy, especially on Suggestive.

@Princess Luna  
So semi-grimdark and image suggestive probably won’t change, then? Got it.

@GenericArchangel  
Whatever happens, which rating which images are isn’t gonna change any for now. It may need to change at a later point to reduce rating complexity, but that’s likely 3-6 months down the road.