Well at least this should quiet down the debate.

I don't care much for the pony thing either way, I just ignore rather than blacklist. I think one of the reasons people have been so vocal about it is that while MLP content volume might be low now, anyone can see that there is no end to the image macros and memes and screencaps and so on and so forth being generated elsewhere. It seemed inevitable that this would all continue to be dumped into e621, and eventually that low volume would become much higher and harder to ignore, with moderators unable to keep up and enforce quality control.

Recall the Ruto flood which garnered the ire of many users; the response from moderators was appropriate because it obviously couldn't carry on forever, so there was no real need for people to get as upset as they were. Furthermore, it was art being posted, even if some of it was low quality. Unlike that scenario, however, anyone can see that MLP content is going to carry on for much, much longer, so that's why I think the nature of this debate is fundamentally different. Ultimately, with the new blacklist functionality there's no excuse for people who just don't want to see anything MLP-related, but as other users have mentioned, there's a clear line between the endless memes/screencaps/etc. and actual art. There's no real means of filtering it at that level of granularity, so the improved blacklist still isn't going to ultimately resolve the issue.

I certainly understand that moderators have been making an effort to enforce some level of quality control on the MLP uploads, and it's not really up to the users to decide what those standards should be, but the moderators' standards are not explicitly listed anywhere and have proven to be rather inconsistent from moderator to moderator. Furthermore, these standards seem to be inconsistent with the standards used to handle other content on this site. I'm not going to accuse moderators of approving "low quality" MLP content while disapproving better quality non-MLP content since those terms are subjective, but it certainly seems like those approval thresholds are different. When posters are just taking the latest MLP image macro from the latest 4chan thread and throwing it here, it's understandable why many users are loathe to consider that worthwhile content and want to see it removed. When the response to this is "blacklist or die" and to squash forum discussions and inject personal views under what should be a professional capacity, it just makes it seem like certain moderators are being biased and determining what is an acceptable post based on whether the image is MLP or not. Whether or not this is actually true is beside the point; if there actually is a standard, many users seem to not know what it is and who if anyone is following it. If there is no standard, well then you can't really complain when users get upset about unfairness. In either case it just makes the entire staff look like they have no control or don't care much about what users think, and if this is untrue, then better efforts need to be made to reach users and say, "This is our quality standard, we will enforce it and hold our moderators to it, and if they don't, you can call them out on it and we will correct the issue."

So I think another improvement this site could use is better transparency and impartiality about policies. More threads like this one, decisive feedback from those in charge, and a solid gauge by which to measure moderators' performance. Users need to be able to call out moderators for bias or poor performance (maturely, of course) without fearing retaliation in the form of hostile responses and negative records for "inciting drama," even if we turn out to be wrong, because otherwise it seems like we have no recourse under any circumstances and only breeds further drama and hostility.

If any of what I'm saying sounds wrong or misinformed, it's simply because whatever is "correct" is not being made clear enough, and surely I'm not the only user who is failing to receive the proper signals. The MLP debate has called into question more than just the functionality of the site, so I hope the discussion won't end here and will be taken seriously.