I noticed a lot of elves and stuff popping onto this site without any kind of animal in it and that made me think of site rules. I thought posting only human was against site policy? Or was that changed at some point. Assuming this is still the case, at what point is something considered too human enough to not meet guidelines? Elves are literally just humans with pointy ears, there is no visible distinction otherwise. And I've also seen only human posts get approved as well, but doesn't that go against the whole nature of this being a furry-centric website? If we're this vague about what is and isn't allowed it just leaves room for people to bend the rules and posting hundred upon hundreds of elf posts that have nothing to do with furry content. I can just imagine all the people thinking like "LOOK they have pointy ears it counts!" and blacklisting it is detrimental because of all the posts of elves that include anthro, feral, etc.

And if this is working as intended, what's the reasoning for this?

any character with any non-human body feature (not including skin color or the lack of facial features) is considered okay to post. (essentially anything that'd be considered humanoid rather than human)

this has been the standard more or less for as long as there has been one.

(it's also okay to post comic pages from parts of a furry-centric comic even if it's human_only if necessary)

dba_afish said:
any character with any non-human body feature (not including skin color or the lack of facial features) is considered okay to post.

this has been the standard more or less for as long as there has been one.

We'll more specifically, it should be the presence (not just the absence of human traits) of at least 1 non-human body feature that doesn't look like it's not attached to them (like fake cat ears) which couldn't be construed as a human with a different artistic style applied (simpson's colored skin, etc), or if it's part of an otherwise furry focused/involved series

the uploading guidelines has a section dedicated to explaining human only content, what counts as such, and when it's allowed to be posted.

essentially: humans are considered irrelevant to e6 and therefore, will be deleted if they are the sole character(s) in the image. the exception to this is when they are made tangentially related by, say, being a part of a pool containing other, relevant characters (though don't go testing for this, posts and pools with an extreme focus on humans can still get deleted), or being a part of some other sequence of images that ultimately contain relevant characters. inhuman species don't get treated like humans unless they appear to be one, so for elves they need their knife ears (believe it or not humans have folded their ears to make it end in a point, sometimes using surgery to do so, so clearly human ears with a point can be deemed irrelevant), dwarves might or might not get the pass since they can appear to just be short, stocky humans, orcs need their pointy underbite, et cetera. mind you these species are still considered not_furry, but they manage to just teeter over the edge of what's acceptable and what's not with our current guidelines.

fluffermutt said:
I thought posting only human was against site policy? And I've also seen only human posts get approved as well, but doesn't that go against the whole nature of this being a furry-centric website?

Human only posts are allowed if they're part of furry focused art. e.g., start of a transformation sequence.

fluffermutt said:
Assuming this is still the case, at what point is something considered too human enough to not meet guidelines? If we're this vague about what is and isn't allowed it just leaves room for people to bend the rules and posting hundred upon hundreds of elf posts that have nothing to do with furry content.

It's not vague at all. They must be visibly anatomically different from humans.

https://e621.net/help/uploading_guidelines#humans

fluffermutt said:
I noticed a lot of elves and stuff popping onto this site without any kind of animal in it and that made me think of site rules. I can just imagine all the people thinking like "LOOK they have pointy ears it counts!" and blacklisting it is detrimental because of all the posts of elves that include anthro, feral, etc.

And if this is working as intended, what's the reasoning for this?

1. Blacklisting will still filter out the non-furry art. You just need to have more than one tag in a single line. like this

elf -anthro

2. It's been a thing for a long time

...I've also seen only human posts get approved as well, but doesn't that go against the whole nature of this being a furry-centric website?

It does. If there's actually humans-only, you can flag it or report it for slipping through the system. Sometimes they manage to get through. I think a notable exception is if it's one part of a set/pool.

If we're this vague about what is and isn't allowed it just leaves room for people to bend the rules...

By technicality, having a non-human feature aside from skin color or lack of facial features makes it not human, ergo furry enough to be on this site. It's best to blacklist not furry if you don't want to see these kinds of images, and add it if you find any like that without that tag.

It's based on additive features, not reductive ones, so a man made of tubes with a circle for a head would get deleted like post #2560775 - an image of a glorified Henry Stickmin character; or post #3367277 - an image of someone's circlehead character.

So, basically, this is the system:

Humans only are not allowed, but if you add a feature that is not-human, it is acceptable. Elves and orcs are good examples of this.
Humans only are not allowed, and reducing features does not make them more acceptable. If you remove facial or body features to make it a more simple design, it still counts as a human in e6 terms. A post featuring only circleheads with no additional features is likely to get deleted.

It's definitely been that way for as long as I've been on this site, and much longer than that too.

moonlit-comet said:
It does. If there's actually humans-only, you can flag it or report it for slipping through the system. Sometimes they manage to get through. I think a notable exception is if it's one part of a set/pool.

By technicality, having a non-human feature aside from skin color or lack of facial features makes it not human, ergo furry enough to be on this site. It's best to blacklist not furry if you don't want to see these kinds of images, and add it if you find any like that without that tag.

It's based on additive features, not reductive ones, so a man made of tubes with a circle for a head would get deleted like post #2560775 - an image of a glorified Henry Stickmin character; or post #3367277 - an image of someone's circlehead character.

So, basically, this is the system:

Humans only are not allowed, but if you add a feature that is not-human, it is acceptable. Elves and orcs are good examples of this.
Humans only are not allowed, and reducing features does not make them more acceptable. If you remove facial or body features to make it a more simple design, it still counts as a human in e6 terms. A post featuring only circleheads with no additional features is likely to get deleted.

It's definitely been that way for as long as I've been on this site, and much longer than that too.

I can't flag a post with only humans for not meeting quality standards if it's already been approved (No idea how) Should I just report it then? There needs to be a reason given and this doesn't fit any of the ones provided.

moonlit-comet said:
By technicality, having a non-human feature aside from skin color or lack of facial features makes it not human, ergo furry enough to be on this site. It's best to blacklist not furry if you don't want to see these kinds of images, and add it if you find any like that without that tag.

Unfortunately not_furry isn't discerning enough to separate "basically human" humanoids from "clearly inhuman" humanoids. Stuff like this is not_furry:
post #4731659 post #4658569
As is stuff like:
post #4744151 post #4744205
Some of these are more relevant than others.