As the title suggests, I don't understand why BVAS exists.

I mean, I understand wanting to have the best image quality available, but why bother tagging BVAS if you're not going to actually upload the better one?

It's not exactly rocket science to upload an image, even if doing it through a smart phone (which strikes me as kind of dumb, but that's not this thread :P ), so instead of the tagging equivalent of hashtag "activism", why not contribute to making the place a little better?

BVAS is normally tagged by other users than the uploader. It's also a way of letting people know there's a better version to be uploaded when your own post limit has been reached--or if you have a large cap and want to let others raise their own.

As someone who does go through the effort of finding better versions of posts and uploading them, I appreciate this tag and do find it useful. It's a quick and easy method for users who:

1) like Furrin Gok said, hit their own upload limit or want others to raise theirs,
2) don't have the time necessary to upload a post,
3) simply lack the know-how on how to tag or source and thus aren't confident in uploading content, or
4) are using a mobile device, whose connection often compresses images to save bandwidth, thus making uploading while on the go a risky endeavor

It's all about preference. Some people just don't want to download/upload/tag/flag, but don't mind pointing out things to make it easier for others.

Some people don't like dealing with art from certain sources because of one reason or another. Some only upload art from artists they've personally gotten permission from.

In some rare cases, the largest version at source is simply too large for upload here.

There's plenty of reasons. No point in looking down on people that choose not to do the whole process. Even tagging it for people that focus on higher-res uploading helps.

imagoober said:
As the title suggests, I don't understand why BVAS exists.

I use the tag because I don't want to "steal" other people's posts.
Many uploaders are emotionally attached to their uploads.

Munkelzahn said:
I use the tag because I don't want to "steal" other people's posts.
Many uploaders are emotionally attached to their uploads.

I usually send a PM to the person with the link with the better version.

Just_Another_Dragon said:
I usually send a PM to the person with the link with the better version.

I did that once when somebody uploaded an ifunny picture. Screw ifunny.

Munkelzahn said:
Many uploaders are emotionally attached to their uploads.

o.O weird

I have used the tag several times with videos. Some artists post SUPER high quality videos which are usually AVI or MP4 and three digits in size.

For videos to be downloaded that's awesome to have such quality, but videos to be streamed inside webpage embed, that's just bit too much. Haven't bumped into issues from e6 server side with this, but it's still likely that some users may not have the bandwidth, enough horsepower on their device or maybe they have data cap to keep eye on (which is thankfully easier with HTML5 videos as they do not start to load until pressing play, unlike gifs and flash which immidiately load full thing).

It hasn't been that long when site didn't even accept files over 50 MB so before that the videos had to be compressed to under 50 MB mark. But even after that, it's just much easier to everyone to have bit more compressed version up. Prime example post #797438. That's just an advertisement for the pack of videos, original filesize for that is 263 MB and even the uploaded 46 MB version is still great quality.

So that's pretty good indicator of "this is good, but if you want to save it to local storage, download it from source/description" with those.

And there are content which can't be posted here to begin with: 3D models, flash and photoshop files, svg(?), pdf, games and vr stuff made with unity engine and game maker, etc. Some have advertisements or screenshots up here, but I don't think they have bvas tag in use.

Munkelzahn said:
I use the tag because I don't want to "steal" other people's posts.
Many uploaders are emotionally attached to their uploads.

I can understand this if uploader have put some personal investment on the upload, either being artist, commissioner, etc. or if you are newbie and are seeing all your hard worked and tagged uploads being removed, but I do not get this behaviour outside of those. You aren't uploading your own work, so why should you care? *sigh*

In any way it's indeed nicer approach to use tag and notify uploader so they can correct their stuff, even if it's less efficient way. But internet users are sometimes really stupid.

sometimes i just slap the bvas tag and move on just because the drawing is so bad that i dont even bother uploading the alrger version or i just dont want it associated with my profile for personal reasons

I've noticed one reason why the BVAS tag exists. Sometimes, images on DA don't have their full version available for download, and a user can only upload what is previewed.

That doesn't mean that every image where a larger version exists is tagged with BVAS. Sometimes, one has to bother looking or it comes by random chance.

This image is an example of random chance when I was tagging images.

post #857598

...

Also, because this is my 1,000th forum post.

post #583119

I add it when approving 400x500 previews when the source says 2000x2500. I rarely upload because I'm easily distracted.

There's a dozen or so users that regularly search and replace bvas posts, so this will at least highlight it for them.

GameManiac said:
Sometimes, images on DA don't have their full version available for download, and a user can only upload what is previewed.

Qmannn said:
You got any examples of this?

post #666443

The DOWNLOAD button at the source is no longer available, but I managed to snatch the full image while it was still there. I am guessing the availability of "full" images is controlled by the uploader.

Notice that the "image details" at the source say it's a 2557×3614 image with a 3.4 MB file size (same as the one hosted on e621) but I cannot seem to find a way to snag that particular file from the source anymore.

Also, sometimes the image is too large (dimension-wise):
post #874414

I use bvas as a courtesy to the uploader so they can reupload it and maintain "ownership"/not hurt their limit as bad.

Mutisija said:
sometimes i just slap the bvas tag and move on just because the drawing is so bad that i dont even bother uploading the larger version or i just dont want it associated with my profile for personal reasons

Yep, those are the usual reasons for me too.
I frequently check the comments for my posts, and therefore prefer to avoid posting content that tends to attract drama or comments that I find annoying. (Which is the reason why I don't post flat-chested females, or censored content. The latter because I've seen the 'gee, I can't see anything'-type of comments about thousand times by now, and it's gotten pretty tiresome.)

Genjar said:
Yep, those are the usual reasons for me too.
I frequently check the comments for my posts, and therefore prefer to avoid posting content that tends to attract drama or comments that I find annoying. (Which is the reason why I don't post flat-chested females, or censored content. The latter because I've seen the 'gee, I can't see anything'-type of comments about thousand times by now, and it's gotten pretty tiresome.)

Those kinds of comments get heavily downvoted nowadays.