I've been on this site for about a year now, and I've noticed something kind of strange. It seems that certain images are uploaded here literally seconds after the original post on another website (especially with images from Inkbunny). I cant even tell you how many times I've been in the process of uploading something just to get that error message {this image already exists} only to find out it was posted a total of three seconds before me. So my question is, how is this possible? How can someone move so fast as to upload something literally seconds after an original post? Where do people even find the time?

I know this might sound kind of odd and maybe even like a stupid question, but I'm just trying to get better and faster at uploading and if there's some secret method of doing so then I'd really like to know...

That would pretty much require you to either be lucky and spot stuff uploaded at the second you happen to see it or then simply dedicate your whole life on just uploading furry artwork, having ten monitors refreshing other furry websites and have siren going up when something new comes up and have superpowers to insantly tag it correctly and send it. Alternatively they can use some scripts or software to help with the process and as we have direct URL uploading, that already shaves at least that 3 seconds when the server directly downloads the file from source, rather than you downloading and uploading it.

Both scenarios are much likelier with more known artists, because they simply have so much more following meaning there's more hands that are instantly on action when they upload, were it by luck or by dedication.

This is actually one of those cases that has made me think somewhat. Because the reason why there's those dedicated users uploading big names is most likely because those posts also gain most attention and positivity, feeding that feeling back to the user who did the upload even though all they did was just upload someone elses work and that's work that would've been uploaded here most likely regardless of their dedication. This is also why I feel bad that there's dedicated "popular" section on the site, because that just feeds more into it.

Hmm. Fastest posting method..

Individual posts?

• Script can use the API, scrape tags from the source, pop up a

text box allowing editing of tags, and post to e621 (using upload_url, obviously) once that dialog is confirmed.

• Input data: URL of original post. Ideally, script would be triggered by a global keyboard shortcut after copying original URL to clipboard; that would avoid the need for extra dialog wrangling.
• Other delays: Getting all the relevant data from source probably requires multiple requests. Threading may be able to reduce this delay.

Multiple posts?

• Implement your own queueing system. Posts should be uploaded as soon as a) the server lets you, b) the tag prerequisites are met, and c) you are no longer editing that particular entry. I think Delurc may have done something like this.
• Collections of similar images (for example, multi-image posts on Inkbunny) are obviously the most optimizable. Suitable tags may already be provided at source, and a spider may be able to examine the individual parts to suggest additional tags for individual images.

In general:

• RSS feeds refreshed unreasonably often would be as close to a guarantee of posting ASAP as you could get. Probably hook it up to a notification system (send an email, popup desktop notification, etc.. possibly multiple; whichever is most assured to get your attention)
• An IRC / Discord / Slack etc bot that lurks in channels which you know particular artists do, and similarly notifies you whenever they say something that may allude to an upload. Probably a simple keyword check.

Bonus points:

• Locally cache e621's tag list (at least the tags with >100 taggings). Use \"fzf -m" on this to select tags just about as fast as is possible.

This is not to say I think the 'upload-fastest' game is a good game to play. It's not. But if I had to play it, this is what look like the obvious optimizations to me.