So ive been noticing ever since they switched out the FFD system that uploaders will flag perfectly good artwork and animations with the 48h removal flag should it get a bad comment, or get a negitive score. Some have a valid reason but most ive noticed have a negitive score of -2 to -10.

Case in point: post #633545

Case in point just got deleted as I posted this. Great. Was a good animation had a -6, others have had anywhere from -1 to whatever or a few comments where people are asses.

Honestly there is quite An ability to abuse this flag type.

I don't understand why the uploader can even request deletion (unless they're the artist) since deleted art can't be reuploaded. Or can it be reuploaded now?

It seems pretty shitty that an uploader can request something's deletion so it won't be able to be reuploaded again.

The animation in question.

I think this is worth discussing, but this flag actually has a lot lower abuse rate than you'd think. Here are some of the more common ones I've seen:

• Uploaders regret
• Low/mediocre score, artist or not
• DNP - (Should flag DNP, but it's close enough that it doesn't matter that much as long as it gets taken down)
• Being told to take it down in the comments by an artist, character owner, etc. - (Should use takedown instead)
• Bigger/better version available (should use duplicate/inferior flag)
• Artist posted the art and wants to upload a better version (should use duplicate/inferior flag)
• Accidentally uploaded wrong file
• Corrupted (should use corrupted flag)

Generally I try to work with them to see if there is a valid reason for keeping it anyways, especially if the artist is already well-known on here since it won't let you upload the same file after it's been deleted.

As for this particular post...eh. It's not a bad animation per se, but there also isn't really anything particularly notable about it either.

iirc i once saw a pic uploaded where the uploader (not the artist) added in the description that he'd have it deleted if the pic was tagged shemale or intersex or something while he stupidly insisted it wasn't. a dick and breasts imply shemale/intersex tag, correct? well, goodbye pic, all because the uploader in question didn't agree with the tag what you see rule.

quite the stupid reason to have a pic deleted tbh.

well, it's certainly a smooth animation.

parasprite said:

• Uploaders regret
• Low/mediocre score, artist or not

treos said:
iirc i once saw a pic uploaded where the uploader (not the artist) added in the description that he'd have it deleted if the pic was tagged shemale or intersex or something while he stupidly insisted it wasn't. a dick and breasts imply shemale/intersex tag, correct? well, goodbye pic, all because the uploader in question didn't agree with the tag what you see rule.

quite the stupid reason to have a pic deleted tbh.

Yeah, it makes me sad to think of how much good artwork we may have lost due to reasons such as this.

parasprite said:
Generally I try to work with them to see if there is a valid reason for keeping it anyways, especially if the artist is already well-known on here since it won't let you upload the same file after it's been deleted.

I think this should be a thing. Shouldn't the admins have the power to decide if the reason for deletion is valid or not (just like they have the power to decide if it's approved or not in the first place)?

I mean if it's the artist who requests the deletion then fair enough but when it's people requesting deletion of someone elses work for stupid reasons shouldn't it be up to the admins to decide if it stays or not?

treos said:
iirc i once saw a pic uploaded where the uploader (not the artist) added in the description that he'd have it deleted if the pic was tagged shemale or intersex or something while he stupidly insisted it wasn't. a dick and breasts imply shemale/intersex tag, correct? well, goodbye pic, all because the uploader in question didn't agree with the tag what you see rule.

quite the stupid reason to have a pic deleted tbh.

I think you may be talking about post #584499, but that one was actually done by the artist. In this case, it would be more proper to do it through a takedown as it isn't a valid reason to flag it anyways. If it wasn't flagged by the artist/character owner/etc. it would stay up regardless.

DragonFox69 said:

I think this should be a thing. Shouldn't the admins have the power to decide if the reason for deletion is valid or not (just like they have the power to decide if it's approved or not in the first place)?

I mean if it's the artist who requests the deletion then fair enough but when it's people requesting deletion of someone elses work for stupid reasons shouldn't it be up to the admins to decide if it stays or not?

Yeah, it isn't always obvious why they flag it though. There isn't always going to be delicious drama in the comments/description to help base the decision on. :P

parasprite said:
I think you may be talking about post #584499, but that one was actually done by the artist. In this case, it would be more proper to do it through a takedown as it isn't a valid reason to flag it anyways. If it wasn't flagged by the artist/character owner/etc. it would stay up regardless.

yep, that's the one. guess i forgot it was the artist who uploaded it.still kinda dumb that it was deleted due to disagreeing with the rules but i guess in this case it was indeed up to the artist whether it stayed or not.

edit: i wonder if that pic would still be here had we had the intersex alias when it was first uploaded since herm and shemale are both in that set of aliases.

parasprite said:
Yeah, it isn't always obvious why they flag it though.

Hmm, that's also a thing.

parasprite said:
delicious drama

I'm shocked the score on that SWF went below 0.

However, removal for low score or a tag dispute is a bit too precious.

If you happen to spend $$$ on porn, avoid artists that take down images for little reason. Don't pay artists that don't allow their art on this site.

I think some uploaders get too affected by the voting system.

I usually upload things i like and i think it would be good to share with people here ranging from safe cute pics to explicit pictures.

Not everyone is going to like what you are posting be it quality or just something the viewer doesn't like, i feel like people are much more inclined to actually downvote something they don't like than upvote something they like.

But we probably can't just get rid of the uploader's choice to flag his own picture because of a small percentage of people are abusing because personal motives, because there are others that actually use it.

That's only what i think.

parasprite said:
I think you may be talking about post #584499, but that one was actually done by the artist. In this case, it would be more proper to do it through a takedown as it isn't a valid reason to flag it anyways. If it wasn't flagged by the artist/character owner/etc. it would stay up regardless.

Yeah, it isn't always obvious why they flag it though. There isn't always going to be delicious drama in the comments/description to help base the decision on. :P

Fuzzywuff is a psychotic megalomaniac. I know, I used to live with him. I would just not honor his word because he wants things his way which means changing the tagging system.

Don't fall for these types, srsly. Make an exception.

Please stay civil in this thread.

NotMeNotYou said:
Please stay civil in this thread.

I'm just letting you know is all. He gets in trouble everywhere because he doesn't get his way. That also means FurAffinity and Inkbunny. He's very picky and extremely demanding. And he likes to make people feel guilty.

It might look like I'm demonizing him, but this is a fact.

Arcanine09 said:
I'm just letting you know is all. He gets in trouble everywhere because he doesn't get his way. That also means FurAffinity and Inkbunny. He's very picky and extremely demanding. And he likes to make people feel guilty.

It might look like I'm demonizing him, but this is a fact.

Doesn't matter, if he doesn't like the rules he will be shown the door, whether or not you "demonize" him.

So yes, let's stay on topic, that didn't add anything worthwhile to the discussion at hand.

are you guys seriously deleting images because the uploader didn't like that it got a low score?

눈_눈

As for this particular post...eh. It's not a bad animation per se, but there also isn't really anything particularly notable about it either.

is "artwork not particularly notable" a valid FFD reason?

null0010 said:
is "artwork not particularly notable" a valid FFD reason?

I thought the idea there was that we don't particularly -care- if it's taken down, -because- it isn't notable -- it's pretty meh. Whereas discussion with the uploader might be forthcoming in the case of a more notable image.

null0010 said:
are you guys seriously deleting images because the uploader didn't like that it got a low score?

눈_눈

All I see is "Uploader requests deletion within 48 hours" and then I delete it. If it has a low score, I secretly cri evrytime. Only time I don't delete is when users use that reason because they think they are reposting the same image when someone else posted it but theirs is better quality.

why is that even an option

that is seriously ridiculous that e6 would give essentially unlimited takedown power to uploaders who do not own the art

this is quite possibly the stupidest idea i have ever heard proposed on this site, let alone implemented

shaaame

damn nerds

It hurts their upload limit anyway, so why bother?

ywah it's dumb like even when I upload good stuff ppl delete it anyways rofl

Dogenzaka said:
It hurts their upload limit anyway, so why bother?

Pretty sure I remember a staff saying its there so the User has an option to remove something with out it counting against them.
It doesn't count twards the uploaded vs. Deleted post limit...

Still the reason I brought it up is that it honestly shouldn't be a ffd option. If it is one, then make it so it does not count twards a re-upload. Allowing someone who has tougher skin to post it. If its a problem then a takedown can be filed by the proper people... but your giving uploaders way to much power otherwise. At least set a timer for how long they have to be a member before they can flag with that option. Most the people who use it in abuse are noobs,...

FFD worked perfectly well before this nonsense was introduced

don't fix what's not broken

I think an open text field just for that option would help clarify things a lot. If they can't find a good reason, the post stays.

Granted, this gets slightly more complicated when it's the artist that posted it, but it usually is anyways.

null0010 said:
FFD worked perfectly well before this nonsense was introduced

don't fix what's not broken

Nothing is perfect.

don't be pedantic with me

i invented pedantic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFXCKQ7K2bs </georgecostanza>

remove the FFD reason. it's 100% pointless and the only thing it accomplishes is removing otherwise perfectly decent art from this site

which is an art archive

where the art is more important than anything else

including the idiotic opinions of people who are having "second thoughts"

if an artist who posted their own work wants their art removed, that's why e6 invented takedowns

It's useful for a couple of things.
From what I've understood, if the post turns out to be DNP but the uploader flags it, they don't get warned/banned for it.

And I've accidentally uploaded wrong versions of the posts before: smaller and unfinished ones. Would've been nice to have that FFD back then.

parasprite said:
I think an open text field just for that option would help clarify things a lot. If they can't find a good reason, the post stays.

Yep, that'd be good.

or you could just FFD the image for those reasons instead

like e6 used to do

before e6 decided to sabotage the entire purpose of the website by catering to secondguessing mouthbreathers

Esme_Belles said:
Pretty sure I remember a staff saying its there so the User has an option to remove something with out it counting against them.
It doesn't count twards the uploaded vs. Deleted post limit...

I think it counted against mine when I took two defective uploads down, but i'm not too sure since it was 2 weeks ago. Also, do artist takedowns count against our limit? I know I have a big chunk of deletions due to two or three artists making a takedown request.

null0010 said:
or you could just FFD the image for those reasons instead

like e6 used to do

before e6 decided to sabotage the entire purpose of the website by catering to secondguessing mouthbreathers

It really sounds like you have unresolved issues that have nothing to do with the FFD options.

Just for the record, the animation in the first post got reupload by the Uploader, but this time with popcorn, looks like he forgot it in the first upload.

post #633881

So much for abuse in this case.

Genjar said:
It's useful for a couple of things.
From what I've understood, if the post turns out to be DNP but the uploader flags it, they don't get warned/banned for it.

And I've accidentally uploaded wrong versions of the posts before: smaller and unfinished ones. Would've been nice to have that FFD back then.

If you upload DNP, flag it as DNP, if you upload an inferior version, flag it as inferior version.

null0010 said:
don't be pedantic with me

i invented pedantic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFXCKQ7K2bs </georgecostanza>

remove the FFD reason. it's 100% pointless and the only thing it accomplishes is removing otherwise perfectly decent art from this site

which is an art archive

where the art is more important than anything else

including the idiotic opinions of people who are having "second thoughts"

if an artist who posted their own work wants their art removed, that's why e6 invented takedowns

It's supposed to be a mini takedown for the Uploader, we already accept every single reason in a takedown, up to and including barely understandable gibberish.

However, I'm fairly certain I wanted a reason for the FFD, with the caveat that the flag gets denied if the reason is idiotic.

parasprite said:
It really sounds like you have unresolved issues that have nothing to do with the FFD options.

wow, rude

NotMeNotYou said:
Just for the record, the animation in the first post got reupload by the Uploader, but this time with popcorn, looks like he forgot it in the first upload.

post #633881

So much for abuse in this case.

Yeah, but this could have easily been accomplished with the old FFD options. This new option allows for no new valid functionality except to deny people the ability to see perfectly cromulent artwork.

why is that even an option

that is seriously ridiculous that e6 would give essentially unlimited takedown power to uploaders who do not own the art

this is quite possibly the stupidest idea i have ever heard proposed on this site, let alone implemented

shaaame

>unlimited takedown power
>48 hours

Yeah, sounds about right.

While null is obviously overreacting this option bothers me a little. Sooner or later there will be a troll who'll upload posts of artist (s)he doesn't like and immediately delete them just to make it impossible for other people to upload them. It'll turn out then whether it's a good idea for flag or not.

Granberia said:
While null is obviously overreacting this option bothers me a little. Sooner or later there will be a troll who'll upload posts of artist (s)he doesn't like and immediately delete them just to make it impossible for other people to upload them.

E621 just uses the md5 hash of the entire file to ID it, right?. That's a pretty trivial obstacle to someone who knows how to edit images (not image pixels), it's easy to change the image metadata -- add a comment block, for example, or just add a blank character to the end of the comment. Totally nondestructive, not even 1px change to displayed image content. Same applies for WebM and (I think) SWF. For certain image formats, it's even easier than that.

Certainly it would make things more annoying, but it's nowhere near a perfect block.

savageorange said:
It's just a straight hash of the file, right?. That's a pretty trivial obstacle to someone who knows how to edit images (not image pixels), it's easy to change the image metadata -- add a comment block, for example, or just add a blank character to the end of the comment. Totally nondestructive, not even 1px change to displayed image content. Same applies for WebM and (I think) SWF. For certain image formats, it's even easier than that.

Certainly it would make things more annoying, but it's nowhere near a perfect block.

Yeah it's just a hash, which is actually the same string as the file name if you weren't aware. [/the more you know]

Anyways, I've yet to see any abuse like this in practice (has anyone else?) as it's almost always either the artist that posted it or they actually have a valid reason (duplicate, wrong file uploaded, corrupt, DNP, etc.) whether there are separate options for all of those is actually kind of irrelevant for this discussion (though "uploaded wrong file" isn't actually on the list). The only other things I've seen are when they are being told to take it down by someone else (artist/character owner/etc.) but that's something that is better handled through "approve, then tell them to submit a takedown" anyways. Though I've seen a few "that's not their gender" flags, but those would usually get taken down eventually anyways.

It's worth mentioning that other than duplicates and DNP, the bulk of these 48h flags tend to be borderline approvable anyways.

savageorange said:
E621 just uses the md5 hash of the entire file to ID it, right?. That's a pretty trivial obstacle to someone who knows how to edit images (not image pixels), it's easy to change the image metadata -- add a comment block, for example, or just add a blank character to the end of the comment. Totally nondestructive, not even 1px change to displayed image content.

Literally all you'd have to do is open the image in GIMP, and save it. Boom.

Dogenzaka said:
Literally all you'd have to do is open the image in GIMP, and save it. Boom.

Just want to toss a reminder that re-uploading a previously deleted image can get you a negative record.

EDFDarkAngel1 said:
Just want to toss a reminder that re-uploading a previously deleted image can get you a negative record.

What if one doesn't know said art was deleted before?

EDFDarkAngel1 said:
Just want to toss a reminder that re-uploading a previously deleted image can get you a negative record.

If that's the case, how would you prevent someone from finding art they never want on this site and uploading it just to flag it and have it deleted? (Edit: oh, Granberia already said the same thing).

Super_Hornet said:
If that's the case, how would you prevent someone from finding art they never want on this site and uploading it just to flag it and have it deleted? (Edit: oh, Granberia already said the same thing).

A pattern might be found, and if the person just makes new accounts, IP ban them. Probably I guess.

Dogenzaka said:
A pattern might be found, and if the person just makes new accounts, IP ban them. Probably I guess.

Basically, yeah. If it's a one-off, we generally don't care. However, people who like to abuse the system will show a pattern, and that we slap.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
What if one doesn't know said art was deleted before?

If you try to upload an image and the server tells you "this post was deleted" chances are the post was deleted already.

I had someone who posted in the description "I changed the filesize because the server told me it was deleted already, and didn't let me upload it."

I'm normally pretty mellow with uploaded content which was previously deleted, but if someone is this stupid I will bring out the hammer.

Granberia said:
While null is obviously overreacting this option bothers me a little. Sooner or later there will be a troll who'll upload posts of artist (s)he doesn't like and immediately delete them just to make it impossible for other people to upload them. It'll turn out then whether it's a good idea for flag or not.

i am not overreacting, this is simply the only way to get any idea of any kind through to users. trust me, i know, it used to be my job. plus:

EDFDarkAngel1 said:
Just want to toss a reminder that re-uploading a previously deleted image can get you a negative record.

it's not going to be very long before e6 gets hit with a coordinated attack of a bunch of people uploading perfectly good art and then abusing this FFD reason to get it deleted so it can't be reuploaded. and as EDF has pointed out, attempting to circumvent the md5 system can result in disciplinary action, so users cannot fix this problem.

even still, editing md5 hashes is a procedure that is beyond the capabilities of the average user. i don't know how to do it myself, nor do i care to learn, nor should i be required to learn in order to properly contribute art to this archive. it's ludicrous to assume that every single person with a computer, internet connection, and an interest in yiffy porn will be able to circumvent e6's hash reader.

e6 has painted itself into a corner with this change and its only a matter of time before it is abused for nefarious purposes. remove the FFD option now. there is no other way to be sure. stop trying to justify such a broken system with all these workaround ideas, or just kicking the problem down the road with "it's not an issue now," because it will be before long. none of these "solutions" are as simple or effective as removing the potential for abuse

null0010 said:
it's not going to be very long before e6 gets hit with a coordinated attack of a bunch of people uploading perfectly good art and then abusing this FFD reason to get it deleted so it can't be reuploaded.

Is there a shadowy cabal of disgruntled furries somewhere who have an evil plot to mildly inconvenience the site in revenge or something?

null0010 said:
even still, editing md5 hashes is a procedure that is beyond the capabilities of the average user.

I stated further up how all someone would have to do is open the image in an image editor and re-save it if they wanted to upload it again. I accidentally did this a few weeks ago. I was trying to upload a higher-res version of an image that's already on here. It said that the image had already been uploaded, so I re-saved what I thought was the high-res version in GIMP and re-uploaded it with no problem. Turns out that I didn't look at the resolution of the new file, or I would've noticed that the download page was glitched and had given me the exact same file with the same resolution, instead of the high-res version that the DeviantArt page displayed.

Dogenzaka said:
Is there a shadowy cabal of disgruntled furries somewhere who have an evil plot to mildly inconvenience the site in revenge or something?

Indeed; who could reap any benefits from such a thing?

Super_Hornet said:
Indeed; who could reap any benefits from such a thing?

*sneezes*

:O

Dogenzaka said:
Is there a shadowy cabal of disgruntled furries somewhere who have an evil plot to mildly inconvenience the site in revenge or something?

I stated further up how all someone would have to do is open the image in an image editor and re-save it if they wanted to upload it again. I accidentally did this a few weeks ago. I was trying to upload a higher-res version of an image that's already on here. It said that the image had already been uploaded, so I re-saved what I thought was the high-res version in GIMP and re-uploaded it with no problem. Turns out that I didn't look at the resolution of the new file, or I would've noticed that the download page was glitched and had given me the exact same file with the same resolution, instead of the high-res version that the DeviantArt page displayed.

and that, my friend, is why you always left click the download link next to a pic on deviantart and save the pic in the resulting pop-up box. this is one of the things that results in bvats posts here and similarly with pics from inkbunny sometimes.

null0010 said:
i am not overreacting, this is simply the only way to get any idea of any kind through to users. trust me, i know, it used to be my job. plus:

it's not going to be very long before e6 gets hit with a coordinated attack of a bunch of people uploading perfectly good art and then abusing this FFD reason to get it deleted so it can't be reuploaded. and as EDF has pointed out, attempting to circumvent the md5 system can result in disciplinary action, so users cannot fix this problem.

even still, editing md5 hashes is a procedure that is beyond the capabilities of the average user. i don't know how to do it myself, nor do i care to learn, nor should i be required to learn in order to properly contribute art to this archive. it's ludicrous to assume that every single person with a computer, internet connection, and an interest in yiffy porn will be able to circumvent e6's hash reader.

e6 has painted itself into a corner with this change and its only a matter of time before it is abused for nefarious purposes. remove the FFD option now. there is no other way to be sure. stop trying to justify such a broken system with all these workaround ideas, or just kicking the problem down the road with "it's not an issue now," because it will be before long. none of these "solutions" are as simple or effective as removing the potential for abuse

Worst case scenario: thing that you've said happens, people are pissed, admins remove flag option and undelete posts flagged by certain users. Also flagged pics are not automatically deleted so there's a chance that staff is going to intervene before shit hits the fan. It's not an apocalypse, there are really more important things to worry about. Like, probably, the fact that we allow anyone upload any swf files to the site.

Also, if I understand correctly, warnings are only issued if user knowingly reposts deleted pics. I'm pretty sure that if you have permission from artist to repost you can sent PM to admin to undelete pic. And we all know that artist permission is absolutely necessary to post.... sorry I can't continue with straight face :D
But really it's not an issue now, since very few people use it, and even in worst case scenario it is rather easily reversible.

So, you're overreacting.

treos said:
and that, my friend, is why you always left click the download link next to a pic on deviantart and save the pic in the resulting pop-up box. this is one of the things that results in bvats posts here and similarly with pics from inkbunny sometimes.

Yeah, the download box said that the image was like 3104x2400 or something, but the image that would save from it was like 1200x1000 or something.

Dogenzaka said:
Turns out that I didn't look at the resolution of the new file, or I would've noticed that the download page was glitched and had given me the exact same file with the same resolution, instead of the high-res version that the DeviantArt page displayed.

Not sure why this happens, maybe DA tries to save bandwidth by temporarily disabling the high-resolution links sometimes.
Just try again later.

alright you guys win, you can continue to have your shitty system with an unwarranted and easy-to-abuse FFD flag reason despite being told of a better way by someone who knows

far be it for me to care about what could be such a great site

enjoy having good art denied to you by assholes because you're too complacent and/or lazy to make the change or advocate for the change

this is the world you want

Drama much?

Though I agree it's a bit strange to allow uploaders to request the (from then on permanent) removal of perfectly fine images, for whatever personal reasons, like because they don't enjoy the userbase's response. But I'm really not afraid it's going to be massively abused by someone.

null0010 said:
alright you guys win, you can continue to have your shitty system with an unwarranted and easy-to-abuse FFD flag reason despite being told of a better way by someone who knows

far be it for me to care about what could be such a great site

enjoy having good art denied to you by assholes because you're too complacent and/or lazy to make the change or advocate for the change

this is the world you want

Don't leave, I just produced an exquisite loaf for the two of us. :(

If you can't upload a picture because someone deleted theirs within 48 hours out of spite, you can always ticket us.

This has always been the case, despite what some have said. I don't know why anyone would believe otherwise.

Dogenzaka said:
Literally all you'd have to do is open the image in GIMP, and save it. Boom.

That's positively masochistic compared to what I was thinking of. A little bit of shell scripting and it would be fully batch-processable. Hook the script up to a menu item in your file browser.
Select as many files as you want, activate the menu item, done.

null0010 said:
editing md5 hashes is a procedure that is beyond the capabilities of the average user.

Nah, it's just a hash man, changing the file content even slightly (1 bit or more) is all that's needed to change the hash. For the most common filetypes on e6, JPG, GIF, and PNG, doing this nondestructively is so damn easy it's laughable. Just add ANY content on to the end of the file. With a short step by step guide, any fool -- even a computer-phobic fool -- can do it in a minute or less, probably even on a mobile phone. You don't need to understand any technical details about the file structure, just that you need to leave the existing content alone and add one or more bytes to the end. This is a process that can be fully automated with no user input at all required -- 'just point me at the file'.

You can also keep on adding junk bytes to the end to keep changing the MD5sum, so it's safe to batch-apply even if you think you might have already applied it to some of the files in the batch. They will remain completely valid GIF/JPG/PNG files no matter how many times you do it.

Now, if you want to arrive at a *specific* MD5sum, yes, you need some computer skills. But if you just want to *change* the MD5sum from what it currently is (which is what I was talking about) -- any fool with a simple guide can do it it in no time at all.

This procedure may also work on other filetypes, like WebM, SWF -- but I haven't tested that.

savageorange said:
Certainly it would make things more annoying, but it's nowhere near a perfect block.

Actually, I thought of a more insidious spoofing scheme (which is still ultimately a stupid waste of time, but eh):

• Get MD5sums of images you want to block.
• Use automated MD5 spoofing to generate content with matching MD5sums that can be legitimately FFDed (eg 'smaller version of post XYZ').
• Upload it from one computer and FFD it from another, ideally via a botnet to avoid upload limit on any one account dropping to 0.
• Bingo, the content you irrationally hate is blocked in a way that gives no hint that you were trying to block it at all.

(tl;dr: as well as uploading X and FFDing it because you want to block X, it's possible to md5-spoof Y to match X, upload Y and FFD it, and block X as a 'side-effect' (picture appears to have no relation to X))

most people don't even know what an md5 checksum is

they don't know it is even a thing

they're just gonna see the error message and go "oh, i guess i can't upload it"

So you're telling me that any user can take [insert artist]'s work, upload it, turn around and delete it no questions asked, and then nobody else can rectify it without going to the admins?
On top of that I get the feeling that most people won't even bother to contest the deletion at all. "They must have had their reasons to delete it" and whatnot.

If so, that's definitely going to be abused sooner or later. I know a couple internet assholes who'd love to do something like that just for kicks.
It's a matter of preventing it now or cleaning up after it later.

null0010 said:
most people don't even know what an md5 checksum is

they don't know it is even a thing

they're just gonna see the error message and go "oh, i guess i can't upload it"

That is true.

That is also an entirely different question from whether

editing md5 hashes is a procedure that is beyond the capabilities of the average user.

Editing md5 hashes is not only within the capabilities of the average user, but they do so every time they make any change at all to a file.

donteven said:
So you're telling me that any user can take [insert artist]'s work, upload it, turn around and delete it no questions asked, and then nobody else can rectify it without going to the admins?

Posts can be flagged by the uploader, but only admins and janitors are able to actually delete them.

It's worth mentioning that members can only flag 5/day anyways. Considering that we get maybe 2-3 48h flags per day (roughly), a member trying to max out their limit with 48h flags would be a pretty obvious warning sign that the flags aren't valid. The 48h flag doesn't magically exempt them from getting slapped for bad flagging either.

this entire thread:

a: hey guys look there is a way to exploit this functionality to the detriment of the site!

b: that's not a bug, it's a feature.

null0010 said:
this entire thread:

a: hey guys look there is a way to exploit this functionality to the detriment of the site!

b: that's not a bug, it's a feature.

Your argument: There are is a very slim chance that someone might abuse a functionality, and you believe we're incapable of realizing when someone is abusing this.

I mean, this is the equivalent of you trying to ban knives because it's possible to stab people with them.
If an asshole can't use one way to piss us off they are simply going to find another way.
Every single tool on this page can be abused, should we make tag edits priv only so people can't make an account and wait some days to tag bullshit?

null0010 said:
this entire thread:

a: hey guys look there is a way to exploit this functionality to the detriment of the site!

b: that's not a bug, it's a feature.

Agreed. Even though there has been some good discussion, the thread has gotten a bit messy since it started. I think it would be prudent to give a more official response to this.

Thank you for pointing this out to us. Currently we have not seen the flag being abused by trolls in this way, but we are looking into ways that we can refine it in order to clarify usage and limit its potential for abuse as well as limit the number of posts removed with this flag. In the meantime, we will be paying close attention to any posts flagged for removal within 48 hours and (assuming it would otherwise be approved) will try to make a good faith attempt at both finding the real reason for removal, and keeping the art whenever possible.

If you have any concerns over the legitimacy of a flagged/removed post, feel free to send one of the admins a dmail so that we can look into it.

null0010 said:
this entire thread:

a: hey guys look there is a way to exploit this functionality to the detriment of the site!

b: that's not a bug, it's a feature.

If you were an active member of the site instead of randomly making forum posts with arrogant attitude you might have noticed that 48 hour rule was created in 2013. Here's first CoC revision with that rule. If I remember correctly it was created because some people who don't know (in contrast to null0010 - the only person who knows.) with a totalitarian attitude wanted this feature bug. (Proles and epsilons can't want features, they only desire bugs.) I'm pretty sure that it wasn't as an option in FFD first, but required PM to admin.

So this feature was there for over a year. Nobody has used it against e621 yet. Apparently trolls are also people who don't know.

Granberia said:
If you were an active member of the site instead of randomly making forum posts with arrogant attitude you might have noticed that 48 hour rule was created in 2013.

uh, Gran, Null was an admin for a good long while. they left, on their own I might add, due to some...problems.

also i'm gona request that the admin lock this thread should it continue to spiral out of control.
I don't make topics to cause shitstorms, I create topics like this cuz I actually care about the well being and advancement of the site.

NotMeNotYou said:
Your argument: There are is a very slim chance that someone might abuse a functionality, and you believe we're incapable of realizing when someone is abusing this.

The problem is that admins are given much leeway to decide how to react. That's generally a good thing, but in this particular case it means that we're going to have wildly different approaches to how this FFD reason is handled. One admin might dilligently investigate every found instance of this flag reason. Another admin might not have that time and just delete the image without looking into it. There's really no way to guarantee a perfect response every time.

Granberia said:
If you were an active member of the site

I was an administrator for like, two years. I try not to play that card, but there you have it.

Esme_Belles said:
also i'm gona request that the admin lock this thread should it continue to spiral out of control.
I don't make topics to cause shitstorms, I create topics like this cuz I actually care about the well being and advancement of the site.

Agreed.