After years of on-and-off internal debate, we have decided to remove the Foxes in Love comic from e621.

Now, the obvious question is why?

Simply because it doesn't fit the standard we set out with the uploading guidelines. While Foxes in Love has some sweet and wholesome dialogue, the art falls short.
While the art has improved over the 4 years we have hosted it, it is still not at a level where we would consistently approve it.

And finally we reach the conclusion to remove the entire comic, which was not an easy decision by any means.
As for the users whose upload limit was affected by this, it has been restored.

We understand that this may upset a lot of people given the popularity of the comic, but I must urge everyone to be civil on this topic.

As a final note, I suggest that everyone who is upset or wants to support the artist visit one of their pages and show them some love:

https://www.patreon.com/foxesinlove
https://twitter.com/foxes_in_love
https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/
https://www.instagram.com/green_fox_blue_fox/
https://www.fenrispublishing.com/order.php?r=g&s=toivo

slyroon said:
After years of on-and-off internal debate, we have decided to remove the Foxes in Love comic from e621.

Now, the obvious question is why?

Simply because it doesn't fit the standard we set out with the uploading guidelines. While Foxes in Love has some sweet and wholesome dialogue, the art falls short.
While the art has improved over the 4 years we have hosted it, it is still not at a level where we would consistently approve it.

And finally we reach the conclusion to remove the entire comic, which was not an easy decision by any means.
As for the users whose upload limit was affected by this, it has been restored.

We understand that this may upset a lot of people given the popularity of the comic, but I must urge everyone to be civil on this topic.

As a final note, I suggest that everyone who is upset or wants to support the artist visit one of their pages and show them some love:

https://www.patreon.com/foxesinlove
https://twitter.com/foxes_in_love
https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/
https://www.instagram.com/green_fox_blue_fox/
https://www.fenrispublishing.com/order.php?r=g&s=toivo

Paysite, site I don't use, site I don't use, site I refuse to use, shop.

Awesome.

calydor said:
Paysite, site I don't use, site I don't use, site I refuse to use, shop.

Awesome.

Well if you want to support an artist the best ways are on their official pages.

I really don't understand why you couldn't have just left the already-approved comics alone and considered them grandfathered content while not approving any more going forwards...?

nimphia said:
I really don't understand why you couldn't have just left the already-approved comics alone and considered them grandfathered content while not approving any more going forwards...?

E621 does not currently employ a rolling grandfathering policy, and as such they would not be eligible to be grandfathered under the current guidelines.

recursion said:
E621 does not currently employ a rolling grandfathering policy, and as such they would not be eligible to be grandfathered under the current guidelines.

Gotcha, thanks.

I think I'd prefer short-term pain (deletions) for long-term gain (consistent approval standard). I think. I wasn't hit by this. I'm sure it's upsetting spending time uploading something, being told the upload was fine (approved), but years later being told the upload is no longer fine.

recursion said:
rolling grandfathering policy

Mairo had mentioned the idea of a rolling grandfather clause when the topic of inconsistent pumpkin_head approvals came up in Discord. A lot of work to maintain the image of consistent approvals over an 8-9 year period when the approval standard has seemingly gone up in that time. Uploaders want approval consistency so that they feel confident when deciding to upload something, but presenting that consistency would often come at the cost of deleting some old, non-grandfathered posts. Moving the grandfather clause "goalpost" forward might help with that a bit.

I know it probably upsets a few people, but it's the right decision imo. Staff are always saying popularity doesn't bypass the quality requirements to be approved, but Foxes in Love always seemed to be an exception for that.

Not grandfathering the content was probably the right decision (otherwise we'll have to keep hearing people say why was my post deleted there's 300 other Foxes in Love posts???) but I think some sort of warning period for people being able to download the images would've been good.

The other thing that's always kind of bothered me is that artist who draws the purple snake(?) on top of low-quality JPG image macros and then intentionally pixelates it as part of the style.

This situation made me think about the fate of minimalistic art styles. How to make the difference between a low effort picture and minimalism ? Or would minimalism inherently be below the standards ? I think it would greatly depend on how minimalistic the style is. For example, a character being only a circle with ears, and a ":3" inside (Hello Lafcadio :p), is definitely a no. However, would those almond shaped foxes be too minimal ? Personally, I am unsure. One could mention the quality of the line but with minimalism, you only got so much to work with and I believe that was one of the difficulties of the decision.

Finally, a big, if not the most important value of FiL is its dialogue. I've always thought it was irrelevant but I've been looking at the uploading and tagging guidelines and couldn't find anything. Could I get some light on the matter ?

primonyr said:
Finally, a big, if not the most important value of FiL is its dialogue. I've always thought it was irrelevant but I've been looking at the uploading and tagging guidelines and couldn't find anything. Could I get some light on the matter ?

What text says never overrides TWYS, so it's pretty much irrelevant.

abadbird said:
Mairo had mentioned the idea of a rolling grandfather clause when the topic of inconsistent pumpkin_head approvals came up in Discord. A lot of work to maintain the image of consistent approvals over an 8-9 year period when the approval standard has seemingly gone up in that time. Uploaders want approval consistency so that they feel confident when deciding to upload something, but presenting that consistency would often come at the cost of deleting some old, non-grandfathered posts. Moving the grandfather clause "goalpost" forward might help with that a bit.

I have also been trying to pitch the idea internally now more than several times, but so far the reason to not have it is because the current way of dealing with grandfathering is huge changes in guidelines where last was gem ban in 2014 and rolling one would make it much harder to easily understand and enforce (which I kinda get because checking peoples IDs for age and someone showing they're born in 2006 throws me into huge loop and doubt if they are actually 18 or not).

Back in 2018 it was super easy to check for grandfathered stuff from couple years ago, but now we are starting to talk of nearly decade of content and then we get stuff from 2016 which shouldn't have been accepted, needing to be deleted because of inconsistancies with rulings and new users being confused why artwork they made of character X is in here because there's previous post that was accepted of same character in 2017 that has exact same aspects that got the new one deleted, so now it has to be deleted.

That all said, these comics touched in here would most likely not be grandfathered, even with rolling system, as they started to be uploaded in 2020 and latest being uploaded couple days ago.

primonyr said:
Finally, a big, if not the most important value of FiL is its dialogue. I've always thought it was irrelevant but I've been looking at the uploading and tagging guidelines and couldn't find anything. Could I get some light on the matter ?

You can tag stuff about the text itself or what the characters are doing (japanese text, yelling, talking to another, etc), it just can't override visuals. It would be like tagging an unchanged Barret Wallace from Final Fantasy 7 as female because an artist drew text above him saying "Female."

It’s worth noting that the first 227 Foxes in Love posts were approved by a single former admin who was known for somewhat disregarding the uploading guidelines in their approvals. It’s very unlikely that these would’ve made it past approval had that admin not been around, but after 200 approved posts, nobody wanted to go against such a big precedent, so they continued to be approved despite not really meeting our quality guidelines by any definition. However, we have been re-evaluating many of that admin’s approvals in the wake of their departure, and this was the last big thing to go. Rolling grandfathering idea aside, these never really should’ve been approved in the first place. The comic completely lacks artistic merit and largely remained popular because of the dialogue.

scaliespe said:
It’s worth noting that the first 227 Foxes in Love posts were approved by a single former admin who was known for somewhat disregarding the uploading guidelines in their approvals. It’s very unlikely that these would’ve made it past approval had that admin not been around, but after 200 approved posts, nobody wanted to go against such a big precedent, so they continued to be approved despite not really meeting our quality guidelines by any definition. However, we have been re-evaluating many of that admin’s approvals in the wake of their departure, and this was the last big thing to go. Rolling grandfathering idea aside, these never really should’ve been approved in the first place. The comic completely lacks artistic merit and largely remained popular because of the dialogue.

I shed a tear along with that admin

<sub>They are bloo, and not having them here makes me feel just so,

some of the times</sub>



To hecc with the admin haters; it is a tough, mostly thankless job

yet today, I worry you have torn out more than just her tiny bloo heart.


You have torn out my foxhole.


<sub>I ahve not idea what that means, I have been drinking




bloo</sub>

faucet said:
The other thing that's always kind of bothered me is that artist who draws the purple snake(?) on top of low-quality JPG image macros and then intentionally pixelates it as part of the style.

You're thinking of ncs, while I'm not personally a fan of the "draw character on top of extremely low quality meme images" their artwork generally passes the quality bar for approvals. Although I wonder if something like this would get a pass if the artist wasn't so established?

post #3698066

maplebytes said:
You're thinking of ncs, while I'm not personally a fan of the "draw character on top of extremely low quality meme images" their artwork generally passes the quality bar for approvals. Although I wonder if something like this would get a pass if the artist wasn't so established?

post #3698066

this isn't too disimilar to some of blitzdrachin's meme stuff there's also a bunch of other photomanip'd stuff around the site and not that much of it has been deleted for quality reasons and the majority of what has is just really minor edits with like head replacements and the like.

maplebytes said:
You're thinking of ncs, while I'm not personally a fan of the "draw character on top of extremely low quality meme images" their artwork generally passes the quality bar for approvals. Although I wonder if something like this would get a pass if the artist wasn't so established?

post #3698066

Actually looking at the content again, rather than just remembering it, I guess it has a lot more artistic merit than I thought.

Though I do still think there's some pretty questionable approvals:

post #3529448 post #3698099 post #3554547

faucet said:
Actually looking at the content again, rather than just remembering it, I guess it has a lot more artistic merit than I thought.

Though I do still think there's some pretty questionable approvals:

post #3529448 post #3698099 post #3554547

This one's still my favourite:
post #2976753

faucet said:
Actually looking at the content again, rather than just remembering it, I guess it has a lot more artistic merit than I thought.

Though I do still think there's some pretty questionable approvals:

post #3529448 post #3698099 post #3554547

well

at least we don't get this nightmare fuel-tier stuff anymore.

faucet said:
Actually looking at the content again, rather than just remembering it, I guess it has a lot more artistic merit than I thought.

Though I do still think there's some pretty questionable approvals:

post #3529448 post #3698099 post #3554547

It is worth noting that all three of those were uploaded by users with unrestricted uploads, thus bypassing the manual curation process. But they’re also just borderline enough that I don’t quite feel confident deleting them, either. Mostly how I felt about Foxes in Love - I wouldn’t approve it, but if someone else did then I’ll leave it alone.

Of course, the Foxes in Love issue finally boiled over with the primary approver of the comic not being staff anymore, and with virtually 100% of the comic being below the standards that we enforce on other images. This was bound to happen eventually. At least NCS is like 98% easily approvable content with only a small amount of borderline quality shitposts.

slyroon said:
After years of on-and-off internal debate, we have decided to remove the Foxes in Love comic from e621.

Now, the obvious question is why?

Simply because it doesn't fit the standard we set out with the uploading guidelines. While Foxes in Love has some sweet and wholesome dialogue, the art falls short.
While the art has improved over the 4 years we have hosted it, it is still not at a level where we would consistently approve it.

And finally we reach the conclusion to remove the entire comic, which was not an easy decision by any means.
As for the users whose upload limit was affected by this, it has been restored.

We understand that this may upset a lot of people given the popularity of the comic, but I must urge everyone to be civil on this topic.

As a final note, I suggest that everyone who is upset or wants to support the artist visit one of their pages and show them some love:

https://www.patreon.com/foxesinlove
https://twitter.com/foxes_in_love
https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/
https://www.instagram.com/green_fox_blue_fox/
https://www.fenrispublishing.com/order.php?r=g&s=toivo

i hope you feel happy in making life pointlessly more miserable you troll. was it harming anyone? no? then why take the time out of your day to make everyone unhappy? go find all the stuff that has less than 50 likes and delete it instead.

pokemorphking said:
i hope you feel happy in making life pointlessly more miserable you troll. was it harming anyone? no? then why take the time out of your day to make everyone unhappy? go find all the stuff that has less than 50 likes and delete it instead.

I get that you are upset, but likes doesn't matter here.
As for it wasn't harming anyone, you are unfortunately wrong on that part.
For years that comic has been given special treatment and was unfairly kept, when other similar post got deleted. Causing a great deal of frustration from artist and users.

Damn, what a thing to wake up to. :(

I understand why, but it still breaks my noodly little heart a bit to see it go. :<

slyroon said:
I get that you are upset, but likes doesn't matter here.
As for it wasn't harming anyone, you are unfortunately wrong on that part.
For years that comic has been given special treatment and was unfairly kept, when other similar post got deleted. Causing a great deal of frustration from artist and users.

Getting rid of it has probably caused users more frustration than just leaving it here.

hjfduitloxtrds said:
Getting rid of it has probably caused users more frustration than just leaving it here.

short-term grief

The world sucks and is getting actively suckier every day; let's remove easy access to one of the feel-good bright spots in it.
Cool-coolcoolcool.wav

We should make a petition to bring “Foxes in Love back”. I'm sure, it would prove that many users are not ok with its removal.

dickpic said:
We should make a petition to bring “Foxes in Love back”. I'm sure, it would prove that many users are not ok with its removal.

The decision to remove them was an internal decision. They were only kept around for so long because previous votes to remove them failed. They were removed now because that vote finally passed. A petition isn't going to revert that internal vote and decision.

recursion said:
E621 does not currently employ a rolling grandfathering policy, and as such they would not be eligible to be grandfathered under the current guidelines.

Not a fan of this.
Unfairly punish users by retroactively deleting content that used to be fine. I know that upload ratio can be fixed by contact the staff, but how many will actually do that instead of just quitting? Uploading — with proper tagging — takes effort and work, and shouldn't be wiped out like this.

Guess with this current trend, it's only a matter of time until all other content that the current devs aren't happy with get erased. Such as elves.

genjar said:
Not a fan of this.
Unfairly punish users by retroactively deleting content that used to be fine.

Fixing uploads limits was a stipulation of the deletions.

genjar said:

Guess with this current trend, it's only a matter of time until all other content that the current devs aren't happy with get erased. Such as elves.

Pretty sure elves will be grandfathered in if they no longer meet the uploading guidelines. Foxes in Love has from the start been in violation, but were effectively granted an exception from a former admin. This has just been enforcing what should've been enforced long ago.

genjar said:
Guess with this current trend, it's only a matter of time until all other content that the current devs aren't happy with get erased. Such as elves.

Elves and other pointy-eared hobgoblins are a totally different issue. Yes, they can be aggravatingly too close to human at times, but that's a relevancy issue rather than a quality one like FiL's. They're not going to be on the chopping block any time soon since we need to draw the relevancy line somewhere easily identifiable (more or less) and their ears are it.

sipothac said:
short-term grief

Yeah... no. Ill not forget this.

Great I can't read the comic I enjoyed reading anymore... Because I don't have the money to use a pay site and I don't support Twitter either...

dragtron said:
Great I can't read the comic I enjoyed reading anymore... Because I don't have the money to use a pay site and I don't support Twitter either...

What about their tumblr then?

dragtron said:
Great I can't read the comic I enjoyed reading anymore... Because I don't have the money to use a pay site and I don't support Twitter either...

Use Nitter then. Finding a consistent working insistence can be a bit difficult but. You won't need to log in.

Or just do what DefinitelyNotAFurry14 said and use their Tumblr.

Or use their Instagram.

You have a lot of options available.

definitelynotafurry4 said:
What about their tumblr then?

I unfortunately don't use Tumblr either...

dragtron said:
I unfortunately don't use Tumblr either...

You don't need to have an account for it. Just bookmark their Tumblr page to view their content.

versperus said:
You don't need to have an account for it. Just bookmark their Tumblr page to view their content.

Huh looks like you're right...

definitelynotafurry4 said:
What about their tumblr then?

The thing is, at least for me, that it would just get lost in a flood of other links to stuff I should remember to look at sometime.

Here it would pop up in my usual filter to provide a moment of smiling, but honestly ... I'm not going to go out of my way to check it regularly.

Welp, this sucks... *sigh*
Rest easy little foxies.

yetanothertemp said:

Use Nitter then. Finding a consistent working insistence can be a bit difficult but. You won't need to log in.

Or just do what DefinitelyNotAFurry14 said and use their Tumblr.

Or use their Instagram.

You have a lot of options available.

Nitter got shut down if i recall correctly

jokingclown34 said:
Nitter got shut down if i recall correctly

Iv had a few instances still work. I think it's just the main one

Minimalist does not equal bad. The artist in Foxes In Love expressed more emotion in a few simple lines than most artists can do with hundreds.

I suppose the simpletons that run this site consider XKCD or Order of the Stick to be bad art? Hell you philistines probably think Peanuts was bad.

Banning Foxes in Love because it doesn't fit the site would be fine, banning it because you don't understand art is absurd.

Maybe take some art appreciation classes before making dumb ass decisions like this one.

user_485712 said:
Minimalist does not equal bad. The artist in Foxes In Love expressed more emotion in a few simple lines than most artists can do with hundreds.

I suppose the simpletons that run this site consider XKCD or Order of the Stick to be bad art? Hell you philistines probably think Peanuts was bad.

Banning Foxes in Love because it doesn't fit the site would be fine, banning it because you don't understand art is absurd.

Maybe take some art appreciation classes before making dumb ass decisions like this one.

I've not been reading through this thread at all, but I think this user just posted this, deleted their account, then immediately got "banned" after already deleting their account, all within the span of 4 minutes. Wow...

user_485712 said:
Minimalist does not equal bad. The artist in Foxes In Love expressed more emotion in a few simple lines than most artists can do with hundreds.

I suppose the simpletons that run this site consider XKCD or Order of the Stick to be bad art? Hell you philistines probably think Peanuts was bad.

Banning Foxes in Love because it doesn't fit the site would be fine, banning it because you don't understand art is absurd.

Maybe take some art appreciation classes before making dumb ass decisions like this one.

It's funny that you say that because, up until this deletion, it was clear we were actually holding Randall Munroe to a higher standard than FIL, because XKCD had deletions that FIL did not. I even said as much in our janitorial discussion.
randall_munroe -grandfathered_content status:any
I am of the opinion that Randall shows a level of care that simply isn't met by FIL; compare XKCD's animal characters to FIL's. post #3486258 even specifically excludes stick figures.

crocogator said:
I've not been reading through this thread at all, but I think this user just posted this, deleted their account, then immediately got "banned" after already deleting their account, all within the span of 4 minutes. Wow...

Wait, he got banned for that comment?

dickpic said:
Wait, he got banned for that comment?

yeah.

if a user's banned they have a strike through their name. you can click on a user's name and the ban reason should be right at the top left of their profile most of the time with a link to the offending content/comment. if the reason's not there it's going to be in the user's records, linked on the upper right.

I thought this sounded familiar.

Just in case someone is interested (and it didn't get mentioned before): Foxes in Love are also on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/foxes-in-love.bsky.social

So 'barely furries' (Humans with the bare minimum of a tail and/or ears) banging humans are ok on a furry site.
But a wholesome comic that many people loved is somehow not up to standards?
What tripe.

Then again; What can I expect from a mod team that threatened to ban me for reminding people to tag properly?
Or said I was the instigator of someone coming into MY forum thread and insulting me because *Checks notes*
"ranting and attempting to dictate how the site is run because the world isn’t revolving around your petty wishes" and "throwing a tantrum because some shitty doodle wasn’t approved or they can’t follow simple rules" and "you responded to someone pointing out you are acting like an entitled child by ranting like an entitled child"

But when I fired back, the (now former mod), said "Don't be so abrasive to others." and DEFENDED the person who attacked me, saying of ALL THAT STUFF ABOVE "He didn't really insult anyone. The worst thing he called you was an entitled child."

Yes; I reacted badly, but the mod in question completely defended the person who ATTACKED ME FIRST.
Then that same mod threatened to b an me if I kept reminding people to TAG PROPERLY.

The moderating on this site is a joke. They powertrip and do whatever they want, and decided to remove one of the best things on this site due to personal tastes.
What a joke.

euadonis said:
-snip-

lmao.

The weirdest part about the complaints is that, if they really cared as much as they say they do and that "everyone loved it," the comic is free on their tumblr (no account required), and supporting them on there does infinitely more than supporting them here...

genjar said

..Guess with this current trend, it's only a matter of time until all other content that the current devs aren't happy with get erased. Such as elves.

Removing elves would be the best thing this site has ever done. So tired of humans getting a pass because of pointy ears.

purelyforablacklist said:
Removing elves would be the best thing this site has ever done. So tired of humans getting a pass because of pointy ears.

any change to the site relevance rules to disallow elves would likely cascade to include a lot of other vaguely humanoid fantasy and sci-fi races other than elves ranging from goblins, ghosts, and demons to robots, elemental_creatures, and animate_inanimates depending on where the new line is drawn. and I'm not sure that's a good idea.

I think, overall, the "non-human body part" standard allows us to serve a decent variety of content in many furry-adjacent genres without losing the core identity of being a furry-based website. it also makes the janatorial responsibilities really simple in regard to site relevance.

sipothac said:
any change to the site relevance rules to disallow elves would likely cascade to include a lot of other vaguely humanoid fantasy and sci-fi races other than elves ranging from goblins, ghosts, and demons to robots, elemental_creatures, and animate_inanimates depending on where the new line is drawn. and I'm not sure that's a good idea.

I think, overall, the "non-human body part" standard allows us to serve a decent variety of content in many furry-adjacent genres without losing the core identity of being a furry-based website. it also makes the janatorial responsibilities really simple in regard to site relevance.

It really doesn't help that the "furry" line is blurry at times - I often see not_furry mistagged on characters with animal traits like fur and hooves:

post #4522723 post #3667543 post #4261478 post #3773521

^ All images I removed not_furry from.

Then just update your upload guideline.
YOU MADE THEM.
How miserable can you be to take all this time just to make your users unhappy.
It was wholesome. Didn't harm anyone.
Come on.
There is no reason for all this.

k9not said:
Then just update your upload guideline.
YOU MADE THEM.
How miserable can you be to take all this time just to make your users unhappy.
It was wholesome. Didn't harm anyone.
Come on.
There is no reason for all this.

ehh, we've got enough wholesome stuff as it is, we don't really need a few more simply drawn foxes padding it further. what we really need more of is viscerally upsetting content, I think that's a sentiment that we can all get behind.

Eh, never read the comic, so I don't really have an opinion on that, but since the topic was brought up, it does seem like elves get way too much of a pass. Like, want to post your human art on a furry site? Give bare minimum one them long ears. Problem solved. You can have two peach skinned furless beauties fucking as long as one of them has long ears! It just feels like a copout to me. And don't get me wrong, I like Legend of Zelda as much as the next guy, and some of the art is pretty sweet, but they're just humans with ears that are an inch longer.

As a counterexample, if you look at a picture of a character like Kaden from Fire Emblem, it's pretty obvious he has animalistic characteristics despite being very human like. Large bushy tail, furry pointed ears on the top of his head. I'd argue that he has more of a place on the site than a base form solo Link. Of course, deleting the fuck ton of elf/hylian/long_eared_human art on the site is a hell of a lot harder to justify than one comic. On the plus side, you'd probably be saving at least a few terabytes of server space.

wiseguy9894 said:
Eh, never read the comic, so I don't really have an opinion on that, but since the topic was brought up, it does seem like elves get way too much of a pass. Like, want to post your human art on a furry site? Give bare minimum one them long ears. Problem solved. You can have two peach skinned furless beauties fucking as long as one of them has long ears! It just feels like a copout to me. And don't get me wrong, I like Legend of Zelda as much as the next guy, and some of the art is pretty sweet, but they're just humans with ears that are an inch longer.

As a counterexample, if you look at a picture of a character like Kaden from Fire Emblem, it's pretty obvious he has animalistic characteristics despite being very human like. Large bushy tail, furry pointed ears on the top of his head. I'd argue that he has more of a place on the site than a base form solo Link. Of course, deleting the fuck ton of elf/hylian/long_eared_human art on the site is a hell of a lot harder to justify than one comic. On the plus side, you'd probably be saving at least a few terabytes of server space.

The staff don't have any particular fondness for elves, but the reason they're allowed is because they're the most concrete line in the sand and people can tell which art falls on which side of the line. One non-human feature and now it's not human

wiseguy9894 said:
-snip-

as I said further up, "any non-human body features" is a really easy line to draw and it minimizes the amount of semantics that needs to be argued when asking what is and isn't allowed.

and a change to these rules would likely effect way more than just hylians and vulcans.

sipothac said:
as I said further up, "any non-human body features" is a really easy line to draw and it minimizes the amount of semantics that needs to be argued when asking what is and isn't allowed.

and a change to these rules would likely effect way more than just hylians and vulcans.

I get that, I really do. I get that a line needs to be drawn somewhere, you have to somehow make a ruling, and making a ruling on a completely freeform method of expression is incredibly hard. I just don't think I can be convinced that long ears in the exact same place as a human's ears really count in the spirit of non-human body features when compared to things like tails, ears on top of head, fur, scales, non-standard skin colors, and wings. And that's okay, I don't have to be convinced. A lot of other people seem to really and truly believe it's enough to constitute non-human, and deleting several thousand images is a monumental task that will piss off a hell of a lot more people than this decision did. I guess it just feels out of place.

wiseguy9894 said:
I just don't think I can be convinced that long ears in the exact same place as a human's ears really count in the spirit of non-human body features

The length does not matter, it's specifically pointed ears. Human ears are round. Many of us aren't fond of it either, but that's an easier line to draw than just about anything else.

wiseguy9894 said:
non-standard skin colors

skin colors are way less of a notable non-human feature than pointy ears, to the point that we don't even take it into account. there's tonnes of media that feature Technicolor humans (most notably the_simpsons), and we don't allow characters that look like that.

I'm not even the biggest fan of elves, personally.

all I'm trying to say is that if we get rid of elves, goblins and a bunch of other stuff is coming with it.
_{and if someone touches my goblins I will riot.}

sipothac said:
skin colors are way less of a notable non-human feature than pointy ears, to the point that we don't even take it into account. there's tonnes of media that feature Technicolor humans (most notably the_simpsons), and we don't allow characters that look like that.

I'm not even the biggest fan of elves, personally.

all I'm trying to say is that if we get rid of elves, goblins and a bunch of other stuff is coming with it.
_{and if someone touches my goblins I will riot.}

Maybe, but goblins seem way less human than elves, and I'd argue that there's plenty of non human traits that go with goblin, the first of which being green skin (I will fight you on this, only green skin human I've seen in media is Beast Boy, and he definitely counts as a furry), but besides that, pointed teeth, horns on rare occasion, and a lot of times not just pointed ears but big, floppy bat ear kinda things, like half their head is ear. Diminutive size as well, I'm aware that that doesn't make a goblin, I'm just adding it in because there's definitely a demarcation that, when cobbled together with the rest, makes sense. I know the line is hard to draw, so I guess it's a good think I'm not a mod.

_{I've gone on more than one binge of the shortstacks, actually.}

wiseguy9894 said:
Maybe, but goblins seem way less human than elves, and I'd argue that there's plenty of non human traits that go with goblin, the first of which being green skin... but besides that, pointed teeth, horns on rare occasion, and a lot of times not just pointed ears but big, floppy bat ear kinda things, like half their head is ear. Diminutive size as well, I'm aware that that doesn't make a goblin, I'm just adding it in because there's definitely a demarcation that, when cobbled together with the rest, makes sense. I know the line is hard to draw, so I guess it's a good think I'm not a mod.

It depends on the media. Some portray them as really ugly diminutive humans while others as clearly non-human, some green, some not (eg. Harry Potter), just as some media make elves virtually identical to humans while others give them increasingly long and pointy ears. If we got rid of elves as "too close to human" regardless of their ears, we'd have to go through goblins (and all the other fantasy humanoids) and figure out just how close to human is too close. It can be tough enough now figuring out relevancy. Axing elves would make that worse, especially when it comes to fending off bad-tempered uploaders.

(I will fight you on this, only green skin human I've seen in media is Beast Boy, and he definitely counts as a furry)

Vina and other Orion slave girls from Star Trek come to mind. They're effectively just green-skinned humans and aren't relevant to e621.

clawstripe said:
Vina and other Orion slave girls from Star Trek come to mind. They're effectively just green-skinned humans and aren't relevant to e621.

Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy is another good example.

This is foolishness.

Yeah, Foxes In Love is not a bastion of artistic excellence, but it is well liked and a non-trivial piece of furry culture.

The rules on quality are fine, but I'd argue strongly that the rules are failing here. In such a case, the answer is not to throw you hands up as admins and say, 'whelp, these are the rules'. Carve out an exception for pieces that are 'a substantial significance' to the community. Write better rules - no one is going to hark on you for writing better rules. You guys are missing the forest for the trees here badly.

I will further say that the current places where Foxes in Love is available digitally are extremely flimsy. Twitter is an unsearchable, unparsable, unsearchable mess where media just vanishes because Elon is having a bad day. Tumbler is dead and gone in <5 years. Instagram is a pox on this world and requires an account + headaches to deal with. One of E621's legitimate points of value is in uncompromising preservation of this kind of stuff. I'm not going to say it's going to score points with outsiders on this one, because it's the 'furry porn site' forever, but as it is, this is absolutely one of the most important repositories for the community and you are drawing lines at the wrong points here.

Finally - as others have pointed out in this very thread - there is actually terrible shit on this site and the response has always been, 'well black list and move on'. You have an opportunity to preserve something of actual value and you toss it, but you won't get rid of this crap because of...why? Again - forest for the trees here guys.

post #4267612

This is a rash and foolish decision - there is an opportunity to fix this and I sincerely hope you do.

zakadi said:
This is foolishness.

This is a rash and foolish decision - there is an opportunity to fix this and I sincerely hope you do.

Its just one poorly drawn comic, its not that big of a deal. You can find it on plenty of other sites, including its own!
Also, that other "bad shit" you complain about is drawn with more artistic merrit than any of the Foxes in Love comics is. Maybe the comic artist should draw better.

Guessing it would be the same deal for a few things, just like Faux Pas which is an adorable fox comic strip comic strip but all found over on the Ozfoxes FoxWeb site. (though that might be because of them asking no one to redistribute)

Foxes in love was liked by a lot of people so its surprising it was removed from the best place to view it and read it (As I would also prefer to read Faux Pas here) but I guess when standards change things end up shifting.

casmin7~ said:
Guessing it would be the same deal for a few things, just like Faux Pas which is an adorable fox comic strip comic strip but all found over on the Ozfoxes FoxWeb site. (though that might be because of them asking no one to redistribute)

Foxes in love was liked by a lot of people so its surprising it was removed from the best place to view it and read it (As I would also prefer to read Faux Pas here) but I guess when standards change things end up shifting.

The standards never changed. Foxes in Love has always been below quality standards,.it was just given a free pass.

purelyforablacklist said:
The standards never changed. Foxes in Love has always been below quality standards,.it was just given a free pass.

Foxes in love was always right there on the border of the standard. That's what made it so hard to deal with. It's not drawn poorly, but it's also very simplistic. It made applying the standard consistently hard.