Unlike typical art galleries, e621 intentionally curates posts to ensure that users are able to browse high-quality furry artwork while using an internally-consistent system of tags. This wiki page covers the various deletion reasons used by curators.

Certain deletion reasons may be illustrated with grandfathered content. Some other examples are not grandfathered content, and are instead justified by their relationship to another post (such as having a nonhuman alt, being part of a comic, etc.)
In all cases, the thumbnails used in this listing are provided solely for illustrative purposes, and their existence does not necessarily guarantee that similar posts will be approved under current policies.

Redundancy

Deletions of these types cover posts that are similar or functionally identical to one another.

Inferior version/duplicate

Posts deleted under this reason are removed for being duplicated or extracted from an older, better, or larger post.
Small snippets of larger posts, as well as frames or snippets from larger animations, will also be deleted under this reason.
Audio is not taken into consideration when deleting inferior posts; audio edits must be of comparable quality to the original material.

Previously deleted

Posts deleted under this reason are removed for their relationship to a previously deleted post.
In general, this implies that even superior versions of the same post are not allowed.

Excessive base image set

Posts deleted under this reason are part of an overly large collection of similar posts.
This most frequently occurs with your-character-here templates with too many iterations, but may also occur from 3D renders with too many alternate angles.

Colored base

post #134500
Posts deleted under this reason are third-party edits of a fursona template, or similar materials intentionally released by an artist.
Similar to the above, template images tend to result in several mostly-similar posts.

Minimum Quality Standards

Deletions of these types cover various artistic or technical shortcomings.

Artistic

post #65188 post #209268 post #308976
Posts deleted under this reason fail to display sufficient artistic proficiency, including issues related to:

• human/animal anatomy, construction of figures/forms.
• linework quality.
• animation quality.

Resolution

post #147 post #60889 post #252025
Posts deleted under this reason are at a small resolution that makes them unsuitable for modern displays.
In the cases of binary and pixel art, a submission can be upscaled using nearest neighbor scaling at a multiple of 100%; resizing at other multiples, or using modes such as bilinear scaling, will introduce destructive changes that reduce image quality.
Outside of binary and pixel art, upscaling is not recommended: small images ("thumbnails") should be sourced and replaced with a better version whenever possible.

Compression

post #9146 post #184106 post #288452
Posts deleted under this reason include artifacts that significantly reduce image quality.
JPGs typically include visual noise, and GIFs typically include a significantly reduced color palette.

Trivial or low quality edit

post #17823 post #261350 post #626747
Posts deleted under this reason are third-party edits that are poor in quality or simple in execution (i.e. "anybody could do this".)
The quality standards are slightly different for translation edits: some simple text edits are permitted when they otherwise wouldn't, and a proficient/skilled edit may be deleted for using a low-quality translation.
Low quality edits include:

• downscales, artificial upscales.
• artifacting, observable differences in quality.
• mixing and matching alternate versions of the same post (e.g. using a male and female version of the art to create an andromorph/gynomorph version.)

Bad digitization of traditional media

post #55905 post #71554 post #75730
Posts deleted under this reason are poor scans or captures of traditional art.
Issues may include:

• poor focus.
• poor lighting.
• unnecessary external details.

Mechanical frame blending

Posts deleted under this reason are videos and animations which insert fake frames in order to convert between inexact frame rates (e.g. 24 frames per second → 30 FPS). This arises from an incorrect video export in which the framerate of the source material is not retained; most video editing software will try to ease the transition between frames by doing a simple color blend between the two surrounding frames, and some newer software will attempt to use generative AI to fill gaps instead. This results in...

• incorrect/lower-quality animation timing.
• an obvious "ghosting" effect in cases of extreme motion such as dancing, tails wagging, etc.
• AI hallucinations/artifacts.

Irrelevant to Site

Deletions of these types cover themes that are irrelevant to e621.

AI-generated media/focus

Posts deleted under this reason lack contributions by a human artist.
AI-generated media is only allowed when accompanied by significant manual art, such as:

• manual reinterpretation of generative outputs (e.g. post #3377494)
• manual character art on top of a generative background (e.g. post #4005933)
• manual animation accompanied by generative audio (e.g. post #3869967)

Human only/Extreme human focus

post #13364 post #327614 post #339894
Posts deleted under this reason lack visual elements with furry or nonhuman relevancy.
Some characters such as Princess Bubblegum, Ragatha, and the Equestria girls are understood to be nonhuman in their source material, but must be depicted with significant nonhuman deviations (horse features, a body that behaves like slime, etc.) to be considered relevant. On the flipside, some characters may be understood to be human in their source material, but nevertheless have furry features that make certain depictions of them relevant to e621.
Some posts may also place such an overwhelming emphasis on their human focus that the presence of nonhuman background characters (such as the single mouse in the second example) is not enough to consider them relevant.

What really counts as human?

Quoted from our Uploading Guidelines:

Pure¹ humans are only allowed as long as they are part of an otherwise furry-centric image. If a page, or an image, of an otherwise furry-centric comic contains only humans, then those pages will also be kept to keep the comic complete.

As such:

• Anything that does not contain anthropomorphic characters or animals as part of their focus will be deleted.
• If it appears like a human it counts as a human, regardless of what in-universe lore specifies.
• The things that make humans not-human under our rules are visible, anatomical deviations from the standard human.
• Examples are the presence of animal body parts (dog ears, cat tail, pig snout, horse penis, etc.), alien body parts, plant body parts, etc.
• This means that orcs, elves, plant-people, humanoid aliens, are all fine.
• A different skin color does not make a human relevant.
• Costumes, clothes, accessories, etc. do not make a human relevant.

_{¹ If any sort of non-human traits are present, the character in question is no longer a pure human, but a humanoid for tagging purposes.}

Photo

post #2450283
Posts deleted under this reason are photographs that are not traditional two-dimensional furry artwork.
Photos of one's pet, one's fursuit, sculptures, etc. are not suitable for archival.

Screencap

Posts deleted under this reason are captures from a video game or user interface.
Some exceptions exist for creators promoting their own games and software.

Young human-like character in an explicit situation

Posts deleted under this reason depict human characters with youthful characteristics depicted in an explicit light.

Zero pictured

post #3276 post #12475 post #4991583
Posts deleted under this reason do not contain a single character, furry or otherwise.
Some exceptions are allowed when they exist in relation to a sequence or comic.

Other/Uncategorized

Deletions of these types include reasons such as takedowns.

Advertisement

Posts deleted under this reason are advertisements without artistic or entertainment value that justifies long-term archival, such as your-character-here advertisements, adoptables, and censored paysite previews.

Avoid Posting / Conditional DNP

Posts deleted under these reasons are excluded from archival due to using a certain artist's materials, or depicting certain characters and properties.
Certain Avoid Posting orders will include conditions such as "Only the artist may post", and verified artists may naturally circumvent their own Avoid Posting orders.

Malicious character reuse

post #1213267
Posts deleted under this reason involve characters being used to upset or defame, or in other ways that are known to be contrary to the character owner's wishes. Examples include but are not limited to:

• plagiarized character designs.
• use of characters as overt political icons.

Paysite/commercial content

Posts deleted under this reason are not available from free first-party sources, and not released with the artist's permission.

Traced artwork

Posts deleted under this reason are traced from another known image.

Takedown

Posts deleted under this reason were deleted following a request by an artist, character owner, commissioner, or publisher.

Underage artist/character owner/contributor

Posts deleted under this reason are made with a minor's involvement, often as a sole artist or a character owner. As minors cannot legally access the site to file takedowns, these posts are deleted preemptively.