My Board

Alrighty, now that the name issue is solved....it's time to get down & dirty with the guts of the site.

First up: Gallery Categories.

It's already been decided that we will not allow mature content - this includes but is not limited to the following:

* Artistic Nudes either drawn or photographed
* Dead animals - this includes people - and yes, dA now allows dead animal shots /blink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':blink:\' />
* Suggestive Cartooning - I'd prefer to see NO anime/naruto/manga/whateverelseitiscalled at all

The reason for this is because we don't want the site blacklisted by company IT people and the fastest way to get blocked is to have mature content.

So...how shall we develop our categories?

hmmmm....first level= photo, photo manip, hand drawn and hand painted etc, 3D, computer generated like photoshop/paintshop pro, pixel art...what else?

we could have categories based on the subject they represent such as...

Humans
Landscapes
Animals
Birds
Plants / Flowers
Buildings
Objects
Colors / Textures
Other

You might recall I started working on a category document file.... [url=\"http://www.killanet.net/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=9326&view=findpost&p=39863\"]You can find that here....[/url] /blink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':blink:\' />

I somehow missed that file, Josh - but I have it now. I just spent the last couple of hours going through dA's categories, and I think they were on crack when they came up with them. Once I get them typed up, you'll see why lol

I'm at school right now, so I can't look...but [url=\"http://photo.net/\"]http://photo.net/[/url] might be a good place to look around for more category ideas. FYI: they do have artistic nudes there; however, it's a wonderful site, aside from some of the more questionable pictures...

I'd take a look, but I'm at my sisters house and her computer is in the dining room with kids that run around the house... Bad idea to go to that site if there's artistic nudes lol.

The questionable photos and artwork are what I am trying to avoid - the biggest problem - aside from avoiding a Mature Rated site, would be where do we draw the line on what is art and what is glorified porn? dA's AN section is a mess - to put it politely - and I really want to avoid that, as many people are unhappy with alot of the stuff in that section.

yea, the big problem is with where to draw the line. if you look at some of them on photo.net, people have said why the picture goes a certain way. if reasonable guidelines could be drawn up, I'd like to see this section added in the future.

Just to get an idea of how bad dA is about nudity... I've had to report an image of a guy with a picture of his erect penis on his webcam. You could clearly see this that he was sitting at his computer with the keyboard in front of him, a monitor, and his mouse sitting right there... His description? 'Thought this looked really cool so I submitted it in the artist nudes.' ....Instantly reported from me, it took dA a month to remove the image. There were people commenting on the picture about what they would do with it and crap... I think dA has gone too far with the porn images on the website and If we do allow artistic nudes, there better be really strict guidelines of where to draw the line. I, personally, think there are some really fantastic artist nude photographer's out there and there aren't that many on dA, most of it is porn. I think I'd be perfectly fine with NO nudity on the website at all.

Well when I hear drens description I can agree. On the other hand, I have a friend who randomly takes pictures of her and they look very cool, they do contain some nudity bit it's far from offensive. So there needs to be a clear line between what can and what can't.

My point is that if you have an "Artistic Nide" category one of the staff should look at the pictures before they are made public. This would take up some time but would make sure the pictures submitted are OK.

Just my 2 cents ...

Completely agree with what you said Tibs, it would have to be heavily moderated...and with the understanding that what we say goes no argument. Don't think this section should be put in right away, give the site time to get up and on it's feet before the section was added...but it's up to the administration in the end. Either way is fine with me.

[quote]I've had to report an image of a guy with a picture of his erect penis on his webcam[/quote]

im curious what the search terms for that was /blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' />, rofl

Tami, perhaps we could setup a two way system... allow the users to participate in the validation of material... so when a user submits a picture, it is assigned to another random user to validate the image is in the right category and isnt adult material, then it gets posted. We could allow any user to participate in the validation service (and if a user misrepresents or abuses the system users could send an "abuse" comment against the users reputation which would staff can review and warn / ban if appropriate.

That way the system is self regulating, it enables users to help keep the content fresh (just like services like stumbleupon use to make sure content is right) and it means staff dont need to spend all hours checking content... this kind of system works for stumbleupon (correcting info), it works for wikipedia, mabie it would work for us.

Plus its another way to get users involved in running the community /smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':)\' />

Oh, for the record, dA is like YouTube. On YouTube, one video leads to another and you can browse for hours on end. It's the same for dA, one image leads to another and eventually you stumble across inappropriate things.

When I upload an image, I don't want it to be 'validated.' I want it there instantly. Having users participate in validating images wouldn't do well for us I don't think. We have a lot of 'haters' out there, and they could join just to ruin things for us. Not to mention if we did that, it would take FOREVER for things to validate.

I know many sites that have implented that and I think it's turned out horrible. Bash.org is one example. People can validate IRC quotes and you're only supposed to validate it if it's funny. However, some of the things that are validated are, for example, things like this:[quote]<user> hello I just joined![/quote]

I agree, there are some really beautifully done AN shots out there, but is it right for *this* site. I personally would rather have the unlimited exposure of a "family friendly" site than have to waste time approving/disapproving/checking reported images. It is perhaps something we can look at down the road, but not for launch.