It Belongs in a Museum

What a lot of people are missing here, I think, is that Derpibooru isn’t a media outlet.
 
Images here primarily exist as entries in an archive. Our visual history, both the high points and the low points, all exists here in a sort of a mural to our community.
 
Since Derpibooru is closer to a museum in that regard than anything else, its content doesn’t express the opinions of the community leaders. If it exists, it has ponies, and it involves looking at it, it’s here, sans restrictions aside of spam and blatant attacks.
 
This stands in contrast to the idea that Derpibooru is a media outlet. If it were, a very large number of images uploaded here in the past wouldn’t have been allowed. When you run a media outlet, what appears on the site appears as your opinion.
 
And, yeah, maybe me making the archive argument sounds almost the same as a neo-Nazi making the archive argument as a cover for finding a place to display messages of hate, but nobody’s a neo-Nazi by mere proximity.
 
TL;DR This place isn’t a “best moments” reel. It’s a repository of the fandom’s history.

This thread is like an island of sanity in the sea of stupidity.
 
I couldn’t agree more.

I sympathize with the archival goal and suspect the anti-nazi side could find some compromise with it, but I don’t think the free-speech absolutists would ever compromise.

@–  
Exactly. I really wish people would realize that instead of complaining about certain types of pony content being allowed. I think all pony content should be allowed. Whether it makes you feel angry or otherwise. It’s called an image archive site for a reason.

@Background Pony #4070  
Is this some sort of 5d trolling? I am honest. In my perception “free-speech absolutists” have advocated to merely retain the old rules. Which is exactly how I read the OP. Do you read it as something else?

@Lisboeta  
No. Yes.

@Background Pony #4070
 
Would you please care to elaborate on what is the difference between “free-speech absolutists” and the OP in your opinion (I can maybe see some difference in the underlying motivation. but not in the proposed measures).

The rules should have absolutely been changed, to accommodate an enhanced understanding for those who have been exposed to Twitter too long:
 
Rule 4 should have become Rule 0.

“Mon amie, the people are doing it again. They are choosing to regulate their relationships in accordance with the use of images!”  
“… Merde.”  

@–  
You fucking idiot, you’ve really fucked up now. I said I want something banned and I want it banned this instant. If derpibooru doesn’t cave to the demands of my twitter gods then we’ll knock them off patreon. However, if they do bend the knee, then you should respect their decision because they’re a private website and they can do what they want. :^)

Here’s the thing about museums.
 
Museums are curated. They do not allow any old thing to be displayed, they instead carefully decide what is proper to display to the public and provide proper context and history behind what is being displayed. That is one huge element to museums that is currently not policy for Derpibooru.
 
Museums to not display all of what they own to the public. Pretty much every museum or art gallery or similar will have items they own that are not publicly viewable. They might be kept for preservation purposes and be available for specific research requests only, but museums are absolutely not required to and are almost always not capable of displaying everything they own to the public at large. Here, again, Derpibooru differs in both stated purpose and in capability.
 
Museums do just throw items up randomly to display to the public. They create and design exhibits using a small part of their collection and choose certain specific items in order to convey a certain desired narrative to the public. Derpibooru definitely does not do this.
 
With those three things in mind, it’s pretty laughable to compare Derpibooru to a museum, and I would guess the crowd crying censorship would be a lot angrier if Derpibooru did start acting more like a museum in its regulation of what content should be viewable to the public.

@Background Pony #8B38  
And, see, that’s my other problem with changing the rules: it shows that we can be used. If we fundamentally change how we operate based on just a few words from an outside influence, it betrays just how easy it is to turn us into pawns in a game of politics.

@Background Pony #FE59  
Nor does Derpibooru fully display all of what it has to everyone. The way Derpibooru is, you have to actively search for most of the things on here, via tags, date filtering, etc.
 
Moreover, it appears that you think I’m equating Derpibooru to an art museum. I’m not. I’m equating it to a history museum.
 
If Derpi wants to ban some images based on ideologies, fine. They can do that. I don’t support that, but they can. But, as it’s an archive, my main request is that the bans don’t apply retroactively.

@PeppermintSwirl  
This.
 
The whole point of free speech is kinda that we’re advocating for all content to be allowed (save for the obvious “illegal”, “has no artistic merit”, and “not pony related”), even - especially! - when said content disgusts us.
 
Aryanne pics? Allowed.  
Pol Plot? Allowed.  
Dilarus’s “1925 mouthpieces”? Allowed.  
All the BLM/ACAB propaganda? Allowed.  
Actual literal nazi propaganda? Good luck making it more hateful than “my content is not for bigots and bootlickers”: now watch as I write that under a post of cookie-cutter anti-cop racist propaganda, right after calling people opposing censorship nazis, allowed.
 
Just tag it appropriately and make default filters hide it (they’ve hidden “nazi” for forever, and today has added “communism” to them), done.  
And don’t get surprised if your hateful content gets downvoted into oblivion. Derpibooru is an archive site, not “protecting your feelings from public opinion” site.
 
@Background Pony #91FD  
This. Which is why all this flip flopping’s been infuriating.
 
@Background Pony #8B38  

 
Lemme just save this entire thing…

I agree that this is an archival site, but if that was its only goal, you would not be able to vote or comment on images (as those functions would have no relevance) and there would either not be a DNP list at all or it would be limited to very special cases and legal feuds. Projects fully dedicated to archival (like The Pony Music Archive) do not try to present themselves as social media sites, as Derpibooru has always done. Derpibooru has always been a community in addition to being an archival site.

@Background Pony #26C5  
I wasn’t stating that Derpi is only an archival site. It’s either an archive embedded in a community or a community embedded in an archive. Either way, that doesn’t change that Derpibooru is one of the major sources of fandom history.

@–  
I’m probably not the best judge of which of the two goals is the primary one, but I’ve a feeling an archival project that happens to have a community in it wouldn’t bother keeping a regular rotation of featured art, display the most popular images of the moment, or organize community events.

@Background Pony #FE59
 
Curating an exhibit takes place in the galleries. Additionally user could already remove the content they don’t like from the site. That’s literally what the filters are for.
 
 
@Background Pony #26C5  
Sure, but now that the show is over, the fact that it is an archive is more important, not less.

@Background Pony #26C5  
One of the most prestigious archives in the world, the Library of Congress, doesn’t refrain from community events or awards.

@–  

 
If you think I’m talking just about art museums and not about history museums or archives, you know nothing about museums or archives. Both also do the exact things I mentioned.
 
And just as museums and archives can remove items from public display that they no longer feel should be viewable to the public, so can Derpibooru. And honestly, if Derpibooru truly means what they’re saying about being committed to not platforming hateful imagery, then any ban should apply retroactively.

@Background Pony #FE59  
So… erase history? Revise it so it’s more palatable?
 
That’s a sad, sad idea.

@–  
True, but I’m pretty sure it also doesn’t allow just anyone to contribute artifacts to it. For a couple other examples to compare to, the Internet Archive does not feature individual items, but it does feature collections and has a few exhibits, and pony.fm lists the most popular songs of the moment, and does allow users to favorite and comment on tracks, though it does not place visual emphasis on these features in the same way that Derpibooru does.

@–  
Or to make sure the museum doesn’t share the fate of Alexandria because of rabid crowds outside. Which can’t exactly befall Derpibooru because, unlike a real museum, you can’t just throw a torch at it and have it all burn down unless you have multiple people inside it stoking the fires.

@–  
Removing an artifact from public display does not mean deleting it off the website in this metaphor. It just means putting it behind a filtered tag, maybe even a rating tag in extreme cases, so that it’s still accessible for those who are dedicated to looking for it, just like an item in a museum’s vault is. More accessible, even, since you don’t need to provide credentials, call anyone, or visit a physical location.

@Background Pony #26C5  
Which, because of the nature of the site, doesn’t require doing it at the same time it’d be removed from public display in a real museum. You can put that tag on it from the get-go and only people who are looking for it will find it.