Posts

@Princess Luna  
Perhaps just a message at the bottom of the ratings tag along the lines of:
 

 
It might make learning easier (since they’d be getting a staff-backed call on the matter) for those who upload stuff on a regular basis, and give everyone an out if they’re really unsure.
 
The issue with more/less guidelines always comes back to Rules as Read vs Rules as Interpreted. The former works great for limited situations where things can be numerically compared, but you’re right in that art can be super fuzzy, but that’s where you need a Word of God to step in and say “this is how it’s interpreted in this case.”
 
As always, thanks for the help!

@Princess Luna  
I don’t know about that one tbh.

@LightningBolt  
Thanks for adding to the discussion; I’ve changed the second one to Explicit. Do you agree on the image brought up with plots facing the viewer and then edited with Spike, by the way?
 
@Damaged  
Definitely…the hard part is that writing more words into the guidelines doesn’t usually help, as it can just confuse people, but writing less makes for less distinguishment. I feel the current intent of the ratings is really good right now simply because there are very few cases where a bit of reasoning on specifics can’t be used to arrive on a definitive rating (or at least two adjacent ones). Unfortunately, the actual text falls short, and I see no way to rewrite things to overcome that, so it does still need a lot of explanation.  
Consistency is the main goal; a lot of my current focus is on making sure we rate somewhat like e621 tags: ignoring context.

@Princess Luna  
Heh, there’s a lot of nuance in the ratings tags that I keep missing (and seem missing from the more brief Tag Guidelines).
 
I’ll just keep going ahead and uptagging anything I upload I’m not sure of for someone to fix later.
 
And yeah, it is good you have your finger on the pulse with this stuff. I’m sure it’d be a madhouse here if someone didn’t. :)

@Background Pony #57E4  
No, there are no implications in the image itself that suggest anything else, only context exists outside of it.  
@Background Pony #252C  
Explicit, imo, it shows enough that it’s like not hidden.  
@Background Pony #57E4  
Suggestive.  
@Princess Luna  
If only there was a semi-grotesque.

@Damaged  
It’s Explicit if Rainbow actually follows the command (and would be tagged “cunnilingus”), but it looks like Fluttershy is just sitting there.  
Similar deal to all the anon pie adventure stuff, which was really hard to rate properly, by the way.
 
I would like to also note it feels like everyone here is a bit of a slowpoke, bringing up literally tagging I’ve dealt with hours prior (and in many cases, had long discussions on).  
At the very least it’s good to see I’m identifying the same ratings problems imagewise.

Okay, it’s been proved I’m bad at ratings tags, but according to the Tag Guidelines, any obvious sexual acts (even ones hidden from sight) are meant to be tagged explicit.
 
So the bottom left panel of this, being Fluttershy backing up onto Rainbow’s face, should probably be explicit, right?
 
(explicit)  
>>2127660p (deleted)

@Binkyt11  
No, for the same reason that a jar of urine isn’t Suggestive. Also, the first one doesn’t even make it clear where the blood came from.  
I should note that for similar reasons, putting your blood all over another would probably be Questionable, but just being covered in your own blood or urine wouldn’t be.

@Princess Luna  
Alright, but should they (or at least the first one).be tagged as suggestive then considering that it’s well… yeah.

@Princess Luna  
I agree I wanted to change it myself but wasn’t sure.

@Undead dragon soldier  
I think it’s Safe, I was a little on the fence about it when I first noticed it because of the amount of crotch showing above the panties, but on review I don’t think it’s enough to be Suggestive.

Does this image really count as suggestive?  

 
All she’s doing is standing there and holding a microphone, but there is an x-ray shot of her underwear.

@Damaged  
Improvised sex toys do not count (or else things just skip over Suggestive when someone’s eyeing up a candle, which would be ridiculous).  
Implied masturbation, whether it be with an object or whatever, is Suggestive. Note that just having an object shown up inside there in an x-ray is Safe if there’s nothing implying it was for sexual pleasure etc.
 
@Binkyt11  
Unfortunately we made a serious mistake with the structure of ratings by splitting the dark and gross sides, and so right now Semi-grimdark has to pull doubly-duty covering stuff that falls in the realm of Semi-grotesque (a nonexistent rating).  
It’s not pretty, but the alternatives are Grotesque (extremely excessive for just blood, squeamishness about blood is highly variable) and Safe (excessive in the other direction).

Hey, what would this be rated as?  

 
It technically isn’t semi-grimdark since it’s most likely a follow-up to this (not technically semi-grimdark either since it isn’t even implying anything as such, just gross).  

@Background Pony #4603  
@Damaged  
Similar >>942657 is suggestive, too.

@Background Pony #4603  
Suggestive’s probably safe, but there’s an argument to be made for questionable in that there is an implicit insertion and (in this case) that coffee mug is apparently a sex toy to her.

Rating?  

 
It seemed like it might have been suggestive, but I wasn’t sure.

@Background Pony #57E4  
Ah, fetish weirdness. Suggestive, maybe? It’s definitely not Questionable, I think.

 
Is this really questionable?

@Undead dragon soldier  
Amount of butt mainly matters if we believe there’s naughty bits involved, not really on ponies (they show a lot of butt all the time in the show).  
Note in regards to the original’s rating that there was a time when simply having bedroom eyes was rated Suggestive in and of itself, which was extreme because it meant that there were screencaps that were only being rated Safe out of being given an exception; ratings rules that change based on where something came from, make tricky questions about scene interpretations, and make us more prudish than an American kids show aren’t good.
 
@Damaged  
In general for this I’d say you have to consider what they’re actually doing, that’s why the “wiggling a butt” example is used; posing the body itself isn’t really something.  
I’d love a wording that actually slices this in an objective way, but it’s probably just not possible without going crazy and putting even a hoof spreading a butt at Safe.

@Undead dragon soldier  
You linked the images directly.
 
Use \>\>2125064p (with the relevant IDs) to link things properly. Wrap them in spoilers and warn if they’re very NSFW.

@Damaged  
Yeah I don’t know why I can’t make an image clickable my computer’s been acting weird lately.

Links, for those interested:
 

 
>>2125064p (merged)

@Undead dragon soldier  
If staff tagged it safe, they take the responsibility for it. I wasn’t able to click the images and inspect the tags (and wasn’t inclined to reverse search them), hence just making a personal judgement call.
 
A good idea is actually using the id links so people can:  
1- filter things they don’t want to see  
2- look a little deeper (descriptions can matter sometimes)

@Undead dragon soldier  
Then you should probably wait for them to respond first. It might take a little while, but they will.
 
Likely you’ll just get their reasoning for why those images are considered safe, but they might change their minds if you talk things out.