Semi-Grimdark phased out - Restructure on rating tags.

Fletch
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Hello there everyone!
 
We’re rolling out a slight restructure on Furbooru’s rating tags by phasing out the Semi-Grimdark rating.
 
Semi-Grimdark rating was legacy brought over Derpibooru, since the site was bound to the children’s show My Little Pony it was sensical to keep the safe rating as safe as possible. We do not have this need at Furbooru once our target audience is more mature.
 
For this reason it was decided that it would be beneficial to the site to simplify the ratings eliminating the redundancy created by the Semi-Grimdark tag.
 
What does that mean on practical terms? It means that cartoonish violence, minor exposure of blood, jokes and related will only require sexual rating. For example:
 
>>148s (merged)  

 
Imagery that only have subtle exposure of blood, violence and alike that used to be tagged Semi-Grimdark can now be simply tagged Safe since the image itself is fairly inoffensive.
 
Imagery that gets graphical enough in it’s violence however got bumped into Grimdark, for example:  

 
Dubious consent imagery will be dealt punctually on a case by case and everyone is welcome to visit Rating Tags General in case of doubts.
 
Imminent rape imagery such as >>20241 (explicit) can stay with only applicable sexual rating tag, however as we will see below actual rape and sexual coercion will warrant Grimdark
 
The specified criteria for Grimdark is as follow:
 
Imminent death, like a gun pressed to the head or visible vore digestion.  
→Insanity with clear murderous intent and potential, characters covered in blood and alike.  
→Dying violently/painfully not in a comedic/cartoonish manner  
→Traumatic physical/sexual abuse, such as rape or straight out torture.  
→Sexual Coercion, unwanted sexual activity that happens when you are pressured, tricked, threatened, or forced in a nonphysical way.  
→Candy Gore.
 
And while we’re at it, it’s important to also reinforce the Grotesque criteria, rating tag that can function alone or in conjunction to Grimdark and/or Sexual Rating.
 
→Body horror  
→Gore  
→Extreme filth  
→Highly Detailed solid or semi-solid bodily waste, such as poop or vomit
 
As always we’re open to general feedback in order to improve the site’s functionality, we’re grateful for everyone’s engagement and comprehension!
Nicelucario
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Give me your knees
Still say it should remain, but if the admins want to remove it, I don’t feel like debating them (not today at least).
Anonymous #8F81
I can see a lot of people complaining because blood is now there as a few posts with blood didn’t mark it as it fell under grindark.
Anonymous #8F81
@dream  
Well I can see that a lot of people dislike blood and a few posts marked semi grindark do not tag blood when they have it.
Fletch
Even Worse Kobold -
Birthday Fur - Joined within the first year of the site operation and has had significant amount of activity as of June 1, 2021.
Derpy Fur - Prevented Furbooru's terrible fate in April of 2021.
Seedling - Gave the site life with many uploads during its first months
Tag Lover - Good and Proficient Tagger
Astra - Helped choose the name for our mascot - Astra.
Passing of the Eclipse - Joined within the first month of public opening and has had at least some activity as of August 3, 2020.
Magical Inkwell - Wrote a fanfiction consisting of at least around 2.2k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Silver Piece - Silver Supporter on Patreon
Since the Beginning - Registered before the site was public

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Luna's Pet Woof
@Anonymous #8F81  
If someone has issues with blood, they can still filter that specifically. Tags are not end all solution to everything, using other site functionality is often warranted.
Wingbeat
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Birthday Fur - Joined within the first year of the site operation and has had significant amount of activity as of June 1, 2021.
Artist -
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Passing of the Eclipse - Joined within the first month of public opening and has had at least some activity as of August 3, 2020.
Since the Beginning - Registered before the site was public

Fun is mandatory
@Anonymous #8F81  
It gets even crazier than that! If you want to be so specific that you only want to filter part of a tag…blood if it appears in lewd stuff, for example, you can use your complex filters to add things using the search syntax!
 
In that case, you’d just add (questionable || explicit) && blood on a new line in the box that says “complex filters.”
Anonymous #8840
I find this rather confusing. A character holding a bloody knife, implying they committed a murder, is going to now be full Grimdark just like seeing the actual slicing up of the victim?  
Similarly, threatening someone begging for their life (something that happens even on kids shows to some extent) is getting the same treatment as actually going through with putting them in the vat of acid?
 
There’s some stuff in PG-rated movies which I would for sure think justifies having a step before you get up to the level of R-rated movie violence.  
It seems to me like too much of Semi-grimdark was merged in to Grimdark wording-wise rather than Safe and I don’t understand the reasoning behind it.
Fletch
Even Worse Kobold -
Birthday Fur - Joined within the first year of the site operation and has had significant amount of activity as of June 1, 2021.
Derpy Fur - Prevented Furbooru's terrible fate in April of 2021.
Seedling - Gave the site life with many uploads during its first months
Tag Lover - Good and Proficient Tagger
Astra - Helped choose the name for our mascot - Astra.
Passing of the Eclipse - Joined within the first month of public opening and has had at least some activity as of August 3, 2020.
Magical Inkwell - Wrote a fanfiction consisting of at least around 2.2k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Silver Piece - Silver Supporter on Patreon
Since the Beginning - Registered before the site was public

Administrator
Public Relations
Luna's Pet Woof
@Anonymous #8840  
The key really is how graphical the scene becomes.
 
and  
For instance these are fairly inoffensive and easily dismissible, the same principle is applied to any instance picture in drawings.
 
How intense does the scene looks like? Is the victim already hurt? have them been tortured? how detailed is injuries and realism as a whole. Following on the imminent death example the following piece is far more graphical so it’s easy to mark it as grimdark/grotesque >>3200 - The change so far has been beneficial as it eliminated an in between that actually generated more doubt before.
 
The guidelines are meant to help the user do their rating judgement before anything else and surprisingly ever since we phased out the tag we haven’t had any disagreements over rating as everyone’s been capable to judge themselves how much makes it dark. Do give the approach and community some credit.
 
In any case every user can consult any image any time at this forum thread.
 
Cheers!
Anonymous #8840
@Fleetfoot  
Well that’s what I would expect in terms of actual practice, my concern is how well the guidelines are understood and will be applied in the future; it would probably benefit you to codify the stuff about the torture/harm in the actual guideline text. Note that there’s only 32 “imminent death” images so far.
 
I would recommend specifically something like this replacing the first and third bulletpoints:
  • Realistically cruel death/doom, like coming apart in acid, bleeding mortal wounds, or facing execution while clearly beaten up
Anonymous #B2EE
Does this mean the tag semi-grimdark should be aliased to another tag such as grimdark or just invalid tag?
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