Rating Tags, Guidelines and You

Furbooru's rating tags are quite a bit different from Derpibooru. Derpibooru is a site oriented at My Little Pony, a show that is supposed to be for kids, while Furbooru is a site based around the Furry Fandom. Because of our more mature audience, the rating tags were also changed to be a lot more lenient to artistic nudity. As it stands right now, the rating tags are as follows:

Please refer to this page for current standing on tagging and stuff

So nipples are considered Suggestive instead of Questionable on this site?

@Nicelucario
Indeed

@Luna

@Nicelucario
Indeed

Good to know, thanks.

I'm going to just focus on the sexual ratings for now in asking for clarification and providing feedback. No actual suggestions for now, this is…a lot to deal with at once.

@Luna

…
suggestive — saucy imagery
→ Partial nudity, such as exposed breasts
→ Bulges and cameltoes, as long as they are not the focus of the image
→ Sheaths, balls, as long as they are not the focus of the image

All this talk about "focus of the image" is horrifically conditional as well as completely subjective. You can't define focus and nobody will agree on what it means.
That aside, you mean to say sheathes are Suggestive even when not the focus? These are Safe on Derpi, and many artists there draw them just to vaguely show a character's sex without being lewd in the slightest, and now this defines them as as lewd as exposed tits from the outset.

→ Outright sexual references, jokes, and so on

What does this mean? At a glance, I'd see this as meaning that "you know what they say about men with big shoes", a line from Frozen, would be Suggestive, which is bonkers when you also have little kawaii dicks or stick figures humping as Safe.

questionable — artistic nudity
…
→ … or images of butts and nothing else

So, Derpi's Safe-rated plot shots (many from the show even) or its Suggestive-rated anthro butts now get full Questionable…why? This seems like it'd be putting shots from Spongebob Squarepants, or crops of the recent Trolls movie, at Questionable alongside prominent dicks while outright flashes of tits are only Suggestive.
If you're going to put something about butts here, you should probably be mentioning anuses instead.

explicit — porn
→ Sexual intercourse (sex)
…
→ Genital insertions
→ Masturbation

So above, it was said stick figure sex is Safe, but now all sex and insertion is Explicit; which is it? As well, it's generally rated Questionable on Derpi when characters have their hoof/arm going down between their legs but we can't really see details or movement. This seems like it would make a lot of funny memes about fapping or sex that aren't really pornographic Explicit. The insertions thing, if it applies to butts too, also creates some problems; ass shoves are a comedic goldmine and even present in 2 instances in MLP's Gen 4 (albeit we don't see much detail).
I think this could be dealt with better by caring about how much is actually shown, spreading them across ratings, and perhaps the insertions across all ratings.

→ Sexual liquids (precum, cum, vaginal secretions)

So a girl in a skirt is standing there as a few drops of something hit the floor below, and that's right up there with full-on porn? Similarly, cum jar memes are outright porn?
I think this could be dealt with better by making these Questionable on their own, but making any emission of them where we can see the source Explicit.

Perhaps this thread should be pined?

@Luna

safe — safe for work
(…)
→ Sheaths and balls as long as they're not detailed (e.g. covered with fur)

I would change the above part into something like this:

→ Sheaths and balls as long as they're not the focus of the image, but rather an anatomical detail that just happens to be visible on an otherwise safe themed picture.

And maybe this should apply only to ferals? I mean sheats and balls are present on irl monuments depciting riders on horses or even some toys:



But I don't think the same standard would apply to human (and thus also anthro) charters.

@CruFox
Good idea

Edit: guidelines updated

@Luna
Something is wrong with this sentence in the guidelines:

They is not the focus of the image

@CruFox
fixed

Revised set of issues with the non-dark part of ratings guidelines:

…a otherwise…

Should be an.

Sheaths and balls, as long as: They are not detailed (e.g. covered in fur) or are an anatomical detail that just happens to be visible on an otherwise safe themed picture

Directly conflicts with

No detailed nudity whatsoever (featureless nudity is allowed)

You could fix this by just axing the second thing, especially as Questionable already "grabs" detailed nudity.

Exception: non-edited quotes / screencaps from PG-13 movies or TV shows should always be rated 'safe'

Wew lad.
So sex where we don't see penetration or orgasms, alongside ripping out people's beating hearts, is Safe? That second example is literally the reason PG-13 was made, because people felt it should be a higher rating below R, so don't go telling me it's an unfair one to use.
For the record, I think instead making post-PG-13-creation PG be Safe would be fine. You'd just have to accept as Safe stuff like non-visible anal insertion for medical reasons (also in this G-rated example), bloodless decapitation (also in this G-rated example), and of course urination and ass-kissing.
I personally think the decapitation stuff is over a line, and should be an exception to PG being considered Safe.

Outlines of genitals visible through clothing (cameltoes, bulges, anus outlines)

So a sheath that's just there is Safe, but a bulge that's just there is Suggestive? Clothing should not be making something higher rated.

Visible sheaths or balls

This just completely nullifies what's said in Safe about these (higher ratings supercede, especially with how you say to go with higher if there's any doubt). You could just put the conditions about when these are Suggestive here instead of talking about them in Safe at all. This seems to be what you did with anuses (possibly by mistake…), and I think works fine for them.

Obvious sexual references, jokes, and so on (presence of words like 'penis', 'blowjob', etc)

I would just remove the "jokes and so on" part, because it makes it still seem like the quote from Frozen about shoe size would be covered were it not coming from a movie, as it's a pretty obvious joke about penis size.

Characters in "saucy" poses with sexual implications (e.g. laying down on bed with bedroom eyes and lingerie)

This is something even G-rated movies do all the time. It should absolutely be Safe, not Suggestive where the bare breasts with nipples are.

Simple urination

Also done in G-rated movies and completely out of place being in Suggestive.

Naked characters presented in sexy poses

Considering that earlier in Questionable, detailed nudity is covered, I can only assume this means that things from Looney Tunes etc. with no features present and no clothes because they're toons is considered Questionable, which is even more bonkers than it being Suggestive.

Sexual fluids (precum, cum, vaginal secretions)

So a bit of balls off to the side in the background is Safe, but a jar of cum in the same position is Explicit?

Masturbation

This means a simple hand down one's pants would go all the way to Explicit, because you're not putting anything in to care about how, well, explicit it is about what's going on.

Genital insertions (anal, vaginal), or phallic objects in mouth (penises, dildos)

And situations from PG movies have just gone Explicit (both the above thing from Dolittle, and a lot of jokes with phallic objects). A "bananajob" is only Questionable (or even Suggestive) on Derpibooru for a reason. I think you should really care about what's visible both as far as insertion, and apparent stimulation.

Oh, and another example of urination in case of "well it was brief" is this gem from the Angry Birds movie. I'm pretty confident in saying that, at least according to the MPAA ratings board, it's okay to show heavy urination to kids as long as you don't show them the actual bits that the urine comes out of.

@Anonymous #77C1
In regards to ripping out beating hearts, that would not be safe because it'd get one of the dark tags (which are also mutually exclusive to safe).

I agree that the sheaths/balls thing doesn't belong in the Safe tag. I was going to suggest a rewrite that would make it make more sense — that is, replacing "not detailed (eg. covered in fur)" with "nondescript bulges (eg. hidden by fur)." And I get what the "just happens to be present" thing was trying to imply in terms of ferals that just kinda have the silhouette of a sheath slightly visible…

…but the problem with all of that is that it might as well just be lumped in with "bulges" and therefore should be considered Suggestive instead.

As far as the exception for PG-13 media, well, it's an exception, isn't it? The MPAA isn't exactly consistent about what they deem acceptable, either, so I wouldn't count on the entire body of work on IMDB to dictate what a furry site deems sexy.

As for the rest…I really don't have a problem with the rules as written. I think in the future, once we've got this nailed down, having a visual guide (sorta like a comic or something) to go along with each rating tag could help people make better sense of what belongs in each rating, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

@Wingbeat
Safe is not specifically a sexual rating, it's the base of all ratings branches. The exception holds and puts that video as Safe-rated.
The MPAA may not be entirely consistent, but they are pretty clearly consistent on all of the cases I presented, and the heart thing is literally the founding event of PG-13.

To be clear on sheaths and balls, my problem is not that they belong in Suggestive, but that the conditions that put them in one rating or the other belong in the higher rating only. Having conditionals in the lower rating but also non-conditionals in the higher rating leads to a tug of war situation where there is no clear answer on where something that satisfies the conditional belongs, because higher ratings pull from lower ones and the overall standard is to always rate high when in doubt.
If I didn't know better and just saw this out of the blue without seeing prior versions or what it was spawned from, I would think that the writer of the ratings guidelines wanted to make it look like sheaths and balls could be Safe, but make sure that in practice they never would be.


To be clear on the masturbation problem, by the way, I think it's quite silly to consider this outright Explicit:
while bare-breasted women are Suggestive. The image above is not explicit about what's going on, and the ratings guidelines should consider that, much as they do for nudity. It's rated Suggestive on Derpi.

Similarly, this shouldn't be Questionable:

It's something you could easily put in a PG movie even if the character were anthro instead of feral in form. It's rated Safe on Derpi.

@Wingbeat
By the way, for an example from children's media "Safe balls", there is this screenshot from My Neighbor Totoro, and this is seen for about half a second:

Yes, Japan has different standards, but the way they do balls on animals in their kids stuff is still fairly non-detailed, and this was localized for American audiences without censoring that part at all. Anuses can get a lot worse, but mostly only on anime meant for adults, like Space Dandy.

@Wingbeat
@Anonymous #77C1

Exception: non-edited quotes / screencaps from PG-13 movies or TV shows should always be rated 'safe'

Wew lad.

I don't think we should be even having this discussion as in the site rules, in the rule #1 it is written, that:

Do not upload commercial content. This includes screencaps and clips of TV shows and movies, scans of printed comics, or anything else that was created and published for profit.

There should be no screencaps uploaded here anyway.
On the other hand I uploaded this myself:

There is a small screencap from Disney movie present in the upper left corner, but it was put there by the artist and the screencap itself isn't the entire submission or even a large portion of it and I though it wouldn't be alright to exclude this art just because it is there. But this type of pictures won't be uploaded here in large numbers for sure so I don't see why they shouldn't be treated like everything else when it comes to the rating.

So in my opinion that part about screencaps in the tag rules is not needed because screencaps would never be uploaded here on their own.

@CruFox
I think the reason to state something about commercial stuff in the ratings guidelines was so that Rule #7 acts sanely. Of course, if the ratings are sane to begin with, it's not necessary because they'll be mostly in line with the societal things the MPAA cares about, and it's looking like that'll be the case.

I would like to note I think the MPAA should loosen up about drugs and swearing and start cracking down on gore/violence. The Martian has no business being PG-13 while Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland got PG. Ultimately I think the current mess where PG goes 13 on a dime and almost all films aim for one of the two is because 4 distinctions is hard to sustain without slippage from one rating consuming parts of another in practice.
It's quite possible that other sites with not having Suggestive are ultimately correct.

Functionally, it looks like furbooru's Suggestive and Questionable tags map to other sites' Questionable and Explicit ratings, respectively — which makes the line which distinguishes things be between full-frontal nudity and outright sex, rather than on Derpibooru where the division was between Suggestive and Questionable.

The S/Q division was much harder to define (like, how "kinda lewd" is too "kinda lewd?") but it made sense because, being about a kid's show, there needed to be a level above "not safe for Woona" but below the typical questionable rating. That wouldn't make much sense here. The distinction between softcore and hardcore is welcome, even though I know it'll mean herding cats on mis-rated images.

Round 3. The current ratings guidelines look pretty good (even fixing a lot of problems Derpi's have). Two things in Questionable are very odd, however:

Complete nudity without visible sexual arousal

It seems very strange to me that there's a catchall like this for top+bottom without caring about features in Questionable, when top or bottom with non-detailed features is only Suggestive. Basically, on Derpi, Austin Powers joke nudity (random objects in the way of seeing the "naughty bits") is only Suggestive because when you block the features, it really takes away almost all of the problem, and even some kids stuff can get away with that. This is TV-PG by the way:

Naked (and semi-naked) characters presented in sexy poses

The "naked" part seems redundant with the above bit, but assuming the above bit was removed, the problem then is really that it feels to me like nude features are worse than a lack of them combined with a sexy pose.
As for "semi-naked", I'm not sure whether it means Suggestive's partial nudity or just something scantily clad. If scantily clad, then it's basically the same issue as with naked. If instead it means partial nudity, then the problem is that again because it doesn't care about features, this would mean a character wiggling their butt at the camera with no features visible would be Questionable all the way in Questionable, next to detailed genitals.
Consider how it applies to this:

Round 4, seems most earlier stuff was fixed:

Outlines of genitals visible through clothing (cameltoes, bulges, anus 'cameltoes')

Removing "detailed" here was probably good since cameltoes and "anus cameltoes" inherently are somewhat detailed, but now this means you've thrown in simple bulges with them, when they're also in Safe.

About anuses, they should probably be mentioned here in Safe to help prevent confusion on where they go:

Sheaths and balls, as long as they are…
- Not detailed (e.g. covered in fur)
- An anatomical detail that just happens to be visible on an otherwise safe themed picture

And correspondingly you might want to mention them here instead of in Questionable:

Visible detailed sheaths or balls

Note that this is from a kids cartoon (Cleopatra in Space), and that's an anus (that is shown actively farting) at the end of the tail:


I see this returned:

Characters in "saucy" poses with sexual implications (e.g. laying down on bed with bedroom eyes and lingerie)

Highly-subjective implications (are these "I miss you, my love" eyes, or "let's fuck now" eyes? Is there even a difference?) are generally a problem in ratings. I recommend removing the reference to bedroom eyes, and focusing on the sexual nature of the outfit, so people don't get the wrong impression and start going after stuff just like in kids cartoons where a modestly-clothed or featurelessly-naked animal characters pose and give a look from a bed. Note the following from screencaps on Derpi:

Looking again after a while…

I have 2 problems with the sexual ratings:

Sheaths and balls, as long as they are…

Still missing mention of anuses, which makes it unclear what a non-detailed one is rating-wise. Similarly, it's still odd that detailed anuses are up with detailed genitals instead of in Suggestive with detailed sheaths and balls.

Sexual fluids and secretions

Why did this revert? This again makes tiny drops of fluid on the floor, a stain in underwear, or a cum jar in the background Explicit. The first two examples are even cases of ambiguity, since they could easily be from a leaky bladder.

I might as well bother to mention dark ratings for once.

I'm not even gonna list out the pieces of Semi-grimdark, cause the whole thing I think needs rewriting. I would recommend the following to replace its bulleted contents:

Minor (non-gory) bodily horror, including:
-Untreated mortal wounds, such as bullet wounds, stab wounds, fresh amputations
-Freshly-severed major body parts, like limbs or heads
-Bones/skeletons with bits of flesh
-Large amounts of blood
-Extreme malnutrition
-Asphyxiation
-Obvious bodily signs of significant abuse
Minorly horrific abuse, such as being prepared to be raped, having a gun pressed to the head, being beaten bloody, or dubious/pressured consent

And then for Grimdark:

Realistic intense injuries/gore, such as guts spilling out, bits of muscle hanging, or blood-drenched bones
Horrific abuse, such as rape, torture, or torturous death

Personal opinion time.

I'd rather remove 9/10 of examples on every rating and give a 2 sentence description instead that people will actually read. I'm in a mod position and every time I've needed to rate something I'd glaze my eyes down the list like "yeah that's way too much to take in, I'm just gonna look for similar content and see how they rated it", and I'm sure that's how most people will handle it since most people don't like reading a ton of stuff for something they barely cared about to begin with. Edge cases will fall on either side and those can be handled as they come. If there's any concerns we can just uprate it and call it a day. It's really not that big of an issue and it's never going to be bulletproof.

Also I'm gonna be blunt and say that I don't care about anything the MPAA says about ratings, even as arguments. They handle a vastly different set of content and they are in place for very different reasons. Furthermore they aren't even particularly good with what they do handle, let alone trying to apply its standards to what is mostly a pile of saucy furry porn.

That's my thoughts anyways.

@Raptorshy
Could use collapsible sections to still have a list there, for those that really like lists or are chronically unsure and nervous.

@Teaspoon
I'd definitely rather it collapsible.

@Raptorshy
The problem with using solely examples is that it's kind of like drawing nation borders by stating which specific towns and landmarks along the border belong to who, without actually defining where the border is. You'd need a lot of examples to even pin down something as simple as nudity…and then the examples would just be glossed over instead.
Ultimately, I do agree it's best to keep things short, and I think Suggestive is the biggest problem because it's kind of a repetitive laundry list. This is a slightly radical suggestion (slightly less bound than my previous ones), but this is what I'd do to cut down on the size of Suggestive while trying to make it cover stuff better:

Sexual implications or appearances of limited nudity ('saucy' imagery)
-Nudity without genitals being exposed (e.g. exposed breasts/buttocks, including with nipples)
-Visible detailed sheaths, balls, anuses, or bulges of such in clothing
-Overt sexual references (e.g. 'penis', 'blowjob', 'finger in the bum') including gestures or acts with objects (e.g. jerking off / sucking a banana, fingering a donut like an anus)
-Very saucy acts, such as kissing with saliva everywhere, posing seductively in lingerie, making an ahegao face, or groping

Note that that last part can essentially cover fetish stuff in a way that doesn't go "well someone's fat so it's Suggestive".

In regards to MPAA ratings, I don't advise relying on them, which previous guidelines revisions actually did (that's most of why I brought them up).
I do however think there is some merit in knowing why/how established media ratings systems in general rate things the way they do, to provide a societally-accepted reference frame. It would be fairly problematic if nearly every movie from the Disney renaissance had a scene that would be considered non-Safe on here when recreated faithfully by a furry artist.