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A suggestion on how to slow down the Image Misuse Train

Last posted Mar 09, 2014 at 08:33PM EDT. Added Jan 22, 2014 at 05:20PM EST
25 posts from 14 users

I'm making a new thread for this because I feel the general misuse of galleries on-site needs to be discussed.

Okay, I think we're all well aware of the amount of gallery misuse on this site. Here, I'm going to be suggesting a few solutions. Most of them will involve making new functions, and since I have no idea of the abilities, time, or patience of our programmers, I'm speaking under the ideal situation where all these ideas are possible. First off, what I consider the most important thing we can add to this site is a button similar to the "Claim Authorship" button; we need a button, that any user can press, that says "Doesn't belong in this gallery."

Our biggest problem is that we're short on manpower. At the moment, clearing out incorrectly-placed images can only be done by the Image Moderators, and the Scrapbookers and Archivists can merely help sort them out into categories, along with normal users making long lists of URLs. The inclusion of this "DBIG" button would allow far more cooperation between users. Once an image has X number of "Doesn't belong"s, it will be placed into a cue. Personally, I would suggest that this cue be accessible by Image Moderators and Scrapbookers alike, and allows these people to edit which gallery the image belongs to.

Another thing I want to cover is tagging. Tagging is important, as it allows people to find specific image types they're looking for; as documentation site, it sickens me when people don't add any tags, or tag an image with the gallery's name just to have a tag. This is up for debate, but I personally think we need to force users to tag their images; that is, they cannot upload an image without adding, say, two tags. I think we all share the similar fear that some people will just put in garbage tags, but at the same time I can't help but think this would be beneficial. At the very least, include a little sentence near the tagging bar that says, "Include the name of the franchise or characters that are shown in this image, if any."

Then there is the problem of specific galleries being misused. Ruined Childhood, Childhood Enhanced, Reaction Faces, and Alternate Universe have been misused a lot lately. The following are purely my own opinions and are not necessarily reflected by the Know Your Meme community, but to me, Ruined Childhood is an image that, once you see it, cannot be un-seen, and retroactively alters the way you think about a show or view a specific character. To poke at a few images in the gallery, this doesn't ruin my view of Homestar Runner in any way, a thing that you hated or scared you when you were a kid doesn't count, things that are arguably funny don't count either, and Getting Crap Past the Radar in a kids show can be argued to be either Ruined Childhood OR Childhood Enhanced depending on who you're asking, so such images shouldn't go in EITHER gallery.

Alternate Universe has seen some misuse recently as well, mainly because everyone seems to have forgotten the the difference between Alternate Universe and Crossover. This is Crossover, this is Crossover, this is Crossover; the merging of two universes or more is a Crossover, people. However, there are occasions where one of the two universes takes precedence over the other; in such a situation, place it in the gallery for the franchise that's "dominating." I would argue that this much better belongs in the Team Fortress gallery than the Crossover one. As another example, this image is Adventure Time in the world of Attack on Titan. As such, I would argue that it can go in either the Adventure Time or Crossover galleries (preferably Adventure Time), but NOT the Attack on Titan gallery.

For flagrantly misused galleries such as these, it is my opinion that we place a warning/instruction page that the user sees each time s/he clicks the "+ Add an Image" button for a misused gallery, in a similar fashion to the page users see whenever they want to create a new meme page.

Feedback on this and other ideas are important, so please don't hesitate to give criticism. Also, I'd like to hear from the programmers just how much of this would even be capable, assuming it was all greenlighted.

First off, what I consider the most important thing we can add to this site is a button similar to the “Claim Authorship” button; we need a button, that any user can press, that says “Doesn’t belong in this gallery.”

Wouldn't a report button make more sense? Just click the button, type the reason why that image doesn't belong here (example: breaks the rules, wrong gallery, dupe), and someone will hopefully look into it. Perhaps with a failsafe if we receive the reports through mail, so we won't get spammed to death each time you have a troll in the MLP gallery.

It's been requested before, but I think the issue mainly is how it should be executed.


Once an image has X number of “Doesn’t belong”s, it will be placed into a cue. Personally, I would suggest that this cue be accessible by Image Moderators and Scrapbookers alike, and allows these people to edit which gallery the image belongs to.

So like a report field similar to the NSFW section in the admin area scrapbookers have access to as well? That's cool, and it would also stop the risk of my mail getting spammed to death.

Not too fond of allowing Scrapbookers to remove images, as we have a lot and people can base their judgement on petty reasons we don't want to see images removed for. More Media Mods is a better solution imo, and threads like these show good candidates.


This is up for debate, but I personally think we need to force users to tag their images

Leaving aside your dangers, I'm just going to state that I'm against forcing people to tag their stuff for the simple reason that it will seriously hurt our daily uploads.

People are lazy. Force them to tag and they might as easily think "fuck it" and not upload the piece, which we don't want to see happening. Myself as well when I have to fill up galleries for newly launched entries, I source them when possible but tagging is a bother when your priority is finishing a new entry.


Then there is the problem of specific galleries being misused.

While a lot of these cases are doubtful as judgement depends on the person looking at it (this was a really bothersome thing when we had to discuss what defines "cringeworthy), there are also plenty of cases where I know we reached a good conclusion on what should be done. So this can be fixed with the right folks and the right dedication.

But let's leave those discussions to the seperate threads made for it, and use this thread to focus on your other points.


programmers

Single, not plural. James is our sole coder, so put that in mind when you make requests like that, as it's one person who has to implant it and he's busy on other stuff as well.

Given how we have an NSFW section in the admin area people can use to see what's NSFW tagged, I can assume it's possible, but can't conclude it. Blue Screen can help you better here, as he knows coding and web design.

Last edited Jan 22, 2014 at 06:08PM EST
Wouldn’t a report button make more sense? Just click the button, type the reason why that image doesn’t belong here (example: breaks the rules, wrong gallery, dupe), and someone will hopefully look into it.

I understand why that would make more sense in general, but I feel like the word "report" can turn some people off; I've discussed such before with people, and I too am one of those people that are too passive to "report" someone's image, no matter the website. Now, if I knew that clicking the Report button would allow me to say an image is in the wrong gallery, I'd use the hell out of it, but I wouldn't know because I never click "report." This may sound stupid, and perhaps this isn't as widespread an issue as I may believe, but it's why I suggested a specific button for gallery misuse.

Not too fond of allowing Scrapbookers to remove images, as we have a lot and people can base their judgement on petty reasons we don’t want to see images removed for.

I do realize that giving Scrapbookers such privileges isn't the best idea, since a lot of the people misusing the galleries are Scrapbookers or even Archivers themselves (basically, just because you uploaded a bunch of images doesn't mean you have the best judgement). However, this cue, if possible, would only allow people to alter which gallery the image belongs to, and nothing else. While it would make things more complicated, perhaps the images in the cue would need X number of "votes" by Scrapbookers/Archivists for a certain gallery before it can be moved there. I know multiple people have recently been suggesting "why don't we make a level between Scrapbooker and Image Mod that gives them some but not all editing capabilities" which honestly just makes thing confusing and dumb. As you mentioned, it would make more sense to simply get more Image Mods, but I can't image giving Scrapbookers access to the "Misuse Cue" would cause too many problems--if someone seriously re-places it in the wrong gallery, it can always be reported again.

Damn, I never would've guessed we only have one guy for that. I know there's plenty of other things of importance between admins and mods, like how long it took debate-wise just for spoiler tags to be implemented, which is why I was talking best-case scenario. Next time I come up with something like this, I'll make sure to ask him specifically what's capable of being done.

Last edited Jan 22, 2014 at 07:05PM EST

Now, if I knew that clicking the Report button would allow me to say an image is in the wrong gallery, I’d use the hell out of it, but I wouldn’t know because I never click “report.” This may sound stupid, and perhaps this isn’t as widespread an issue as I may believe, but it’s why I suggested a specific button for gallery misuse.

However, this cue, if possible, would only allow people to alter which gallery the image belongs to, and nothing else. While it would make things more complicated, perhaps the images in the cue would need X number of “votes” by Scrapbookers/Archivists for a certain gallery before it can be moved there.

I understand your problems here, but I believe we might be getting into petty details here. Your solutions as they read now are too specific to a single issue while ignoring the others. Gallery misuse is an issue yes, but so is people breaking the NSFW guidelines, duplicates, trolls, meta jokes, and other stuff which just requires swift removal and not moving between entries.

You want to create a single button to request moving to an entry and nothing else. But what when someone spots something that requires removal instead? A solution for such a specific thing would make it only extremely confusing for people to report other issues with images.

If the problem is the button reading "Report", make it read "Mark for Checkup" or something. Easy fix.

Yo James if you read this could we just add a rules/nsfw guidelines disclaimer to the upload page I know that's not hard at all I could probably do it in 30 seconds with my limited HTML knowledge

As for the rest, I agree with RM; a "report" button is more useful for general use than specific ideas and would still help.

Last edited Jan 22, 2014 at 07:59PM EST

With a site where one big feature is image uploads, I'm surprised there never was a Report button in the first place. You'd think it would've been installed a long time ago.

By the way, it's a "queue" you're talking about, not a "cue".

Just gonna expand(a little) on what Deltamelon said.
When it's two universes is merged evenly, it should belong in the Crossover gallery.
If it's a reference to something else(like this), it should be in the Enhanced Childhood gallery.
This should be in the Crossover gallery.
This, on the other hand, should be in the Alternate Universe gallery.

Last edited Jan 22, 2014 at 09:40PM EST

blue wrote:

Just gonna expand(a little) on what Deltamelon said.
When it's two universes is merged evenly, it should belong in the Crossover gallery.
If it's a reference to something else(like this), it should be in the Enhanced Childhood gallery.
This should be in the Crossover gallery.
This, on the other hand, should be in the Alternate Universe gallery.

It's always a bit of a question what is correct and what isn't with broad galleries like that, so it needs a bit more discussion than that to come up with good guidelines.

If you guys can come up with a good straight definition that matches with the focus of the gallery, and work it out as a sort of disclaimer to put on top and below the entry, go ahead. Once that's there it's probably a lot easier to get the cleaning done, and perhaps we can even think about unlocking a certain troublesome gallery at that point.

Feel free to dicuss it on the forum, allows people to hop in and add their opinion.

Although I have a lack of meme knowledge, I would also like to bring up another example of misuse.

The Video Game Logic galllery might be fueling this train with its misuse.
The definition, as I am aware, is "Rules in Video Games that are questioned or called out". For example, this image macro

However, images that contain glitches, camera angles, or this just don't feel like they belong in this gallery.

Video Game Logic is an expression used to highlight absurd plot lines, mechanics and glitches that are found in video games.

Images like this do not belong to the gallery.

Last edited Jan 23, 2014 at 08:58PM EST

Speaking of Site changes and programming

Also, I’d like to hear from the programmers just how much of this would even be capable, assuming it was all greenlighted

Being a web programmer myself just helps me understand how difficult many of the proposed changes we be to impliment

As RM points out, we only have one person able to make change to this site and that's James.

KYM is programmed in Ruby-on-Rails which is web technology than not even I am versed in. I work with PHP, not Ruby. This puts James in a specialist position. Anything we do; it's gotta be him who does it on his busy time schedule and I don't know how hard the job really is for him. I hear Ruby isn't the simplest of frameworks

Therefore we need to ask ourselves first: can we sort these issues out through a method that doesn't involve site changes? And only resort to site modifications as a last resort.


You know…I wouldn't say the galleries are misused so much as people just don't understand how to use them.

People get the general idea: article sets a topic and people upload images based on that topic.

But that's the most that people learn about the galleries. Most uploaders probably don't ever use the forum. So they probably don't ever see the rules or don't realize that the rules they see in the forum apply to galleries as well. And they skip all the discussions around the site that talk about proper uploading guidelines

The concept of uploading "based on the topic" is vague and subjective. People start assuming what is and is not appropriate for galleries. They assume what counts as the subject and what doesn't. They also assume that there is leeway in image relevancy or that the gallery can be used for purposes other than just demonstrating the meme (It's actually supposed to be used JUST for showing the meme)

So before we get crazy thinking of fancy new buttons and features for managing images, the first thing I'd like to see added to KYM is the rules and guidelines in a place where uploaders will see them more clearly

We've gone over idea's on how to make image misuse easier to manage. But just as importantly we need to go over idea's on how to stop misuse before it even starts. Improving communication like this could help.

I had a super long post written and just before I was about to submit it I accidentally hit the refresh button and lost it. Fuck typing on a phone.

Anyway, here's the general gist of it.

"Doesn't Belong in This Gallery" button: Yes

Giving Scrapbookers the ability to move images which have been reported: Yes

Calling it a report button: No

Forcing people to tag images: No

I'll go more in depth once I get back to my computer.

Okay, here we go.

For the "Doesn't Belong in This Gallery" button: YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. This would actually allow users who recognize the problem to help out instead of feeling powerless and complaining to the mods. RM brought up worries about trolls abusing it and annoying the mods, but if we require a certain number of button pushes before the picture is added to this queue, then it isn't a problem.

I also agree that Scrapbookers should be able to move images. I honestly find it insulting that we're given a special title which allows us to do absolutely nothing. As RM pointed out, it is true that because anyone can become a Scrapbooker, some of them may be unreliable. However, if we limit this to only images that have been reported by the button, they would only be able to move images which actually do need to be moved. Besides, if someone abuses their power, then they can just have their Scrapbooker powers taken away. Easy.

I disagree with calling it a report button. The word "report" has connotations which imply that the picture is breaking a rule, which doesn't necessarily have to be true. As the OP said, people rarely use report buttons because it sounds like a last resort, and also because pretty much every site says "Misusing the report button is against the rules", making people hesitant to report something if they aren't completely, 100% sure that it is breaking a rule. Adding a text box for people to write a reason could also turn people away from reporting because they don't want to have to type an explanation.

I disagree with being required to tag images. I recently was uploading a bunch of images to the gallery of a new article. At first, I was tagging every single one. But it eventually got tedious and tiring and I realized that it would take me forever to upload every single image. Finally, I decided to stop bothering and I managed to upload all of the images much faster. My point is, being required to tag might discourage people from uploading images because they don't feel like adding a bunch of tags.

Last edited Jan 31, 2014 at 03:37PM EST

Philip wrote:

For the “Doesn’t Belong in This Gallery” button: YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. This would actually allow users who recognize the problem to help out instead of feeling powerless and complaining to the mods. RM brought up worries about trolls abusing it and annoying the mods, but if we require a certain number of button pushes before the picture is added to this queue, then it isn’t a problem.

I would be more interested in allowing scrapbookers access to that button (so not everyone). One report gets them on a list for mods to check, at which point we only have to say Yes/No for having it get removed. Or 5 reports gets them auto-removed.

Making moving between entries and reporting for removal different buttons feels confusing and like a pain in the ass to oversee. That's why I was for making Media Mod an easier to obtain power. Just make more, like 5 folks who we really know are dedicated. Or make it even easier and allow DB mods for example to add/remove both Scrapbooker and Media Mod powers at any given point. No offense of course, but most of the mods have better overview in the userbase than the staff. I personally just really really dislike the batches system because good contributors might get demotivated into continuing their effort if they notice they have to wait like 5 months before they have a shot at getting some powers.


I disagree with calling it a report button. The word “report” has connotations which imply that the picture is breaking a rule, which doesn’t necessarily have to be true.

Already brought forth a solution for that. Just name it "Mark For Checkup", similar to "Mark as Spoiler/NSFW". It's an easy fix and allows folks to mark/report both images that need to be moved or just removed.

Last edited Jan 31, 2014 at 04:59PM EST

Philip wrote:

I disagree with being required to tag images. I recently was uploading a bunch of images to the gallery of a new article. At first, I was tagging every single one. But it eventually got tedious and tiring and I realized that it would take me forever to upload every single image. Finally, I decided to stop bothering and I managed to upload all of the images much faster. My point is, being required to tag might discourage people from uploading images because they don’t feel like adding a bunch of tags.

Don't be a lazy fuck and add at least one tag, you butt.

If the problem is in uploading, I don't know, 100 pictures. In that case saying: "Ok, with one tag would be enough. I'll add the rest later" would be acceptable but come on. Yes, adding tags when you upload a pictures is tedious and boring, but helps a lot when you search for an specific image or a specific reaction, etc, etc.

If the problem is the time it takes you, don't worry you have all the time in the world to upload pictures, uploading isn't a race. The world isn't going to end in the next five minutes, and if it ends ¡¿why would you spend your last five minutes uploading a picture?!


About the image cleaning thread, is there any moderator checking that thread or it is pretty much dead?

Last edited Jan 31, 2014 at 07:42PM EST

I'll just repost what I said on "Edgy". It could save a lot of galleries

I think the image gallery should only be limited to things that are directly related to “edginess” itself.

Example: This is acceptable

This is not

“Edgy” images documented on this page should not be a users personal interpretation of what is edgy, but if a post is directly related to the term “edginess”, it should be allowed. If we did the same for Cringeworthy we could have saved it. It is too far gone now though…

Makes sense doesn't it? It can apply on any abused gallery really. It may sound a bit rigid, but it's better than shutting down a gallery or letting it get out of hand.

Would there be any way to record who adds tags to images (both to their own and others?) and reward people who add good tags. I know it would probably be unfeasible, but if people were rewarded (even if only a special title) for adding relevant tags it might incentive people to use them more. Of course, there is the issue of what tags are considered relevant (and crap tagging), but those I think would still be better than trying to find a tagless sourceless image in several thousand image galleries. I know that this may be too much work for not much reward, but I'm just trying to think of a way to convince people to tag, because it seems making things easy to find isn't enough.

Jill wrote:

Would there be any way to record who adds tags to images (both to their own and others?) and reward people who add good tags. I know it would probably be unfeasible, but if people were rewarded (even if only a special title) for adding relevant tags it might incentive people to use them more. Of course, there is the issue of what tags are considered relevant (and crap tagging), but those I think would still be better than trying to find a tagless sourceless image in several thousand image galleries. I know that this may be too much work for not much reward, but I'm just trying to think of a way to convince people to tag, because it seems making things easy to find isn't enough.

Mods have access to a page in the Admin Area which shows what users have been making edits to images. Whether this is the title, tags, or description.

It shows the dominant names of people who tag a lot because those simply pop up a lot (like you), but a total number isn't shown. You'd have to ask James if there's a way to see how many times someone has tagged images.

RM wrote:

Mods have access to a page in the Admin Area which shows what users have been making edits to images. Whether this is the title, tags, or description.

It would be a good idea if we can see the last user who made an edit of an image.

It could be added into the box that appears on the right part of the page when you edit an image.


What's the main difference between Alternate Universe and Crossover?

I ask because I'm checking the AU gallery and I want to be sure about what belongs to the gallery and what not before I start adding "Move/delete" tags.

Last edited Feb 23, 2014 at 08:39PM EST

@Loli
Everyone seems to have their own opinion on it. Generally, from most explanations that I've seen seem to say something along these lines:
If there are characters meeting/ interacting with characters from other universes in their (mostly) original forms, then its a crossover. If the characters are modified to look like they are part of another universe or semi-cosplaying as characters from another universe, and the characters that are from that other universe are not present, then it would be a bit more appropriate in the alternative universe gallery than crossover one.
Of course even then, there is plenty of stuff that still falls somewhere between these two. Also, if we have a full entry on one of the things being crossed over, it may be better in that entry's gallery.

@RandomMan
I'll do that then. Thanks.

Skeletor-sm

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