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If you ask me, most of the pictures that has a 9gag/ifunny.co watermark are normally terribly sourced and dosen't give credit to the orignal source.

Add the fact those watermarks are an eyesore.

If you ask me, most of the pictures that has a 9gag/ifunny.co watermark are normally terribly sourced and dosen’t give credit to the orignal source.

The same thing can be said of all the fanart we have in our galleries. What's your point?

Add the fact those watermarks are an eyesore.

I, personally, don't mind them. Again, what's your point? I'm having problems in trying to understand what you're expecting us to do.

What we could do is delete the ones already in the gallery, create a rule that prohibits images with watermarks that promote a person or other entity, and moderate accordingly.

So yeah, that's what OP would like for us to do. That was obvious.

I wouldn't suggest that though.

It sounds more like a pet peeve. Actually, poorly sourced media bother me. And I'd like to see us moderate to have images be sourced and to not contain watermarks beyond the original artist's/creator's signature.

But that will be terribly difficult to moderate and enforce, and it's certainly going to decrease the amount of images being uploaded to the site. We once discussed if we could moderate for sourcing images, especially art. But we'd rather have an instance of a meme that's of a subpar quality, has an ugly watermark, or has no source than to not have the instance at all.

The best I could suggest is adding the source as you find them. But I don't think we're going to sacrifice our standing as a database to have particularly particular criteria for uploading.

You could add a message saying "avoid third party image sharing sites like 9gag, ifunny or ICICI unless the original source is there"

That's going to prevent a lot of instances from being uploaded or users will just ignore the suggestion.

If we moderate it, then users won't upload the image at all. They're not going to risk being suspended, but they aren't going to reverse image search the origin either.

If they ignore it, then they're going to upload it anyway if we don't moderate it beyond the suggestion.

Again, it looks bad, but it's better than having some users avoid uploading images here at all.

What if someone posts the source image without the watermark, could we ask Media Mods to delete the 9gag version?

I thought about that briefly, but I didn't think it through. I think it's a good idea.

I'm not really a Media Moderator, so I'll defer to someone else who might be more active there, but I think that suggestion would work. I figure it'd be like the Duplicate Image thread. In fact, I think you could just post it in that thread with the original and the watermarked version.

I'd take on the task myself, but it looks like I lost banning and image powers after being reactivated. I suppose I should get on that…but in the meantime, maybe another moderator or other users can check after me and see if the idea makes sense.

Likewise, just a question, if someone technically reposts something, someone finds the "first" poster, but it is of inferior quality, has less tags/no source, or overall inferior material, is the first one elegible for deletion if submitted to the queue of our trusted media mods?

You'd probably get a better and more informed answer from a proper media mod, but I would say so. The issue is more about losing an instance than it is giving credit to an uploader who didn't actually post the art.

I'd say the only time you'd keep a lower quality version is if the instance is actually the uploader's actual "art," and they just didn't bother to tag it. But if the uploader is the artist, I suspect that even if they tagged it poorly, it would be the highest quality version of the image.

Watermarks are shitty, but not forbidden.

If the issue is the fact that they're poorly sourced, then Loli pointed it out as well but images without watermarks also get poorly sourced by our userbase a lot. Bad sourcing is a general issue, and blaming it on watermarks would undermine how bad it is.

Check date of watermark version → ImgOps → Edit latest search date to before the watermark version → Check what you can find. It's troublesome and roundabout, but can help you find earlier versions.

Likewise, just a question, if someone technically reposts something, someone finds the “first” poster, but it is of inferior quality, has less tags/no source, or overall inferior material, is the first one elegible for deletion if submitted to the queue of our trusted media mods?

I'd say yes. Quality and sources are important. If someone uploads a better version with proper tagging and sourcing I'd gladly remove the old outdated version. Improvement =/= Repost.

What if someone posts the source image without the watermark, could we ask Media Mods to delete the 9gag version?

We can remove the version with the watermark. No biggy.

However here quality is important as well, so if the version without the watermark is of worse quality than the one with the watermark, it is most likely not the original due to the downgrade in quality and thus I'm tempted to keep the watermarked version.

Both wouldn't be correctly sourced regardless. People commonly understand that 9GAG isn't a source but just a watermark.

If there are two images and one has a banner and one doesn't, I suggest removing the one with the watermark unless it has a drop in quality. If the one without the watermark isn't sourced properly but the one with it is, simply copy the source over to the other image's description.

You could add a message saying “avoid third party image sharing sites like 9gag, ifunny or ICICI unless the original source is there”

I am against warning people for having watermarks, since that sounds like a really shitty idea that would drive away some users, and I am also against something telling people not to upload images with watermarks, as that really seems like more of a annoyance than an actual problem.

Likewise, just a question, if someone technically reposts something, someone finds the “first” poster, but it is of inferior quality, has less tags/no source, or overall inferior material, is the first one elegible for deletion if submitted to the queue of our trusted media mods?

Reposts with much better quality show spread easier and also generally make our site cleaner and easier to browse. If an image is extreme blurry, compressed, or badly formatted, and there is a repost with much better quality, the repost should be kept and the original deleted. If the original hasbetter sourcing and tags, simply copy the tags and source to the repost.

vs.

Obviously the one on the right is a more clear evidence of spread, and should be kept. (This isn't applicable to this image since they are in different galleries.)

There is a problem with finding the original source, since it may be lost to time or deleted, and the only other instance of it is on iFunny or 9gag. Also, most of the time the real source can't be proven unless it's the original artist or is stated to be OC in the source. However even if you don't know if it's the real source, you should definitely post it. There are some people who are just assholes and expect everyone to reverse google search to find the source, when this can be hard when the image can't be found easily through reverse google search.

Honestly, I find water marks really annoying also, and I would be for a project to find images with watermarks and edit them out, then post them, but if no one says it's a repost then that's worse than uploading an image with a watermark. Also, it's really hard to edit out 9gag watermarks, but editing out iFunny/other banner watermarks is really easy, and there could be a movement organized to edit them out.

The only really "ultimate" rule of thumb is the image quality. When I went through sourcing the undertale gallery once, I found an unsourced image that looked like someone uploaded the tumbnail of the art. I removed and reuploaded the image sourced at the original quality the creator made it as.
Generally, in cases of image reposts, if the reposter sourced and tagged well, and the original is an untagged/poorly tagged unsourced image of same quality, I generally remove the original. I can't blame the reposter for not knowing it was already there, and they obviously care more about it than the original poster. That having been said, if the original one is of better quality, it's still of better quality regardless. so the repost is removed and metadata added from the other.

I agree that watermarks by non-content creators look terrible, but that doesn't mean anything about why they should be banned.

Simmilarly, I do agree that users should try to source the original creators whenever possible, but, often, that isn't really possible. That having been said…

Verbose wrote

We once discussed if we could moderate for sourcing images, especially art.

We actually are cracking down on this a little bit more than we used to. If you upload an image and the source is impossible to find, we get it. But if we notice a pattern of a users repeatedly not sourcing images when it is clear that they are just being lazy (especially when we put a gallery notification as with Undertale), we will issue warnings.

Websites that add their banners generally lowers the quality of the image, especially jpgs.