[X] My Assistant

I'll try to keep this as brief as possible, but I can be long-winded sometimes.
It's been an interesting year, that's for sure. (That incident in July... )
Things have passed, though, and we should look to a new year--and hopefully lots more!--of degeneracy.
I hope you've all made some resolutions, and I hope that you keep to them .
With that said, though, I think some improvements could be made to the site.

In particular, imagesets should be penalized.
that's the title!

There's a number of reasons why I believe this should be done, but I'll try to explain the main ones.

1. Imagesets are trivial to create
Let's take a look at the definition of an imageset:
https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Gallery_Categories

Drawn content that does not constitute a comic or cg set (e.g. loose images, screenshots, image dumps, etc.)
Images within such galleries are preferred to have a singular theme (e.g. singular artist, series, character, or fetish).

After classifying hentai into various categories, imagesets are essentially everything else.
With that, it should be somewhat obvious that there are very little requirements to create an imageset.
And indeed, unless an imageset is a compilation or has forbidden content there is very little reason for an imageset to be expunged.
Some requirements exist such as having at least 8 images, but it is trivial to find 8 images.
A gallery can also be expunged if it's updated more than twice per 30 days, but artist imagesets are an exception to that, and that can also be skirted around by, well, creating another imageset.

That's pretty much all that you have to avoid. It might seem a little strenuous because of the wording, but it's actually really simple, and it's far more likely that any given imageset should not be expunged than the opposite.

Procuring images is probably the easiest step. There are a lot of sites out there you can get those images from. There are third-party sites such as other gallery systems, boorus, image boards, and whatnot.
You can get them from the artists themselves, as there are thousands upon thousands of artists just posting content on a number of sites.
Either way, it's ludicrously simple, and quality-checking is not needed.

Really, it's not needed at all, because, well ...

2. There is no such thing as a "complete" imageset and there is no benefit in trying to create one

The first part is explicitly stated in the wiki
https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Expunging#Different_Versions

Different Versions -
All versions of the following may exist simultaneously:
Imagesets of any theme, if uploaded by a different user. There is no such thing as a "more complete" collection in this regard.

This means that, unless your gallery has the exact same images as another gallery and does not violate the rules above, your imageset can stay, and there is little anyone can do about it, even if they want to.
Okay, I know that doesn't sound too bad, but that's where the second part comes in.
Past a certain point, looking for new images to add to your imageset is pointless. Why should you? Aside from an intangible sense of pride or accomplishment, there is not much to gain from doing so.
In fact, it can be argued that it's beneficial to do the opposite. If you don't have the "complete" content of an imageset, that means you can add more later, and bump your gallery.

This aspect of imagesets is noticeably different from every other gallery.
If you upload a similar quality doujinshi as a previously-uploaded gallery, it is likely that your gallery will be expunged as it is "already uploaded."
If you upload an incomplete CG set, it is possible for your gallery to be expunged by a newer, more complete gallery as it is "replaced."

Taking that into account, I think it's pretty simple to say that ...

3. Imagesets are inherently lower quality and should deserve less rewards, or else there is not much incentive to upload anything else



Those are my stats. Note that I've done in a year (or less) what's taken other users multiple years to do.
Frankly, I do not believe I (and imagesets in general) deserve most of those views and hits, for those reasons listed above.

It can be easy to say "just disable imagesets and filter uploaders!" but that is obviously not what's being done.
The general viewer will wank to the first thing that catches their eye, and when imagesets are so easy to create and upload, they're far more likely to see those.
And when so many of them are viewing imagesets, and they decide to contribute to the site, what do they do?
Do they spend the time to purchase and scan a doujinshi? Do they learn how to use image editing software and typeset a translation?
Thankfully, some of them will, but the immediate other option is obvious; they will make imagesets, because they're easy to make and there's little-to-no quality regulation to keep them in check.

It's a bit of a slippery slope argument, but given recent trends I've observed, I think it's at least somewhat true.

So what should be done?

I think the most important step is for the gallery system to be able to distinguish imagesets from other types of galleries.
Okay, okay, I know there's the "Imageset" category, but that exists solely for imagesets of Eastern origin. Western imagesets are lumped into "Western" and we do have a "western imageset" tag.
However, there is no effort to distinguish Non-H imagesets from standalone works. 3D imagesets, western non-h imagesets, and cosplayer imagesets all exist as well, and we don't distinguish them.

Penalizing solely the imageset category does nothing, as uploaders interested in reaping the "benefits" of uploading imagesets can just upload in other categories.

Alright, so let's say we're able to separate imagesets from stand-alone galleries. What's next?
We can slap a Gallery Point penalty on them, just like we already do for Misc galleries, yeah?
I mean, we could, and I definitely think that's important, but I think Toplist points should be penalized as well. A lot of people upload partially to reach those rankings.

Even then, I don't think that's nearly enough. In fact, it may have a detrimental effect. If imagesets get 25% (or 1/4) of what other galleries get, then why not just upload 4 imagesets?
The amount of effort to create multiple imagesets is still practically nothing compared to a "proper" gallery.

This is just an idea, but I think a really elegant solution would be to "hide" imagesets by default on the first 1-10? pages of the Front Page. That would simultaneously decrease the views given by imagesets and encourage the creation of "better" imagesets. If they're only readily visible by default through searches, there's incentive to organize and tag imagesets properly so they can be searched, instead of getting easy views from front page crowding.

I'm tired now and I don't have much else to say. I might edit this later.

TL;DR imagesets are really easy to make so they should not be as rewarding to upload

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I think treating generic non-artist galleries the same way misc is treated could possibly help, or just flat out include them in the misc description. I think artist image sets have their place and can help people discover new artist, I know I’ve found at least a few pixiv artist I like from imagesets.

As more artists move to Fanbox/Patreon/etc, having a category for those contents becomes increasingly necessary.
With that in mind, Big Tits Gallery 4 is fucking bullshit that is almost always downscaled booru galleries that don't get dealt with because image sets can't be superior or inferior.
This is compounded by having a significantly less robust tag system that boorus are better at handling anyway, such as actually tagging artists on a per-image basis.
Update restrictions on imagesets should be better enforced, but the restrictions as a whole should be lightened (the 30-day rule has numerous exceptions that make it difficult to apply to anything that isn't blatantly low quality). I would say 14 days, but I don't know enough to make an educated suggestion about the specifics here.

Public artist gallery: significantly reduce incentive because of how trivial it is to flood sections by ripping from Pixiv. There's merit to archiving deletion-prone artists, even then I believe there is much less merit than translating/scanning/etc.
Paywalled: no reason to discourage other than fake updates. Lots of clerical headache if it's separated into a new category, I would hope that an additional imageset misc tag (paid content?) would add sufficient visibility for the same reason that translated:english does in doujin/manga.
Non-specific artist/booru copy/etc: remove entirely, fuck those guys.

...
Paywalled: no reason to discourage other than fake updates. Lots of clerical headache if it's separated into a new category, I would hope that an additional imageset misc tag (paid content?) would add sufficient visibility for the same reason that translated:english does in doujin/manga.
Non-specific artist/booru copy/etc: remove entirely, fuck those guys.

A big concern I can see on any kind of "paid content" tag, as well as rewarding paid and non paid artist sets differently, is that it's very subject to change. Artists (especially patreons), release stuff that's paywalled all the time, before releasing it for free later down the line.

I wholly think generic image sets, like the booru-esque ones you've mentioned and I've mentioned in a previous post, should be penalised in some form.

I don't think any particular exceptions need to be made for artist-specific imagesets.
They are already set apart from imagesets (and other galleries) by the fact that they can be continuously updated (within reason).

People do appear to value these imagesets over others, but I think that a general penalty on all imagesets is offset by the fact that they can essentially be bumped consistently, assuming that the artist is somewhat active.

(I actually don't think that the casual viewer cares whether or not it's a creator or even themed imageset, but I don't have the numbers to justify that at the moment)