What are the current guidelines for determining the appropriate order to organize related posts?

Relevant help page here: e621:post_relationships

The above wiki help page seems like it could be expanded, in order to ensure more consistency in tagging/linking of parent/sibling/child post relationships.
Note: 'image' is used below, but discussion ought to include any content type or format.

Potential Improvements

What is a series of steps that can/should be followed in order to determine, appropriate relationships between posts, that can be applied consistently?
If someone has already developed an effective, generally-accepted process, the wiki help page can be expanded to include this process, so users can find an express procedure, rather than relying on assumed norms.

Example guidelines

What follows is a provisional set of rules, based on the type of relations between images. Most (if not all) are based on examples seen in the wild.

Note: a flowchart or diagram would probably be more suitable for a final product. The table format presented here is only for clarity.
This is not to be taken as the only possible solution. Other solutions may be valid and better.
This is also not to be interpreted as a strict, finalized structure or hierarchy. This is definitely missing some corner cases, and could use additional critique/development.
Input and discussion are welcome.

General guidelines

• Criteria for determining which post should be considered the parent/ancestor/antecedent, and the order in which to set sequential parent/child chains.
• For a multi-page comic, the above help page recommends using a pool instead.

Sibling post guidelines (i.e. posts that share the same common parent post)

IMO I don't think a super in-depth and stringent criteria list for parent/child post relationships would be helpful for new users (i.e., seeing a wall of text would probably be very intimidating). It should be kept short and concise. This does not mean however that having a procedure or list to follow is necessarily a bad thing, it just needs to be in a collapsable section as to not flood the user with too much information.

All I'm saying is that users who know about the parent/child post relationships would probably already know how it is used on the site, while users who don't know about it would probably be avoiding it altogether.

As far as I'm concerned, you should never have parent-child post chains.

Like, if it's a comic with more than 3 pages, you should be using a pool instead.
For other cases, just have one parent post, and multiple child posts.

For posts with alt versions, I usually pick the most "basic" image, and set it as a parent for others.
I don't really see the point in having different guidelines for "clothing", "messy", etc. versions. That just needlessly complicates things.

Agree on both--this is what this thread's meant to get at.

Parent-child chains are tedious to navigate, and there were at least a few still out there. The wiki help page is mostly silent on the matter, so people will still end up chaining posts that way.

Moving this line:
Please do not use parent/children for pages of a comic. It's better to use a pool for these. to underneath Examples often include and being more clear about the threshold (3+ pages or whatever) will hopefully catch more eyes. Its current position at the very bottom puts it visually as part of the Flag for Deletion heading.

Three or four examples like the help page currently has is plenty, but as it stands there's only one nudge toward how to decide on a parent post (i.e. This is usually the bigger, finished version.). Rewriting it to include more hinting, e.g.

Examples often include

• A finished piece (parent) and any sketches that came before it (child).
• The base version of an image (parent) and a gender-swapped version (child).
• A clean, safe-for-work picture (parent) and its NSFW variations (child).

Since Flash isn't supported on the site any more, this existing line will need attention as well:

• Different versions of the same flash

I hope it's okay to post on this despite it being almost a month ago. It's relevant to what I was searching for.

The wiki page on post relationships doesn't say anything (unless I missed it) on short sequences of images or short comics. Especially with the behavior of a parent inheriting favorites from a deleted child I found that common usage confusing. Re-reading this topic, I see that was already discussed.

I was searching to find if using parent/child relationships for related images that are not versions of the same images is even appropriate, despite often seeing the feature used that way. I don't see anything in the wiki implying that particular use case.

If it's indeed appropriate to use parent-child relationships for short sequences that are not variations of the same image, or the pages of a very short comic, guidance as to when to use parent/child vs. pools would be helpful.

Based on the discussion here, I will currently assume parent-child chains are to be avoided, but parent-child relationships for sequences that are a couple page comics or related images that are not variations of the same parent image are acceptable. If so, I think the rules could use revision to make that clear though. Pools are to be used if there are more than three pages.

On the topic of Flash, it can still be used with a Flash projector, the current version (last version?) being:
https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flashplayer_32_sa.exe (For Windows)
https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html (Non-debug version.
Links to other OS versions.)

Associating .swf files with the projector allows most to run correctly. Most that fail depend on other online files.

bitwolfy said:
As far as I'm concerned, you should never have parent-child post chains.

Like, if it's a comic with more than 3 pages, you should be using a pool instead.
For other cases, just have one parent post, and multiple child posts.

For posts with alt versions, I usually pick the most "basic" image, and set it as a parent for others.
I don't really see the point in having different guidelines for "clothing", "messy", etc. versions. That just needlessly complicates things.

As a current example of how specific guidance would help with this I posted a four image sequence K-9 made. It's exactly four so I didn't make it a pool, but I thought back to this in avoiding a parent-child chain.

It was edited by another to make it a chain:
https://e621.net/posts/2929715

zeorp said:
As a current example of how specific guidance would help with this I posted a four image sequence K-9 made. It's exactly four so I didn't make it a pool, but I thought back to this in avoiding a parent-child chain.

A 4-post sequence should definitely be made a pool. Even a 3-post sequence could be a pool.

watsit said:
A 4-post sequence should definitely be made a pool. Even a 3-post sequence could be a pool.

Thanks. I will get to it for that one when I have time later if someone else doesn't.

How does it work when an artist has a sheet with a sequence but also crops (sometimes of higher resolution), which would then be a pool? Exclude the single image sheet from the pool but make it parent to each image? Put the sheet as the last image of the pool?

~~

Someone did create the pool.