https://e621.net/posts?tags=status%3Apending+

This approval queue is absolutely gigantic, we need more staff to approve these.

Awesome art like this is left in limbo for weeks: post #4506954

I should really stop uploading so much.

We still haven't recovered from the holiday season, unfortunately.

cinder said:
We still haven't recovered from the holiday season, unfortunately.

damn, even our robot is needing a break.

I wonder if having like seasonal janitors would be a good idea to help pick up the slack when the workload gets high or, like, morale, or whatever, gets low. although, I guess you'd probably just want a consistent team that you know that you can trust rather than a bunch of temporary peeps that you don't really know.

After the last staff recruitment drive only such a tiny handful of janitors actually seemed to be added, and then quite a few of those ended up with moderator rank as well to further dilute their time available to accept posts. A few staff have even resigned since then making it almost net-zero.

I don't understand why so few janitors were promoted when I'm sure a lot of people applied - were all the applicants that bad? Or is the barrier just set real high? The "unrestricted uploads" flag is given out often enough which is pretty much one half of the job - if you're trusted to approve your own uploads, why not others?

Being able to delete posts is obviously the other part, but I think it's quite hard to abuse without getting noticed. People will very quickly notice their posts being deleted for unfair reasons, and it's not a terribly difficult thing to revert since it's all logged.

faucet said:
After the last staff recruitment drive only such a tiny handful of janitors actually seemed to be added, and then quite a few of those ended up with moderator rank as well to further dilute their time available to accept posts. A few staff have even resigned since then making it almost net-zero.

That's not true.

From what I understand, the main purpose of that recruitment drive was finding moderators.
Based on the applications that were sent in, 10 interviews took place. As a result, 4 janitors and 3 moderators were hired, myself included.
The only janitor-turned-moderator is Spe, who wasn't even a part of this drive. Plus, Slyroon became an admin once again.

Last year, two janitors retired. However, that was primarily because they had other things going on in their lives, did not have much time for e621.
Pretty much all of this is publicly accessible information.

The approval queue had piled up a little, that much is true.
But it's not a normal occurrence. Last month, the queue hovered around 2-3k, with dips to 1k at one point.
Trust me, we'll be fine.

I also retained approval permissions after switching roles, so I effectively perform both roles still. We keep track of individual approval numbers, and mine have remained pretty consistent after switching roles, so we didn't exactly lose a janitor with that switch either.

It's not that the barrier is extremely high, it's more that we don't want or need too many new people at once. Trying to coordinate a group of staff becomes more difficult the larger that group gets, so bringing on a bunch of people indiscriminately would be chaotic. The staff team is actually highly coordinated; it isn't just people who happen to be given approval powers going and doing their own thing. Bringing new people into that fold is a rather detailed process, and it takes time. This is important for us to remain at least somewhat consistent between staff members regarding how posts are approved.

I'm certain that we aren't permanently done bringing on new staff, but as it's always been, it'll be done in groups of about two or three at a time, and only as needed. We did get hundreds of applicants from the staff drive - true, many of them weren't really good candidates, but plenty more were. We still have all the applications in our system and will continue to pick from that list as we need more people. This is far more manageable than simply giving a staff role to everyone who applied and looked good enough.

The queue is still a bit backlogged due to low staff activity during the holiday season (predictably), but it will likely get caught up soon. If not, we'll probably bring on another batch of janitors to assist. The situation isn't really dire though. We're at roughly 5000 pending posts, which sounds like a lot, but really isn't too bad once you consider that about 2000 new posts get uploaded every day. That's about 2.5 days' worth of backlog.

I tried applying for the Janitor position back when the site was looking for new staff but because I refused to create a Discord account I was denied. It's a shame, really. I'm here all the time and I'd love to be able to help out the site more than I already do.

Discord use is not the hill to die on. Discord isn't bad. It's not the app to make a reluctant, principled stand on over whatever it is people don't like about it. If you're going to disqualify yourself, let it be because you don't want to help people and solve things for e621. For me, the biggest issue was opening a Discord instance at all under my degenerate account, because it was created and only exists for e621's Discord, which I had ghosted when it stopped being fun for me. I use my main Discord account regularly, and switching accounts constantly through the app would be a pain in the ass. But keeping a browser Discord instance open isn't that bad.

When I do furry shit, which is daily, I open all that in a private window (don't want hundreds of thousands of porn pages in history) with a tab for e621's Discord at the end. I just read the two help channels, sometimes answer questions, and ignore the rest. That's a very small burden. The chat and other channels are too zoomer for me or something. I don't know. I don't really relate to the active users, and I already feel satisfied with my socializing elsewhere. I just want to talk shop about e621 and don't really care about being a furry and whatever that entails. I miss the people from 2018-19 when I was active in that server, as much as half of them annoyed me. Rip in peace, petmaster.

abadbird said:
stuff

Idk man, with how discord's going, not using discord is becoming a more valid hill to die on

abadbird said:
Discord use is not the hill to die on. Discord isn't bad. It's not the app to make a reluctant, principled stand on over whatever it is people don't like about it.

I remember when people said these exact words about Facebook. I stuck with my instincts then and don't regret a thing.

I still haven't signed up for Twitter, which I count as a positive thing especially with what's going on there lately.

I genuinely can't comprehend how people keep in contact with their friend groups if they don't use Discord or some other similar instant messaging service. do you use like email groups or SMS chains or Steam or something? do you just not have friends outside of your local area?

i got offered the position but i had to refuse due to just, life.
i do have interest in it, but i doubt life would allow me.

sipothac said:
I genuinely can't comprehend how people keep in contact with their friend groups if they don't use Discord or some other similar instant messaging service. do you use like email groups or SMS chains or Steam or something? do you just not have friends outside of your local area?

other instant messengers exists obviously other than discord, I use line since i live in the east, but it is an interesting question to those who don't use ANY.

cinder said:
That's not true.

From what I understand, the main purpose of that recruitment drive was finding moderators.
Based on the applications that were sent in, 10 interviews took place. As a result, 4 janitors and 3 moderators were hired, myself included.
The only janitor-turned-moderator is Spe, who wasn't even a part of this drive. Plus, Slyroon became an admin once again.

Last year, two janitors retired. However, that was primarily because they had other things going on in their lives, did not have much time for e621.
Pretty much all of this is publicly accessible information.

The approval queue had piled up a little, that much is true.
But it's not a normal occurrence. Last month, the queue hovered around 2-3k, with dips to 1k at one point.
Trust me, we'll be fine.

If we look at the action log for the addition/removal of post approvers since the drive:

+ furrypickle
+ Lafcadio
+ scaliespe
+ DubsTheFox
- leomole
- ajk
- KiraNoot
- Nicklo6649
- Blind_Guardian
- Millcore
- LightningZBolt
+ Catt0s
+ Cinder
+ meowmcmeow
- bitWolfy
+ Recursion
+ OneFattyCatty
- SnowWolf
+ slyroon

Since slyroon's recent promotion, it's now at +1 instead of ±0. Of course some of these demoted staff probably hadn't touched the approval queue in a while (or at all) so they have at least been replaced by active approvers, though I'd still say my "almost net-zero" statement isn't wrong. Maybe I missed one or two people because the moderation log can be difficult to read when there's all the other stuff, but I don't think it would alter the outcome much.

There's currently 33 approvers, and if they were all doing approvals (they're not, because that number is including Bad Dragon staff and admins that primarily do other jobs) it would only require them to review less than 100 posts each per day to result in no backlog at all. I assume a large portion of the backlog is just borderline quality/relevancy posts that nobody wants to outright delete, but that information is hidden from regular members now so I've no way to confirm.

The vast majority of posts in the queue right now are under 17 days old, so they're not at risk of getting deleted any time soon, while most posts that are soon to meet their doom seem like they deserve it.

The only janitor-turned-moderator is Spe, who wasn't even a part of this drive.

I thought you were the same, but it turns out you're a moderator-turned-janitor instead. 🙃

sipothac said:
I genuinely can't comprehend how people keep in contact with their friend groups if they don't use Discord or some other similar instant messaging service. do you use like email groups or SMS chains or Steam or something? do you just not have friends outside of your local area?

I can't stand Discord but I've ended up using it out of necessity (for e621 purposes and other reasons) so I've just got some throwaway accounts that have none of my personal information and only use the browser app. I've vowed to never pay them a single cent for Nitro and only be a leech on their bandwidth. It however pisses me off when people are ranting about how bad Discord is when they're paying for a Nitro subscription, my brother in Christ you are part of the problem for supporting them monetarily.

I keep contact with most my friends with Telegram (which actually has functional mobile notifications because I'm not at my computer all day, every day). Morally, it's probably not much better, but I'm not paying them any money either. Most people who exclusively use Discord are probably zoomers that I don't wish to talk to anyway. Whenever we voice call, it's Discord however. I miss the days we all used TeamSpeak because the audio quality didn't feel like I have ears full of sand and I wasn't constantly having to adjust individual people's microphone volume so I could actually hear them.

For local friends I use WhatsApp which is probably the worst of them all. I hate that app with a passion.

faucet said:
After the last staff recruitment drive only such a tiny handful of janitors actually seemed to be added, and then quite a few of those ended up with moderator rank as well to further dilute their time available to accept posts. A few staff have even resigned since then making it almost net-zero.

I don't understand why so few janitors were promoted when I'm sure a lot of people applied - were all the applicants that bad? Or is the barrier just set real high? The "unrestricted uploads" flag is given out often enough which is pretty much one half of the job - if you're trusted to approve your own uploads, why not others?

Being able to delete posts is obviously the other part, but I think it's quite hard to abuse without getting noticed. People will very quickly notice their posts being deleted for unfair reasons, and it's not a terribly difficult thing to revert since it's all logged.

There's also a problem to consider, most people that are qualified don't actually want the position. I applied as a janitor, and quickly realized I didn't actually want to be a janitor when the test was over
Could I be a janitor? Yeah, I passed the test, I could be if I really wanted to, but I currently have no desire to be a janitor
I'd imagine the same goes for many with the unlimited uploads permission, they likely have no desire to become a janitor

I can't speak exactly (since I wasn't there), but I can read up and make some assumptions
Last I knew, most staff applications were disqualified from the get-go due to little to no site activity and/or having current records (having a record on your account is practically an instant disqualification for as long as you have it)
the drive I was a part of had some 200 applications, some 50 of which made it through to the curated list presented to other staff members to vote on
out of those, about 10 made it to an interview
out of those, six were brought on board

The interview process isn't a walk in the park, but it isn't that hard either
you have to both pass the tests presented, and be liked by the current staff
a lot of people miss one of those, or have some other thing preventing them from joining the team (e.x., no activity, bad (rude/disruptive/combative/etc) activity, records)
it's never really as simple as tossing more people at the problem, since we don't want people that won't mesh well with the team, or those that won't do well

Regardless of how easy it can be perceived to clean up things, it still takes time to review and clean up those things, and diminishes the site reputation. A lot of people already see us as power hungry tyrants, we don't actually need one of those in our midst to validate those feelings

faucet said:
There's currently 33 approvers

For a kinda sorta read on our "active" approvers, 13 had >1500 approvals in december (two of those being admins)
11 > 2000
8 > 3000
7 > 3500
3 > 4000
2 > 5500 (both admins)
1 > 6400

That's up from one of our worst example used internally, March 2023
Where only 8 approvers managed >1500, with one of them managing almost 28,000 (the next closest being under 5,000 - zero admins)

It's also up from November, where 9 approvers managed >1500, with one managing over 13,000 (the next closest being almost 5,000 - zero admins)

faucet said:
I can't stand Discord but I've ended up using it out of necessity (for e621 purposes and other reasons) so I've just got some throwaway accounts that have none of my personal information and only use the browser app. I've vowed to never pay them a single cent for Nitro and only be a leech on their bandwidth. It however pisses me off when people are ranting about how bad Discord is when they're paying for a Nitro subscription, my brother in Christ you are part of the problem for supporting them monetarily.

Don't mind me bitching about Discord while having an active nitro subscription since 2017

donovan_dmc said: ...

To add to what Donovan said, from what I understand, being on Discord is a somewhat hard requirement for new staff members.
Not a complete dealbreaker, and you don't have to hang out there all the time... but not being there means that you would be completely out of the loop with the latest happenings.
And that's really not ideal.

Plus, Discord is where janitors discuss contentious posts, that's where the moderators have their queue, that's where new features are being developed and discussed.
It's kind of important if you want to work together with the rest of the team.
... also, that's where we all play Wordle. And that's what's really important.

sipothac said:
I genuinely can't comprehend how people keep in contact with their friend groups if they don't use Discord or some other similar instant messaging service. do you use like email groups or SMS chains or Steam or something? do you just not have friends outside of your local area?

For me, it's a combination of IRC to talk to some people, Telegram for some others, message boards for others. I don't need to be in constant/instant communication with all my friends all the time to keep in contact.

Personally, I'd be fine if there was something like an IRC or Matrix server set up with a bridge to Discord. That way, those of us that don't want to use Discord can use an alternative and still be in more or less direct and instant contact with people on Discord. I understand that self-hosting an IRC or Matrix server has a cost (people having to maintain it and the bridge), but it would open the door to more potential recruits, and be nice to those who only use Discord begrudgingly and would prefer one of the other options.

cinder said:
To add to what Donovan said, from what I understand, being on Discord is a somewhat hard requirement for new staff members.
Not a complete dealbreaker, and you don't have to hang out there all the time... but not being there means that you would be completely out of the loop with the latest happenings.

At least when I was offered, it was a dealbreaker. Which, I can understand that not being in the loop with moderator discussions would be an issue with knowing and being able to follow updates to the rules and more readily get answers to questions, so I can't really fault that. But there are alternatives and possible compromises that I hope can be considered or explored.

abadbird said:
Discord use is not the hill to die on. Discord isn't bad. It's not the app to make a reluctant, principled stand on over whatever it is people don't like about it. If you're going to disqualify yourself, let it be because you don't want to help people and solve things for e621. For me, the biggest issue was opening a Discord instance at all under my degenerate account, because it was created and only exists for e621's Discord, which I had ghosted when it stopped being fun for me. I use my main Discord account regularly, and switching accounts constantly through the app would be a pain in the ass. But keeping a browser Discord instance open isn't that bad.

When I do furry shit, which is daily, I open all that in a private window (don't want hundreds of thousands of porn pages in history) with a tab for e621's Discord at the end. I just read the two help channels, sometimes answer questions, and ignore the rest. That's a very small burden. The chat and other channels are too zoomer for me or something. I don't know. I don't really relate to the active users, and I already feel satisfied with my socializing elsewhere. I just want to talk shop about e621 and don't really care about being a furry and whatever that entails. I miss the people from 2018-19 when I was active in that server, as much as half of them annoyed me. Rip in peace, petmaster.

Making a Discord virtual server for a community with content largely banned on Discord. XD

i applied to help out. but didnt make the cut. approvals can be slow at times and id wouldnt mind helping out with approvals but it is what it is. im a patient person, i can wait lol.

I guess an alternative is a voting pool. Top votes (with anti-Sybil measures?) = secondary approval queue with different rules/priorities? But this leads to situation where a popular image can actually be breaking rules. i.e. Stuff like DNP and character bans could slip through... It's also asking for people to give honest opinions of thousands off images and we just know people will abuse that. :(

People already try to use votes & favorites to justify why something shouldn't be deleted, we don't need to actually validate that