Topic: Feature request: “Needs minor fixes” hold + message before deletion (non-urgent cases)

Posted under Site Bug Reports & Feature Requests

kneiff

Member

I’m posting this because I keep running into the same problem, and it’s starting to discourage me from uploading here.

When a piece clearly represents a lot of work, but gets deleted immediately over a small, quickly fixable issue, the end result feels brutal. Not because I can’t handle quality standards. I’m here because I like high standards. The problem is the workflow: high-effort uploads ends up getting the same outcome as low-effort spam, even when the issue could be fixed in minutes.

I know the janitor team is dealing with a huge volume of junk, and I’m not trying to single out individuals. Mistakes happen. What I’m asking for is a process that better matches the reality that some failures are minor and fixable. (And importantly: I’m talking about non-urgent issues.)

Suggestion ("Needs minor fixes" flow):

1. If an upload shows clear effort and the issue is minor, don’t delete it immediately.
2. Put it in a temporary “Needs minor fixes” state (hidden from public view is fine).
3. Send a short direct message telling the artist what to fix.
4. Give a small window (e.g., 24–48 hours) to re-upload or edit.
6. If it’s not fixed in time, then delete it as normal.

This is good for both sides:
- It keeps standards high while reducing unnecessary removals of good work.
- It saves time (including janitors') compared to repeated re-uploads and back-and-forth.
- It makes the process feel less punishing for serious contributors, without giving AI-slop extra slack.

Why I’m frustrated:
Seeing "deleted for quality" on something I poured serious free time into is stressful, and it’s making me hold back uploads I’d otherwise share here. I want to keep contributing, but I need the system to distinguish between "low quality" and "minor fix needed".

Example:
I spent ~90 hours generating and sorting ~450 video snippets, then manually cut the best ones into a 9-minute animation. It got deleted because my signature was mistaken for an artifact. I reached out, and it turned out to be a misunderstanding. No fix needed, janitor's mistake (no hard feelings). But the deletion itself was still a massive gut punch.

This has happened multiple times now. In my experience it’s usually either (a) a minor issue I can fix quickly, or (b) a borderline call that could be resolved by a short message before deletion.

If others have had the same experience, feel free to share what happened and what helped.

kalethOrebiter

Privileged

kneiff said:

100% agree, those features have been proposed a lot and all the staff agrees it would be nice.

The problem is having the manpower to implement it. The very small amount of staff working on the code is shared between e621 and e6ai, and most of the time e6ai gets port of features/fixes from e621 — and e621 really don't have artistic-context, nor a rejection rate that would justify that feature. Keep in mind that every single member of the staff (including the "lead programmer" and the lead admin) are unpaid volunteers; it's very hard to get new complex features.

The staff is well aware of the frustration generated by the state of the site. They do try to be lenient. They even spend extra time on the e6ai's discord to review all arts before they are submitted to point at the defects and help reduce the risk of deletion. Also, they can reset your upload limit if you fall to 0 upload/day.

TLDR: Staff are doing the best with the tools they have, and are willing to help. If you want to help as a developper (or if you know someone who is), you can also check the recruitment post.

kneiff

Member

kalethorebiter said: it's very hard to get new complex features.

At this point, I do see a temporary solution without implementing new features:

Maybe make an exception for videos / animations?
- This minimizes extra janitor workload: There are very few video uploads per day on e6ai.
- Animations are inherently 'hard-effort' already: General hardware bottleneck, long play-time, codecs and upload sizes, etc.
- Animations are very popular.

This might justify the "special treatment" that an animation director would receive.

Suggestion:
1. If a high-effort animation has a small issue, don't delete immediately.
2. The janitor should DM the director first and explain the issue.
3. If the director does not address or fix the issue in the DM, delete his post.

"Special treatment" for animations is actually necessary:
One can always upload images on discord and ask for feedback before uploading. But videos are too large for discord, so there's no way to check for potential issues before uploading animations.

kalethorebiter said: If you want to help as a developper

Oh I am sooo close to writing an application..!!! I'd love to get involved with you guys, really! However, I am a full-time developer already. Also I am currently unfamiliar with your tech-stack (that will change soon-ish, web-development will be a part of my current project).