hello! I think something that might work to update the site a little is to change the image for the thumbnail cover used to hide "rated" material (whether NSFW or gore, I'm not sure as I don't tend to click on these images to view them. xD)

right now its sort of a goofy yellow smiley face with bright colors and graphic-style sphere rendering - and I could see it alienating someone who might not want that image in particular to repeat across their gallery if they had a lot of that type of content to upload.

I could also see it being helpful to differentiate between what types of content is behind the thumbnail, like using red drops as the image to signify blood/gore, or using a large letter "M" with a strike through it to designate mature/nsfw content. some people might be more willing to view gore content and others might be more willing to view mature content.

of course, I could also understand the argument that the old-school style weird smiley is a piece of old internet charm and should be left alone, but these were just my thoughts as I was browsing the site earlier. I could see it deterring potential new members and I personally am unlikely to upload any of my drawings with significant blood in them because xD haha call me sensitive but it's a weird image for me to think about having over a piece I otherwise feel is a serious story beat for a character or story.

Content-coded thumbnails would make guest browsing a lot friendlier: the tooltips give a heads-up, but there's nothing to tell submissions apart at a glance, and since this site drops the curtain over moderate violence alongside graphic nudity, it may be warding casual eyes away from subjects they otherwise wouldn't object to. All you'd need is a scheme that's good for every combination.

For sprucing up the images, I think this site has a mascot? What about a house riff on Ambaaaargh's Censorship Pandas? Early-2000s 3D prerender has kitsch, but is the only part of the UI that looks visibly out of date.

I would love to be able to upload custom thumbnails; in fact, I had plans to propose something similar to the Censorship Pandas that Dionysus suggested. My idea would have been to create a "sticker pack" or "theme set" feature, full of cover images, with one for every possible combination of ratings, with the option of choosing from a handful of default themes (light, dark, slick, techy, beachy.. whatever) that all users would be able to access automatically. And, similarly to the way that Furvilla's Forum Vistas work, users could pay a small fee to create their own set (Custom Vistas cost roughly $5.00 USD), and buy additional copies of it ($1.00 USD) to distribute to friends or re-sell in the player-run markets. It wouldn't be too hard to whip up a template and tutorial for Side7 users to design their own custom thumbnail sets — I was going to offer to help with setting up something like that after IRL things chill out.

Granted, I like the idea of being able to freely create custom thumbnails, but I've also been trying to think of small perks that would entice people to support the site, and this seems like a fair and do-able thing.

All very interesting suggestions. I'd have to come up with a method of displaying the rating combination on the thumbnail without having to pre-make each thumbnail since there are hundreds of combinations of all the rating qualifiers. I like the idea of having Oni (our mascot) giving a warning in the thumbnail about the rating, though.

I have some concerns over the custom thumbnails, if I'm understanding your suggestion correctly. I'd be worried someone would upload a misleading thumbnail, like something clean, while the actual image was filled with gore or something like that.

-- BK

i think this is a really cool idea! a way that could get around there being so many rating combinations, is 2 have like, a set few thumbnail images 4 each individual rating setting, and then a non specific 1 that applies 2 combinations of the ratings?

so 4 example like, if i uploaded a image that was filtered 4 violence, there could be a violence specific thumbnail, but if it was filtered 4 violence and language, the image could be like the existing 1 that doesnt specify what it is thats being filtered! or the user could have the option 2 choose between non specific, violence warning, and language warning images! (i am not sure if this would 100% work because it takes away from the scrolling through a gallery and being able 2 immediately see what an image is without clicking on it and getting the popup, but having the user choose between images that relate 2 the different ratings might help a little bit with it?)

So, the idea that immediately came to my mind on how to handle this is that the thumbnail be of the image, but blurred. Overlayed on the image would be something akin to "Rated M(ABC)". The one part that I'm going back-and-forth on is whether the confirmation popup with the rating explanation should still show. I'm leaning towards "Yes".

What do you think?

-- BK

A generic blur might not be sufficient for some scenes, but if there was an option to zoom into a neutral area of the artwork and/or blur in addition to that, that would probably be able to handle most situations.

As for anyone who would use falsely rated cover-ups to misrepresent the censored content, that sounds like a ban for trolling to me, or at least a high level infraction against their account. (Then again, multiple accounts aren't against the rules any more, so that wouldn't really deter a dedicated troll.)

Back to that "sticker set" idea I was kicking around.. the required amount of combos could be cut in half if Side7 used automatic, colored thumbnail borders, which would always be visible, layered above any custom thumbnail. On FurAffinity, they mark their mid-level-warning rated uploads with blue, and their high-rated-warning uploads with red.

As a stopgap measure, it would work: DeviantArt uses a blur, and even at default display dimensions it's so dissolved as to be illegible. I'd print it as two lines: Grade, and Content beneath. (Whether we want to stick to letters or write out in full is a typesetting question—if I can scrounge some spare time I'll draft mockups.) Keeping confirmation is always preferable, if only to waive liability. ;P

It would involve more work in the back-end, but pulling the current suggestions together, one possible schematic is for three components to the thumbnail:

1. Grade — Thumbnail border, tracing the inside of the UI frame. Mature v. AO; blue for the former, red for the latter?
2. Face — The 'main' thumbnail as Oni with a relevant expression and an appropriate icon in the scouter: Drugs (mellow/beer or cig), Language (shouting/symbol swears), Nudity (black bar over the eyes, derp tongue), Sensuality (flirty/heart), Violence (angry/target cursor), Other (suspicious/question mark). Only one would be shown at a time, with a default sort determined by which you think is the most critical, with users able to specify a face from applied ratings in case they feel certain content takes precedence in the piece.
3. Icons — Each content flag is marked discretely as a secondary icon along the side. Possibly something like Cigarette (D), Explosive Speech Bubble (L), Bathing Suit (N), Heart (S), Knife (V), and a Question Mark (O). This would ensure all appropriate flags are displayed upfront, regardless of Face.

If designed as a dynamic overlay rather than individual images, it may be easier to implement code-wise. I for one think it would be hecking stylish. B^)

The "dynamic overlay" idea is exactly part of the thing I wanted to mockup, (if this poison ivy would kindly stop wrecking my day..) because that would ensure that the content had a consistent style throughout the site. Consistency is probably the most important thing, even if custom cropping/covers ever are implemented. If I make a set with my avatar, and use glowing, green letters in a unique font for the ratings/reasons, it could be confusing for a newcomer who doesn't know how to interpret that. They might think that it's a drawing of vines along the border, without realizing that it's actually spelling out M(D/A/V/L/N)+gore

Keep in mind, you're trying to squeeze all of this customization into a 100x100 thumbnail. But, I'm open to any mockups you want to do.

-- BK

this sounds like a good approach imo! I guess I do also see the point that blur might not be enough for all scenes depending, but just on a general principle I feel like that's a step in the right direction. I also like the idea of keeping the confirmation popup.

Well, the thought I had was about a 70% blur, and about a 20% darkening of the thumbnail. Between that and the overlayed text, I think the thumbnail would be sufficiently masked.

Now, the idea of colored borders to signify rated M and rated AO thumbnails could also be added.

-- BK

Did some mockups in Inkscape:

Background assumes blurred source, with translucent outline to keep legibility. Second row provides the largest text. Will need to round the corners more to match the basic frame.

Also, quick and dirty demo for a visual thumb (boxes to map elements):

(Detailed drawing is beyond my Inkscape skills so Oni examples will have to wait on actual sketches. )
A proper pixel artist can spruce these up, but as proof-of-concept I think it's feasible.

Thanks for the mockups.  The first 6 are along the lines of what I was thinking of.  Using a blur of at least 50%, and a brightness of 50%, so the thumbnail is blurred and darkened a bit. A conditional colored border shouldn't be difficult. 

I don't think the icons will work well. I fear they'll get lost in the thumbnail, and be easily missed. Plus, we're back to coming up with overlays that would be needed to match every combination of tags.

I'll work up a live example of what I mean and share it, possibly this weekend.

-- BK

Cats are weird, fluffy animals!🐈 er, I mean..

What if we used CSS image filters to apply blur on the client-side, and maybe put a rating thing in the corner? like the "IMG" and "LIT" ribbons?

Ooh, thank you for the mock-ups. I was considering using the CSS blur() and brightness() filters to modify the thumbnails. I like the rating ribbon/corner idea. My only negative about it is the lack of the rating qualifiers (DLNSVO). That's one of the goals is to make the rating reasons more visible.  But, otherwise, you've hit the nail on the head!

-- BK

That is a lot of information to put on the thumbnail, here it is, anyway:

Not much left of the thumbnail! doesn't really matter though, since it's blurred.

4 pngs - AO, M, T, E (E is kind of unnecessary?) 100x40px (includes the blank black bar) and maybe you could overlay text on top of the black bar if possible (beats having images for every combination of DLNSVO possible)

Well, Rated T thumbnails won't be blurred. Just M and AO. But, I like this idea, and yeah, text overlay using actual text and not an image overlay is pretty simple to do.

-- BK

I'm happy you like it, thank you

For anyone that wants to maybe preview this live in their web browser, if you know how to use the Inspect Element tool:

Add the following below/after img class=ribbon line, on a thumbnail:

https://pastebin.com/ADSVaCz6

You can change the DLNSVO as it's just text, and see what it'll look like with any combination

I could not figure out the blurring, it blurs the ribbon and ratings bar for me, too. I'm no web developer.

Colors of the ratings can be changed to whatever is required, I am not sure what they should be.

This is great!! Thank you for doing the mock-up like that. It's great to see a live version.

As far as the blurring goes, I will likely need to put an empty div over the thumbnail but under the ribbons and give it a background-filter blur. That way, the thumbnail is blurred, but the other elements are above the blur.

-- BK

@Sheepy These are absolutely beautiful. You have my endorsement. :D

I guess the only procedural question is would these only be used for the M+ screen, or would we want to adopt the footers across the board? They're clear and unobtrusive enough to work as a general standard.

Side note that thumbnails in the user feed &c. are double size (200x200), though if it's all configured as a style overlay it shouldn't be a problem adjusting to fit.

So long as it's possible, that's great 🙂

I guess the question here is, how much will adding those impact page load time/performance (I don't know)

On one hand, consistency. On the other.. the "E" and "T" may be unnecessary? 

I can provide a bigger version for those 200x200 thumbnails if required

There is another option, of just replacing the current image:

With Thorvald's profile picture:

I mean, look at that face, that face says all you need to know 😉 (thanks for the kind words btw)

Technically there's 4 thumbnail sizes. 200x200, 100x100, 50x50, and 25x25. Not that the 50x and 25x would be big enough for any additional info.

I love it. Maybe we'll just go with that. 😆

-- BK

Y'all are seriously gonna get me to finally make the HD redux, ain't'cha? XD