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Is fanart fluff? Could something be done to make it not fluff if so?
What's the opinion on posting non-oc fanart? Is it considered fluff (which seems to currently have a negative stigma attached to it based off of my reading of previous threads)? Would more effort need to be put on the behalf of the poster before it's accepted (theme / several works from the same artist / some sort of comment showing analysis, reflection, or appreciation)?
My guess for what most people would agree with is that posting fanart without anything else would certainly be fluff, but if you frame it along with a question, have a thread like "what's some of your favorite fanart?", or otherwise do something other than posting a link to an image, everything is fine.
Avoiding fluff is avoiding posting content that's consumed in a few seconds then tossed away (with a few exceptions). I think if you make it the slightest bit substantial, you won't have much issue. Starting a discussion is the easiest way to do that, but maybe you're also able to provide interesting insight into the piece that adds some value or something.
Ok, but should that effort come as a comment to a link post or should the art be linked in a text post along with the additional content?
The post itself should contain the prompt for discussion. Make a text post, use the text box to write about why you're sharing a particular piece of fan art (to discuss it, to share insights, or to ask opinions, or whatever), and include a link to the fan art in the body of the text post.
Don't bury the prompt in a comment on a link post. There's no guarantee your comment will remain visible if other people comment on your post. It could get buried.
Aight, this set of criteria works for me.
If all you want to do is post links to drawings, with no context or discussion, that would be considered fluff. (I certainly would consider it fluff!) It doesn't really fit with the idea that "In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important"
Why do you want to post fanart here, anyway? What's the point of that?
Cause I like art. I figure others would also appreciate art. It further expands the reach of the artist since I strive to always provide a source for the art that I find.
What's the point of anything? I spend a decent amount of time looking at art every day cause it makes me happy to find works that I really like, and I like to share my happiness.
More directly, I understand that this art can be considered fluff by itself so I want to know what additional value I as the "sharer" ought to provide such that it's not fluff.
I don't know. To me, there is no functional difference between the two types of post. But noone has ever asked if bare links to songs (like bare links to drawings) constitute fluff, so I've never had the chance to opine on the subject... until now. :)
For context: the one and only time I posted a song in ~music, I wrapped the link in some introductory text because the idea of a bare link to a YouTube video just didn't sit right with me.
A couple things:
For one, music doesn't naturally lend itself to quick consumption in the same way a meme or a piece of fanart does. Even most short pop songs will still be around 3 minutes long, requiring a similar amount of engagement as a short article. The issues that come from sharing music are a little different, in that people are both far less likely to actually listen to the thing posted than most other kinds of content and people generally have a hard time talking about music, it's just not something most of us are good at or want to do unless we go out of our way to learn to do so. If a change is made and we don't post bare links anymore, imo it makes more sense to make a change because links are not causing the community to engage with each other, not our principles about fluff. Though it's important to keep in mind that due to the nature of the medium, ~music will likely always be a little more on the "posting for the quality of the content" side rather than the "discussion starter" side, but that doesn't mean it should just be a page of music links with 0 comments either.
Also, there's several users coming from the mod team of LTT and other music related Reddit communities who have a lot of forward-thinking ideas about what to use ~music for and how the hierarchy system and other planned and possible future mechanics can make Tildes an ideal place for music recommendation and discovery through handling these links in a much more useful way than Reddit ever could. There's been a million walls of text typed with those ideas going in different directions, I don't see a need to argue for one specifically here, but simply put there's a lot of ideas for what to do with the music links (some just being natural extensions of planned features in the docs, some being ideas often repeated by certain users) and it's easy to see a utility that exceeds what we would normally describe as "fluff."
For what it's worth, I see where you're coming from. I've mostly stopped posting music links on ~music as it doesn't do that much right now. I have some ideas for threads to try to keep that place from being a wasteland of music links...there's a problem there, I just don't think it's one that's useful for comparing to instances of fluff.
There's a lot of conversation in that thread you linked and no reply from Deimos, so I wouldn't base too much on that. In that thread, I essentially said the same thing that I do here and others seemed to agree. Really, it just needs something to be substantial. If a photo will obviously spark a conversation and be a piece of content that enriches the site, that's probably good enough. If you want to share something that feels a little too disposable and passive, start a conversation about those things.
Having a loose line is working out fine and I don't see a reason to change it unless it starts to not work. Tildes, by the nature of the planned trust system, will have the benefit of not having to automate its solutions or rely on overworked mod teams that have to be strict for practical reasons. We can have judgement calls, and if they get out of hand then it's worth considering a different way of approaching it...but using Tildes is far from a fluffy experience at the moment and most every active user is doing what they can to create a high-quality culture on the site. Short of the obvious like "no just posting memes," I think blanket statements against entire genres of content are both really hard to do and unnecessary.
We're getting caught up on a definition about fluff, when really all we need to think about is if we can present something with substance or start a conversation.
I didn't know what fan art was prior to reading this, so I'm speaking based on this sentence from Wikipedia:
OC or not, I think it has a home in ~creative, and maybe in ~music and ~anime (a group I don't frequent so take my view on it w/ a grain of salt), iff it could generate some discussion. I think the distinction of appreciation vs. discussion is key to Tildes: stuff like /r/aww or /r/funny are for appreciation---and that is what I think the community means by the term fluff---, whereas Tildes is for discussion. If you think it could generate discussion, then it should be fine IMO.
Don't just post a pic because you like it, you can start a more general thread instead, for example for discussing any fan art of a particular fandom. Then maintain discussion and add art in comments to discuss for as long as you wish. The system is not like on reddit, threads aren't meant to die after 24 hours here.
No, I meant art that I did not create. Just stuff that I find browsing pixiv, twitter, artstation, etc. and would like to share with others.
In my opinion, Tildes is not the kind of a place where you just share stuff you like (and yeah, it's a guy with this nickname telling you that). Not that sharing the stuff you like has no merit, but it has to have a base of its own.
I'm planning to run a section of my website where I share the thing I find insightful, inspiring, or otherwise promoting creative endeavors. This would be perfectly fine, I feel, so long as I don't break copyright. Reddit is a little bit more of a garbage pile because of that attitude of "ooh, stuff! i like! SHARE!!", even though it sometimes leads to enviving exposure for the artist. There should be a threshold for quality of the things you share, otherwise you're oublicly promoting low effort. (Not that you've indicated in any way that you want to share bad stuff, but I felt like it had to be said pre-emptively.)
I mean there's no point in sharing crappy art here cause it doesn't seem like there's karma so no way to whore internet points posting anything and everything that could possibly get a vote. Not that I do that anyway, but my incentive is to share the things I like and think are beautiful as opposed to it being an exchange for points.
But yeah, another criteria added - make sure that it's art worth sharing as opposed to sharing for sharing's worth.
It's not about crappy art exactly: it's the attitude of sharing as many things as you can cram into your bandwidth as soon as you recognize even a vague, undefined, and weak liking to the thing. Some of those things might even be okay, but the bar has been set so low that what usually comes out is, at best, average.
This isn't the place for that. Arguably, there is no place for that, but it does happen – mostly in private channels. You should find a place you want to either share on or hold onto the things you've found appealing in some way. I've mentioned my own website; you can make your own and do the same. Maybe use a Tumblr account. Or, try something like are.na.
Can you rephrase the problem and the context of the question?
I would like to post non-oc fanart. However, as a link to just a graphic with a chance to it not leading to much discussion, it could possibly be considered just a higher tier form of fluff. Fluff does not seem to be appreciated here. I would like to have some discussion about what I and others could do so as to make a post featuring non-oc fanart not be considered fluff.