@Krickis I'm unsure that things are going as intended with importing art, or maybe I misunderstand intentions. Namely, as far as I could gather, the intention was to only bring art over when artists have given permission to import it. The artist Hoofclid is a friend of mine, and 89 images of his were imported from Derpibooru without him knowing about it. Now, I don't mean to say those images should be deleted, he did say he was fine with it when I asked him, just that he was unaware it had happened. What I'm saying is that current operations don't make sense to me. If we're importing art without asking artists like other boorus are doing, then we should be importing a lot more art. But if we're only doing so when we have artist permission, how was Hoofclid's art imported without his being aware of it?
We imported art from a few hundred artists that haven't made pony art in a year or more (and we keep doing so when we find additional ones), and it looks like Hoofclid was mistakenly flagged as one. Probably one of us read some dates wrong and screwed up the math. We apologise for the mistake.
The idea in this was preservation, and that contacting artists that have potentially left the fandom would not be feasible. As always artist preference has priority, so it's easier to fix a false positive like this than to contact all those people and wait for a response that might never come.
As a matter of opinion (although I'm well aware my opinion counts for nothing here), importing art from artists who are not DNP shouldn't be a problem, and would get us to much of the bulk of art that other boorus have.
I personally agree that anyone without a DNP shouldn't be a problem, but the team has good reasons to be cautious. We don't want to seem presumptuous or come across as disingenuous, or hurt or relationship with artists. There are many artist we've contacted asking for permission that have never replied or gotten back to us, despite being active, so we're stuck in an impossible situation. "Silence is consent" is not an appealing policy to have, but getting permission for everything is also not feasible. We're still trying to figure out a good middle ground.