Ember_Heartshine 
Site Moderator
the worst manechat mod
Good morning, everyone.
Let's have a little chat about accountability, trust, and the way our moderation team works.
As many of you know, we were contacted yesterday by an artist whose artwork had been edited without authorization and posted onto the Booru without proper attribution during its testing phase. Because the specific moderator contacted was also the editor of the work, they recused themselves and handed the issue off to the rest of the moderation team, who dealt with the issue in under an hour. The art in question was removed immediately from the site, and other artwork by the artist was removed from the site at their request. At the time of writing, a formal Do-Not-Post has not been filed, but the team is enforcing an unofficial DNP on all works by this artist until a formal DNP is created at the artist's discretion. I have personally been in communication with the artist and we are working together to figure out what we can do to make this right.
The Manebooru team stands by the moderation actions taken in response to this issue, but we acknowledge that it was a severe oversight that led us to this situation in the first place. We take the trust of our users seriously, and the trust of the art community as a whole is very important to us. It's hard to run an art site founded on the idea that artists come first if we don't keep a close eye on our own activities and potentially infringe on someone else's work.
This fandom has seen enough drama in recent months. We can't express how disappointed we are in ourselves for contributing to some of it in this manner. Nothing we can say or do now will change what happened in the past. All we can do is work hard to rectify the situation and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.
As always, our lines of communication are open for feedback. We can be reached via email, on Discord, (edit: Discord link updated to Manechat as the Manebooru Discord has been deprecated) and in this forum thread. We are constantly working to improve ourselves and this site, and we want to hear your thoughts.
The full conversation between our moderation staff and the artist can be seen publicly here (Discord comment link) or here (Imgur link). The private Discord chat logs between our staff and the artist have not been included at the artist's request.
Let's have a little chat about accountability, trust, and the way our moderation team works.
As many of you know, we were contacted yesterday by an artist whose artwork had been edited without authorization and posted onto the Booru without proper attribution during its testing phase. Because the specific moderator contacted was also the editor of the work, they recused themselves and handed the issue off to the rest of the moderation team, who dealt with the issue in under an hour. The art in question was removed immediately from the site, and other artwork by the artist was removed from the site at their request. At the time of writing, a formal Do-Not-Post has not been filed, but the team is enforcing an unofficial DNP on all works by this artist until a formal DNP is created at the artist's discretion. I have personally been in communication with the artist and we are working together to figure out what we can do to make this right.
The Manebooru team stands by the moderation actions taken in response to this issue, but we acknowledge that it was a severe oversight that led us to this situation in the first place. We take the trust of our users seriously, and the trust of the art community as a whole is very important to us. It's hard to run an art site founded on the idea that artists come first if we don't keep a close eye on our own activities and potentially infringe on someone else's work.
This fandom has seen enough drama in recent months. We can't express how disappointed we are in ourselves for contributing to some of it in this manner. Nothing we can say or do now will change what happened in the past. All we can do is work hard to rectify the situation and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.
As always, our lines of communication are open for feedback. We can be reached via email, on Discord, (edit: Discord link updated to Manechat as the Manebooru Discord has been deprecated) and in this forum thread. We are constantly working to improve ourselves and this site, and we want to hear your thoughts.
The full conversation between our moderation staff and the artist can be seen publicly here (Discord comment link) or here (Imgur link). The private Discord chat logs between our staff and the artist have not been included at the artist's request.
