Question Boorus and Other Image Hosting Sites.

[Arcane Squall]

Happy Friday BMRP!

Hope it's going well for you all. I have a question about boorus and other image sites like them. I do realize that they aren't BMRP but suspect people here might still have the answer.

What I've heard/read is the boorus are sites that host incredible amount of images. But as I understand it they're notorious for hosting illegal content. Or they were? Was hoping for a bit of clarification on what exactly that looks like on those sites before I go there. Prefer to not access that sort of site if that is the case. But I do see a bunch of posts here using images hosted from there and other similar sites. What about other sites like Hentai Foundry?

Right now I'm just using Twitter and following artists I know don't post that sort of content.

Thanks!

 

[Doctor Manhattan]

They are generally anime image repositories, and in as much as hentai does tend to portray younger woman, in that case it would be repository composed of quite a lot of illegal content. I believe there has been crackdowns on them but still you might run into something inappropriate. The same is true for Hentai Foundry althought I believe it is more policed (however I am no expert so don't quote me on that). Gelbooru is also very popular.

On Twitter, the odds are strong that you won't run into illegal content, so that's a good way to find stuff that you like. Also I would say if it has an imgur tag, it's probably safe as they switched up a lot of how they host NSFW content and also monitor strongly/frequently.

 

[Arcane Squall]

Okay, this is really good to know. I appreciate the info! And glad to know my method was good. Lol

 

[Strange Days]

I use several of the -booru sites to find FCs + other boards like Zerochan or SankakuComplex and a lot of them have in-built methods to avoid what can potentially classify as troublesome/illegal content or filters and blacklists in place for users to customize, which automatically block out images that contain one or more of said tags. Not sure if registering is needed but last I checked, searching for certain terms will redirect users to a dummied-out page.

Oddly enough I've always found them much easier to use than other repositories, so there really isn't much to lose if you follow those steps. It's like having a massive stream of play-bys with like, half the effort of looking up an artist, scanning through their content and hand-picking what you like.

 

[Siph]

Personally I quite like Safebooru when browsing for references; it almost exclusively hosts non-erotic artwork, so you're unlikely to run into inappropriate depictions of minors. I believe most other *boorus also give posts ratings in terms of how NSFW they are, which you could also use to filter out potentially troublesome content.

 

[Revelations]

Officially, there is no hard rule against using the -booru sites or sites like rule34 for general imagery. That being said, both -booru and R34 sites do host content that isn't allowed on BMR.

Unofficially, and this might change (As is the nature of our rules), these sites are tentatively fine as long as you aren't directly linking to said rule breaking content. As we cannot easily police every link that gets posted on the website here, it mostly falls under the person linking the image to follow our rules.

We do allow sites like f-list which can host content that is not allowed on BMR. We obviously take action on F-list links that host said content or support it in some fashion, but we don't have a blanket ban on F-list for example.

The -booru sites are based off of 'tags' that are helped to ID pictures. IE: An image on gelbooru might have the following tags 'Milf, small_breasts, red_hair, 2boys'. The 'boys' is admittedly misleading because they use the term 'boy' for any male character, same with 'girl' for female specific tags.

Basically and TLDR, use discretion for sites you use and browse from. I myself have used gelbooru hosted images in my RP's, but I do make sure that the images therein are adhering to the BMR rules. Should you prefer not to use gelbooru or similar sites, twitter specifically does not allow illegal content to be hosted on it so it's most likely a safe(r) alternative.