As the title says, something fishy is going on around here in theO. I've been noticing some members post about their wall/card getting deleted the past few months. Its mostly about issues on using fan art.
During my early months in the site, I'm already informed that Pixiv were not allowed. Then after time, I'm seeing people submit stuff from Pixiv but they link back. I thought that when you use the "crediting system", it would also be fine as well. Then I saw some from deviantART and its just the same, they credit or ask permission and their works are fine. And then I'm suddenly hearing news that anything fan art (Pixiv and deviantART) are now being removed immediately.
I don't really use fan art so I'm confident that none of my works will get deleted. I prefer to use official art. For me, fan art has a distinguished beauty that I think should not be improved by means of graphic art. But that's just me. But I know you find fan arts worthy to use as well.
Even so, I'm also getting confused on what to use and what not to use. Getting an art deleted may be a warning to the art that he/she should be careful next time. But this is mostly done unintentional. Artists can't easily know where the picture they used originally came from. This is an internet so we can expect a lot of people posting things and spreading it everywhere.
I believe there should be at least changes in the rules telling everyone if fan arts are approved or not. So that everyone here is fair. People get their stuff deleted because of an unintentional mistake is fine once, but having stuff deleted but without clear verifications on the rules is pissing me off. If the rules won't change immediately, I'm pretty sure a lot of people here are in risk of deletion and the worse part is being banned from the site as well. Also the worst effect is that the artist might lose the motivation to make more art which would really break my heart.
Now don't go bashing on the mods. Rules might not be clear but the mods are not be blamed of. They're only doing their jobs and the pressure they're getting is much heavier. I'm pretty sure they're doing their best to fix the issues in the site as soon as possible.
Since the rules aren't clear yet, you're left with two choices: either continue on using fan art (with the 50-50 risk of getting deleted or not) or staying safe by using official art. It's up to you.
MY TIP: Just because fan art has issues doesn't mean its really bad. Fan arts (or doujinshi) that are safe to use are the ones that are published. Even Pixiv has published artworks. See them all here (they're totally safe to use, trust me!). Just remember that published doujins are as safe as using official art as well.
ANOTHER TIP: For now, I can recommend two sites that are reliable for finding 100% safe to use sources: Minitokyo (MT) and AnimePaper (AP). MT and AP both offers high quality scans and vectors too.
In MT, members can download anything they want for free and as many as they can now! A nice change for the recent 5 free download per day. MT is also with fan arts (indy art) too. Some of those are hand drawn by the members, manga colorization and vectors too. Take note though that the vectors in MT are in JPEG/JPG so when you download them, you still have to extract it.
In AP, scans (they call it picture) can be downloaded by means of "papers". "Papers" are like money in AP. They are gained through accepted submissions and commenting. BUT wallpapers and vectors are definitely free for members. By the way, vectors in AP are high quality in detail and is like an extraction as well. They're already in PNG so they can be used without the trouble of having to extract/render them because they have transparent BG. Only a few are in JPEG/JPG though or with background though...
Sorry for the long post... -_-
