there is an obvious pattern of either more creative or better looking images receiving roughly higher numbers
I do not want to discredit your observation here as it’s completely valid in the general sense.
However, all I’m trying to say is that upvotes are only an assessment of how many people are interested in the subject matter of an image given how most people typically just take a quick glance at a piece before upvoting/downvoting/doing nothing and moving on. Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation - higher quality images tend to have more upvotes than stuff that’s objectively trash, because most people aren’t interested in images that are so bad you call them objectively trash. But other then that, upvotes are literally just a popularity contest either of the idea, the artist, or both - take it from someone who’s been an artist here for a good while.
I am objectively a better artist compared to when I first started, but some of my older stuff has more upvotes compared to more recent stuff in the magnitude of a couple or even a few hundred. Have I regressed? Absolutely not, there’s more factors at play then that, such as Derpibooru having less active users, brony fandom in general having less activity than in the 2010s, people moving to alternate sites etc.
If they mean nothing why have a way to sort by upvotes.
They absolutely do mean something, you can gauge general interest in ideas, artists or characters. But interest is not the same as quality as people can be interested in something that might not be the best but really funny, or simply because it has their favourite character or was drawn by their favourite artist, or literally any reason.
I could also usually predict how images of my own would perform, and sometimes some would shock me and I could focus on the details users appeared to like more.
Don’t fall into the trap of only caring about raw numbers especially when said numbers are trivial and don’t directly benefit you. I’m not saying you have, but the number of upvotes something I did gets has zero influence on how I personally perceive my own stuff or even other people’s stuff. I also think some level of self-satisifaction with art is very important, and if you’re making stuff for the sole purpose of seeing what others think of it, you’re doing it wrong.
I used to be against AI, but now I’d say I’m neutral to it and I think this decision is good and mutually beneficial. Tantabus can eventually be run however the AI community sees fit and can welcome AI creators with open arms, instead of Derpibooru which is a mixed bag. I probably will still occasionally check Tantabus despite not dealing with AI myself as you can absolutely still draw inspiration from AI images and as an artist I don’t think it’s wise to put my head in the sand so to speak.
Regardless of what you think, it was something I used, and is being removed without a good reason or input from the actual userbase.
How is the reason stated in the OP not a good reason? The FAQ initially wasn’t there, but the reason is now explicitly stated and it’s been there for at least a day.
And on a really technical level, I’d argue this is the result of input from the userbase. This change wouldn’t have been made if people generating AI content had more discipline in what they were posting. If you say that you haven’t seen many bad/sloppy AI images here then all it means that Derpi staff were actually doing their jobs. This is just the unfortunate side effect of making art that looks high quality at a glance more accessible in terms of skill level. You can have people who know literally nothing about what makes art look good or inherently be high quality generating really bad AI images and then demanding the same level of respect as human artists or hell even AI artists who at the very least take time to clean up errors a human would probably never make.
Art is already extremely accessible in terms of cost and even in terms of learning resources. But in order to make anything by hand that would even remotely grab someone’s attention, you have to invest time to learn and have discipline. And once you learn how to make good art, you still have to invest time into making each piece so there’s an inherent limit to the amount of things you could even post, even if it’s less detailed or complex. With AI, you can generate a lot things at a time in minutes or even seconds.
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