That isn't feasible either because if only one single person doesn't like the pet or the user for whatever valid or bogus reason, you are going to have pets kicked out left and right.

Pet spotlight is random? Users complain it's a popularity contest. Staff's solution? Make it a popularity contest.

I haven't read through all of this but my first reaction is dislike. What criteria are the users supposed to be using to judge the pets? I do edits for people sometimes and it's not always as easy as you'd think to spot grammar errors. I'm also part of the pet spotlight ping group and I've seen so many pets get rejected and no one can figure out why. So obviously everyday users aren't going to know exactly what makes a good spotlight pet. I just don't really care for this. I can see a pet with good art and a crappy story getting up-voted on aesthetics alone. I'll read through this when I have time. Maybe I'll change my mind.

Count me out on the idea of users voting on whether my pets are up to snuff or not. I could instead see something along the lines of requiring more than one nomination from a user. Currently, one user can nominate a pet; why not make it 3 users total needed to fully nominate a pet to the queue for staff to look at?

Otherwise, I don't see any reason to complicate the system when the simplest fix of all is to just check off reasons as to why a pet was rejected.

I'd hate to see the feature end up being retired, so I appreciate the effort in trying to keep it relevant.

While we are at it, I feel like comments should be taken off the spotlight wins as it is. Too many people are having hissy fits in them, so even if someone deserves a win they feel like shit because people are talking shit on them and their pet.

I fully support 's idea though as long as it takes like 5-10 user forms to get a pet rejected and not just 1 because if someone doesn't like me, I don't want them able to take it out on my pet and me have to start over because of it.

I agree so long as it is not just 1 person who can kick a pet out of the running.

If staff doesn't want to/doesn't have time to take up pet spotlight anymore, why don't they just get users to apply for positions on judging pet spotlight?

It could be like a mini-mod position... what, paid in GAs or whatever? And there would have to be a general consensus like "yes this pet meets criteria".

There would be more than one person, so it wouldn't be one user calling the shots, which is a lot nicer, imo.

I don't think users should be able to upvote or downvote entries. It will become a popularity contest. People will get their friends to vote for them, and instead of the pets getting through that deserve to get through, pets will get through solely based upon how many friends someone has. -.-

Also, will users that have been blocked by a certain user be able to see that certain user's pets entries? Because that will definitely be a problem.

but if it could only be turned into a sP sink too... sigh!

Really though the problem is ^ that. Even when staff judge it people cry about how it's staff favoritism and how people don't deserve to win because they don't like the idea/the profile is plain/it's a sun kanis graphic on a common kanis pet/because they're a staff friend/because magnets/the pet is a whore/the pet isn't a whore/the color yellow offends my soul/THE USER HAS TOO MANY FRIENDS WHO ALL COMMENTED IN THE NEWS AND NOW I DON'T FEEL SPECIAL THAT'S BULLSHIT FRIENDS SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO POST EVER.

And if staff apparently pick and choose exactly who wins, oh my god. Gonna start stocking up on popcorn for the day users are in control of this trainwreck 8| popcorn and a helmet... war is coming.

My feelings exactlyyyy.

But I like the thought of instead of upvoting/downvoting users have to get nominated maybe 3 times, if it really has to be more user-run.

I hated the previous way it was judged, tbh. I couldn't care less about the "pet profile" spotlight. I found that it brought too much worth on the container and not enough worth on the content.

I'm not sure I like user-based voting, but tbh, pet spotlight cannot be worse than it currently is.

Bolded mine. If a pet is misrepresented, that is literally against the rules. Always has been. Sorry, but no, people have every reason to be upset in that case.

Yeah, not found of this. It really sounds like a popularity contest, which makes me want to enter it even less and less. The only thing I like is the checkbox, but besides that, I'm not found of the upvotes and downvotes. You can't make it private on whose pet is in there. Don't like a person? Downvote their pet. Best friends with someone? Upvote them just because, not because of the merit of the pet itself.

User voting on subeta never goes well; I don't think why anyone would think of bring that into another feature.

I don't really see the point of it giving out sP, either. We already have enough sP in the system; I don't think we need more. Maybe something likes like forum points or some special item, idk.

And if we didn't have enough staff to approve the pets, why is the pet spotlight every few days now because we had so few pets in the queue? We might not have enough staff, but I think this is even less reason people would want to enter their pets in. While it's entirely possible that staff members could have personal basis when looking at a pet (we're all human and have our own tastes), I think most people can agree that it wouldn't be nearly as much as if we allow users to judge into the mix as well.

Usually I'm not for removing features, I can't really even think of one in the past 9 years I've been on subeta and said this, but if you can't dedicate enough time to the pet spotlight, maybe it needs to be removed or put on hiatus. But with how crappy uservotes go, I don't know why anyone would want that - seriously, if we have to bring the userbase into it, have unpaid "pet spotlight" minimods or something. A lot of people have been willing to volunteer, why not take advantage of it? It would be a lot easier to monitor them I'd imagine in order to weed out any favoritism.

I like 's idea a lot of having it be a volunteer position with multiple users who are the ones who vote on pets and then the top pets are sent to the mods. But even then I don't know what should happen to those who get lower votes. Just because they don't shine in the group they're in doesn't mean they won't shine in another, it doesn't seem fair to completely kick them out unless there's something horribly wrong.

On one hand it is the users fault for using graphics (just one more reason I don't care for them, on top of them lagging more than straight coding), however the lynch mod that sprang for blood was more than a tad melodramatic over a 50k elixir mishap.

I can understand the utterly missing genders/pet species/usernames/not credited sources which are all things that were flat out missing and should have been caught easily.. but the uproar that pet caused (and that was brought back up many months later) was nothing short of petty and one shining example of the shitstorm to come if users are in charge of voting :/

Yes, it is the user's fault for using graphics to do that. And I can COMPLETELY understand the outrage. There are users who have been rejected and no one has any idea why, but then there is a glaring error (even if it is a cheap fix) that was against actual site rules. Not saying there should have been a warning, but if we're looking to be fair, the pet wouldn't have won because of that.

I do think that there should be multiple people working on the spotlight, even if its one person going through to catch errors like that, and another to double check that everything has been found and finalize the winner in the queue... it would (theoretically) prevent something like that from happening again. Aside from that, the pet in question was lovely. Again, I'm seeing this from BOTH sides of the argument. Cheap fix and human error doesn't mean that others are not allowed to feel bitter about the win when they were rejected for something that no one else could find. The checkbox reasoning will hopefully help with that, as well.

yes re: checkbox feedback for spotlight rejections no re: everything else please do not give the pet "community" any more fuel to be shitty to each other than we already have