Well I wish there was new designations on the spotlight page. Now after reading this forum I wanted to make changes to one of my nominated pets (a fanpet who has been nominated for months possibly over a year) and his code is all broken. It loads fine but to edit it all the <'s ('s ['s have all be replaced with &amp. If he wasn't in the "holding" block for so long I might of noticed and been able to correct it.

Okay, so I have a recent winner (Seas), and she was nominated back in March 2015. It took her a good 9 months to win. I also have 3 other pets that are nominated around the same time, or a month or two later.

1. Not being able to tell if you pet has even been LOOKED at is VERY discouraging. Seeing those numbers makes it all the more so.

2. The whole symbols issue that happened when we switched servers... is that ever going to be fixed? And are people really being kicked for that? Because that is not he fault of the makers, and it really is a tedious fix.

3. I know this is in progress, but even one liners for rejections would be super helpful and would lessen the number of re-nominations that have the same problems as before.

4. I get that you have a problem with fanpets and accuracy... but that's a lot of pets waiting to be sorted through. I am also confused, because when we switched to 3 days a week (Early December 2015) we were told it was switched because we had gotten down to 80 pets in the queue... and now, over a year later, we are sitting at 60... but people have been waiting months and months to win. Something seems really off about that to me? Three pets a week for 56 weeks (one year and one month) is 168 pet winners. If 80 of those pets were before the switch, and there are another 60 still waiting, that says that only about 150 pets were added to the queue in a whole year? There definitely seems to be a bottleneck at the review stage, and I hope that the reforms can figure that out (I've put my input on that forum ages ago, so I won't rehash it here).

I am really holding back on finishing more pets at the moment, and these issues are part of the reason why. When you have several sitting for ages, you don't feel excited to add another pet to a waiting queue.

I am so glad I was able to get the original code back. But yeah for the pets who were in the queue for months prior to the server switch and now there should be a notification to let them not get kicked out if they fix it in a months time frame. It wasn't our fault that they were working in the past and now load improperly. I am trying to get all my overlays done and profiles to make winners but the wait time is a serious killer.

I'm confused how the review process goes. Because the way it's sounding, a pet page takes hours to review. Do you guys have a form or do you each review individually?

Because I think having check buttons for errors could benefit you guys and users. Like, you have a list like this:

_ - Story (grammar/Spelling) _ - Story (authenticity/fanpet validity/idksomethingelse) _ - Profile Code error _ - Images/viewability _ - whateverelse

and you click what isn't right, then click reject. That information immediately can go to the user with "hey, ______ got kicked because of _, _, _, and _!"

Everyone wins. And viewing, even with a long story, long TC, etc, should take about 15-20 minutes?

Same here, I also hold back / lost interest finishing my pets. One is even half finished and I totally can't get motivation to go for it.

Sounds a very good idea to me even if I don't know anything how the current voting process looks like. But the tiniest hint of feedback would be awesome and check buttons would be easiest way.

Gosh I am getting so frustrated with waiting for the spotlight. I've had a pet in the queue for nearly a year now, and since it's BEEN so long, something wonky happened to the text on the page where a bunch of random symbols have replaced some of the apostrophes. I've also changed my UN and I want to edit it but I believe editing the page takes the pet out of the queue and I don't want to risk it. I don't know; going nearly a year with nothing is driving me crazy and has seriously demotivated me to ever work on a spotlight pet again, regardless of if I were to win.

I don't even get excited for pet revamps and new colors the way I used to points at the news about the Manchu revamp because of how demotivating it has been, waiting for months for staff to do what they said and implement changes to the spotlight. :/

I'm just getting so tired of the overly positive "we're working on it! we promise! so much is gonna change! :)" messages over and over while years go by and nothing happens.

The whole fanpet issue kinda bothers me because idk, I look at all the winners and if they're fanpets of something I don't know about I just google for them and read about them for 10 seconds to get the gist of them. I tend to mostly go all out with my fanpets, so the fact that some of mine might have been sitting in the queue for 6+ months just because someone can't google a Megaman character kinda irks me.

I do agree with having to mention "This is a fanpet of so-and-so" on the page, I have that on mine. But idk I think if a pet is well done anyways it's able to be self-contained. My pet Prince Richard won spotlight and people loved him. Did someone really have to research the not-released-outside-of-Japan 1993 Gameboy game he's from just for him to seem eligible? I kinda doubt it.

(I hate being so grumpy but I am)

on the fan pet level, at what point would a fan pet be considered "accurate" to the source or w/e and let into the winner's queue? some people may create their pets and chose to represent some head canons within the art/profile/story/etc. would those pets not be allowed into the queue based on "accurate/canon" representation? im just curious how much leeway would be given there. it's not really something that impacts me, but i could see how other people might be affected

The Pet Spotlight is a complete joke. I've never bothered with it and I'm so glad I didn't. Nothing that's ever happened with the Spotlight has made me consider changing my mind. I don't want my pets to be untouchable for years just so they can be rejected for some random reason no one can figure out. That's not fun or enjoyable in any way. (And I say this as a huge pet person. They're all I really care about here on Subeta, a pet site.)

Hearing about fan pets/unfamiliar subjects is really just... I don't know. Its really not that hard to Google whatever it is. Why do pets need to be 100% verified accurate to win the Spotlight? Plenty of people have AUs, headcanons, in-universe OCs, etc that wouldn't necessarily be canon for fanpets. And then there's some things you just might never fully understand if you didn't play the game/read the book/whatever. If my fanpets were submitted I doubt anyone unfamiliar with the work would get it and for most of them people still wouldn't quite get it just looking up the game.

If its a factual pet then... just Google it? That's a situation where I could see it taking a little while to verify things if its a big thing aiming to be really informative. Like that one from ages and ages ago about pandas or something? It had a lot of info. But still, its definitely possible to do. I've been toying with the idea of allowing Yellowstone to be submitted once I'm all done with him so I can try and spread some education about the park but I'm not going to bother if not having staff obsessed with the place will work against me like that. :/

I don't really like the idea of kicking people out with rule changes if they've been waiting ages and ages just because they have fanpets for an unfamiliar thing. Doesn't really seem fair to me. Its not their fault there are apparently some hidden fandom rules.

And even then, does it even need to be guaranteed accurate? This is Subeta. If someone's relying on a pet page for scientifically factual information, then they're in the wrong place and they deserve to be trolled.

I'd say just check off the usual criteria, make sure the page reads ok, and send it through to the winner's queue. The admins shouldn't have to waste time on research for something like this.

Very true. I think its pretty ridiculous this is a reason to hold up the queue and that apparently admins feel the need to know about the subject matter to judge it. This is a pet site, not a school. If its a good, solid pet why does it matter what its about?

But if they really want to judge it that harshly its not hard to look things up. Not knowing the fandom/interest/whatever isn't a very good excuse to just let pets rot in the nominated queue.

May I ask something: Are you only working on your pets because you might win the spot light? Or are you working on them because you want to create a beautiful and special pet and because you have fun creating something?

You can also work on your pets and not strive for the pet spotlight if the waiting time is not your thing.

Just my 2 Cents...

I totally understand where you're going, but for me, personally? A pet isn't finished until it's won the Spotlight. Ideally, if a pet wins, that means it's top knotch. That means it's been reviewed, and queued, and you've put your all into it to finally see it walk down the runway. For lack of a better term. If you don't try for the spotlight, I feel like it's that last little checkbox you don't have. Story -- yup. TC -- yup. Spotlight -- Nope. Then the pet isn't finished.

At least for me. I also know others who would never submit their pet into that.

i'm confused by this whole "if you edit your pet you get kicked out of the queue" talks. i've had both miljenko and rizon nominated for roughly 6-7 months each, and recently edited both of their profiles because all the brackets and apostrophes had turned into random symbols. and they both still show up as nominated on their profiles.

... unless i'm wrong and thinking of something else entirely? xD

There are 2 queues. The first is the nominated queue. This is just where a person has nominated your pet. Once it is reviewed by the staff and accepted, it then goes into the "winner's" queue. This is where you don't want to make major changes because it has already been reviewed and is just waiting to be randomly selected to win. If you do, it can possibly kick you back to the nominated queue (depending on the change and I don't know what changes trigger this) and you will have to wait to be reviewed again.

The fact alone that there are two queues should make it where we as pet owners get to know where our pet stands. One should be nominated and the other reviewed. Because the nominated status of over a year is annoying.

It's not so much just "winning the spotlight". It's about all our work being recognized and shown to the public. Really nobody but my friends would happen to look at my pets randomly, and even then, not all of them are done. Winning the spotlight isn't really some prestigious award, it's just a nice note of "hey this person's pet is finished and it rocks! Check it out!"

I get the idea of "pets are supposed to be for you", but showing off your hard work is rewarding. Hence why human avatars are displayed on forum posts. Sure you make your HA for you, but showing off what you did to other people and getting likes or whatever is a nice feeling. :)

So the gist I'm getting from this thread is that if you want your fanpet to win, they're best chance to win is if they come from a well-known or popular fandom (aka, My Little Pony, Transformers, Marvel Comics, Star Wars).

And fanpets of an obscure reference, say for example, of an old, underrated OVA from the 80s you wish to educate others about, is the least likely to win.

So here's my advice, for those who create fanpets and wish to submit them to spotlight: include at least one or two direct sources about the fandom their pet is representing, somewhere in your credits section; whether it's a direct link to Wikipedia or the series official website (for an example of a fanpet based off the Pokemon, Scolipede, here's a direct source link about Scolipede from the official Pokemon franchise website).

That would be hell of a lot quicker than asking staff to google everything; the source is right there, and already researched for the reader's convenience. Don't tell me a person can't be bothered to at least quickly skim the summary of something.

As for making sure a pet represents accurate information of their fandom/series, that's not as important because many, many people create OCs to insert into that world. As long as the fanpet looks and reads like it would belong in that world, and even uses some of the in-universe lingo of said world (FF7 example, 'Mako poisoning', 'SOLDIER', 'Jenova'), then that to me is good enough to pass.