My only problem with the pre-vetting is that it seems like a rather significant number of literally rule breaking entries slipped through (photo manipulations, screenshots, product images, etc). Maybe there were just that many entries before voting opened, but there's no way for us to tell that.

Also the photo manipulation clarification never made the actual entry page, as far as I remember. That's a problem. News comments being used for important stuff continues to be a bit of a problem :/

I don't nec want staff to filter the 'participation' entries - but that is why I'd like a true 'downvote' option. Someone who tried (edit: effort or thought, not 'skill') but I just don't like the concept shouldn't be on the same level as 'here's a box, gimme book'. Even if you were to limit it somehow... though that'd be somewhat of a fine line to walk so the 6th 'haha I did it for the prize' entry doesn't skate just because you ran out.

That's why I said creativity and/or ability. I do think the artistic users should be rewarded, but with EVERY contest like that, the prize-reveal is usually accompanied by users saying "congrats but how can I get the item too? It's not fair that I can't draw" or something along those lines. If the prizes are available some other way (like via the MC like they are this contest), then fine, reward the artists on the site. As I said in my earlier post,

The good artists who have good ideas win. There are several entries that fit that category. There were some entries that were not as well drawn, but the ideas were amazing. I voted for those too. I just don't think there need to be tiers. There's a participation prize, then there are prizes for the winners typically. I don't think there need to be prizes for 20 votes, 40 votes, etc.

As per the original news post:

And here I just voted by what would work with a goat. Not something a goat would destroy/eat/use as a ladder to escape their pen within an hour. My issue was more with the use of clip art and stolen stock images, I saw two, the flower in the OP and the stock image of a canister of oatmeal. That's why I said there should be a better vetting system before the public is expected to vote. Bad art doesn't even belong in question and should be allowed hands down. If the art is truly that bad the voting process will weed them out anyway.

I think saying 3D model without any other info didn't really help either. I spent a few hours thinking I could use The Sims before seeing a user asking if they could use Minecraft was told no.

(I may have watched someone try their best with keeping a goat herd in their pen but failing to realize that the shelter was a bit too big for the area so they just climbed it and jumped off. That and some escaped by breaking the fence every other day. The grass is always greener on the other side.)

You didn't have to draw a submission; you could use clay, food, cardboard boxes, literally anything to convey a conceptual building idea for a goat house. That's the point I'm trying to make. You can't compare a drawing to a clay model; that's unfair. Beauty of art is in the eye of the beholder.

I love these competitions when I don't have to necessarily draw it. I'm not a great cake decorator or pumpkin carver, but I like to try it anyways. And we have lots of varied talents on here besides drawing. Some people don't realize that talent yet until they try.

That's just the nature of competition and life. Do your very best work and enter; don't go in with expectations of winning anything more than participation. Keep expectations low, and you'll never be disappointed in life.

In any case, getting rid of the copyright infringement stuff, obvious stock photos, and anything not pertaining to the general theme or idea of what the contest is about (no, a bowl of cereal/oatmeal is not a proper building, stop trying to be funny) should be removed as they come in. So long as the submission fits the criteria of the competition's theme/idea, doesn't matter if it's a stick drawing or the Mona Lisa; both will be there for us to decide on.

I didn't draw a submission. But if you start to weed out "bad art" in conjunction with only very artistically inclined users winning, it's really discouraging to even try to participate. It takes away all the fun of even trying. I know I'm not going to win - that isn't the point. It's when users want to get rid of other users' creations because they aren't good enough (or in my case think it's a stolen photo from google ugh) that I really have a problem with. Some users' "best" may look awful, and we can't just toss that out because other users don't want to spend the time to vote no on it.

Let me be clear because I see people talking about it: I never meant that staff should weed out "bad art". My anger and frustration comes from the people who put in pictures of flowers and bowls of oatmeal and a copyrighted image of quaker oats. Those never should have made it through. Neither should the double entry where the person signed their name. This was supposed to be anonymous. If you can't follow the rules or try to meet the criteria of the challenge, you don't deserve to get the participation prize and you should not even reach the voting phase.

There should be absolutely no removal of valid entries based on quality/concept. For a start, where do you draw the line? How can you really determine how low effort something is? There's quick sketches, but there are also a few well-drawn entries I suspect are recycled artworks and weren't created specifically for the contest. Plus, it's very difficult in most cases to know how much time and effort went into a final piece. If you're not adept at drawing/the medium you've chosen, it can take much longer than someone more familiar with it. Mine looks super awkward, but I spent so many hours adding bits and editing it and fiddling with colours and trying to get the perspective to work. And that's on top of research, finalising an idea, and initial sketches. The last thing any contest like this needs is a reason to invalidate anyone's legitimate efforts.

One thing that needs work is clear definitions of the rules from the start. People shouldn't have to go to the news comments to find details about what's allowed/expected. The anonymity aspect also isn't very clear, especially for any users who are semi-active.

I decided to judge entries on -

1. Would the building be practical for a goat shelter? It didn't have to be a 100% real life design, though, because this is Subeta.

2. What would a building like this look like in a revamp of Oatmeal's enclosure? The entry didn't have to be a brilliant piece of artwork for this because a Subeta artist will be drawing it.

I would fully support a little more vetting of entries for contests - just for weeding out unrelated images/stolen images/dodgy stuff.

I have no problem with any level of art as long as it is relevant to the contest. Some folks have great ideas and no art skills, so reading their descriptions helped me decide, that was useful.

I guess im kind of torn. On one hand some of them looked as though the person had just opened Paint and drew a house. The issue wouldnt be that they had used Paint over Photoshop or something because you can do some pretty nifty things in Paint. If you take the effort. The issue would be that it was a flat image of the front of a house lacking any signs of effort like perspective or shading or any sense of imagination really.

On the other hand while I have a very basic understanding of things like shading and perspective (because of grade school weekly art class projects though im not very good at it) other people might not have had that advantage and be completely in the dark so it's hard to know where theyre coming from experience wise. And maybe that flat front of the house is the result of that.

Back to the first hand, I really doubt it though. I do think theres a difference between "oh shit the contest ends in an hour and i forgot to do something" and amateur artistic skill. The contest lasted like a month and there was a decent window of time to look up some basic artisitc skill foundations. You also didnt have to draw anything. You could have built it, which would have taken more time than drawing probably but if you know drawing isnt your thing you had other options. Though I guess its better to not have the staff take that chance and let the users do it.

Personally I planned for weeks to run to Hobby Lobby to get stuff and never did and spent a good twelve hours working on mine the night before and the day of the deadline using crap I found around the house and craft supplies I already had. I actually like mine a lot but now I'm wondering if it's one of the uninspired ones you guys are complaining about. Though it doesnt change how I feel about it. It doesnt really matter because I had fun doing it and like crafts and putting stuff together.

I do think there should be a light screening process for things that break the rules though. Also more clarification on the submission page. I knew we could make a 3D computer model but going through the entries I saw one tgat looked like it was made in Minecraft. My thought was "oh fuck I couldve used Sims or the Creation Kit" but realised there would probably be issues with that copyright wise. Also the building stuff in those programs would have been made be me so it would only have been half my effort and half the game makers.

General rule of thumb, no matter how obvious something may be there will probably be someone who doesnt pick up on it so more details are better. Even people who are considerate and thorough and pick up on details will miss things right in front of their faces.

I like the way the voting was done too. I voted for things I liked but mostly tried to vote for things that fit. While the Oatmeal living in a bowl of Oatmeal was amusing I couldnt really see it being an actual shelter the artists would draw into the page. I was going more for the houses, leans, and hobbit holes. Kudos to the people who submitted those though because the thought never occured to me. Maybe we could have an Oatmeal oatmeal bowl shaped dollhouse as an onsite toy item.

I don't know how to shade in Paint. Never learned, never knew you could even do something like that in Paint. Sometimes that flat awful art is the best someone can do, especially if there's a lot going on in real life that inhibits computer time.

Just saying.

I think too many people are getting personally butthurt over their inability to draw, and thus thinking that when we say we want the entries vetted, we mean their drawings specifically. That is so not the case. I'm positive that I voted for more drawings that were considered "bad" than "good" ones. You know why? Because it's about the concept.

I saw so many beautiful drawings that were a basic house with nothing else. No description, no details, nothing. Those were automatically a down vote because this is for a goat, not your Sims. One of my faves wasn't the best drawn, but it actually had two homes -a summer and a winter- and had things to do in the enclosure. Was it a better drawing than, say, the castles I came across? Nope. But it got my vote over the perfectly drawn castles because goats don't live in a damn castle. It's about practicality and concept.

Also, if these entires were already vetted, then there wouldn't have been just a flower, or just a bowl of cereal, or just a quaker oat container. It's not like you can't use those ideas- quite the opposite. You just need to be creative about it. The upside-down bowl was adorable, and clearly had some thought put into it.

Personally, I really liked the ones that took the time to think about how goats actually live, and put in grass roofs for Oatmeal to frolic on, or the ones that used themes that made sense, like a giant barrel. There were a lot of creative ones, but there were too many that made it blatantly obvious that they were in it for the prize only. Hell, like someone said, in the description one said just doing it for the prize. Sorry, but that guy should have been vetted out.

I'm also gonna second whomever said that we should have a second round of voting. maybe for the top 50? That way we can be really particular about it and put some thought into voting.

Oh, and for those that think there should be like a 1-5 system, I don't mind that either. We could have a YES/NO/MEH type system, with three buttons, where a no gives you 0 points, a meh (or indifferent or something like that) gives you 1 point, and a yes gives you 2. Most points wins. There's still a few methods to try, but I think we can all agree that so far, this is the best one.

Also i wish i could just emptyquote your post for pages and pages

And yet I'm pretty sure I saw a Minecraft entry, 2-3 Sims entries, and the Animal Crossing one I mentioned yesterday. I don't think anything was actually disqualified. :P

I agree entirely. There are way too many rule breaking entries for any of it to have actually been reviewed by anyone paying attention before the contest was posted for live voting.

The only thing that makes me think there was a vetting process initially was the url for the entries had numbers into the 400s and 500s and yet we only went through 200 ish so I'm not sure if 50%+ were vetted out? If so, dang, that's a lot of spam after all.

And that's why I also stated that just maybe some people might not know and that really was their best. Maybe they have arthritis and that was the most they could do before stopping. Though I honestly feel really doubtful that is the case for many people. It's no secret that the site has it's share of people who don't want to put effort into community based things but still want the perks that come with them. We go through this every contest, every team competition, every Luminaire with Mysterious Melody. Hell even I've done it. When we had that Survival wearable contest I think I drew some shitty lipstick in Photoshop and threw it in. I found out the idea I wanted to go with was already a wearable (a cat hug pillow with a big bow). I had the shading done and everything. And then I forgot about it until the day of the deadline and drew some shitty lipstick.

Theres no shame in drawing bad. Nobody is born knowing how to do those things. It takes years of practice and even then you could still suck. (Just to be clear I mean the impersonal you and not you specifically)

Also you could probably shade a picture in any program that allows you to draw lines, since you can use lines to shade and show form and not just shapes of color. Though I imagine it's much more of a pain in the ass with Paint, especially if you're using a mouse and not a tablet.

Also another nifty trick, you can use the eraser to change the color of specific lines. Like if you had a bunch of black lines and a blue line and wanted the middle of the blue line to be orange but the ends to stay blue. You can set Color 1 to blue and Color 2 to orange, hold down the right mouse button and drag it on the parts you want to be orange. It will leave the black lines untouched.

TOTALLY.

If you put in more than a few minutes, unless you are spectacularly inept and are using a computer for the first time/have never seen a house, you'll probably produce something decent by most standards. I would think (hope!) that anyone who put in hours and hours, produced something that at least showed this effort. I don't know if some of you guys just didn't go through all the entries, but it's pretty obvious which ones were lazy vs. which ones just lacked technical ability.

Also, I'm not the most PC person, so maybe I'm just inherently not ever going to understand this, but even if this contest did cater more to people with some artistic ability - so what? We have things that cater to battlers, to restockers, to writers, etc. to give almost any kind of skill, talent or interest a chance to shine. But even still, these Subeta events reward creativity not actual talent. The past events; pumpkin carving, cake decorating, sculpting, making masks, etc. - no one says you have to be good at drawing or Photoshop savvy. If you don't have the skill, put in the time and effort. If you don't have the time, well, why should you get the same prize as someone who DOES put in the time and effort? There was a huge disparity between what I'd call "the legit" entries, and those that were obviously done just for the prize.

And my problem with the participation prizes, is that everyone who isn't in the top 3, is rewarded at the same level - whether they were close to winning and got a lot of votes, or whether they drew a rectangle and wrote, "goat's house". So, that's what I find unfair out of principle, and why I think a tiered system based on user votes would work well. Or even have two rounds of voting like suggested above.

I get that staff have to give some kind of incentive to encourage participation, but that's the problem with participation prizes - you'll always get people who take the easy way out to exploit the system.

I think its ridiculous to expect people to try and learn to draw perspective (which is really hard), detailed shading (again, hard), etc in a month for a contest with a small prize. 500 CSC we wouldn't win anyways isn't worth that much time and effort, sorry.

I drew a simple entry. It probably looks like I spent no time on it even though I spent as much as I could due to wrist injuries. But you know what? That's what I thought Oatmeal's house should be (past tense because now I love the idea of a bowl of oatmeal shaped shelter or bed). Simple with some cute touches. Oatmeal is a goat. Sorry that I don't think goats should live in castles or have big giant fancy HGTV homes, even on Subeta. Oatmeal will probably end up with a home like that anyways, and I'm fine with that, but just because you think a goat needs that doesn't make simple entries like mine the worst thing on the planet.

I'm sure all of you advocating for no entries like mine would be appalled by what real goats live in. My aunt has had goats for years who are extremely well loved and well cared for. Their enclosure and shelter look so much ""worse"" than even my entry. They're fine and have everything they need. Goats don't need a Taj Mahal and I think it would be fine to reflect that idea in Oatmeal's house.

Not everyone can dedicate hours and hours and hours to a contest on a pet site. If you can and want to, awesome! Seriously, enjoy yourself. Have fun with it! But those who can't for whatever reason (jobs, school, kids/pets/family to take care of, limited internet, health problems, motor skill issues, injuries, etc) are still allowed to have fun and participate too. Its ridiculous how caught up some people are getting about punishing bad artists for daring to enter. Some people suck and still enjoy entering contests for fun or -gasp- participation prizes! Guess what? I'm sure plenty of the uninspired, probably-didn't-take-that-long, have-nothing-to-do-with-Oatmeal, and look-like-recycled-pieces "good artist" entries were for the participation prize too. People who participated deserve their participation prizes, period. Its not a "good artists" prize.