ALWAYS :p I just meant we need more new users in the queue xD YOU KNEW WHAT I MEANT

ALWAYS MORE PETS.

Can you believe that after like, 10 years of pet spotlight, I got my first nomination in 2020?

I'm technically a new user that you want in the queue ok.

let me make sure i understand what the issues are:

1. there are so many pets in the queue, that some of them have been in there for years.

2. many of these pets belong to the same handful of users. this means the 2-week cooldown period is preventing their pets from winning too close together, which ends up meaning nobody wins, despite, as stated before, pets lingering in the queue for multiple years.

3. instead of increasing the frequency of spotlight wins to power through this overflowing queue, wins have actually been decreased to 4 days a week. this means even fewer winners, which means more pets continuing to linger in the queue. i'm confused by the logic of this decision.

so, considering all of that, this is what i'm thinking.

if nobody is winning because too many of the pets belong to the same few users, the cooldown needs to be reduced or removed. the current system is just gumming up the works for everyone else.

if there isn't enough variety of users in the spotlight queue, maybe it's because people don't feel motivated to work on their pets when they feel they will probably never get that spotlight win. i know i have pets i'd like to work on, but i haven't felt motivated in part because of how broken the spotlight currently seems to be.

the faster the queue moves, the more motivated users will be to get their pets spotlight-ready. and maybe even then, there might not be "enough" variety in users participating in this aspect of the site, but i think that's okay. it's not surprising, nor is it an inherently bad thing, that there's a relatively small number of users who want to make their pets spotlight-ready; and of those people, they are likely to want to do so for many or all of their pets, not just one.

subeta is a small site these days. i only see the same small handful of users in the forums, and even smaller sub-groups in each specific forum category. the same few users hang out in the battle forums exchanging strategies, and another same few in the avatar forums rating outfits, and another in the pet forums discussing their pets, and another in the art forums sharing their artwork, etc. not everyone is going to want to engage with every aspect of the site, and that's okay.

TL;DR: get through the oldest pets in the queue before trying to encourage even more entries! when the longest amount of time a pet has spent in there is, oh, say, a few months, then we can talk.

additionally, i agree with users volunteering to help with the spotlight queue. in fact, i would love the opportunity to help with it! i have a few spotlight winners myself, so i know what goes into it, and it would make me so happy to be able to approve potential winners, or provide detailed feedback on what someone needs to change in order to be eligible.

Big agree that getting pets through the queue that’ve been there the longest should be a priority, cuz from the feedback I’ve seen, users with pets in the queue for too long get discouraged! Since the Spotlight is designed to eventually have every eligible pet win, there’s no downside to this that I can see!

Another thing that stumps people is profile coding; not everyone can code!

While there are very good free templates available, it would be nice if the new pet profile system had pre-made options, to make customisation easier for neophytes.

I also think that the queue should favorise people with less wins, actually. Having people with less than 5 wins get ahead of people who are at 30+ wins would make sense for me.

I think that cooldown will be important once more people enter...if we remove it and make the queue NOT random, then a person could conceivably submit 15 pets in a day and they would win the next 15 days.

I liked your spotlight entry :D

it sounds like you just said the same thing as the quote? there are currently not enough pets in the winners queue belonging to different users, so the cooldown may result in no winners. disclaimer i am terrible at math so the 20 pets example just confused me so i may have just misunderstood, sorry.

"...which ends up meaning nobody wins" and "So after 10 days we wouldn't have anyone to win because of the cooldown."

Could the cooldown maybe reset or make exceptions if only pets on cooldown are in the winners queue?

I can't read ignore me xD It has been a rough week.

I do still say that the cooldown is a needed thing. And I am not sure if it can be coded to ignore the cooldown if there are no other pets to win.

(omg I really need to remove that xD)

Aaa no worries! I just reread a few times and was like uuhhh-

I do think the cooldown is a good idea! The same user winning over and over would be discouraging. And I have no coding knowledge, so I don't now how feasible coding exceptions would be/if it's not in the cards, o well.

I think when I was originally trying to write it, I was trying to write "There technically are pets that could win, just none that aren't on a cooldown." That is what I am going to tell myself xD

Nomination pool is the best idea

I definitely think lifting the restrictions on nominations (or providing a way to browse nomination-capable pets) would help a bit. You basically have to go beg for someone to do it already, even though it's technically not allowed-- it means people who don't use the forums just never get eyes on their otherwise excellent pets. Search being taken down and not replaced is probably also hurting this, because that was my main way of looking at others' pets.

I didn't bother editing it or putting it back up for nomination, and I've put my pets on the backburner for now because puzzling out what I did "wrong" with that one is going to take too much of my time when I want to work on other things (namely toyhouse). If that particular pet wasn't good enough then my other plan (basically building a "website" using one pet as an "index page" and linking to others) probably won't be either, so I don't need to bash my head against subeta's obtuse code to try and make it work until I feel ready to handle it (which could be a while, since I'm very sick with chronic pain and I have no idea when I'll cycle back to "okay"/"stable").

idk if any of this is useful or meaningful feedback, i'm tired and waiting for the painkillers to kick in so i can sleep

I also wondered about decreasing the cooldown time. I myself don't mind it because it allows me to edit nominated pets and have enough time pass for them to rise up in the queue again. Maybe decrease it to a week?

I...have also considered users helping with the spotlight queue. I've wondered about becoming someone who looks over nominated pets myself, though I have qualms because of slow/sketchy internet and RL responsibilities.

Not trying to be rude, but how many paragraphs was the story for your pet? I'm asking because I have a pet with a small amount of story too:

I'm concerned I don't have enough story for her either, and I need a standard to judge how much I need to write.

Sorry that your pet got kicked out by the way.

Seconding this!

Part of what discourages me from getting my pets spotlight-ready is knowing that it could take literal years to win. ): Because of that, seeing that the winners are going to drop to 4 a week is... very disappointing. I get that there are a lot of repeat users in the pool, and it's great that people are so motivated to work on their pets or commission profiles and art for them! But at the same time, it does kind of bum me out to see the same few users loop through the spotlight every week while other people with fewer pets are left to wonder for upwards of a year if they'll even be able to win once.

I dunno. Like, I don't really mind waiting, but knowing that it's probably going to take even longer to win now doesn't really motivate me. ;; I think dropping the cooldown to 1 week or so would be a better solution. If the queue moves faster, users are more likely to actually see their pet be posted within a year, and more people might enter their pets for the spotlight.

I haven't read through stuff so I don't know if this has been suggested, or is even the kind of suggestion that's being asked for, but...

Since non-unique names were implemented there is now a small chance that two users could have the same named pet and even the exact color and species? Small suggestion is to include the owner's name in the post too, using the ID code in case they change their username, and slightly reword the post.

Example using my pet who won a couple years ago:

[userid=580707] is the same as

Admittedly I don't know how it will be handled if the pet is adopted out to another person, I guess the same way it is now... nothing. There are a lot of super old pets in the spotlight archive who don't even have a profile anymore shrug

that is actually a very good suggestion and might be an easy addition!

I don't have time to read this all, but I think a lot of us have no idea HOW to enter our pet for spotlight. I feel like I've read vague bits and pieces but haven't known exactly where to find what is required in an easy place so that I can work through a checklist to prepare my pet for this. I have several pets I'd like to give a go at spotlight but unsure how to know if they have all the required things or not.

Once someone said only pets with custom/specialized coder profiles would have a chance to win. I'm not a pro so my coding is very modest and that has really discouraged me from even trying as I'm unsure of what is even needed in the code.

I'll browse around this thread and see what I can find!

On each news post for it, there is a link if you click on "Pet Spotlight" in the win message. Ther rules are there and it shows the past several winners as well. I am also linking it here on the board for convenience!

Click

I also added this to my first post.

I think a good solution is to do away with the nomination system. You have a pet ready; activating the option to spotlight it should put it in the queue.

Again, I'm gonna renew my suggestion to have generally more pet content in the news; Subetapedia updates would be a good start.

Also more pet slots (raising the base account limit from 10 to 15, or CSC pet slots, or MC pet slots...really, pet slots, man) but yeah, mostly Subetapedia updates, or monthly themes around certain pets/colors.

There is always more activity in the pet community when there are new toys to play with!

That would definitely get more pets into the queue - I have a feeling there's a lot of really great pets out there that aren't getting nominated because their owners just don't like chatting / don't want to have to "fish" for nominations. Thinking about it, the nomination requirement isn't really that fair on those people who are just happiest working on their own thing and not having to 'deal ' with other people / those who don't have a couple of friends they chat to on here on a regular basis.

Then we could have enough pets in the queue (and not all owned by the few people who won in the last 14 days) to go back to daily spotlights!