Uh, who was this person? Personally I'm happy when my pets (kinda) win back to back. There are some that have been waiting for years to win.

I too wouldn't mind helping with nominated pets. And you made good points about custom overlays and coding.

I mean I never really tried coding until starting Subeta. I literally was in a class about webpage coding and I thought that I could get some practice by making my own pet profiles.

But the pet profiles really didn't seem to follow what was supposed to happen in the coding book I had. I checked multiple times, struggling to figure out what the problem was. That made me shy away from doing complex profiles.

The problem that Destiny brought up is that they want more individual owners to win, and the best way is to adjust the cooldown. Yes, winning is fun, but I'd love to see different names win too, not always the same fifteen-or-so people!

I'm all for a longer cooldown if it means more diversity. The closest wins I ever had to one another were just under a month apart (Chara, 2/5/18 and Asriel Dreemurr, 3/2/18); it still felt like a nice surprise when I got the spotlight event for Asriel because it had been a fair while!

I really love that sense of surprise, it's always the highlight of my night. If I end up with multiple pets in the queue, I wouldn't want them to win too close to each other. That, and people might get burnt out on my style, which is mostly "stories that are way too long". Diversity keeps every win fun and fresh!

Yups, between your two wins - there were 24 other winning pets. I haven't checked if anyone in these 24 pets won twice, but it feels diverse enough to me, compared to the recent situation where there were 8 winning pets between two wins from the same user!

PLUS IT MAKES SENSE THAT ASRIEL AND CHARA WIN THIS CLOSE TOGETHER, OKAY.

soooo i know we don't have a spotlight council or whatever, and i'm fine with the spotlight being managed by a limited number of people to streamline the process

but maybe

pets that are... potentially controversial... could get checked over for offensive content. by more than one person. to ensure that such things don't get a pass because one person is perhaps unfamiliar with certain offensive stereotypes or jargon.

[sup]put lightly, i am saying i am deeply unimpressed that bat soup (and other, equally questionable 'rona-related things) made it to the front page and i would like it if in the future, potential bat soups were checked over by more than one person, so that we do not have more bat soups[/sup]

[edit] news post 12/6/20 "We’re working on implementing a way to make sure at least two people check each possible winner. " legit all i wanted, thanks

The shaming of social distancing and lockdown, as well as the bat soup are literally borderline breaking site rules (i consider the former to be harmful content, while the latter just go against the anti-racism rules we have)

I'm bothered by a rule-breaking pet winning - not just a spotlight-rules-breaking pet, but something that completely goes against the spirit of the site.

fully in favor of pets with controversial themes being more heavily scrutinized. today's win was akin to finding a crisis pregnancy center when you needed a planned parenthood in terms of misinformation and racist overtones.

I was wondering if someone would post in this thread about the recent...disaster. I suggested to do so in the winning post but it got deleted....so....

Do we have specific denial reasons for a scenario like this? If not, staff need to add them.

I'd rather find out that a story is problematic via a staff denial than having the pet win and....this backlash being the result.

Does this mean any pet with a virus-centered story could be problematic and I have to include a trigger warning to protect users?

I am a bit confused about this situation, honestly.

I realize subeta is kind of skeleton-crewing it, but when you have a pet that wins the spotlight, I believe editing it kicks it out of the queue/causes it to be reevaluated, so I am curious if someone saw and was like "ah it's long" and assumed long = good? I missed a lot my first skimming of it because, well, skimming, mobile, and it was late at night, but I assume staff would take a bit more care in proof-reading, especially when it's something that will essentially represent the site when it wins? More than it does by existing in the first place, anyways. It just seems odd the pet's name wouldn't cause for more concern/a more critical eye the moment it was seen, to put it lightly, versus something that would be obscure.

I do agree with that if I had a problematic pet I'd also rather find out because of the staff member and a denial than having the pet win and then those issues coming out. It's not the first controversial pet spotlight win, I remember others because of the pet being 'too gruesome' (though this one was many years ago), but it does seem we should have some kind of ... framework? In addressing it? Even if something may not be intentionally malicious, that doesn't mean it should represent the site. I really can only imagine someone wanting to find out after the spotlight win was wanting to have a controversial pet in the first place.

I recently woke up so I might not be as eloquent as I'd like but hopefully that makes some sense! Hopefully the logged out news page will also be properly addressed too, as it still shows the spotlight win.

I'm especially worried because I have a pet with a story that centers around a virus as well.

There's no reference to real world diseases (as far as I'm aware), and the story has more fantasy elements and ends happily.

I don't know what you mean by scenario like this in terms of denial reasons but this could easily be covered by PG13 reasoning or any of the "this breaks site rules" type reasons. I have had pets rejected for so much less than this, with it saying to the effect of "pet is not pg13: story is too graphic". The rejection reasons are way less ambiguous than you might think. They can add messages with their reasons.

I haven't bothered with the pet spotlight for a long time but thankyou for the clarification on that's how they do it now - a long time ago it was just silent rejections with no event or anything.

Oh ya, I feel, I've had many a pets silently rejected back in the day. here's the news post from when they changed it over. Iirc that decision was made based on user feedback too :D

I honestly do think this is what happened since bat soup is on an unaltered free template code with no colour changes or other additions beyond the story. I've had pets denied for "not enough original content" when I've drawn all the art myself and heavily altered the code I was using, just not written as many paragraphs as bat soup has.

Yeah, "not appropriate for the site" is a denial that exists - I think Bison got something like that once.

But the reason this pet shouldn't have won is because it broke site rules. Not because it's about a virus.

They have more specific rejection reasons than in the past. One of my pets was rejected for spotlight for using real names and being a real life situation. A staff member notified me by ticket.

The person who created the template responded and said they were upset their profile was used for this pet.

My pet has more fantasy elements involved than the "dreaded devil pet". No reference to real world events, only a Subetan holiday. I even remember that when I was asking for criticism on this pet that I gave a verbal trigger warning to anyone who wanted to read it because I knew the virus was a thing at that point in time.

I think I had the story idea sprout in my mind a month or two before the pandemic hit.....

If Survival is still going on next year (I wasn't here for it this year, so idk if it went on but I'm assuming it did) then I can't imagine pets with stories about viruses would be rejected solely because they are about a virus.

said it best. Plus, as someone else mentioned in the comments of the new news post where they took it down, there have been informational pets that dealt with illnesses much, much better than this did and everybody was fine with them. So in my opinion, I don't think a fictional virus would give grounds to reject a pet unless it broke site rules.

but i'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt if you'd like

Dude, it was held but there was a WHOLE OTHER scandal at the beginning of Survival.

But I really want to know for sure about this spotlight scenario in order to avoid trouble. I think I was so anxious about what happened that I had a bit of trouble sleeping last night due to my fears.

I am having some friends look over the pet in question for some feedback, but I'm thinking I need to post in the help and questions forum to get a more definitive answer.....

Oh really? I kinda wish I'd been here to see it.

But I get it! I'd probably be weary about submitting a pet about a virus too after this. Which pet is it, if you're comfortable telling me? I'd be happy to review it for you 😃

If nothing else, you could probably send a ticket in and get a certain answer from staff.