The problem with "just TCs" is that the TC portion isn't a requirement of the pet spotlight-- so it doesn't matter if there is one or isn't one x:

You can't call the TC a pass when it's totally optional-- however, I would absolutely love to see TCs become a requirement to the spotlight. That + the ability to remove a win/trophy after a period of time would make me 50% more interested in this than I am currently (which is at about a -5%).

I do agree though, that it seems silly when a pet wins and the profile/art/graphics/story are all commissioned + there's usually no TC either (which doesn't actually matter when it comes to winning or not, mind you). But there is the fact that coding is sorcery, art isn't exactly something everyone can do (even if they can-- they may not have the software/tablets to turn it digital), and even if people can tell stories there's a lot of reasons people might be hesitant to write their own stories down-- generally asshattery that's often shown in the news/offsite, english might not be their first language, their roots might show too deeply (ain't nobody gonna change my mind that it's dragged instead of drug-- for the record), or they may have mild+ mental disabilities preventing them from being a literal master. It would really suck to have your hand in all of these unfortunate pots and be told that your ideas are okay but since you're not artistic enough you can't play with the other children.

Definite support of relevant TCs becoming a requirement, though (with idk, an 8 item minimum? There's so many effing items on subeta if you can't find 8 that fit a theme... Idk I have nothing for that).

(edit2add: for the record I code/art/write/tcspam for all of my pets, but I don't spotlight, so ijs I can sympathize even though this doesn't effect me at all)

I don't know about this user voting, like everyone else has been saying. It's very likely to become a popularity contest.

I think if you're going to do this, you should have a trial period of about one or two months, then see how the userbase feels about how things are going. But definitely don't implement it and say "This is how it is from now on" with no possibility of turning back.

I agree with the TCs becoming an aspect for nomination consideration, I've always thought that TCs add a good bit of personality to any pet and I think they should be at least a little important. :)

Could this be made as the dress-up contest, where we vote, but based on the looks of the pet and story, but w/o names?

Reading everything here and have to agree-- great big NO to the whole, "upvote/downvote". The users here are already too clique-ish and you'll just have a popularity contest on your hands.

You will have people going, "Ew. Snake! I hate snakes! -downvote-" instead of actually looking through it. (As an example).

If you mean the "downvote" to be a simple "Its not ready" then why not apply it as a form? Critique it. WHY isn't it ready? What does it need?

If all this is supposed to do is cut down on the workload of staff members (which is what it seems like), then why not bring in more staff for this? Why not make up a minimod title for this?

To vote, fine ..downvote can make this into "I don't like this person so will vote against" so I don't think that idea is good.

Flag for an inappropriate one for staff to look at and remove, fine however a critique for improvement even better.

In regards to the last part, if I had a say in the matter, I'd group it into coding (even if you don't get something fancy, coding is inescapable, as simply aligning your font is coding to a mild degree) and Artistic Element (either a story/poem/thing or drawing). So, you could pay someone to code a profile and commission an artist to draw your pet's picture, but you'd have to write the story. Or, you could code the profile yourself, but pay for the other things, etc. Staff MIGHT consider a treasure chest of over X amount of items as an Artistic Element, too. idk people can debate over the treasure chest. This would help avoid people saying 'I made this one button IM DONE YO', since people will now be voting with that in mind, and would probably require a level of effort to be shown. I know one person's effort does not equate another's, but the spotlight has always been influenced by people's opinions and emotions; it's just the nature of the beast. It can't be avoided. It's judged by people, not a computer.

In regards to fudging facts about who did what and sneakily paying people offsite, I admit it would be difficult to police to some degree, but I feel that requiring a person to only have to hand-produce ONE element of their pet profile would help deter them from illegal activities/rule-breaking. Just my thoughts. ^_^

This definitely has a good chance, to some degree, to end up as a popularity contest.

People with lots of pet friends or who are in pet-related groups are going to submit their pet, link their friends and ask them if they think Fluffy is ready (aka vote for him please). They may not be able to slip under the radar of staff if their pet in fact isn't ready, but still some peoples' pets are going to end up getting to stage 2 faster than others who might be just as deserving.

I think it might be a good idea to have some kind of chronological order to the pets that are still being voted on by other users. Example: Users can view ten pets at a time and each one needs three upvotes or downvotes before it's moved on or booted. If there are 11 pets submitted on Saturday and 6 on Sunday, that 11th pet on Saturday will automatically be the next pet that users can vote on- not any of Sunday's are visible yet until one of the ten spots opens up. That way we can't simply just skip past Saturday's pets and begin voting for the ones entered on Sunday.

It would still have some flaws, but it might cut back on pets sitting and rotting at the first stage.

Glad to see pet spotlight being looked at. I don't know if the voting idea will be a good idea. I am not sure if blanking out the names from the pets will work since some users add pet names to their layouts and stories.

Comment on the TCs, I am not very keen for it to be a requirement because I am working on a pet that does not own anything... thus i will not add items to his TC. It really depends on the story that is given to the pet. It is strange to force a pet to own treasures in their space.

i have to 100% disagree with pet TCs being a requirement. they're fun and all but sometimes you just don't have a use for them in a certain profile, or they'd overall ruin the look of it. worse yet is that because they're not nested in pet_info, they're hard to hide away in a tab or somethin'.

not every profile is your standard pet profile that has to or does display everything and i'd hate to have creativity taken away because you have to have or display a pet TC to qualify. sometimes it isn't that you can't think of items, and more that the profile or setup just does not call for it.

I think TC's can be awesome sometimes but I never really miss it when a pet otherwise have a nice story and concept behind it.

And as many point out maybe just ditch the whole downvote thing please? Or at least maybe change the downvote to multiple choices so that you have to choose a reason for downvote like "Maybe a bit more work on the story.", "Something in the coding went BOOM!" etc.

And for the something have to be made by the owner idea someone put up. I think it would make it unfair for the people who have no skills in the different areas but have a really nice concept or idea for a pet who they just need help with fleshing out.

Hmmm I like some of the ideas for this but it feels like features that revolve around user voting always cause a LOT of drama, so it's kind of hard to fully support the idea, you know? I absolutely hate the popularity-based events tbh, but I actually think it could be interesting w/ pet spotlight to incorporate users more into it, just because there's already the support group and all? Like, spotlight is very user-based already, so it makes sense to me to make it even moreso (but with staff still checking over everything and such), esp since staff is spread thin.

In general I think it should definitely be made against the rules to beg for votes, just to nip that possibility in the bud haha. And people shouldn't be able to give out links that will allow other users to vote for their pets, or else it'll be a total popularity contest. Maybe each user could only view a certain amount per day, and it could be randomized?

If some sort of "downvote" option is added (plz rename it if so), would it be possible for users to have to go through a checkbox with reasons as to why the pet isn't spotlight-ready rather than just being able to downvote? It might prevent people being jerks/downvoting for petty reasons, since they'll be required to give reasoning. ORRR like what said-- maybe to approve/upvote a pet we have to check off a certain amount of boxes from the spotlight guidelines? And if the pet doesn't meet three-four of the criteria or so, that'd be where "downvoting" comes in (which could be less "downvoting" and more "this pet does not meet enough of the guidelines/isn't spotlight-ready"? They wouldn't have to meet ALL the guidelines, but would have to meet a certain amount!)

I'm really REALLY leery of the idea of prizes because that could easily encourage spam, but it's also very possible that many people wouldn't participate without a promised reward. :/ Maybe most of the prizes could be pet-based.... Would there be a way for staff to check over things occasionally and flag users who seem to be abusing the feature/spamming upvote or downvote/etc?

Honestly I'm not against the idea of this, but I think it'd need to be done very carefully to avoid being a new dramafest (though with any new feature that seems a bit inevitable, haha).. and there would definitely need to be a short trial run before it's made truly official, I think.

I agree with everything you said. The part I quoted is exactly what I had been thinking. I honestly think if that's the intention behind the downvote it makes no sense the way they are framing it. If I'm understanding correctly you'd want the downvote to have a form? The only drawback would be what is going to prevent people from just putting bullshit in so they can downvote.

I'm only just starting to work on pets but honestly this would probably make me more wary of even attempting to do the spotlight. I mean, as far as I know I don't think there are people who would deliberately downvote me for personal issues (I could be totally wrong though.) but it all seems super sketch. I feel like this would only work in a perfect world. Let's be real. With the amount of drama we have it's pretty likely that there'll be people who are willing to be petty and downvote for non pet-related reasons.

The one thing I would actually get behind is the viewable queue. I might be reading this wrong, but the way it's phrased it doesn't seem like the staff given feedback thing has anything to do with the actual things that the spotlight is supposed to be looking for.

I might just be misinterpreting this though. I'm reading it as though the staff is leaving the approval of aesthetics to the community, then giving reasons for a queue kickout. Unless this is referring to the actual spotlight requirements not being met.

While I do understand that staff resources are limited, I do not understand how acknowledging user's effort to pimp their pet profiles (and usually spending lots of time and interaction on site to get everything together) would be "not important" to Subeta staff. To me, that really seems way more important in terms of site profile and user interaction than another pretty dress or another item in the 10,000 item gallery hoard.

So, there will be a few users who participate and vote. Up and down. - How will you ensure that each voter sees all pets enqueued? And not always the same 10 pets?

• Then, how will you prevent this from becoming a populariy contest? Or buying votes?

I dislike the idea of yaf (yet another forum), too. There are tons of them already, and without a working forum search I spend a lot of time searching if a topic has been adressed in all possible sections.

Also, what others have already said, pet profile voting should not be a means to gain sP.

What about changing the nomination process if you want more interaction? No more clicks on the profile by your friends in order to nominate the pet. Make it a subforum to the Pet forum (all right, yaf) but with a different setup. Not a single input box like in the regular forums but one for each requirement in a check box with comment field style. Users who feel that their pets are ready make a topic, and other users could work the given checklist as feedback to them (users would reply per requirements, e.g. while for a given profile there is no doubt about the art work, the story is rated not ready. So, it would be transparent what needs to be improved and it would be made sure that all users use the same rule set for judging. Instead of having single users voting "secretly" and counting these secret votes per pet, break down the process where the feedback is per requirement and would include some arguments. If such a pet would be found "ready", it can be entered in the winnig queue and reviewed by staff.

As for a reward - forum points sound good.

That's definitely fair enough, though including it as a requirement would really be the only way I'd support the notion of "you have to have done at least one thing to creativly add to your pet" (which wasn't my idea or anything-- I do agree it's silly to see every single thing commissioned, but I can definitely understand why/how it happens and I'm not against it by any means).

I wouldn't mind seeing something like "your pet must have 3 out of 4 qualifying factors to be successfully nominated" + y'know all the rule thingies like name and owner and stuff, or something along those lines.

Likeee:

1. Story/writing (whatever it is now, I don't actually know |D).
2. Some form of text explaining what's going on (ie: Max is a cuddly fluffydog with bad allergies but loves flowers anyways because you don't own him he does what he wants).
3. Asthetically pleasing profile.
4. TC with no less than x items relevant to the theme of the pet.

So people who might not want to commission stories or might not be masters of the written world could drop a blerp about the pet + have a TC or something? Or if you're word/item savvy but coding is sorcery you could pass off some super simple layout and still be nominated?

I dunno, passing thought-- again I don't spotlight, so I'm not heavily vested in any of the above outside of the fact that it wouldn't be fair to not only require artistic creativity but force you to make it yourself too.

If Spotlight goes to user voting this will be the end of Subeta for me. I've had pets rotting in the que for months as it is. You know, that que that doesn't have a lot of pets in it. So why couldn't there be non-paid mini-mod positions for the pet spotlight? People have been practically throwing themselves at staff for years to make this a thing. Since there isn't enough paid staff to manage the pet spotlight. On a pet site...

I really don't dig the idea of downvoting pets, largely for the reasons I've already seen while skimming the thread. An idea I do potentially really like is the concept of "flagging" a submission so that way if it appears incomplete or lacking, in theory it could get a definite look-over and either get the A-OK to remain or get the boot. While I totally can appreciate how much time it takes to review pets, admittedly I just really don't like the idea of a bot processing upvotes/downvotes, since humans can be petty and it wouldn't surprise me too much if groups of users were to bandwagon for or against certain pets because of personal, spotlight-irrelevant reasons. I very well might be a cynic, though!

Something I'm TOTALLY on board with is TC's being required. It's really easy to have even just a small or simplistic one compliment a concept or a story really well. Regardless of size, they're such a huge creative component to pets. Arrangement, co-ordination, dedication to working for the sP-- all around it's a really solid piece of the puzzle. Appearance-wise I don't fully understand the argument of keeping them out, but I haven't done an extensive amount of coding in pet profiles so I genuinely can't weigh in on that. I don't know how complex it becomes with 'em!

I'm also 100% behind the idea that the pet's owner ought to have contributed something creatively to the pet. Be it one or two things (coding, story, concept, art, TC, interpretive dance, anything honestly), I just feel pretty strongly about this, as other users do in this thread. It feels to me as though the owner should have some sort of connection with the pet, apart from having spent sP/CSC/USD (in the case of art) on it-- specially with how the price of purchasing a profile has been driven down and how easy it's become to accumulate sP.

ANYHOW that's my two cents! It's not very revolutionary but I figured it'd be worth piping up since I love my babby animals and spending time and vast amounts of sP on them.

BUT WHAT IF YOU'RE A HERMIT

In all seriousness, this sounds like it would require the submitting user to be more pro-active to guarantee a win. Sort of like campaigning, but minus the millions of dollars spent.

Yeah, I understand that, I'm not really saying they should be a necessity, but maybe for people who are into tc's and take pride in their specific collection, that work would be considered. Therefore, if you have one, it can help you, but if you don't, it won't hurt you either.

Maybe this is already a thing, I'm not certain, I'm just a tc kind of person and in a way it is an expression of creativity; so if you show your creativity in a tc, awesome, that counts, if you show it in a way that doesn't use a tc, that's awesome too.

{the tc thing is kind of not the point though and I don't want to get anyone hung up on it, because I don't think it's going to be a major change regardless lol}

Well, good to know. I don't like the idea of down voting. In my opinion, that is only going to become a source of drama.

I like the idea of getting feedback at why a pet is rejected. I don't like the idea of users voting :/