So, I know that now spotlights are gaped out by 2 days due to the fact less pets are in the que. Maybe we could add a "retro spotlight" that can showcase a pet that won X year. So say for instance there is no pet for today, January 15th, the system would pick a previous winner from that day (up to 4 years ago) and showcase it instead. It wouldn't need anything maintenance like the normal spotlight because you don't get anything, it's mainly just to showcase a "past" winner.

I suggest this because as a person who loves spotlight and pets, I really like the idea of seeing pets again or even seeing ones I hadn't seen before. For me the biggest thing is seeing the comments users make about the pets showcased. Of course we have to take into account some people are still assholes and will complain and be rude about winners, but thing is... This is generated by a system that only scans for wins that already happened. Lots of people obviously don't look at past winners, and newer members don't really get the chance to appreciate the work that went into some of the pets. I also think it's a great filler and something fresh.

Anyway, that's my 2am why am I making this suggestion... suggestion.

Do a lot of pets still have a profile after winning? It'd be a bit silly for the system to pull up a past winner and the past winner the profile's now blank or... pets named Pet_Number because it got cleared? Although, going through the past winner and clicking randomly it seems that a lot still do have profiles, and I can only assume its the same profile?

Yeah, I've gone through past spotlight winners before and some of them have been adopted out, changed their profile, or no longer have any profile, so I don't think this will work. :c

Nah. It sucks that it's down to only a few days a week but like others have said, a lot of previous spotlight winners have been cleared or adopted out which would defeat the point of this. Yay blank name spotlights??

As someone who won a spotlight several years ago( 2010 being one of my old ones) I'm not particular sure how this would work. A lot of my old spotlight profiles and things of that nature are broken and in some cases, completely blank. Basically you'd end up getting a blank/broken profile if you did want to see what my old spotlight pet looked like. Also, there's the issue of old spotlight pets having been adopted out and the new owner may not necessarily want their adopted pet to be spotlighted especially if it has nothing whatsoever to do with what the previous owner's spotlighted pet was.

I have to agree with everyone else. I was perusing the past winners page and clicking on pets that grabbed my interest and to my dismay some had no profile anymore.

This would be a LOT of extra work to re-evaluate every old winner to see if they're still "good enough" to be shown again. I've seen people adopt old spotlight winners from the adoption center with blank profiles.

Yeah my biggest problem with this is most spotlight wins seem to be for the now, not really months+ later. I've seen more than a share of "well I won the spotlight, now what/I guess I'll get rid of it" boards, and pets adopted out or renamed or reworked and idk. I feel like staff going back through past winners to see which belong to active users, which have profiles, which are still within site rules (missing gender? Everyone will lose their minnnds) is just a lot of work? Especially when the winners already had their limelight.

I'd rather see the spotlight re-worked to become more appealing, then maybe more people would get involved and it could go back to daily.

Like personally, the spotlight doesn't mean anything to me. It's just a place to show off commissions, potentially get a ton of crap thrown at you for having an idea without tons of art, and a means of forever branding an ID with a trophy that may or may not be relevant for years to come.

The two driving forces for me not caring is approximately 25% of me not wanting to listen to whiners if I won with my boringly-simplistic-wonderful-graphicless profiles, and 75% there is literally no way to get rid of that trophy ever, it's always there like a hideous growth you can only hide but it's always there. Always, there. I move my pets around a lot (orders, someone moves to a battle id, zodiac signs based on pet creation day, insanity, renaming existing characters, etc) and I absolutely am not interested in having that growth follow the id around forever and ever.

But if, say, the spotlight win "came up for parole", if you will, after a year-- so in a year you could go to the spotlight option page and BAM you could change the pets option to "leave win intact, disable nominations, enable nominations". Then I could hide the trophy if need be, and have it removed in a year, or leave it alone, or if it pkeases me I could enter to win again.

Clearly re-winning isn't a problem currently (otherwise there wouldn't be a reduced amount of winners), and the ability to get rid of the trophy could make it more appealing for others to partake.

-shrugg- Or just do Random pet of the day for tge other four days of the week. Or do nothing.

No. A lot of people would complain, because the standards in the early days were honestly lower that they are now. Also WHY DID THEY WIN TWICE MEH

I think we would need another type of spotlight for the other days, but I have no idea what. Gallery spotlight? Profile spotlight?

Yeah I'm with a lot of others on the fact that if it was pulled from the past winners pool, a lot of them don't have profiles at all and that would send a very confusing message.

I like 's "random pet of the day" idea though. I also think the human avatar spotlight should be changed and think it should be somewhere on the news page or a similar page since we can't even see it unless we're signed out, which I find pointless. I know it's all just for fun and there isn't a trophy for it or anything, but I like seeing the avatars.

of the 10 pets i've had win spotlight, only one still has his profile in tact, and several of my past winners have been renamed and retooled, not to mention now sport blank profiles. this would probably come up with a lot more misses than hits, unfortunately.

that in mind, my previous wins don't really approach what i now consider my standard of quality (read: i only have one pet profile up now), so i'd prefer more for other people to forget about it than remember it, personally.

I really do like this idea!

Also, I've seen people mention an avatar spotlight and...I'm not really eager to get a HA spotlight, tbh. We already had a bunch of events and contests that revolved around avatars (Epicon, summer in centropolis, peka-boo...) and I don't think it's a part of the site that needs more recognition.

thanku :D

Actually the avatar spotlight already exists. It is on the front page when you are logged out, but it randomly pulls a user from the database, it's not based on anything :P

The only problem I see with an avatar spotlight would be the entire... CW ordeal (baw it's not fair, there has to be two one for CWs and one for no-CWs otherwise it's cheating or something) that would 100% happen without a shadow of a doubt. Plus Idk how it'd work, most people change their HAs daily.. what would be the grounds for an acceptable HA? Would there be a nomination process? Would it just be random?

Sounds complicated (and what style-file already achieves?).

I couldn't support profiles either, it'd just be like the pet spotlight only without any text whatsoever. Just a lookit what I bought :'D or check out my coding skillz which are both great (coding is sorcery, I'm always in amazement of both what can be done with pet/user profiles and that people can actually make it happen.. especially when I felt accomplished for figuring out how the hell to change a pet heart color while letting it change upon hovering xD) but not really something that needs to be asspatted over.

A gallery spotlight would be interesting-- a ton of showcased potential TC fodder sounds wonderful.

I wouldn't mind something new, either. Like, what if once a week there was a writing showcase? Where every week users submit writing (perhaps a limit-- 500 to 2k words or something... something where staff could actually read them all in their leisure through out the week) pertaining to a theme, and the top... 5 or something got showcased and the user got a trophy and I dunno, an item related to the theme (an existing onsite one, maybe old inflated stuff? maybe everyone who enters gets the item or something as long as they wrote about the correct theme).