The Pet Spotlight is due for a bit of a shaking up.

We've decided we want to give a bit more control to the users on deciding which pets deserve some time in the spotlight, which will not only give US more time to focus on important things like drawing sweet new items for you and fixing up the site coding, but will also make the pet spotlight more accessible. Hopefully.

What we want the new system to be:

• Users see the queue of pets that have been nominated
• Users cast upvotes (Yep, this is ready!) or downvotes not-upvotes (Nope, not quite ready!) on each pet
• When a pet has a certain amount of votes (determined by robots) it will get put into the win queue
• Staff will double check the pets in the win queue to make sure there are no sneaky rulebreakers (but we won't be judging aesthetics at this point)
• Checkbox reasons if staff have to kick you from the win queue
• Rewards for voting in the pet queue (sp?) to keep users voting

We're going to open up a forum for help on getting your pet up to scratch for pet spotlight, although it will be entirely user-run being that the queue is going to be more user-run now. Is there anything else you'd like to see implemented into this system?

guys look

:/ I don't like this. I prefer staff review and would hate for it to turn into a popularity contest. Also I'd really hate to see spamming, whether that be of upvotes OR downvotes.

This seems like a bad idea to me, especially the down voting. What would prevent people from rigging this offsite?

Can the name of the pet + user name be hidden?

No real say in the matter any more, I've not cared about the spotlight in years. (For myself and my pets) Hopefully for those who DO work hard and take part some of these changes can be helpful to them.

I've made progress on my pets at less than a snail's pace so I don't know of anything else to add but I appreciate having a reason listed for rejection, for future reference c:

sP rewards? I thought we were swimming in sP already. How about something more like randomly award forum points or quest points?

Other than that, great idea!

I also don't like this. I can definitely see it turning into a popularity contest, as people will see that the pet is owned by somebody they like, and so they'll just vote the pet up so their friend can win, regardless of how the pet looks.

Also, I can just imagine the hoards of boards - "HEY GUYS UPVOTE MY PET!!!1!!"

The pet spotlight it supposed to be about creativity, not popularity. :c

I don't like it either. A lot of people have different tastes, and I can see fan pets winning over actual original characters- just because they're recognized. I do not want it to be a popularity contest.

While I do like the idea of revamping the spotlight a bit and find it interesting that we could see the queque of pets nominated, I also agree on the concerns that mentioned. Having users vote is a nice idea, but I have the same fear that it will turn into a popularity cntest or that users will get even more angry now if they're not chosen.

POPULARITY CONTEST YAASSS

What the fuck. Time for me to stop working on my pet for spotlight.

Ty for the stay, it has been good ;) [Edit]

I am really not looking forward certain changes. I'm all for the input about why we were denied and I'm all for users to see the queue. But to see actual users decide if I AM worthy of them? No. You have to be neutral if you judge a competition and I can't see users doing it properly. I can smell a popularity contest even if you hide the name, the pet name the smell or whatever. When writers create a book, they are not requesting people to upvote or downvote their writing or their freaking ability to write. Can we stop shutting creative writing down? Do you know how time consumming it is to work on a pet and to put your best into it and to write a damn story? I'm sorry, but if it changes I'm stopping spotlight right now and never going back.

Much like what others have said, popularity contest determined by other users = no thanks. Guess I can stop wasting time getting my pet spotlight ready haha

I... kinda like this idea, but I can see it being a bit of a popularity contest. Whereas, as it is now, you only have to have one person notice your pet to nominate it, this way you'd have to have someone nominate, AND get a load of users to upvote you enough. And I feel like users with not many on-site friends would get as much of a second glance as someone with loads of users backing them/their pets.

I'm not entirely against it though, I just feel it might be even harder for some users to get their pets noticed.

I think I'm definitely against down-voting though. That just seems mean, especially if someone has put the time and effort into their pet.

I AM ALL ABOUT:

• Checkbox reasons if staff have to kick you from the win queue *****
• Users see the queue of pets that have been nominated **

Idk about voting though... because yea, I definitely see it becoming a popularity contest. Is the two-week rule still going to be upheld? What would prevent someone with two+ pets in the queue winning in a row, esp if people just keep upvoting them (friends or otherwise)?

Feel like you babes would wanna see this

Have you thought about hiring just a handful of users to go through the queue? I would love to do something like that to help out!

Rather than down-voting could there be a "flag this pet" type button? Because yeah this is already easily a popularity contest, but aside from that I don't like the idea of downvotes when there might not be anything wrong with the pet itself. Because there should be no reason to downvote a pet aside from having an issue, correct? So maybe users can flag it instead to be checked out and removed from the queue instead of having pets downvoted because people dislike the owner.

Opinions?

I like the check box list for why a pet is kicked, but I'm not sold on user voted pets. I feel like anytime we get user voted anything there's a huge backlash because people feel like the users are getting all their friends to vote for only certain people, exclude certain people, etc etc, and despite staff oversight once a pet has enough votes, it won't necessarily stop groups of people from controlling the majority of the pets passing muster - which is fine if everyone can be non-biased...however we all know that doesn't necessarily work here.