I love to see the pets being picked on a daily basis. I like to lurk, find fantastic stories and pet look ups and nominate pets. Does anyone else miss this being a daily thing?

I definitely miss this as well, but for more selfish reasons. I have 5 pets who have been nominated for months, and with only 3 winners a week, it takes forever to win. lol

That being said, I just really want a pet spotlight that attracts people, even if there are only three winners a week. There has been no update on the number of pets in the queue, so I have no idea if cutting it down to three a week has actually done any good, but I hope some changes to the system will entice more people to try for the spotlight and not push people away. The more people we have winning, the more days a week it can be, and the more variety we can see! ^^

If the pet spotlight wants to attract people, it needs to have broader rules. Right now, the rules are too restrictive.

It feels like so much effort is spent on the container and so little on the actual content.

Also, we have a requirement for a written story. That's ridiculous. Same with the profile. You don't need pretty graphics to have something worth seeing.

I just would like to know exactly where my pet stands in the queue. I'm pretty sure by now it's the never been looked at pile as it's been sometime since I've noticed someone nominated her. This was before the change to three days a week.

I've been wanting to change her profile for awhile now. I'd go ahead but I was a bit proud and happy someone liked her enough to nominate her. Now I'm just annoyed and a bit stubborn. If she gets kicked out I'm not going to try the spotlight anymore and just change the profile.

I feel like everything is moving a looot slower now that the spotlight only posts 3 times a week. I finally got my first pet nominated, and I spent a month waiting for it to be accepted or rejected before I realized that wasn't happening. I've talked to other people who have said it's been MONTHS (dec, jan) since their pets were nominated and they haven't heard anything. It feels like the whole thing is just s l o w and if it takes this long for a pet to get picked, I definitely think it's turning people off from doing more with their pets, since it feels like it'll be forever until anything comes out of it. Some people have previously brought up the point that it also doesn't seem to be random, and they highlighted a few users that have a pet winning every 2 weeks almost on the dot, which is also frustrating and ridiculous.

I just want to stop seeing the alert for new news posts at midnight on days they skip the spotlight. :/

Isn't the new news alert for the potion lottery winner? Or.. ^^'

Isn't the new news alert for the potion lottery winner? Or.. ^^' I guess it could be, but A) it's not in the real news feed and B) I don't care who wins the Potion Lottery, lol.

- It was, but now that the lotto winner isn't announced in its own news post there's really no need to keep the phantom alert.

yeah, like i get that apparently there weren't enough entries to warrant a winner every single day, but there have been plenty of suggestions as to how to get more people to enter and to make sure those entries meet the standards. for instance, giving a reason for rejection (messed up coding, poor writing quality, poor art quality, etc).

i'm curious to know what kind of rule changes you'd like to see. most people over the years have argued that the rules were actually too broad and needed to be made more specific, which they did end up doing. also the requirement isn't actually for a written story:

i don't think that rule is entirely unreasonable - there ought to be something worth seeing on the page aside from a fancy pretty profile, nice overlay, or impressive treasure chest, and the page even goes on to say "There is an exception to the story rule: some people get extremely creative with treasures and can actually form treasures into images, comics, pictures, etc. This will be considered using 'art' to tell a story if done well." so you don't need a 'story' in a formal or traditional sense; you just need something interesting to see.

and it's not like the profile itself even has to be fancy, either:

it's true you don't need pretty graphics to have something worth seeing, but whatever you're presenting should be presented in an interesting, aesthetically pleasing way.

I miss it too, and I would also like the "phantom alert" to stop popping up. :P Idk, the spotlight is the spotlight. It's definitely a part of the site that needs attention but I'm not sure what would make more people join. I don't want it to be even less often though, it would be sad to phase it out. It's hard enough to find neat pets around the site, I'd like pets to have more attention in general.

Stories should not be a requirement. Period.

What is aesthetically pleasing is too subjective to be an official criteria. If the judge doesn't like it, even if you, the owner, and twenty of your friends like it, it will never win.

I miss it too :/ I have quite a few pets that have been nominated for several months. xD

- I think the profile graphics aspect of the SP is likely one of the least restrictive of all the requirements. Plenty of individuals have won with minimalistic profiles, and often they are augmented coding.

What I would like to see is more moment on the Brainstorm thread for the Spotlight. It was getting attention and discussion, and then went ploof. Its frustrating as hell.

I also would love to see the phantom New News announcement discontinued on days where there is no SP winner. I'm sure like many other users, I have to check the announcement just to make sure something new didn't show up :/

I would like to see it back to being every day. This is a pet site, there should be more emphasis placed on pets, but instead everything is focused on HAs. Frankly, if I wanted an HA site, I'd go to Gaia. But no, I want my pretty pets.

I really do not buy that there are not many pets in the queue. I wonder if "not many" is akin to Subeta's use of the word "soon" (ie, they have a different idea of what it means than the rest of us)

I think the pet spotlight should be revamped to lighten up the requirements, and a queue counter should be added.

It would be nice if staff could comment more on this thread about the changes that were mentioned to say if they'd even consider being more flexible on the current requirements...

I love that people are saying they've had pets in the queue for months, and yet we keep getting the "there aren't enough pets in queue" excuse.

Welp.

I loved the pet spotlight every night. Maybe if staff actually put an interest and effort into it, users would to. But it's been put on the back burner, and with how slow staff is about it, users aren't going to bother. (Really, months on waiting for a pet to be accepted or rejected is not acceptable when I know for a fact there are pets being instantly accepted AND spotlighted based on when their profiles were made. That is NOT okay.)

Any chance there can be an event when your pet is kicked from the queue?