Maybe it's not the best title, but I would like to tell you what I mean. I have one pet nominated for the pet spotlight since December 2014. What is now about 19 months, more than 1,5 years. I personally think this is ways too long time. I don't want to explain how I feel about, I guess everybody can tell that I am not the happiest about this, seeing other users winning 3 times in 2 months, while my pet still waits. In this thread I don't want to complain, but maybe suggest a change for the routine, that is picking the winners. It was told to me that it is completely random, what pet is picked out of the pool of possible winners. Maybe the programmers could change this routine and set a priority to those pets, who are dwelling in this pool already for ... 6 months / 9 months, whatever.

Maybe other users have similar experience? What was the longest time your pet was (or still is) nominated?

I can see why you are frustrated!

I think maybe the que should clean out the pet nominations once a month and make everyone reenter so that only active users and their pets are being chosen.

But then again I know the system they have for this is pretty complicated and the staff dont need anymore work than what they have to deal with already!

So every 3 months, active users would need to get their pets nominated again and hope that whichever staff member ends up reviewing their pet approves? That sounds like it would just add to the frustration some of us are feeling.

Are the pets of inactive users even winning often?!

I'm really happy that this is something that's being considered / looked at?

I've had pets in there for a good four months at the least, so sometimes I'm just wondering if they got forgotten or are stuck in not-yet-judged limbo. It's nice to hear that I'm not alone!

If it is truly random, that's awesome. If it's being tweaked to consider the inactivity of owners, that's pretty okay too. I'm just glad to hear news on the subject from people directly involved!

My first two spotlight wins came not long after I'd completed the profiles. Brainfreeze's profile was finished about a year ago, nominated shortly after that, and won just this week. I've got another nominated pet who I think has been in the queue about as long as he was.

It doesn't really bother me, but I can see how it would be frustrating to people. It'd be great if inactive users could be filtered out.

Maybe there is a possibility to give long-term pets a higher chance to win than recently entered ones. I am sure the programmers can think about somthing, that gives those, who sit there in the queue a little perk. Also, cleaning out inactive users may be a great idea.

Currently I have only one pet in the queue. I had once 4-5 pets in the queue but I took them out due to the frustration the spotlight cased me, even tho they have pretty advanced profiles with high-quality graphics and illustrations. Might be I will re-enter if some issues are cleaned out, like the long waiting time or the often-asked feedback in case of declination during the voting. This one pet I left in the spotlight as I was curious, how long it would take to either get kicked out or winning. So no worries, currently my frustration is close to zero XD

I would think that if you make the queue less random and don't let any pet sit there for a year or more, you wouldn't have inactive users in the queue in the first place? That sounds more like a symptom, and probably wouldn't be that big of an issue if the queue worked better.

Error 502 - nominated 23rd May 2015 Harry J. Potter - nominated 24th June 2015

Error 502 has been sitting in the queue for the longest out of any of my pets (I do have one that was nominated last month as well), but I agree on a way of filtering out inactive users providing the entire queue isn't cleared (getting a pet nominated can be hard enough, without needing to achieve that on a regular basis for the same pet!).

I know it's been said before that there's no way for us to know which queue a pet is in, but maybe that could be changed, so at least we know that the 12+ month nominated pet has at least passed the first queue, and is just waiting for their turn for the spotlight?

I have 6 pets in the queue I think and 4 of those have been waiting a year now. I would be fucking pissed if I would have to re-enter them again every month.

The reason why I have 6 pets in the queue is because the "we do not have enough pets in the queue to have a daily spotlight" that only ended a few months ago, none of them won while it was only 3 spotlights a week. Then suddenly heaps of new pets were accepted in the queue when staff decided to give attention to the spotlight and BAM again less chance of winning.

It's not the players their fault the spotlight was neglected for ages and that heaps of pets suddenly got accepted in the winners queue when staff decided to give it attention! We shouldn't be punished for it by having to enter over and over again every month while we've been waiting for ages already. And inactive users still deserve to win, they worked for their pets and you don't know their reason for not being around anymore.

My last pet won in june 2015, despite having heaps of pets in the queue non stop. So maybe, just maybe: let the queue favour pets who have been in the queue longer. That would be a less harmful idea than throwing everyone out every month. And raise the spotlight to 7 days a week instead of 5.

[edit] Oh and don't get me wrong: i'm excited the spotlight is getting looked at. I'm just incredibly frustrated that since january 2015 I had 2 pets win while I had a constant of +5 pets waiting in the queue for either winning or being bumped out. I'm here for my pets and I love working on them but in my head I can only have this many things on my plate to work on, and a pet isn't of my plate for as long as it hasn't won the spotlight.

Possible pet spotlight improvements in my opinion:

• Order them according to time in the queue. I don't mind every now and then a new pet winning because it would be frustrating to always end in the back of the queue. An algorithm with 75% chance for a longest in the queue pet being picked and 25% chance a newer pet to be picked. Just throwing a number around

• 7 days a week selecting pets, why not the weekend? More people around to look at the pets.

• Show people in what queue they are, are they ready to win? Are they still awaiting review? And give them a date. Since when have they been in the awaiting review queue? Since when are they in the winners queue.

• Along with the previous suggestion: if your pet has been in the awaiting review queue for 2 months (example) give an option to poke a staff member.

• Try and get that minimal feedback system going with just checkboxes:

  • Layout wrong in browsers
  • too many writing mistakes in the story
  • not suitable for pet spotlight
  • clash of the colours, layout is not pleasing to the eye
  • TC lacking/Story lacking
  • etc

[edit] Oh the irony, I complain how long things take and then I find out another 2 pets of mine has been thrown out after MONTHS. I thought for the length they were in the damn queue the would have been in the winners queue by now. Certainly because one of them was in the queue already since last year.

Status right now: 4 still in the queue 2 recently thrown out (this week even? not sure why they were even thrown out) 2 who keep being kicked out so i gave up (1 for entirely unclear reasons)

If anyone is keen on some numbers. Street was just kicked out and he had been in the queue non stop since 18 January 2015. We are only 4 days off being 1 year and a half in the queue. Janne has been kicked out as well and he was in the queue since 28th February 2015.

This is why Street hadn't won yet ... he was waiting for rejection for a year and a half.

So now I can spend try contacting dozens of people to look at my pet what is possibly wrong (which already happened before I submitted in the first place). Maybe someone will find something which I can fix, then I can spend another year and a half waiting and if we look at it a positive daylight it will take only 6 months for it to actually win ... then it's July 2018 when my pet finally wins.

: I totally agree with all of your suggestions! It would be such an improvement for the spotlight if it would come true! I took my pets out of the spotlight - except one - for exactly the same reasons you also feel frustrated.

Why isn't the review process done in chronological order, rather than random? I never understood that.

I don't even remember when my pet Vaati-Kun got spot light nominated but it must have been a few years...

Where can I check that?

I currently have two pets sitting in the queue, and they have been there since March/April of last year. That is 1.25 YEARS. That is unacceptable. It is also the reason I have stalled on finishing other pets. It is VERY demotivating to wait forever for pets to win. I mean, I can wait a while (I had to wait almost a year for my last winner). But this is getting ridiculous. I think the queue has always kind of favored newer entrants. I remember that one of my pets won after only 3 weeks of being nominated. Another after 2 weeks, and a third after only a month. Nobody should have to wait forever, but newer nominations really need to NOT take priority over long time waits.

Removing inactive users is one thing, but I have to agree with on this.

Clearing out the queue every month sounds nice, but since we are not supposed to solicit nominations, that just makes the spotlight harder on the users. I would also think this would be harder on staff - you would then have to review the same winning pets again and again every month if they don't win during that month (which from the looks of things seems very likely).

There is no real system in place to see when a pet was nominated.

I personally keep track of when my pets get nominated by looking back in the fb conversation with my bestie because she is usually the person who spelling checks the stories one last time before they are nominated. So when i seek "street" (the name of my pet) in my convo with her I see that he was nominated along with 2 other pets on 18 January 2015.

Ah. I see. Wish I could figure out when my pet was created. Then I'd have a rough date.

Thank you. c:

LINK

And here we go again. I don't know whether to just give up entirely or laugh uncontrollably.

I've said it before, I have a pet who has been in there for years now, it seems like. As far as I know she never was kicked out barring the time the queue was completely cleared. She was nominated when we had the spotlight everyday. She was still nominated when we went to three times a week (oh yay! Now she'll win since there's not many in there!). She's still in there. At this point I feel like I'll die of old age before I even see any progress.

Worse part of this is I don't want to have to go through all of this again but I've completely changed my ideas on the pet. I want to change her but damn it, I'm stubbornly wondering just how damn long this is going to take.

Do I sort of win the waiting game for the following? I've also had a pet who had been in the queue since the beginning of the spotlight. I remember this because my friend nominated it back when they still played. Other than the queue being cleared it sat there. Finally it was kicked out around the time we had those coding errors caused by whatever was done with the site coding to screw up pet profiles. I've since redid the profile and once again it's just sitting there.

Edit: A good time line for my one pet - I don't remember if she was nominated before May of 2013. That's a good base date since I remember that was when I put up the photo of her brother on her profile.

Edit 2: lol So now my longest in the queue pet was kicked out. I don't know when but I'm sure it was still in a couple of days ago. Nomination is turned off on that one now. If any others get kicked out I'm turning the nomination off on them.

The spotlight sure feels like it's moved from just showing off our pets to having to be over the top perfect and flashy to ain't no one got time for it.