it's no secret that the pet spotlight, a feature many people enjoy working to get their pets ready for—and which, in fact, comprises some people's primary goal/interest on the site—is notoriously overfilled and understaffed.

people will spend several years with a nominated pet, never knowing whether or not their entry has moved onto the next stage, only to get spontaneously rejected because "you credited yourself for creating the profile but you didn't credit yourself for writing the story so how do we know who wrote the story??" or some other tiny thing that could have simply been a personal message of "hey, if you clarify this detail this we can approve this profile." so even if they fix the issue and get re-nominated, that wait time starts all over again.

the main problems as they've been described in the past seem to be:

• there is a constant massive amount of entries in the approval queue (waiting to be either approved or rejected)
• there is only one person in charge of doing that, and it's obviously not something they should be demanded to dedicate huge amounts of time & energy to
• because of that, there are not consistently that many entries in the winner's queue (waiting to get randomly pulled for the next spotlight post), so winners come out very infrequently (right now we're at one a week)
• users have no way of knowing which queue their entry is in
• although there is an affordance that editing a profile in the winner's queue moves it to a shortlist for re-review, the fact that users don't know whether their entry has been approved yet means editing any nominated profile is a gamble; this feels especially shitty when a problem arises due to code breaking on the site's end/otherwise outside their control and they have to scramble to fix it while knowing this might restart their wait time.

so i think the main things that need to be addressed are:

1. create some way for users to clearly see which queue their entries are in. this could go on the pets > spotlight page, where instead of just saying (nominated) under the name of nominated pets, it might say either (nominated - waiting for approval) or (approved - waiting to win). it would also be nice if users were notified when this updates, not just when they win, so they don't have to anxiously check the page over and over again.

2. figure out a way to get through the queue faster. obviously subeta is a small site with limited people working on it, all of whom have jobs and lives. i know the idea of user volunteers going through the approval queue has been waffled over before, but it kind of seems like the only way. as long as the criteria for approval & rejection are crystal clear and as non-subjective as possible, i think it's not unreasonable to give a set of trusted users the option to help go through the queue. (i know i for one would be more than happy to help.)

3. please, some sort of mercy for tiny fixes on profiles that would otherwise be ready for approval! just send users a message—or maybe have some button to automate a message based on whatever criteria is insufficient/missing—allowing them the chance to fix it and then scoot it along to the winner's queue.

i got one of these messages years ago and i was super grateful for it; the pet won shortly thereafter. more recently, though, i had the inverse experience where i was "missing" a credit (sorry i interpret "profile by me" to mean i made the code AND written content of the profile!) and didn't realize it was going to be considered a problem until ~2 years later when i suddenly got the rejection notification. and that just made my heart sink because that was 2 actual human earth years of my life i'd been waiting and wondering, and now it was all for nothing and the wait would have to start all over again, just for needing to add 5 letters to the profile. it's a very souring experience and i've seen people say it's so discouraging they give up entirely, or even consider quitting the site because of it.

Making sure you see this board and 's excellent post. Thank you for all you do, I know you've got a lot on your plate.

omg this is horrible. If that happened to me, I think I'd be one of those quitting the site... I do other things here, but I'm primarily here for my pets, so I agree with everything said here 1000 times.

Also I've had pets nominated for years, and it's been almost a year and a half since one of mine won the spotlight... but I had NO IDEA those pets may not have even been approved after years of being nominated. Finding this out is very discouraging.

And like... I know the spotlight shouldn't be that important to me; the important part should be creating the pets that I enjoy whether or not they win... but I feel like no one* will look at my pets unless they win. So the spotlight matters to me because I want my characters and their omniverse to be seen ;___;

*ofc I'm being hyperbolic here! Faune ❤ and the rest of the small but devoted pet community are great about giving feedback and encouragement, so I know my pets ARE seen. But getting featured on the front page where EVERYONE will notice them is extra special, y'know? :)

edit: lmao I just realized my current leashed pet's blurb is ironically perfect for this thread

I was motivated this year to get my pets spotlight ready because I want to share my characters with everyone. I've got three right now nominated....and I have no idea if they're in the winners queue or what. As a result, I feel pretty deflated in trying to work on my other pets. I really want SOMETHING to be done. Even if it means it has to be completely done over on Kumos, fine. If volunteers are needed to review entries, I'd throw my hat in the ring. It'd give me something to do during the week when I'm not working.

I just want to be motivated again to keep working on my pets.

I figured THAT was where the hold up was, was if the spotlight does get updated via Kumos.....then it makes sense that those pet profiles also need to make the jump to there, and that definitely is going to affect the coding of everyone's finished stuff. Which resets everything back to ground zero til people figure it out. xD

I do like that legacy transfer, looks like it does work well! But definitely keep us in the loop about Kumos pet profiles. I'm a non-coder, but I can definitely notify the person who did my pet's profiles, cause I bet she has tons of input you're looking for!

Thank you for the update! This makes perfect sense. I love our profiles so much and hope there's a way to smoothly transfer them that requires minimal re-coding (as a non-coder who barely figured out things here I'm scared of everything breaking lol). I know communication is appreciated, but also that it's hard to fit all the things on your list into one day! Thanks for the work you're doing. Here's to continued progress!

ahh thanks for the update (and using my dork as an example lol, his profile looks perfect after the move, plus I like that the url is easy to figure out, with the username:petname). And yeah, I understand about the uncertainty of how/if the backlog will move. It would be great if there was some way to move the profiles to Kumos, but have the pet profiles in the queue stay on the legacy system until they win the Spotlight, so they don't have to be re-nominated and reapproved. But I don't know if that's possible.

I also like the idea of having widgets on the Kumos pet profiles; that will make it easier for people to customize the profiles without having to fool with the CSS if they don't want to have to code. But the ability to just have the existing profiles transfer as is, is great too. I was really worried I'd have to redo everything on all my pet profiles, but in checking several of mine on Kumos, it looks like they display correctly as is.

I am 1000000% all for every suggestions in this thread. The spotlight used to be my favorite part of the site. I loved looking at the creative work people put on their pets. It used to be an EVENT, where a ton of the pet people would rush to the news at midnight to see who won and write comments. I got douzens of comments on some of my older wins! I saw pets with 50+ comments in the past!

The fact it's so hard to get into the winning queue now, and that win are so inconsistant, with only 52 winners a year and MANY being repeats users since some people just have douzens of pets in the win queue, is so discouraging for new and returning users to even work toward entering the spotlight. I will echo was Frenchi said, I had a pet in the queue for a year before getting a notification that I needed to credit the writting (I also assumed that saying "'profile by Past'' meant it included the story/writting)

I would be the first one to apply to volunteer for Subeta. After 19 years on here, I'm happy to give back to the community. That said, I get that there's some issues with Kumos and the way the backend is currently made. But I strongly believe revitalizing the spotlight, maybe even adding new prizes/incentives to participate, would bring some love back into the pet aspect of Subeta, a PET site!

Fully second 's volunteering to give back in this way!

Also, the Pet Suggestions - All Areas thread has some good ideas about incentivizing the spotlight!

Bouncing.... an idea. Not even sure if this is logical let a lone plausible.

-What if the pet spotlight went back to daily to clear the backlog. -No new nominations are able to come from the Legacy site. (freezes spotlight)- to clear the backlog. -Pet creation is disabled on the legacy site, -All new pets and profiles are made on the Kumos site. -Basically like the Legacy shops? Users have to migrate pets/profiles (IK!IK!) themselves?

Anything done won't make everyone happy, but it could maybe work? I don't know, just suggestions...

THIS. That's how we do it. I like this. I think it's the perfect solution!! That means I'd hold off on any new pet ready to be nominated and hold them off til profiles are done on Kumos.

Thank you for the update! I'm very anxiously awaiting the topic on new pet profiles.

In addition to sharing many of the feelings voiced in this thread about the spotlight itself and strongly agreeing with the suggestions (and also being someone that would be happy to volunteer for something like going through the spotlight queue), I just have to say... I feel like one of the biggest reasons I'm struggling to remain active on here lately is the uncertainty over the future of pet profiles. I'm anxious to know what pet profiles will look like in the future, especially as someone that much prefers the editing of pet profiles in comparison to user profiles (but also understands how user profiles would be more easy to customize for people that don't like to mess around with CSS!)

I really don't mind if pet profiles are low on the to-do list, since I know you have a lot on your plate with working on this site, but pet profiles are 100% my biggest passion, so it'll be really great to have more of an idea for what to expect.

coming back with some more thoughts, this is probably one of the places on the site i'm most willing to think about volunteers - everyone who is involved really cares about the creativity, and if it's some kind of system where we can get a couple of volunteers we can make it so that it's not a single persons voice / ideas. and with more people on the queue we can handle the "was this a small change that should keep the person in the queue"

Oh, that's great to know! I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not impatient or anything with them, I don't want to put any pressure on or anything, but it's honestly really nice to hear that they are indeed a priority. :) Profiles do seem veeeery scary to have to move over...

I have... a lot of thoughts on pet profiles, hahaha. I'm just going to kind of... ramble some things off the top of my head, and give some thoughts/dreams?

Being able to switch between a v2 pet profile and a legacy-style one would be amazing if it's possible! My biggest fear has been that 'emulation' could mean that we might not be able to edit the old profile. That's why I stopped making pet profile template freebies, because I'm not sure if they'll all end up broken or needing to be completely redone when things move more fully over to Kumos. But if we'll still be able to make updates to legacy versions... that definitely changes things and makes me a lot less anxious!!

I don't work with user profiles much because they feel so much more difficult, largely due to how there isn't a way to preview them in the same way you can pet profiles -- obviously there are ways to work around this by saving the files, etc., but it's just a lot more hassle and can lead to more issues than the good ol' preview button on pet profiles.

Would it be possible for the 'edit profile' page of v2 pet profiles to not have the CSS live, so that we can edit without issues? Sometimes on my user profile some header edit buttons will be stuck behind images or the like, as I like to use fixed images sometimes.

With our current pet profiles: I've always found it a bit awkward-looking that column 1 only has the minion (so a 64x64 image and some text...), while column 2 has a 200x200 pixel image, the pet name, pet color info, owner, pet like button, and then pet spotlight. I almost always end up moving the pet spotlight to be below column 1, so that it doesn't feel like there's as much wasted space.

I would love the option to have pet gender display as a word rather than the symbol image, without having to mess with CSS. The default gender symbols are cute but they often don't match my font choice, and I enjoy aesthetics, I guess.

Widgets for v2 pet profiles... um... hm. Books read and food eaten could be done that way instead of displayed with the stats, with a few item images being visible maybe, sort of like sticker collections on user profiles? A widget tied to battle records, maybe little trophies based on total amounts of wins and such for battlers? I'll have to think more about this.

This is not just about version 2 pet profiles, it is me begging for a feature hahaha, buuuut I just feel like I need to mention it because it's related to pet profiles... One thing that has been discussed, I believe on the pet suggestion topic Faune made, would be multiple pet treasures or 'drawers' (or similar) in the pet treasure, ideally being labeled. I am not sure if it would be easily doable or a pain, hah, but it would be so awesome for some of the really big treasure chests that we want to break up a little. I have a lot of pets that collect multiple types of items, and it can be a little overwhelming to just see a giant wall of items.

We're able to break them up with CSS, of course, but it would be awesome if it wasn't quite such a convoluted process. I was experimenting with doing so on my pet Rhia's profile: https://subeta.net/petinfo.php?petid=5996312 I feel like it's a really fun way to add more customization and flavor to pet profiles, so I'm kind of wondering if it would be possible to break up TCs like this with the 'drawers' being different widgets or something? It's a pain to do as-is because if I want to keep things organized, I basically have to update the CSS every time I add a new item, and it'd be kind of convoluted to have the different sections in different places on the profile... but the idea of being able to put different sections of the TC in different spots could be used for some fun things on pet profiles, I feel.

I think the ability to clear spotlight wins would be good. I think the idea of being able to enter again without clearing previous wins isn't necessarily bad but I would also find it odd and probably frustrating if someone were to repeatedly win with the same profile, so I'm not sure where I stand on that exactly. I wish that the pet spotlight trophy linked to our pets' news post from the day of their win, instead of just the pet spotlight page.

I'm really happy to hear that you're open to volunteers with pet spotlight! I feel like us pet people are a small but very passionate bunch, and I know I'd love to do something more productive than cry about pets and beg for more :P

Something I'd like to see is if a pet who won the spotlight already, is adopted out to someone new or abandoned, could that pet be entered again possibly somehow, with a new owner? I'm not sure how that would work, except maybe if they do enter again and win again, then the new trophy replaces the old one. So then it becomes the user's job to record keep the pet's past win(s). OR, the new owner can forfeit the old trophy to enter again, but the record of the win still remains, you'd just have to go and find it somehow.

Prize-wise....no idea tbh. Loyalty box? They're no trade already and the contents are also no-trade, so.....to me, it'd be valuable being able to win the spotlight, get a loyalty box, and pick the overlay totem to help get another pet ready. Or another pet slot lol. Or something else entirely!

I can't comment on the coding of the profiles because I already get paralyzed at the thinking stage. Besides, I trust Lea and other coders to be the voice for that cause they know what they want. ^^

If we're doing new pet profiles, a couple of things immediately come to mind:

• privacy settings for pet profiles: public (visible even when logged out), users only, friends only, private. We'd toggle them individually, on the page where you edit the specific pet's profile.

• being able to scrub a spotlight win from a pet - I've adopted pets from the pound that were spotlight winners, but I have no idea when they won, or what their profile was. Let me scrub the win - I did not win the spotlight, I do not want the trophy, I do not want the pet spotlight archive linking to my pet. Someone else might want that though.

• being able to upload/use a CSS file for pet profiles - think of how we use customCSS for users. Something like that, but for pet profiles. With that, you could have a "base" for a custom pet profile. Then, you could tell a pet profile to use the default Subeta coding, or custom coding via description (the way it works now), or the Custom Pet Profile Base CSS (better name pending) and then make minor adjustments to the colors in the pet's profile. This would free up a LOT of space for folks who love to write, but find themselves waging a war between character limit & custom profile coding.

• being able to see who liked your pets - I'm nosy. If we're showing who liked your posts on Kumos, then I'd like to know who liked my pets too.

I may return later with more general pet profile v2 suggestions, but I feel like feedback/suggestions for pet profiles v2 may be better off in another topic.

[edit]Also, before I forget: a hard cap for TC items - with the max number clearly listed so we know what it is. Over the years, I've seen several people reporting in that huge pet TCs (over 1000+ items) make their browser lag really badly. I don't know if Kumos will be better optimized, but I still feel that unlimited pet TCs are a very bad idea. If we're cracking down on gallery and shop sizes, then this should be no different. And on the topic of pet TCs, having a toggle to show/hide the item names in your pet TC would be very nice.

I second (or third/fourth/whatever the count is now) the request to be able to scrub spotlight wins. I agree with Lea that it would be frustrating for someone to win multiple times with the exact same profile, and I don't know any way around that if wins can be scrubbed... but I don't think most people would try to do that, and it's a chance I'm willing to live with if it means I can scrub a previous win and give an adopted pet a new identity!

Also this isn't strictly profile related, but I would LOVE a way to mass-remove items from a pet's TC. I recently changed characters on a pet and had to empty their ~200 item TC one item at a time. Mass-add is such a great feature, it would be nice if there was a removal equivalent!

(Also also I too would be happy to volunteer to help with the approvals.)