The new version of the forum has been the same for a while now and very few of the suggestions made in the feedback thread have been implemented. One thing that is on the users more so than vanilla is what and how often content is getting pushed to the frontpage.
I obviously don't have access to the data but given how active the WAYWO threads have always been i'd argue that a large % of the people that participate here do so in those threads. Seeing as how there is very little discussion or advice given to others relative to how it used to be. It seems what little "tuition" people want to share is now put behind a paywall.
Thats besides the point though, what i'm trying to get at is that the Frontpage/news has all but lost its worth given the signal:noise ratio for those that frequent the website, It functions as WAYWO light, this could be useful for whatever number of users that only want to see the "best" of the threads however this doesn't really feed back into the community in a particularly beneficial way and when the frequency of those posts is so high your moment in the limelight is shortlived for what little it is worth. Also if you take into account the chances of overlap it becomes practically redundant, if someone is posting often and going into those threads they've most likely seen what is being reposted.
My request would be that instead of this laughably low effort frontpage you can actually start doing something that makes it a place worth visiting, the previous itteration was used far better and distilled the information into monthly posts which was easier to manage and had more innate value to those artists.
The formatting/presentation seems to be rather broken, with overlap/dropshadow and a lack of spacing, is there a reason for it to still be like this?
Now, judging by your frontpage you like your content piecemeal for whatever reason, so i'll try to make this easy to digest.
> Less frequent reposting of content to the frontpage, if everyones special no one is. > More article like pieces or discussion, it exists, link to that. > Fix the formatting already, what are you paying for? > Don't play favorites and push gumroad/paid content.
Wow, you're really a dick. But I want to get past your poor attitude and just answer your questions, since there are some good ones. You need to check your attitude though.
One thing that is on the users more so than vanilla is what and how often content is getting pushed to the frontpage.
Users don't push content to the frontpage. Only moderators do.
We're mostly volunteers, so we do it on our own time, as often as we get the desire to do so. Personally speaking, I try to peruse the forums at least once a day for new content to push. But I have a full-time job, plus freelance work after hours, etc., so I get to it when I get to it. Similar situation with the others.
It's a lot easier now with the new forum software, just a single button click once we find something. The old system required Wordpress editing, which is quite a bit slower. If you'll recall, updates used to be more like once a week or so.
... given how active the WAYWO threads have always been i'd argue that a large % of the people that participate here do so in those threads. Seeing as how there is very little discussion or advice given to others relative to how it used to be.
The "What You Are Working On" threads are really just tiny slices of the rest of the forums. They're used to briefly share things, not seek critique. If people want crits, they add a link to their own threads. People do go to them, and they do critique. At least that I've seen.
Frontpage... signal:noise ratio... functions as WAYWO light... see the "best" of the threads... doesn't really feed back into the community in a particularly beneficial way... your moment in the limelight is shortlived... the previous itteration was used far better and distilled the information into monthly posts which was easier to manage and had more innate value to those artists... formatting/presentation seems to be rather broken... etc. etc.
What gets on the frontpage is simply what we moderators find interesting or noteworthy, or what we think members would like to see, or what we think they should see. If you want more exposure, post more awesomeness. It's that simple, and it's purely egalitarian.
If formatting or anything else is broken on the site, we want to fix it. But we need actionable info. Please send a message to one of the moderators, with specific details about the error. How you got there, your browser info, mobile/desktop, screenshots, etc. We use a bug database to keep track of things, and we're actively working through the list. But we're always on the lookout for more.
instead of this laughably low effort frontpage you can actually start doing something that makes it a place worth visiting... Now, judging by your frontpage you like your content piecemeal for whatever reason, so i'll try to make this easy to digest...
Haha. Screw you man, that's rude. I'm done, lost my will to persevere with this. Someone else will have to pick up from here. I'll leave you with this important quote from the Info sticky.
Respect Your Fellow Artists
Some simple guidelines for showing respect to other artists of Polycount.
Be courteous, polite and show respect to others. Use of the forums is a privilege, not a right.
Engage your brain before your mouth. You are responsible for your own words and any harm they may cause.
Don't post irrelevant nonsense in any of the non-General Discussion forums
If you are posting controversial content which may offend some people, there is always a chance one of our moderators will remove it. If its removed, that is final and it will not return.
Critiques and responses to images are to be constructive and related to improving the quality of the artwork. Our members love to see others improve and succeed. Always keep this in mind when posting.
About the frontpage being a mirror to WAYWO: most people don't post WIP or showcase threads and most "finished" models from the people that do end up there anyways so it's not that strange that there are a lot of things from that thread on the frontpage. Also, the monthly recaps are still a thing they just get buried among the rest of the posts - maybe that one needs to be stickied on top until next month or something.
> Less frequent reposting of content to the frontpage, if everyones special no one is. > More article like pieces or discussion, it exists, link to that. > Fix the formatting already, what are you paying for? > Don't play favorites and push gumroad/paid content.
>The front page isn't to make anyone "special" its just to show some good content
>Articles do come up (tournament announcements, tragedies, etc). I've seen around 3 art dumps within a month's period. But the only reason why its not showing up more, is because those threads don't come up often. In my opinion, discussions shouldn't come up to the front page because discussions can last forever
>The formatting is fine. You can clearly tell that they did that format on purpose. You don't need to like it, but you do need to deal with it. You could ask for a change, or even start a poll on whether to change it or not. But doing it this was is just wrong. Have you even contacted a Moderator on this "issue" prior to posting this? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Polycount isn't a company. Its just a website.
>Polycount isn't one who plays favorites. The showcase things that are of good quality. Whether is paid or free. It just so happens that the paid content is good enough to showcase. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Posting negative comments about a website shouldn't make me out to be the badguy, if you've taken it personally thats entirely on you.
I don't want to be an antagonist or the "enemy" you talk about in discord conversations, I merely want a website that presents me with interesting information. Whether or not you're a team of volunteers doesn't matter to the end user, this isn't about you its about the website."
Negative comments aren't essentailly bad, its just how you said convey it. If you said it as more of a suggestion then you wouldn't have been the "bad guy" ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
>If time is an issue as you're all volunteers the onus is on YOU to get more people to lower the workload, you don't use it as an out as to why the service or quality is poor, users don't and shouldn't care.
>The frontpage is basically acting as a mirror to the WAYWO threads, this is mostly redundant and oversaturating it as a place to visit. This is also where the "users" instead of "admin" comment comes in, as some of the content could be split off into their own threads and act as a means to show the entire process, NOT just seperate images throughout an already fast moving part of the forum.
> The service/quality is fine.
> I agree, maybe something like a daily comp would be better, but then that would make the monthly comp a bit redundant as well as it taking more time to organize. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nonetheless the new system is better than the old. This thread could have been viewed in a better light if you haven't been unnecessarily attacking people.
I obviously don't have access to the data but given how active the WAYWO threads have always been i'd argue that a large % of the people that participate here do so in those threads. Seeing as how there is very little discussion or advice given to others relative to how it used to be. It seems what little "tuition" people want to share is now put behind a paywall.
So you are complaining that the place for people to put what they are working on and a place where the majority of critique is not meant to happen works as intended? Concerning what it used to be I looked back at the 2012 and 2013 editions of WAYWO and there was a little more discussion and critique but I would argue that this is actually worse than what currently happens in the 2015/2016 WAYWO threads. Concerning the "Tuition" if you ask the vast majority of Polycounter's about how they did something most of the time you will get an explanation/breakdown from them. Additionally are you disregarding all of the very helpful feedback people give to each other both in the 3D and 2D sections and the Technical talk section. Then you may be ignoring the large amount of threads dedicated to learning and helping others (see most of the stickies on the technical talk section.) Regarding the rise in Gumroad tutorials high quality content in a larger amount takes time, effort and passion to see it through to the end if it is done correctly. From professional artists who have full time jobs, potentially a family and a life where do you suggest this time and effort will come from? There is still a massive heap of free and very educational content regularly being posted on the website regardless of the rise of Gumroad tutorials.
Thats besides the point though, what i'm trying to get at is that the Frontpage/news has all but lost its worth given the signal:noise ratio for those that frequent the website, It functions as WAYWO light, this could be useful for whatever number of users that only want to see the "best" of the threads however this doesn't really feed back into the community in a particularly beneficial way and when the frequency of those posts is so high your moment in the limelight is shortlived for what little it is worth. Also if you take into account the chances of overlap it becomes practically redundant, if someone is posting often and going into those threads they've most likely seen what is being reposted.
As someone who uses Polycount pretty much every day I still miss a lot of content especially in the WAYWO threads so the front page can be useful for me to easy see what the moderators think is the best/most interesting of that. Define "Feedback into the community." When you are refering to the time in the limelight I am pretty sure you have mostly misunderstood the purpose of the front page. If you were wanting "Glory" or "Fame" for getting your art to the front page you will best be looking to the monthly recap. You also appear to be complaining that users may see what has been reposted to the front page. But at the same time you are complaining of the frequency of posts to the front pages which are really two different things, either you want more on the front page so that users will not see too much of what they have already seen or you want less on the front page so that the user does not keep missing content but this means they see less and are more likely to see what they have already seen.
My request would be that instead of this laughably low effort frontpage you can actually start doing something that makes it a place worth visiting, the previous itteration was used far better and distilled the information into monthly posts which was easier to manage and had more innate value to those artists.
Are you ignoring the fact that the monthly recap never stopped? True it can be buried quickly but if you just had the effort to type "Recap" or "Polycount Recap" into the search bar you can find the recent posts and the posts months before.
Now, judging by your frontpage you like your content piecemeal for whatever reason, so i'll try to make this easy to digest.
Now this is just rude...
> Less frequent reposting of content to the frontpage, if everyones special no one is.
Again you seem to be stuck in the trap that the function of the front page is to be "special" or "famous" and not to show users interesting posts and threads that they may otherwise miss.
> More article like pieces or discussion, it exists, link to that.
There is already a fair amount of this on the front page that is regularly posted up there. You just have to accept the fact that if there is large amount of a type of content being posted on the forums it is likely to be reflected in what is highlighted.
> Don't play favorites and push gumroad/paid content.
I do not see much favoritism being done by the mods in the front page selection. There is a wide range of different art being posted up there and it may shock you I know but good artists that produce good art are likely to be highlighted more than artists who are maybe not as good that post less often. Why is displaying gumroad/paid content bad? The moderators are getting no money out of promoting good content that their users may want to buy. You could have the opposite of no paid content being displayed on the front page but then that really does not help its users nor does it help people who make high quality content.
Very mature of you to go through all of your post history and replace all of your posts with a period.
You've proven yourself to be a person who only wishes special recognition, who has no actual interest in bettering the community and contributing regardless of recognition.
Very mature of you to go through all of your post history and replace all of your posts with a period.
You've proven yourself to be a person who only wishes special recognition, who has no actual interest in bettering the community and contributing regardless of recognition.
I dunno what the hell is going on here, only thing I have to contribute to what I think is being talked about is:
it would be niceif we could have a upvote on posts in a few forums , then we as a community could more have a collective voice and maybe play tastemaker for the moderators.
then they could easily parse posts with new high upvotes save them time and help get worthy content which might otherwise slip through the cracks (though I personally think it rarely does) to the front page.
I like that idea. We have a bunch of other features in our wishlist, hope we will be able to share it with everyone soon. We'll talk about adding this in.
In the meantime if you see something really neat and you'd like to get it out there, contact one of us and we'll look into it. I can't promise anything, in the end it's up to us to decide. But we do really listen to all of you, about what you want from this, your forum. It's your website, as much as anyone's.
I think it would be nice if such upvotes were to remain invisible though - there is something very elegant about *not* having a likes/star system. Every time the forum got updated in the past this was usually the first feature to be removed from the new layout because it eventually becomes a social media-esque ego stroking thing, which is just more background noise taking away from the art.
After all, view count and replies are probably good enough metrics already ...
The upvote action would serve to (silently) signal that you're interested in that kind of content and that you recommend it to be frontpaged.
About the thread view count, the only way I know to see how many views yours or someone else's threads have in this new forum is to go to their profile page (e.g. click their avatar). In the "Topics" section of that page you can see how many replies and views their threads have.
That's kindof my point really - it shows that popularity metrics are in place already, so adding more of them would be redundant. I would understand the need if the mods kept missing cool content to promote to the front page, but that doesn't seem to be the case - therefore I think the current system is fine
I've banned 2dartist and his/her other account. I'm happy to take some critiques, but your bullshit of editing down your comments shows that you have no value to us. Bye.
Replies
Valid critique. We're working on things. Many improvements are probably not so visible to you, but they have been coming in steadily. Fixes take time.
Users don't push content to the frontpage. Only moderators do.
We're mostly volunteers, so we do it on our own time, as often as we get the desire to do so. Personally speaking, I try to peruse the forums at least once a day for new content to push. But I have a full-time job, plus freelance work after hours, etc., so I get to it when I get to it. Similar situation with the others.
It's a lot easier now with the new forum software, just a single button click once we find something. The old system required Wordpress editing, which is quite a bit slower. If you'll recall, updates used to be more like once a week or so.
The "What You Are Working On" threads are really just tiny slices of the rest of the forums. They're used to briefly share things, not seek critique. If people want crits, they add a link to their own threads. People do go to them, and they do critique. At least that I've seen.
Whut? There's no paywall here at Polycount. I guess you're talking about Gumroad? Polycount itself is a free service.
What gets on the frontpage is simply what we moderators find interesting or noteworthy, or what we think members would like to see, or what we think they should see. If you want more exposure, post more awesomeness. It's that simple, and it's purely egalitarian.
If formatting or anything else is broken on the site, we want to fix it. But we need actionable info. Please send a message to one of the moderators, with specific details about the error. How you got there, your browser info, mobile/desktop, screenshots, etc. We use a bug database to keep track of things, and we're actively working through the list. But we're always on the lookout for more.
Haha. Screw you man, that's rude. I'm done, lost my will to persevere with this. Someone else will have to pick up from here. I'll leave you with this important quote from the Info sticky.
>Articles do come up (tournament announcements, tragedies, etc). I've seen around 3 art dumps within a month's period. But the only reason why its not showing up more, is because those threads don't come up often. In my opinion, discussions shouldn't come up to the front page because discussions can last forever
>The formatting is fine. You can clearly tell that they did that format on purpose. You don't need to like it, but you do need to deal with it. You could ask for a change, or even start a poll on whether to change it or not. But doing it this was is just wrong. Have you even contacted a Moderator on this "issue" prior to posting this? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Polycount isn't a company. Its just a website.
>Polycount isn't one who plays favorites. The showcase things that are of good quality. Whether is paid or free. It just so happens that the paid content is good enough to showcase.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
> The service/quality is fine.
> I agree, maybe something like a daily comp would be better, but then that would make the monthly comp a bit redundant as well as it taking more time to organize.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nonetheless the new system is better than the old. This thread could have been viewed in a better light if you haven't been unnecessarily attacking people.
You've proven yourself to be a person who only wishes special recognition, who has no actual interest in bettering the community and contributing regardless of recognition.
I was pretty confused at first...
it would be niceif we could have a upvote on posts in a few forums , then we as a community could more have a collective voice and maybe play tastemaker for the moderators.
then they could easily parse posts with new high upvotes save them time and help get worthy content which might otherwise slip through the cracks (though I personally think it rarely does) to the front page.
In the meantime if you see something really neat and you'd like to get it out there, contact one of us and we'll look into it. I can't promise anything, in the end it's up to us to decide. But we do really listen to all of you, about what you want from this, your forum. It's your website, as much as anyone's.
After all, view count and replies are probably good enough metrics already ...
About the thread view count, the only way I know to see how many views yours or someone else's threads have in this new forum is to go to their profile page (e.g. click their avatar). In the "Topics" section of that page you can see how many replies and views their threads have.