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An open discussion of TBT events

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alright friends this is gonna be a doozy of a wallpost.....

I want to start by making it clear that I am not speaking about any one person, I really hope no staff or community member takes anything I say as a personal criticism by any means. I'm making this post because I made a somewhat off-handed criticism of TWE 2 about something that I truly feel is caused by a more complicated issue. I don't want to just complain about something without trying to move towards a productive solution, so here goes.

I hope in the future that TBT events stray away from solely being chosen by TBT staff, and are chosen in a way that involves the community - as it was done during the '17 Fair's Design-A-Villager contest, for example. I want to stress I'm not saying that mods are being biased towards certain people, and that's a misguided point of view. The mods should pick whichever entry they want for whatever reason they want. (That is literally the structure of the contest - the staff's preferences) And people here are really talented and creative, of course they deserve to win. But, it's my opinion that it's a lot better to involve the community in the voting process. I think the best solution is to consistently follow the same voting format: have mods choose several entries, and have the community vote within that (anonymous) pool. Staff Favorites could be added as separate chances to win, if staff would like full input on some winners.

Something else I believe is somewhat limiting for the participants of events is that while winners can win multiple times the same year, they only receive one collectible if that collectible is unique. This means that any subsequent winning entries from one person are still taken up as slot, but nobody really benefits from this inconsistency. It does not benefit the winner to win any more than once, and it does not benefit the rest of the community as they lost another chance at winning. The best answer is NOT to prevent people from winning in multiple categories. In my opinion, the best answer is to pick a separate winner in addition. This way, you are still distributing the same amount of prizes that were intended to be given out in the event - and you are not excluding people who've already won from multiple winner titles.

I would love hearing everyone's opinions on what I've said, and I ask that you please keep this discussion civil and away from mentioning anyone specific. Thanks for reading!
 
I disagree with the community voting part. With community voting, everyone just nets votes from their friends and so-called-jokingly posts "hey guys vote for me!" in public threads. Keeping the entries "anonymous" does nothing. People still message their friends via PM which ones are theirs as well as tell people via discord or skype, and there's no way to prevent that or implement a solid rule about it. Having staff favourites keeps everything much less biased, and not to mention would prevent another instance where people bribe others for votes, which we saw during the fair. I think the only time the community should be brought in for events like this is for a tiebreaker like what happened with the pumpkin carvings.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the separate winner thing. It seems like it could be a good idea however I will say to me at least it feels like a pity prize. It's like "You didn't actually win but we couldn't give x person two of these", and personally I wouldn't feel right being in that extra place. Perhaps to keep things relatively the way they are all the "extra" unique collectables could be raffled off at the end of the entire event and that way everyone's still a winner. That being said I don't really have a problem with how things are run currently either - if you won you won, if you didn't you didn't, no one's really owed anything and not having a unique collectable isn't going to hurt anyone.
 
I know you probably made this because you're still a bit sad about not getting a Pink Candy. Not gonna lie, I thought your Temple Tempest entry deserved to win. However, I've never won a prize from an event in my entire time on this forum. Sure, it's disappointing. But I've come to accept that we're not owed anything and there's no point in stressing over a few pixels. Your lineups are always great anyway, so I don't think you're lacking in collectibles lol.
 
I have to agree with Gyro. If you give an extra prize because someone got double, it would feel like an empty win. You just got it because the real winner won twice, not because you won. The only thing I won was a birthday raffle and my snowflake ended up being an extra one so originally, I wouldn't have gotten it in the first place.

You also can't prevent people from trying to net votes from their friends and others. This is just how things are. Not saying it's right but you can't control other people's decisions.
 
I disagree with the community voting part. With community voting, everyone just nets votes from their friends and so-called-jokingly posts "hey guys vote for me!" in public threads. Keeping the entries "anonymous" does nothing. People still message their friends via PM which ones are theirs as well as tell people via discord or skype, and there's no way to prevent that or implement a solid rule about it. Having staff favourites keeps everything much less biased, and not to mention would prevent another instance where people bribe others for votes, which we saw during the fair. I think the only time the community should be brought in for events like this is for a tiebreaker like what happened with the pumpkin carvings.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the separate winner thing. It seems like it could be a good idea however I will say to me at least it feels like a pity prize. It's like "You didn't actually win but we couldn't give x person two of these", and personally I wouldn't feel right being in that extra place. Perhaps to keep things relatively the way they are all the "extra" unique collectables could be raffled off at the end of the entire event and that way everyone's still a winner. That being said I don't really have a problem with how things are run currently either - if you won you won, if you didn't you didn't, no one's really owed anything and not having a unique collectable isn't going to hurt anyone.

I see what you're saying, but I don't agree that <10 people represent the community better than a popular vote amongst everyone. Yes people voting for friends is inevitable, but the mods would've already pre-selected winners when they make the pool that people vote on. Including staff favorites in addition to a popular vote would also help balance friend bias. Giving it away at random is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it'd really incentivize people to put effort into entries.

I know you probably made this because you're still a bit sad about not getting a Pink Candy. Not gonna lie, I thought your Temple Tempest entry deserved to win. However, I've never won a prize from an event in my entire time on this forum. Sure, it's disappointing. But I've come to accept that we're not owed anything and there's no point in stressing over a few pixels. Your lineups are always great anyway, so I don't think you're lacking in collectibles lol.

Aw thank you : ) & Yeah I was definitely bummed but I just wanted to bring up my opinion because I saw I Got Mail's thread and I realized my initial comment on TWE 2 was an oversimplification of how I felt on this.
 
I see what you're saying, but I don't agree that <10 people represent the community better than a popular vote amongst everyone. Yes people voting for friends is inevitable, but the mods would've already pre-selected winners when they make the pool that people vote on. Including staff favorites in addition to a popular vote would also help balance friend bias. Giving it away at random is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it'd really incentivize people to put effort into entries.



Aw thank you : ) & Yeah I was definitely bummed but I just wanted to bring up my opinion because I saw I Got Mail's thread and I realized my initial comment on TWE 2 was an oversimplification of how I felt on this.

It's not supposed to represent the community. It's a staff-favourite award, it represents staff favourites.

Halloween was a much smaller, more relaxed event than the fair, and incorporating community voting into it would make it last longer when it doesn't need to. For events like the fair, community voting works since it's a much bigger event and the winners have to be narrowed down to a top 3 rather than a top 5. For events like this on the other hand, I don't think it's necessary to add it in, especially seeing that by the looks of it much less people participated in TWE2 than in the fair.

Everyone's issue seems to be that "the same people always win", but with community voting that problem won't change. The award(s) could still just go to people who are popular and who run around telling people to vote for them. There were recurring winners in community-voted events in the fair so this isn't really a solution in my eyes.

To add on, I understand you're upset that your Temple entry didn't win after you put in so much time and effort, however it's important to recognize that the other entrants did as well. I believe I said this in You Got Mail!'s thread but even if something doesn't appear to have blood, sweat, and tears mixed into it doesn't mean it didn't take every ounce of the creator's energy to make.
 
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One thing I thought of is maybe increasing the number of staff faves that are given out, even just by a small margin to like 8 (that's how many pumpkin nominees there were right? too lazy to check) Though that might make the internal voting more complicated or time-consuming idk, I'm tired so I can't think of how it would work right now. @@'
Just a thought though, I don't really have an issue with the way things are done right now. Like most people I'm disappointed when I put time and effort into something and it doesn't get picked, but ultimately I would have still enjoyed participating in the event, so.
 
I definitely think there should be more community involvement in the winners, and I mean sure people will vote for their friends, but that's always how it's going to be. I understand that it's ultimately the staff's choice, which I mean can be kind of biased I think. As we see a lot of the same winners in all of the events. But if it's events where we're just posting our stuff openly, or even if we have a thread where we're sharing our entries since the actual entries are "private" it kind of kills the whole anonymity thing. And honestly I love seeing ALL the entries, not just the few that the staff pick, and I hate missing out on seeing them all with the whole 'secret' entry thing we do in the fair and larger events... I've voted for friends, and friends have voted for me. I've gotten those PM's asking if any of mine made the finalists so they could vote for me. But being it that I had made the finalists was nice enough, the only time I ever won was because someone else cheated so I mean... And I don't always vote for the best thing "skills" wise, but will also vote for things that are more "funny" or something I just like for other reasons over something done in a skills heavy way. Also bummed that 9/10 of the things that make it to finalists are usually digital. Not everyone excels at digital and it's nice to see more traditional things too, but they hardly ever make the finalists, which kind of steers me, and I am sure many others as well, to attempt digital and not be able to get something as good as they'd get traditional. By no means am I saying the people who win don't deserve to win, the people who always get chosen obviously deserve it for their mad skills, and as long as they're around they'll probably continue to win the same events year after year. I honestly think it should be instead of a 1st 2nd 3rd kind of layout that we do things like "best digital" "best traditional" "funniest" or something along those lines, I know that funniest is usually what gets staff favorite, but it'd be neat to have something more like that for the winners, I don't know. I love participating but I know how it feels to get your hopes up each year, especially when your post/entry gets a ton of likes, and you're just like "omg yes I have a great chance!" And you don't even make it to the finalists. It's a real bummer. But I don't know if there's any other way to do it besides staff picking, because I mean it's not like we'd have a fair winner if we put every single entry into a poll... and like I said it being anonymous is next to impossible, so I just take the events as they are and keep trying!
 
... "best digital" "best traditional" "funniest"

I would loooooove to see a "funniest" category for certain events, even if it's just like a highlight reel. I generally don't have the time to look through all the other entries so it'd be a nice little add-on.

A "best traditional" category could be a nice addition, though the fair did seem to be more inclusive about traditional entries this year so I'm still not sure if it's still necessary? I didn't look at all the Kracko entries so I can't say if it was the same situation there.
 
Well, friends voting will always happen so yeah, even if they hide it from voting they can probably share unless the staff decide to monitor everything everyday which I think is not a necessary task anyway, for reasons. I do agree with "same people every year" winning some themes and some obvious art skills. I mean they are not bad or anything but sometimes a bit of variety could be good. Yes I might be a hypocrite since I've done the "same theme" on my things as well but seeing a lot of times it's just skill rather than being creative is rewarding, I can fully understand why some people might sound bitter.

And to be honest, considering the participation being pretty big they should available to do more Staff Favourites, or equivalent, or just give out on the minor ones. Since you can't gift it it's rare either way. I mean the only Event exclusive I have is green pinwheel and that was random knowledge skills, not art. I mean yes we've had Discord nights, but a bit too large (and late, 1 am is not a good time for me. 1 or 2 hours earlier would not hurt if it's weekends). Could probably say that was my most favourite thing ever to do in the IRC because it was smaller than and you had a chance. And I miss that night, hope they bring back random night at least once more!

I do however appreciate the Fair and everything the staff does, I do get it takes time and money, but when the same meme/fun things and/or skills win (depending on the event) it's like.. sure I try hard to do stuff but do I really need to do a certain thing to even have an appeal to whoever picks it? I don't hate on anyone, just my thoughts and I pretty much agree with some of the more bitter thoughts even though it's not really one or two persons to blame. But yeah, maybe more staff faves, more categories or just some kind of expansion so you can award one extra if someone wins twice etc. yeah that would be a good idea.

I mean thy could forbid people to share but yeah Discord and other private forums would make that hard, yeah so I pretty much get why there is unless they like set bots on that person on Discord or stuff idk.
 
Should be said too that I really enjoy doing the things, I mean I think it's pretty unique considering the loads of sites I've been and I appreciate the hard work and time/money spent on creating everything for us, but yeah I agree with some people maybe being a bit "bitter" about things. While you could do community voting, that could be even more friendly voting (and I hope no more paying votes), on the other hand if they did it closed staff would probably be even more accused of bias. However if it could prevent friend voting and make sharing less worth (or wait to share after it's over or they picked their nominees) I'm not against it.

Keep going keep going I say, but yeah either add more chances for event/staff faves or maybe reconsider a few things. Good communication is important.
 
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