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If you have any suggestions on how a certain contest can be improved, please feel free to post. We are open to new ideas.

Taken from the recent Sig contest:


So what you're saying that not enough people know about the awards and it needs more attention?

I'm not very up-to-date with art jam, so entering the sub-forum seems very confusing for me. Obviously the names are descriptive enough, but I don't know what's running and what isn't. Which thread still needs attention (nominating or voting) or just needs to be left alone. I can imagine that people who just wonder in may have the same problem.
Editing the thread's title to see in a glance what the status is would help.

This club should be a huge help too. Making sure that people gather here by putting a link to this club in every new thread to promote it would help people stay up-to-date with what's going on. Especially showing the status in the club's info area with a link to the thread helps clearing up a lot of question marks.
Since these contests aren't held continiously (the same one over and over again), it's always nice to have a mass PM going around.

When it comes to improvement, it might be nice to hold meetings on IRC every now and then. We do the same thing before every season with FAL and it really does help bouncing around ideas that way. Aim to have around 6 participants (no less than 4 people, or else it's not worth it and not much more than 8, or else it'll just get chaotic) and I'm sure you'll get some results. :3

Just throwing some ideas around~ ^_^

Concerning participation, I put together a few random, on the spot ideas by looking back at past nomination/voting threads, since I wasn't really here for most of them:

1. The Club - To reiterate on Boursk's emphasis of the club(And probably one of the main reason as to why club was made), I think that this should get bulked up with as many members as possible for the simple reason of mass messaging. Since the process of nominations and voting is a month long event, people tend to forget, lose their sense of timing, or don't realize that a contest is going on and messaging will definitely remedy that problem. There's also people who don't visit the forums frequently, but would be interested in the contests and how you guys would want to round up the members is up to you, but a sticky on GD and Anime forums for a month or maybe a site announcement may be sufficient.

2. Involvement of New People - From what I can tell from skimming the contests, there seems to be a core 20ish people who grab/suggest a majority of the nominations. Selective_yellow had an idea in the winner of May's signature contest:



In order to bring in fresh meat, this is something that could be done on a longer time basis than current contests.(Every 3 +/- months) While the details of this contest would have to be discussed further("Beginner" is a very debatable title) , it opens up and encourages the chance for those with less talent(/points at self) to get into the contests. If the numbers of participants of the main contests increase to a highly reasonable amount because of this, this contest could be abolished sometime down the road.

Just to add onto the idea, I would say the contest would have to be along the lines of submission style event since "beginner" lists/signatures could be forgotten very easily or not really noticed, and gives people the chance to whip something up.

I had a few more, but they seem to have slipped my mind during this tl;dr. Other than that, I don't really such much else wrong with the nomination process or how the contests are carried out.

I'd say start up the Winter List Designs when the time comes and when the club is more established and see how it goes. Hopefully it turns out much better than the summer manga list nominations. ^^b

We put the dates of each jam and whether it is a vote or winner thread in the thread title. Is there another way we could do this that would be more clear?

I think, what he means, is there's always a lot of confusion on the board as to what threads are open, and which are not.

I know that we always put the deadline dates in the thread themselves, but let's not fool ourselves, many people don't read them. So every now and then, we'll get someone coming through the board, bumping up old topics saying "I voted for..." when it's already done. And then, since they're on the top, more people do the same.

On one hand, I think it would be a good idea to say in the thread title whether a thread is still open or not. However, on the other hand, the thread titles are so long to begin with .....



I have a few worries about "mass messaging": for one, it annoys the heck out of some people. Of course, thread aren't made in the MAL award board every day, so hopefully this means messages would be kept to a minimum. Still, if we're going to mass-message, I think it should be stated clearly.

Another thing is, for some clubs (like the Icontests), we usually end up mass messaging our members anyway (it's really sad to see only 36 votes on a thread when the club has 700 members). How does this work if people are members of both clubs? They start getting mass messages from both?

If you really want to mass message, on thing might be to have it more as a "newsletter" as well. A lot of the threads begin at specific times: first of the month, middle of the month. If we could combine the threads into one message, that would hopefully cut down on the annoyance of it as well.


Just my two cents, so far, anyway.

Can't argue with you here about the annoyance level, and I'm also wondering if the time gap is wide enough so it doesn't tick people off too much. The option to accept/deny mass messages from clubs would be nice for this scenario.

The newsletter idea sounds like the best way to go around it. Only one single message has to go out early in the month and if you include all the contests and information(Nomination/Voting Dates and Deadlines) within one, clean notice, it should keep any dissatisfaction to a minimum. This will probably require a little bit more preparation from the contests that go by themes like Art Jam, Backgrounds, and Icontest but it should be worth it if you guys get a lot more people involved.

I would just hope people don't forget halfway through to vote after submissions/nominations. :)

A newsletter is a good idea. Like what you said, the contest's with themes will have to plan a month ahead in order to have this type of information the newsletter. Not sure if this would work as we all have real lives to deal with, but it would be nice if it did.
But first, this club needs to grow :)

A simple *CLOSED* would suffice.
ex. "*CLOSED* Icontest: Elements (Early Oct '08) Voting"

There's no real need to put *OPEN* in it, so that should safe space. If you want to shorten the title, it -might- be an idea to remove the dates (since it should be clear what's currently going on and what isn't).

Again, I don't know how the MAL awards are held, but I was under the impression that they're held once a month and take about a month (first two weeks for nominations/submissions and last two weeks for voting?). I doubt that one mass message per month is too much, so isn't it just a matter of planning these contests together at the start of each month?

example:
month 1: anime list design + art jam
month 2: manga list design + signature design
month 3: wallpaper + icontest
month 4: anime list design + signature
etc.

I guess it's the same idea of a newsletter, since you can tell the members who won last month and what's starting in the coming month. The only thing I'm adding to this is that you shouldn't start the contests too long after the newsletter's announcement, or else they'll just get forgotten again.

Putting on the club's info page when the new contests (for each category) are going to start would help too. That will make people have something to look forward to, instead of it coming so suddenly and having simply been forgotten. It makes the contest get a little more "professional" feel too it, since it shows that it's all planned. :D

If we're going with the newsletter/message idea then it would also be best if that newsletter/message comes out when you are already able to vote.
That would, in my opinion, mean that at least the list/signature design contest should start at the same time so people don't have to note some dates (which they will probably forget again) but can just click on a link, read and give their nomination/vote whatever.

In that case the first newsletter/message should go out when nomination starts, listing the dates of it's closing and when the voting begins.
The second one when the voting starts including the closing date and when the next nominations start. Then it starts from the beginning including the winners in the next nomination newsletter.

That system only included list and signatures now, since I don't know much about incontest and art jam, but I know that they are more often and that would bring us before a wall again, since everything starts at different dates and so it probably would require much more messages.
Wouldn't it be possible to combine that a little/making a new structure there?

edit
yep, I think so too.
But I think manga and anime list design have been put together if I remember correctly, or not?



But back to the point Talon and me started to discuss about this.
Are most people here really fine with list and signature contests being this much less often now?

Also I'd say yes to the Best Beginner * Contest as that looks like a good idea to me.

Okay, when I suggested a newsletter, I meant a bimonthly newsletter. So, for example:


All contests usually run bi-weekly or monthly anyway. And, to account for people having lives, we could send the newsletter out on, say, the 3rd and 17th instead of the 1st and 15th.

The only contest that doesn't fit to this schedule is the Icontest, with both Nominating and Voting threads, each having one week each. But we PM our members anyway, and even being able to post the Voting link in this club would be helpful.


I'm imagining a big forum page with "CLOSED" all over it xD But I understand precisely what you mean.

It'd be nice, I also think, if we could all agree on a standard thread naming format.

Manga and animelist will be put together, except people give me reasons to do different. In my sight, both list are the same (technically) but both list are different (content and lenght). Some people give more thoughs about their mangalist but the majority has just a huge animelist and mostly ignores the mangalist. that's why mangalist contest doesn't has an impact like the animelist.
Back to the putting things together, the reason on my side is that people just notice more the mangalist. they are a little bit forced to nominate/vote for both since we speak about both in one topic. there is less way to "ignore" a running contest and I don't see alot of people just vote for one contest while two are offered.


Best beginner (newcomer sound nicer tho), it's very posible and still I'm a little bit concern if there will be enough newcomers over time.

The sig contest could be run more often I think. Every 2nd month, unlike the now every 3rd month. This means it could run along side with either the Anime or the Manga list contests.

Talon, is the idea where the Anime/Manga list design being a combined contest still a green light? If it is, how often should it run? And are you going to start it soon?

About the *beginners contest*. The issue still is that, who is considered a Beginner? If a beginner is classified as someone "new" to a GFX application, then how do we judge their works as "new"?

Maybe do the first one where all the people who have won a MAL award at least once are excluded and with each new newcomer contest, exclude the people who have been nominated/were elligable in previous newcomer contests?

What I have noticed is that people who have been nominated from the very first 1 – 5 posts gets a lot of attention. Maybe the people who nominate are too lazy to search for new designs and probably utilize themselves by choosing from those few designs what they like best. What I would suggest is make a thread ( a post)/blog showing the graphically extensive and all the decent designs , where people would have a brief look from what design they like most and what to nominate. Well I already know that there is a list/signature design updated thread, but in most of the cases there are the same old few people posting for a page or two, and most of the people probably wouldn’t go back to like 3 or 5 pages. I would have to say that Talon’s blog for Advanced CSS list designs is a prime example. Maybe something similar like that for the signatures. IF so there would be plenty to choose nominate and ofcourse involvement of new people and new designs and more nominations and more participants.



Maybe a competition involving the new users who have joined in the recent 5 or 3 months?

It does seem to be a little bit difficult on on deciding who should be considered a "beginner" or newcomer.

I would say anyone who had made it to the voting round in previous regular signature/list contests should be automatically ineligible. Or is that too extreme?


This would be the the best way to ensure that there is a constant flow of new people, but for example, if someone were to make it to the voting round and placed in last or one before last, they won't necessarily get "better". I think that this should apply to something like the Top 5 or something as a medium.



I don't know if this is the best method, since there may be people who have been around for a while who would be interested in the contest.

Ok hold on. So what does "NEW" mean? I'm thinking "new" as in new to making sigs/lists. Boursk for example (sorry > <).
DF, you're thinking "new" as in a recently joined member of MAL?

I'm not really fan of the "new" or "beginners" idea. I also doubt it'll work well anyway, cause I don't see how anyone will judge how new someone is. It's not bad overall but I think it's a bit unneeded, at least in my opinion.

I like more the idea of DarkFlash, making it easier for people to pick a sig/list design might help them voting. I haven't voted much so far, but I have to say that for the last sig one, it was a bit hard for me to remember the few I liked (except when the person post a lot, easy to see it often) and that it takes some time to go through the threads to vote. The main idea would be to get something like talon's Advanced CSS list designs.

It's easy to vote for icons because there's a list, you pick your fav. and you're done. If something similar could be up, it would be easier for people to vote.
People just need to submit snapshot of their sig (just like anime/manga list) and someone would be charged to update the topic. Then when a sig/list design contest is starting, just put a link to that show off list, in addition of the last design/sig update.
Also, by having a thread up with anyone interested in showing off their stuff, it helps people who doesn't post or spam a lot, and so it'll give a wider choice of vote, without needing to dig deep into a thread.

Ok, so instead we'll stick with the idea where "new" is someone who didn't place in

Yes the idea of a list containing all the recently updated Sigs will be nice but problem is this:
How many people will do that though. Also I would imagine it would takes quite an effort to keep the list updated. Anyone up for the job?

There is no need for an updated list. Just get everybody interested (in creating signatures, lists, profiles etc.) into this club and then announce contests once every month, telling people they have so many days/weeks to submit an entry.
Then those who are interested can take a few minutes out of their lives to screenshot their current signature/list/etc. and submit it to whoever's in charge of the contest they want to participate in.
When the deadline is up, a thread will be started with all the entries and everybody can vote.

This, of course, hinges on the fact that we can get everybody who might be interested to join this club :)