Omit usernames in the Art Of The Month Contest

[MidKnight]

Before I begin, this isnt a rant due to my own personal spite. I believe In justice and what is right and fair.

I notice how popularity and favoritism plays a VERY LARGE role when it comes to the art contest. The AOTM contest have alot of contestants that work hard on their projects but lose due to favoritism and popularity of others. People are voting for their friends instead of the better artist at that moment. This is not fair at all, and this also takes away major credibility from the art contest.


The solution to this is simple, hide all usernames In the AOTM contest to prevent favoritsm, and present only THE WORK. LOTS of contestants lose becasue of this, and it is really annoying and irritable to see favoritism provail instead of the best work.


The name of the contestant shouldnt be revealed untill the voting has finalized. The contest has become more about the name of the artist, instead of the work that individual is putting out. A name is just a name, the product is what matters. So why should it be necessary to present a name?


This favoritism has to stop, and if it continiues, alot of hard working artist are eventually going to stop contributing to the Art Contest. And it will slowly fall off overtime. What is the damn point of of a "contest" if the same handfull of artist are going to win time after time again?

I would like your honest opinions on this logic.

 

[Yugure]

I already

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this last month (or was it the one before...) and Caliburn told me this:

Has been suggested before, but it will never happen.

1) It's just plainly annoying. If it would be anonymous, it would mean everyone would need to sent me their artwork. That's also the case with SOTW, but in this case it would several times worse as this means not only do I need to start saving all those drawings on my PC, then I need to upload them on Photobucket and then I need to start to copy paste them all (and that on its own is already an annoying task, let alone with all the other extra stuff). Not to mention drawing files are bigger than signature files.

2) This might be a relative point of view, however IMO it's way easier to deduce the maker of a drawing based on the style than it is with signatures. That doesn't count for all drawings, however a lot of people can easily recognize Hansom's or Lara's works whether it has a name or not.

3) Overall seen 'friends voting' isn't that big of an issue in the Art Contest. Of course there are always people who vote for their friends, but if that friend has a really good drawing there isn't really much you can say about it. As far as I know there haven't been much drawings that won due to their friends, but were clearly inferior to other drawings. Of course I'm not counting the people who got DQ due to alt accounts and such. On top of that it's very subjective what a good drawing is and what not.

4) But there is one single important reason above all else as why I never and absolutely never will make the Art Contest anonymous: it decreases the amount of people who can get away with ripping severely. In a submission thread everyone can check the submissions, with other words the chances that a ripper is caught increase by a large amount. I don't have time to start checking for each individual drawing on my own to see whether it's ripped or not, but if it's a public thread everyone can search for rippers. It happens frequently I receive PM's from members who have proof that a certain person ripped.

That reason alone outweighs all your arguments.

So it won't happen

 

[OhReary]

I already

You must be registered for see links

this last month (or was it the one before...) and Caliburn told me this:

Has been suggested before, but it will never happen.

1) It's just plainly annoying. If it would be anonymous, it would mean everyone would need to sent me their artwork. That's also the case with SOTW, but in this case it would several times worse as this means not only do I need to start saving all those drawings on my PC, then I need to upload them on Photobucket and then I need to start to copy paste them all (and that on its own is already an annoying task, let alone with all the other extra stuff). Not to mention drawing files are bigger than signature files.

2) This might be a relative point of view, however IMO it's way easier to deduce the maker of a drawing based on the style than it is with signatures. That doesn't count for all drawings, however a lot of people can easily recognize Hansom's or Lara's works whether it has a name or not.

3) Overall seen 'friends voting' isn't that big of an issue in the Art Contest. Of course there are always people who vote for their friends, but if that friend has a really good drawing there isn't really much you can say about it. As far as I know there haven't been much drawings that won due to their friends, but were clearly inferior to other drawings. Of course I'm not counting the people who got DQ due to alt accounts and such. On top of that it's very subjective what a good drawing is and what not.

4) But there is one single important reason above all else as why I never and absolutely never will make the Art Contest anonymous: it decreases the amount of people who can get away with ripping severely. In a submission thread everyone can check the submissions, with other words the chances that a ripper is caught increase by a large amount. I don't have time to start checking for each individual drawing on my own to see whether it's ripped or not, but if it's a public thread everyone can search for rippers. It happens frequently I receive PM's from members who have proof that a certain person ripped.

That reason alone outweighs all your arguments.

So it won't happen

This^
there's no way you can prevent it, and even so if people recognize the work
they'll vote, you just need to believe in the community.

 

[Caliburn]

Suggested before and will not happen, an earlier comment of mine on this matter has already been posted.

Also you're severely overreacting. There are always people who vote for their friends, but when their artwork is good, it really doesn't matter. There has yet to be an artwork that won from clearly better drawings due to his friends. Overall compared to how worse it could be, friends politics is actually very low and reasonable decent in the Art Contest. It could be much much worse. Also when several drawings are good, it's a subjective choice which you like the best. There is rarely a specific order where you can say that one should have won, that one 2nd and that on 3rd.

You also have no real foundation for all the things you are saying as how is it possible then that the Art Contest has been going on for nearly 3 years now? That members who are quite popular, even though having participated several times, never won? Or that members who never really were popular and/or were only active for a short while won the contest after only participating once or twice?

That people are going to stop participating because the same people win is a BS statement. If that was the case then the Art Contest should have been finished long ago, while in fact its popularity has only increased. There might be people who stopped participating because they could not compete with the high quality of other artists, but that's something completely different than saying that people are just going to stop participating because of friends politics.

Also all those people had to start from scratch too at some point. They often got popular due to their artwork, so it's contradictory to say that they win by friends voting for them when they became friends due to the artwork.

 

[-S-]

I hate to disagree :T_T:

But I barely have any fans, and I only have a few art threads, but I've come second twice.

 

[MidKnight]

Suggested before and will not happen, an earlier comment of mine on this matter has already been posted.

Also you're severely overreacting. There are always people who vote for their friends, but when their artwork is good, it really doesn't matter. There has yet to be an artwork that won from clearly better drawings due to his friends. Overall compared to how worse it could be, friends politics is actually very low and reasonable decent in the Art Contest. It could be much much worse. Also when several drawings are good, it's a subjective choice which you like the best. There is rarely a specific order where you can say that one should have won, that one 2nd and that on 3rd.

You also have no real foundation for all the things you are saying as how is it possible then that the Art Contest has been going on for nearly 3 years now? That members who are quite popular, even though having participated several times, never won? Or that members who never really were popular and/or were only active for a short while won the contest after only participating once or twice?

That people are going to stop participating because the same people win is a BS statement. If that was the case then the Art Contest should have been finished long ago, while in fact its popularity has only increased. There might be people who stopped participating because they could not compete with the high quality of other artists, but that's something completely different than saying that people are just going to stop participating because of friends politics.

Also all those people had to start from scratch too at some point. They often got popular due to their artwork, so it's contradictory to say that they win by friends voting for them when they became friends due to the artwork.

I'm sure you are aware of how indecisive that a majority of us can be,this also applies to contest voters. If you are saying that it isn't possible that favoritism/popularity can be a deciding factor In a contest due to indecisiveness, then that would be an extreamly arrogant accusation.

However, you have already confirmed that nothing will be done about this, so there is no need for me to continue.

 

[EnvyMyApex]

At the end of the day, we all know the circumstances of this contest. If you don't like them, don't participate.