Cow was an inspiration.
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I've been too busy recently to keep an eye on the front page, so I don't know which saves were on there and can't give an opinion as to whether mass demotion of the cow saves was justified.
However, I would like to point out that the front page is tampered with on a routine basis, and has been for years.
The FP/voting system works terribly under pressure, but votes plus some manual curation is the best system we've got at the moment for selecting saves to go on the FP. People sometimes vote for silly reasons, e.g. because the save destroys Justin Bieber or has a cow in it, rather than because it is any good. "Good" and "popular" do not always coincide.
The following things have appeared on the front page in the past, and we interfered to get rid of them:
- art
- element suggestion saves
- text only saves
- saves about killing Bieber
- saves that ask for votes
- art
- excessive logos
- homepage saves
The front page is supposed to be a showcase of good saves, which means there should ideally be a bit of variety, both in content and in which users created those saves.
If there were 17 laser saves on fp, then yes, I would demote some of them, starting with those which were less interesting or had been on there for a couple of days.
My normal way of dealing with an excess of a particular type of save on the FP is demoting older saves so that they disappear from FP faster than they would normally, with the length of time before demotion depending on my subjective opinion of how good a save is.
By "type of save", I mean what the save actually does, rather than the theme. So I would not consider a cow laser, a cow city, a decowpiler, a cow refinery, a pac-cow game, plus a cow factory to be an excess of a particular type of save. But fifteen saves containing PROT cows bouncing around without much happening to them would be excessive.
Please rest assured that I don't take much notice of complaints about a save not getting attention, regardless of whether it is a cow or non cow save, and that at this time no changes to the front page sorting algorithm have been agreed.
If I think a save genuinely deserves to be on FP and hasn't received enough votes because it has been overlooked (e.g. if it hasn't been bumped every 3 hours), rather than because people don't like it, then I will promote that save rather than demoting the saves already on FP. This is an extremely rare occurrence though, I can't even remember the last time I did it.
"how about optical illusions. if we find ourself with an optical illusion trend are the mods going to put a stop to that nonsense?" Yes. Though I would normally tolerate a trend for a few days before I start squashing it.
"why vote, the mods can just decide what is going to be on front page with a whim." Yes, we can, but generally we don't. The amount of interference varies. Noticing that we generally don't (as was the case for a while before the cow saves) should not, however, be taken to mean that we always won't.
Trends don't often require interference, the last time I remember doing lots of demotions was Nov 2014, when there was a flood of planet art.
"people spamming the comments and tags" - ban those people, rather than demote the saves.
Edited 3 times by jacksonmj. Last: 21st Apr 2016 -
Thank you jacksonmj.
I agree with your answer.
"If there were 17 laser saves on fp, then yes, I would demote some of them, starting with those which were less interesting or had been on there for a couple of days.
My normal way of dealing with an excess of a particular type of save on the FP is demoting older saves so that they disappear from FP faster than they would normally, with the length of time before demotion depending on my subjective opinion of how good a save is.
By "type of save", I mean what the save actually does, rather than the theme. So I would not consider a cow laser, a cow city, a decowpiler, a cow refinery, a pac-cow game, plus a cow factory to be an excess of a particular type of save. But fifteen saves containing PROT cows bouncing around without much happening to them would be excessive"
but you would not demote nearly all of them in 5-15 minutes regardless of content. I knew my thinking was correct on this. your method seems more appropriate than laying down the hammer as if we had posted a bunch of inappropriate material.
I appologize for thinking it was more autonomous than it really is. My bad on that part.
Again. thank you for explaining what you ALL have to do to keep things smooth. And thank you ALL for doing it.
Sincerely. I do appreciate it.
I love The Powder Toy. The community is priceless. TPT is meaningless without the community.
I consider this a closed issue and promise to not engage in nagative conversation about said issue.
Edited once by Sandwichlizard. Last: 21st Apr 2016 -
It would be cool if the front page had multiple pages. Then it might be harder to "monopolize".
Anyway I probably shouldn't say anything as this seems to be between the mods and lizard but I will anyway...
From my perspective as a regular TPT user I would say that the cow thing was pretty funny and enjoyable for a while and that maybe the mods shouldn't have been so quick to mass demote. However, I am still glad that the front page is moderated because some pretty ridiculous stuff can end up on there that isn't really representative of a "good save". While it might have been wrong to mass demote I don't think the mods had any ill intent, they just want to make sure the front page has diverse quality stuff on it.Edited 2 times by ivel236. Last: 21st Apr 2016 -
On a positive note. I normally love the ebb and flow of fp. Yes, even if my save is sinking. There is something about the way saves jostle for position. Its like watching a chess game. The "Intelligized popularity contest" is quite fascinating. seeing how the community trends from topic to topic. The Good of Cow was that it created an impromptu friendly competition to see who could do the most insane / unexpected things with the cow. It was a challenge of wit. I wish we could engineer, plan, and inform the community in advance that there is going to be an event of some kind. maybe every six months. sparks creativity and community interaction. It should be fun and maybe a bit silly. gets people to unwind together and build friendships easier. The stuff we do here is soo much like work sometimes, I feel we need a "company picnic".
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OK well there is that, However the small cow rendering is mediocre due to scale and TPT resolution and everyone got to use it freely so there was no competive advantage. Also it was such a fun movement it did not seem to matter. The big cow however was high quality rendering and I have to admit did break that sacred rule. that is what probably tipped the scale. I dont know. I just want to remember the fun part now.
Edited once by Sandwichlizard. Last: 21st Apr 2016
