AdderXYU wrote:then you are wrong.
Yeah, thanks for letting others have opinions. You seem to think that your opinion is a fact. How could you possibly know how many designers have taken a look at these sorts of comments and just thought to themselves "no thanks" and walked away?
I'm not a mod threatening probations for disagreeing with my opinion. DWAN is. Which I still feel is a pretty poor stance for a mod to take.
Okay, perhaps I missed it, but I never saw a comment like that. She wasn't against your difference of opinion - she was against the inflammatory and unduly harsh delivery of that opinion. And that doesn't change the hypocrisy of that comment of yours. The fact that you're not a mod doesn't make it ok to be hypocritical.
If you cannot read a contest's rules before entering it, you deserve this. Simple reading. Even the 10 year old followed the submission guidelines.
It doesn't mean you have to be rude about it. Is civility really such an undesirable trait to you? The problem with being a jerk to everyone who makes a stupid mistake is that you end up being a jerk to those who make legitimate mistakes, i.e. if someone absolutely new reads the official rules and submits a flying penguin design. The banning of flying penguins is not mentioned on any official page - it's a legitimate mistake. But if people continually act in an elitist manner, they start to treat new people with contempt.
Derby success gives potential designers an idea of what woot is looking for. If they send in dailies, they will most often be dailies that fit the woot mold... something mediocre, something skully or memey, etc. These artists don't enter derbies because they don't want to waste the time against a tasteless crowd. They give their worst work day after day because they don't want to waste a killer one on a site where their work won't even exist more than a week. They submit designs that failed elsewhere because they know woot will take anything. People voting for such mediocre work leads designers to work just that hard when submitting to woot. It leads plenty of good designers to take derby breaks out of frustration.
For every mediocre piece that has been put on sale, I've seen another that is creative, fresh and well-executed. Most of the top selling shirts are examples. If you disagree with that, it's fine, but your opinion is worth no more than my own or that of anybody else on this site. If potential designers decide to submit their worst as a daily, I would blame that on the designers rather than the derbies. The majority of unpopular daily submissions I've seen do not compare in the slightest to derby winners.
These are real issues in this site. So is the reaction from a MODERATOR. Mods with that kind of partiality are not healthy for a community... it just makes people too scared to be themselves.
I've already commented on DWAN's reaction and her suggestion that a kid's shirt be given less severe comments than others'. I agreed with you. But although she showed some partiality, it doesn't make the worst of these comments any less probation-worthy.
Even one stupid little derby shirt can pull up the dark, disgusting underbelly, and thats why we need to be vigilant.
My point exactly. This design was one little derby shirt, but everyone is just raging and flaming and going on and on. I'm no better - here I am responding to you, and doubtless I will receive another lengthy reply, and the cycle I tried to end will go on and on simply because I don't want my opinion misrepresented - and you probably feel the same way.
Adder, I feel that you made some very strong points. But your less-than-cordial manner and outright verbal abuse of people undermines your arguments! I find myself arguing against you when I actually agreed with most of your initial comments. Please, continue shining your light on all the little problems with woot and the derbies and the submissions and the people, but do it without pulling up that dark, disgusting underbelly of yours. You can continue being the crusader you are without offending everyone in sight - just offend most of them!
Again, woot themselves have begged us to police the derbies ourselves. If I'm one of the few willing to do that, and I'm constantly harassed for it, that's fine.
Woot may have asked the users to police the derbies, but they did not ask us to form militias or angry mobs. They didn't ask us to hurl insults at each other, start little wars or make mountains out of molehills, as has been done with this shirt designed by a young girl. Plenty of people are policing the derbies - the evidence is right here in this thread. Many people - I included - have been trying to step in and end this farce. Unfortunately, we all have simply been dragged into it, further escalating the problem. And I am sorry if you feel harassed, but nothing said against you has been any worse than the comments you yourself have made. Many of the most harassing comments I've read have been yours, actually.
this line doesn't work if you've just made a huge post trying to have the last word.
You think the worst of me. I wasn't trying to get the last word in, Adder. I was trying to mediate. Sorry, I'm a stereotypical Canadian like that. I was trying to show that both sides had valid points and that this whole thread exploded because nobody was willing to just stop and take the high road.
I was trying to be impartial. If it seemed like I was focusing on you, I apologize - you're just one of the most vocal (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). But surely you must admit that this has gotten out of hand, and almost everyone who has participated in this conversation has played a part in it.
Edit: I read over my replies and some of them seem a bit harsh to me. I apologize for any undue snappiness - it's late and I wrote two final exams today.
jimiyo wrote:...Im not particular to how the woot audience treats good artist...
...I was amazed at how disdainful the woot audience is, and how discouraging it is.
I get the feeling theres a bunch of trolls that are allowed to plunder around and be bitches without any sort of punishment...
...Really, I just needed to step back from the Derby cause it was too time consuming for the payout and abuse...
It sounds to me like the woot audience is simply too harsh, both to designers and to others who are commenting. Like in this thread - if you read the beginning of this fiasco, Adder was perfectly civil. In fact, there was good dialog, good discussion. Then somebody criticized Adder for his opinion, and he defended himself in a similarly critical manner, and everyone went bananas.
and someone, wait no, ExpletiveDeleted, called me a jerk. Sup with that? So other people can go around and be bitches but Im held to a higher standard?
I think it's because you're so great and mighty that you need to set a proper example for the rest of us. And also, some people don't have a sense of humour. It's a serious medical condition.
But I dont understand the quality of the Dailies. Woot cant be getting that many crappy designs for them not to be able to choose something awesome. I dunno. $1000 aint bad for doing almost WHATEVER you want to do...
I have a question about that, actually. Does woot actually require that you have an extensive profile before choosing your daily? From the FAQ, I got the sense that only experienced designers could apply, and then woot would look at the designer's profile. If they liked what they saw, they would contact the designer, who would then design a daily. However, this seems contrary to what I've picked up from the general community. Can amateurs submit designs as dailies, or is it just that artists can apply and, if they are lucky enough, get commissioned to create a daily?
I'll see if I get an answer here, but if the question gets buried in an avalanche of diatribe and rhetoric I'll repost it later in a more appropriate forum.
