Hmmm. Reading through the posts it's pretty interesting to see the different perspectives. Just as my own personal
outlook as a member of this community, I've been reading through the posts about "stricter
moderation".
I remember when I was a member and this was around Mt2, moderation was even stricter than now (yes, really!). There were
Instabans going around and when I first joined (like 2 weeks in) I totally freaked out when I came across guestbooks
with bans (and yes they were almost instant).
My personal feeling is that many people think that moderation is a lot stricter, simply because we have narrowed down
the possibilities of what members could submit. For instance:
MT2
- the Western Art Purge (fair enough, activity was still extremely high, but a few people did seem to drift off but not
many),
MT3
- introduction of other gallery guidelines upon the introduction of the Elite gallery (collaged wallpapers, ghosting and
the like- a few people thought that this was limiting creativity, which it is certainly not, so those left too),
- Gallery items with inadequate descriptions NOTE this is why some people's gallery items were passed off as rips, when the message really means that the
item had a wishy washy description
- Family Safe content only
I won't talk about this much, but it was one of the purges/ things added into the Policy, and this I guess has
lowered the interest of some.
I personally don't think moderation is "stricter", or that the rules are stricter. In the case of gallery
items quality, the rules were just more succinct and were always there but spelt out more. As for mature content and
everything else- well, I have nothing to really say about it. Perhaps a solution to this "narrowed down submission
possibilities" issue is to bring back in more possibilities in other aspects. Like new categories, new features,
other things you can submit, since these "art forms" have been killed off.
So yeah, that's my own personal impression. I don't think we've been stricter. It's just lately we
may have been enforcing various aspects of the Policy more, but moderation was stricter in Mt2 in my opinion.
Credits and FDQ. Ah.
When Mt3 came in I was a member. There were 0 FDQs :)
Yet I was extremely happy to pay for every single download- and this was before the discounted scans and walls and
everything came in!
So when the FDQ came in I realised I was ripped off ;) Just kidding. I didn't really like the idea of FDQ at
all.
Having 5 FDQ, to me, is more than enough. 5x7 FDQ= 35 FDQ a week, provided you have a good net connection and a good eye
for things.
6 highlighted items + 6 top weekly popular wallpapers = 12.
For a regular member with a normal watchlist of say 30-40 people, you will get around 20 friends submissions.
12+20 = 32.
And you might even get 3 scans extra per week, make a wall, vector or whatever and generate some extra credits for more
downloads.
When your watchlist is quiet, or you don't download the highlights/ popular wallpapers because it doesn't look
good to you in the thumb, you even have some spare to download on whatever you want basically.
I don't see how 5 FDQ a day is inadequate.
Credits are extremely easy to earn, yet the majority seem to feel that they are hard to earn. Even with the credits
number appearing on the panel. I guess everyone wants immediate results in a give and take situation.
I contribute- straight away I must get credits- straight away I will be able to download.
But hey, if it's going to generate activity quickly like that, it might be worth a thought. Only we'll have to
think of it in more detail so that the system won't be abused. *shrugs* It could be possible.
As for lower activity I guess real life and passions just eventually die away.
I've had my own life in the way of things and so my activity has decreased somewhat. I've still been trying to
make contributions, just maybe not as often and as enthusiastically as I should, because of real life. The similar case
has been happening to many other great people I know in Minitokyo. As a consequence, these great people who used to be
highly active on Minitokyo and making the best contributions are those likely to either frequent a combination of the
forums, galleries and also groups, which I find are dying.
Despite the groups announcements working as a really neat function, and being able to browse through and seeing what
announcements there are, it seems that perhaps groups are getting redundant. Where there is redundancy, people join
this... that... or both, and in the end the activity is washed out between them all. It's a bit like a circle of
friends. You won't get addicted if you have a few different frienship rings. You only get addicted to the one group
because you feel more. So yeah.
I'll leave the post to end here. Everything I wrote is basically my own opinion. Not trying to say that I'm
right or proving anyone wrong or anything like that. Just my own thoughts. :)
