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FA needs a commission system.
3 years ago
The footer is the truth.
I think FA really needs a commissioning system. Something for artists to handle commissions on the site, details and everything. A special page where they can set up a commission with someone, or perhaps they click an option and commissions are open with a certain number of slots and non-blocked users can take a slot to discuss. Obviously there should be a buffer of some kind so that if someone is rejected, another can be chosen. Anyway, the reason why I would like an in site version, is that scamming artists will be flagged for being risky and possibly, eventually, banned. All the proof would be right there on the site after all.
I'd also like to see some systems for YCHs and Raffles, included in this system. Some new way to handle these that allows the site to handle randomly picking or to allow bid buttons to be placed on slots. it would then show up in your notification bar as 1Y or 1R, YCH/Raffle.
Raffles;
This would be possibly the easiest of them to do. Non-blocked users can load the page, look at the raffle rules, and then click "Enter Raffle". Their ticket number would be listed as "Pending", for the artist to approve it or not if the artist gave conditions. If the artist left it completely open, then the ticket number would auto generate. If one of the conditions is to post a journal about the raffle, you could put your journal ID in the slot next to "Enter" and it would allow the artist to quickly view the proof of it and approve.
Certain terms here can also include that you must be an FA+ member, or someone who has sent the artist money in the last x days using that thing I can't remember the name of on profile pages that lets you send random money. :P It would be annoying, but, it should be an option in the raffle system.
After the raffle ends, the commission page would open for the winner and the artist, allowing them to discuss the terms and everything. The raffle already has the terms in it, like "line art" and such stuff. So that would be the default information put into the commission page once its created and the artist can edit as needed during the conversation with the user.
YCH;
A YCH would be a little more complex, due to the number of slots being an unknown max. I think the system should allow 20 slots maximum, cause anything more would be flat out ridiculous. I think I've seen some with as many as 8 slots but that was the most I've seen personally. Each slot would have a Bid button. The art included should have them named "Slot A" or "Slot 1" and so on. Then you select if you used numbers or alphabet for slots, how many slots there are, and the YCH page would auto create the bid buttons for the slots. This would only allow people who aren't blocked, to bid.
Artist can set the start bid, the min bid increase, and the auto buy (0 for none). Clicking "Bid" without entering anything, enters the default minimum. Auto bid should not be an option. Entering AB should auto bid the max and close the slot till the artist chooses to accept or invalidate that winner.
The artist can set things like a time limit for the auction. They can also choose to add in last minute bid protection, to stop someone from waiting till the last 3 seconds to send a bid in, allowing the artist to choose that the auction will continue for 3 more hours, or 6 more hours, or 1 more day, after a bid has been given.
There should also be a warning included amongst the users who bid, and a warning to the author, that Slot 1 is bidding with someone he has blocked in Slot 4. That would help prevent some conflicts as well. If winner of slot 1 is blocked by, or is blocking the winner of slot 4, then the two would need to talk it out and make sure its not going to be a problem.
Once the YCH is over, this opens a group commission page with the art type that the artist has already agreed to before hand.
Artist Side: Commission;
You should have a page with your commission types and prices listed for various things. Things like "Anthro" "Wings" "Feral/Quadruped", "Taur", etc. You fill in various price changes based on these things in either a positive or negative number. If you like doing Anthros for example and want to provide a discount on it, you enter -10, to subtract $10 from the base price. If you don't like doing wings, you can put in 10, to add $10. If you won't do Taurs at all, type X to disable the option completely.
The artist sets up their costs for various types of art, line art, sketch, colored, digital, whatever else there is. This is the first thing the user will choose on entering the commission system. An X in any box, disables it, it shows up but as greyed out.
The artist can also select whether they want the money up front, or "half now half after" or whatever other options. A slider will allow them to show how much they want up front and how much after. The artist can also check if they will only send the final works after the full payment is sent. They may select whether they will also include PSDs and work files with payment or if they retain the rights to everything they did and are just letting the user show what they paid for. AKA, if the artist has the right to delete it from your gallery any time they choose or if the artist is giving up that right and letting you own what you paid for.
Cancellations and stages of cancellation can be defined. If you want the commissioner to get a full refund after sketch, you can flag sketch stage as full refind. If you do the lineart stage, but you decide you will only give back 90% for line art stage, you can define that. Each stage is something you can choose the amount you refund on that stage.
When the artist has put in every option they want to allow commissioners to have, they save it to their profile, and then at any time they can click "Open Commissions" and include a slot count and a buffer slot count. Say, they want to open 5 slots, and they include a buffer of 3. That means 8 people can take the slots, the first 5 are given the first chance, and the buffer 3 are warned that they have entered the buffer and may not get their commission. The artist can also choose to accept the buffer slots as well however, so that would allow 8 slots to be used out of the 5 in this case of accepting all.
Commissioners / Users;
If you are looking to commission, you find an artist who has slots open. You click "Commission this artist", and enter a page with all the details of price changes on each option and whats disabled. You see the terms as well and decide if you wish to proceed. Before you can begin filling anything out, you click proceed. This puts you in the queue as "pending", reserving that slot for you if you fill in all the details within x time, perhaps 10 minutes? Maybe 15 minutes? If you haven't by then, you lose the slot but you can still save and send it and hopefully get a slot or buffer slot.
You may not commission an artist who has you blocked. That would be silly!
After you've chosen all the options available to you, you are given a large input box that lets you put in special details and information. At the end of this, the customer / artist rights are displayed. If you retain the rights to the art, you get a green "Customer owns the art", but if the artist has decided that they own the art, its a red "Artist owns the art". You can click it to see what this means if you need to. You also see how much you must pay up front, and at what stages of cancellation you get refunds.
YCH/Raffles
These are special case commissions, artists will enter a temporary set of details and restrictions as if setting up a commission page, such as what type of art it will be, and what restrictions there are such as "no ferals" "no taurs" and whatnot. Once the user joins and wins these, the details are prefilled into the commission page with options the artist chose to leave unlocked ready for the winner to choose.
Active Commission;
The artist and the commissioner(s) get a special in FA page system that allows the artist to select what stage they are currently in and share drafts for each stage. These drafts are temporary and are held on FA for a certain amount of time before being disposed of.
Stage 0: Discussion
You two are given note-style input boxes to describe everything. You can also discuss things outside of FA, but you must bring your results of the discussion to FA to have FA's protection against fraud. One of you must post the details of the external discussion, and the other must confirm that the details are accurate.
Stage 1: Pending
Once both of you have finished the discussion stage, the artist can put the commission to pending stage. The artist is doing other tasks, perhaps other artwork, or even waiting for payment from you. Once the artist is ready to get to your work, they can click "Sketch stage".
Stage 2: Sketching
The artist is now allowed to upload drafts to share, and they are able to discuss note style again (or externally with the same requirement of bringing things back with confirmation for protection). Once the user has confirmed that they are happy with the sketches, the next stage can begin. Each stage follows the same details as this one.
Each stage here has a request cancellation button, which informs the artist immediately that there is a cancellation request. Perhaps FA can even add browser based notifications that can alert an artist with a popup or ping of some kind.
At the final stage, the artist has the right to hold back the art till complete payment has been made, and if they have chosen to give everything over, they are able to upload any files relevant to the project. The commission page is kept as archived for x time, perhaps 1 year after which drafts are deleted and the remaining text only version stays behind, possibly for the length of the account.
Conclusion
I believe this would help protect people from scam artists with the fact that an artist who deliberately scams you will be banned and give artists some more security as well against charge backs with the simple risk that the user will be banned from FA if they issue a chargeback after confirming everything. This would also help improve YCHs and Raffles on the site giving some better features to them rather than using comments to try and host it and such.
It would probably be quite complex to set up, and I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but, I'll let you guys tell me what you think of everything here I've detailed out and I can edit it later to include anything I forgot with edit notations and time stamps. :P
I'd also like to see some systems for YCHs and Raffles, included in this system. Some new way to handle these that allows the site to handle randomly picking or to allow bid buttons to be placed on slots. it would then show up in your notification bar as 1Y or 1R, YCH/Raffle.
Raffles;
This would be possibly the easiest of them to do. Non-blocked users can load the page, look at the raffle rules, and then click "Enter Raffle". Their ticket number would be listed as "Pending", for the artist to approve it or not if the artist gave conditions. If the artist left it completely open, then the ticket number would auto generate. If one of the conditions is to post a journal about the raffle, you could put your journal ID in the slot next to "Enter" and it would allow the artist to quickly view the proof of it and approve.
Certain terms here can also include that you must be an FA+ member, or someone who has sent the artist money in the last x days using that thing I can't remember the name of on profile pages that lets you send random money. :P It would be annoying, but, it should be an option in the raffle system.
After the raffle ends, the commission page would open for the winner and the artist, allowing them to discuss the terms and everything. The raffle already has the terms in it, like "line art" and such stuff. So that would be the default information put into the commission page once its created and the artist can edit as needed during the conversation with the user.
YCH;
A YCH would be a little more complex, due to the number of slots being an unknown max. I think the system should allow 20 slots maximum, cause anything more would be flat out ridiculous. I think I've seen some with as many as 8 slots but that was the most I've seen personally. Each slot would have a Bid button. The art included should have them named "Slot A" or "Slot 1" and so on. Then you select if you used numbers or alphabet for slots, how many slots there are, and the YCH page would auto create the bid buttons for the slots. This would only allow people who aren't blocked, to bid.
Artist can set the start bid, the min bid increase, and the auto buy (0 for none). Clicking "Bid" without entering anything, enters the default minimum. Auto bid should not be an option. Entering AB should auto bid the max and close the slot till the artist chooses to accept or invalidate that winner.
The artist can set things like a time limit for the auction. They can also choose to add in last minute bid protection, to stop someone from waiting till the last 3 seconds to send a bid in, allowing the artist to choose that the auction will continue for 3 more hours, or 6 more hours, or 1 more day, after a bid has been given.
There should also be a warning included amongst the users who bid, and a warning to the author, that Slot 1 is bidding with someone he has blocked in Slot 4. That would help prevent some conflicts as well. If winner of slot 1 is blocked by, or is blocking the winner of slot 4, then the two would need to talk it out and make sure its not going to be a problem.
Once the YCH is over, this opens a group commission page with the art type that the artist has already agreed to before hand.
Artist Side: Commission;
You should have a page with your commission types and prices listed for various things. Things like "Anthro" "Wings" "Feral/Quadruped", "Taur", etc. You fill in various price changes based on these things in either a positive or negative number. If you like doing Anthros for example and want to provide a discount on it, you enter -10, to subtract $10 from the base price. If you don't like doing wings, you can put in 10, to add $10. If you won't do Taurs at all, type X to disable the option completely.
The artist sets up their costs for various types of art, line art, sketch, colored, digital, whatever else there is. This is the first thing the user will choose on entering the commission system. An X in any box, disables it, it shows up but as greyed out.
The artist can also select whether they want the money up front, or "half now half after" or whatever other options. A slider will allow them to show how much they want up front and how much after. The artist can also check if they will only send the final works after the full payment is sent. They may select whether they will also include PSDs and work files with payment or if they retain the rights to everything they did and are just letting the user show what they paid for. AKA, if the artist has the right to delete it from your gallery any time they choose or if the artist is giving up that right and letting you own what you paid for.
Cancellations and stages of cancellation can be defined. If you want the commissioner to get a full refund after sketch, you can flag sketch stage as full refind. If you do the lineart stage, but you decide you will only give back 90% for line art stage, you can define that. Each stage is something you can choose the amount you refund on that stage.
When the artist has put in every option they want to allow commissioners to have, they save it to their profile, and then at any time they can click "Open Commissions" and include a slot count and a buffer slot count. Say, they want to open 5 slots, and they include a buffer of 3. That means 8 people can take the slots, the first 5 are given the first chance, and the buffer 3 are warned that they have entered the buffer and may not get their commission. The artist can also choose to accept the buffer slots as well however, so that would allow 8 slots to be used out of the 5 in this case of accepting all.
Commissioners / Users;
If you are looking to commission, you find an artist who has slots open. You click "Commission this artist", and enter a page with all the details of price changes on each option and whats disabled. You see the terms as well and decide if you wish to proceed. Before you can begin filling anything out, you click proceed. This puts you in the queue as "pending", reserving that slot for you if you fill in all the details within x time, perhaps 10 minutes? Maybe 15 minutes? If you haven't by then, you lose the slot but you can still save and send it and hopefully get a slot or buffer slot.
You may not commission an artist who has you blocked. That would be silly!
After you've chosen all the options available to you, you are given a large input box that lets you put in special details and information. At the end of this, the customer / artist rights are displayed. If you retain the rights to the art, you get a green "Customer owns the art", but if the artist has decided that they own the art, its a red "Artist owns the art". You can click it to see what this means if you need to. You also see how much you must pay up front, and at what stages of cancellation you get refunds.
YCH/Raffles
These are special case commissions, artists will enter a temporary set of details and restrictions as if setting up a commission page, such as what type of art it will be, and what restrictions there are such as "no ferals" "no taurs" and whatnot. Once the user joins and wins these, the details are prefilled into the commission page with options the artist chose to leave unlocked ready for the winner to choose.
Active Commission;
The artist and the commissioner(s) get a special in FA page system that allows the artist to select what stage they are currently in and share drafts for each stage. These drafts are temporary and are held on FA for a certain amount of time before being disposed of.
Stage 0: Discussion
You two are given note-style input boxes to describe everything. You can also discuss things outside of FA, but you must bring your results of the discussion to FA to have FA's protection against fraud. One of you must post the details of the external discussion, and the other must confirm that the details are accurate.
Stage 1: Pending
Once both of you have finished the discussion stage, the artist can put the commission to pending stage. The artist is doing other tasks, perhaps other artwork, or even waiting for payment from you. Once the artist is ready to get to your work, they can click "Sketch stage".
Stage 2: Sketching
The artist is now allowed to upload drafts to share, and they are able to discuss note style again (or externally with the same requirement of bringing things back with confirmation for protection). Once the user has confirmed that they are happy with the sketches, the next stage can begin. Each stage follows the same details as this one.
Each stage here has a request cancellation button, which informs the artist immediately that there is a cancellation request. Perhaps FA can even add browser based notifications that can alert an artist with a popup or ping of some kind.
At the final stage, the artist has the right to hold back the art till complete payment has been made, and if they have chosen to give everything over, they are able to upload any files relevant to the project. The commission page is kept as archived for x time, perhaps 1 year after which drafts are deleted and the remaining text only version stays behind, possibly for the length of the account.
Conclusion
I believe this would help protect people from scam artists with the fact that an artist who deliberately scams you will be banned and give artists some more security as well against charge backs with the simple risk that the user will be banned from FA if they issue a chargeback after confirming everything. This would also help improve YCHs and Raffles on the site giving some better features to them rather than using comments to try and host it and such.
It would probably be quite complex to set up, and I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but, I'll let you guys tell me what you think of everything here I've detailed out and I can edit it later to include anything I forgot with edit notations and time stamps. :P
Zylen_Andel
~zylenandel
This is a good idea I think. For artists and writers alike, this would be a really cool system.
