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Kiribans, a rant.
14 years ago
Actually that's a lie. I honestly hope this is more of an honest discussion then a rant. And, frankly, I know no one is going to read this (on a realistic level. I don't have enough watchers. Unless someone like 
Foxbyte 'rejournals' it this it isn't going anywere. But this is still the best platform I have so, meh, I'll use it).
Lets give some background. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2098132/
First and formost, I want to say I hold nothing against
Nim-Nim. I like them as an artist and if I didn't I wouldn't have even tried for it. They, in fact, ran this about as well as is possible... which is why it's a great testcase because there are still problems. Problems I say are inherant to the system and bad for both contestants and host.
It's also resant and I was personaly involved so I can speak more authoritavly then any other example, and why use a hypothetical when you can have facts?
First lets look at those rules. Everyone knows roughly how kiribans work so why go over them? This goes back to my saying Nim actually did a really good job with this. First, we request a full screenshot. This is because anything else is bloody easy to fake. Anyone can make a picture of a white 40K on a grey background. The full screen lets you see things like comments recieved/given and the user's system clock to know if we're looking at a 'real' entry. This also shows the inherant flaw that people cheat, otherwise this wouldn't be needed.
Next is to post to this specific journal. This is just housekeeping, making sure no one posts in a later journal and claims they beat someone else too it. Which can't be solved with FA timestamps because they're only acurate to the minute. Still, show we where thinking ahead. Third, and this is an update for Nim, the first three people win. Shows we're running a traditional time based Kiriban, and that they where cool enough to open it up from one prize to three. Incidentaly, this is the only reason I even participated. Past experiance with Kiribans made me pretty sure I couldn't win it but top three seemed a vauge posability.
Our 4th point is a good declaration, but a bit worrying. There shall only be 3 winners. Meens in theory there should be no quibbling and it's done... but this only works with well defined rules. In this case we have a clear tie breaker, speed, but as I'll show later is still a problem. And it's more endemic to Kiribans that arn't as well set up, where 2-10 people meet all the qualifications to be a winning entry and there's no pre-established way to tell them apart. Part of this is because of the way FA tracks pageviews, it's entirly possible for multiple people to get a winning screenshot, especialy on a less popular artist who isn't flipping those digits.
Our fifth point is also a good one, you can't win twice. Once you have yours let other people play. And finaly don't whine if you loose... which I suppose I'm actually violating kinda hard, but I'm not whining about loosing (frankly, I expected that) I'm whining about kiribans period.
So under what seems like an optimum setup what was the outcome? 23 entrants in under two minutes, and that's just the people who thought they had an honest shot at it. There are more people who didn't even post who are just goggling at how hosed they where. So where do we see some issues creeping in? Well we have the person with a dual mointer setup, they had to choose between a huge file upload or cropping the picture, either of which takes time and costs and real chance of winning. Anyone with a high res moniter is hitting the same problem if smaller. You have the question of hosting sites, you can be hosed by a third party.
Think none of that matters? How about this, it turnes out I was never elligable in the first place. See, I made it 6th by timestamp, but we know from #2 that I couldn't have won anything. For me riding F5 the pageviews went from 39.999 to 40,001 so I capped and submitted. So did #2... and they didn't win anything. Now somewhat unclearly but it was stated a screenshot of REACHING 40K, not surpassing 40K. And there are plenty of people below us who have exact 40K screenshots, so that shows processing time matters. So which is more fair? Making it a speed contest and then disqualifying the slow accurate answers? Or making it accuracy based and disqualifying the fast?
I say neither. The whole system is broken. Despite rule six you'll see a lot of complaining in the thread. And they're not really complaining about loosing, in most cases, they're complaining about how Kiribans are run even if that's not conscious. Lets look at what we're actually trying to acomplish with a kiriban and see if most people are suceeding.
First and foremost it's a celebration of a milestone. You made it to X, whatever that is. There's usualy something else too. Maybe you want to give back to your fans, right? Otherwise you could just write a journal saying yay me. Also you could do that was another trope, the Calabrating X Picture, generaly cheese/beefcake and giving EVERYONE a little tiny something instead of a few people a big something. You may be trying to attract new viewers. People post about the contest or talk about the contest and the idea of free art gets them to look at your page and hopefully stick with you. Maybe they'll watch, maybe they'll buy something if they don't win. Even if they just fav something you get more exposure because it expands your networking. You might be comunity building, getting your fans to interact and participate, keeping your page livly and vibrant and interesting. So are we achieving that?
Well... you've got a bunch of grumpy people who don't like the results. Some who didn't understand the rule and some who got bit by the rules. That's not celebrating, that's a downer. You've got people who didn't even try to participate because of past experiances with Kiribans and their flaws. That's minimizing your returns. Or atleast not maximizing them. You're also, potentialy, getting your participants mad at eachother, which isn't good for community building at all. And this is from a well planned, well run Kiriban. There are some real disasters out there...
So is there something that can be done about it? SURE! Lots of options... but almost all of them involve more work. Kiribans are easy because basicly everyone knows how they work so there isn't much effort. But if you're going to take the time to do one well, then there are some really competitive options. And I say if it's worth doing it's worth doing right. First, clearly define your rules, being as specific as possible. Muddy rules can only bite you in the arse later. Learn from other people's contests and see what did and didn't work for them... but also watch to see how many rules you're getting up to, if it's hard to particupate, or confusing, people arn't going to want in. Also be aware you might be forcing people not to participate, like the dual moniter example. If you're getting too many rules, maybe you should do a diffrent kind of contest.
You could always have more prizes... but since the prize is usualy free art this is obviously more effort. But offer what people seem to like. If the reason people are watching you is you're a damn good colorist, one full color pic will probably get you further then five sketches. Similarly, if you have really crisp lineart you could get more milage from a couple inks then if you spent the same amount of time on one 'grand prize'.
ALWAYS include an out clause. If for some reason your rules break down have a predetermined solution, even if it's just drawing from a hat or using a RNG(Random Number Generator). It keeps you from making it up on the fly, and prevents people from thinking you have a bias.
Consider using the RNG as the win determinate. Any gamer will tell you about strange dice superstitions. Everyone hating on the RNG can actually be comunity building since it has a common enemy, and it's not a person. It's suprisingly carthotic, and dirt common. Kingdom of Loating even has a RNG NPC you can curse or give offerings to, it's a prevasive beliefe. Tap into it, use it.
Do something diffrent. It's more work, you'll have to come up with it yourself, but it will probably be more entertaining AND more memorable.
Adamios has been doing this ever since his first Kiriban brought a lot of these problems to light and they've been enjoyable even if I havn't won squat. I'll probably not participate in another speed based Kiriban again, the problems are too endemic to the format.
All of that said... a traditional kiriban probably generates more 'good' results then 'bad' and certainly generates more then not doing anything. So they're not... wrong. They're just so far from right most of the time. We can do better, and I think we deserve better, but any time an artist offers up their work for free we should be thankful. And that's not just drawing your character for free guys, that's letting us see and enjoy their art. This whole FA thing? It's amazing what we get for absolutly free every day. And next time you feel like complaining about someone's commission prices visit your local art gallery and look at the prices... For something you didn't even have any input on the creation of. We the users are spoiled rotten, and we offten forget it. So lets celebrate some artists, even if they arn't celebrating themselves?
tl:dr kiribans are lazy and broken... but not wrong.
Foxbyte 'rejournals' it this it isn't going anywere. But this is still the best platform I have so, meh, I'll use it).Lets give some background. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2098132/
First and formost, I want to say I hold nothing against
Nim-Nim. I like them as an artist and if I didn't I wouldn't have even tried for it. They, in fact, ran this about as well as is possible... which is why it's a great testcase because there are still problems. Problems I say are inherant to the system and bad for both contestants and host.It's also resant and I was personaly involved so I can speak more authoritavly then any other example, and why use a hypothetical when you can have facts?
First lets look at those rules. Everyone knows roughly how kiribans work so why go over them? This goes back to my saying Nim actually did a really good job with this. First, we request a full screenshot. This is because anything else is bloody easy to fake. Anyone can make a picture of a white 40K on a grey background. The full screen lets you see things like comments recieved/given and the user's system clock to know if we're looking at a 'real' entry. This also shows the inherant flaw that people cheat, otherwise this wouldn't be needed.
Next is to post to this specific journal. This is just housekeeping, making sure no one posts in a later journal and claims they beat someone else too it. Which can't be solved with FA timestamps because they're only acurate to the minute. Still, show we where thinking ahead. Third, and this is an update for Nim, the first three people win. Shows we're running a traditional time based Kiriban, and that they where cool enough to open it up from one prize to three. Incidentaly, this is the only reason I even participated. Past experiance with Kiribans made me pretty sure I couldn't win it but top three seemed a vauge posability.
Our 4th point is a good declaration, but a bit worrying. There shall only be 3 winners. Meens in theory there should be no quibbling and it's done... but this only works with well defined rules. In this case we have a clear tie breaker, speed, but as I'll show later is still a problem. And it's more endemic to Kiribans that arn't as well set up, where 2-10 people meet all the qualifications to be a winning entry and there's no pre-established way to tell them apart. Part of this is because of the way FA tracks pageviews, it's entirly possible for multiple people to get a winning screenshot, especialy on a less popular artist who isn't flipping those digits.
Our fifth point is also a good one, you can't win twice. Once you have yours let other people play. And finaly don't whine if you loose... which I suppose I'm actually violating kinda hard, but I'm not whining about loosing (frankly, I expected that) I'm whining about kiribans period.
So under what seems like an optimum setup what was the outcome? 23 entrants in under two minutes, and that's just the people who thought they had an honest shot at it. There are more people who didn't even post who are just goggling at how hosed they where. So where do we see some issues creeping in? Well we have the person with a dual mointer setup, they had to choose between a huge file upload or cropping the picture, either of which takes time and costs and real chance of winning. Anyone with a high res moniter is hitting the same problem if smaller. You have the question of hosting sites, you can be hosed by a third party.
Think none of that matters? How about this, it turnes out I was never elligable in the first place. See, I made it 6th by timestamp, but we know from #2 that I couldn't have won anything. For me riding F5 the pageviews went from 39.999 to 40,001 so I capped and submitted. So did #2... and they didn't win anything. Now somewhat unclearly but it was stated a screenshot of REACHING 40K, not surpassing 40K. And there are plenty of people below us who have exact 40K screenshots, so that shows processing time matters. So which is more fair? Making it a speed contest and then disqualifying the slow accurate answers? Or making it accuracy based and disqualifying the fast?
I say neither. The whole system is broken. Despite rule six you'll see a lot of complaining in the thread. And they're not really complaining about loosing, in most cases, they're complaining about how Kiribans are run even if that's not conscious. Lets look at what we're actually trying to acomplish with a kiriban and see if most people are suceeding.
First and foremost it's a celebration of a milestone. You made it to X, whatever that is. There's usualy something else too. Maybe you want to give back to your fans, right? Otherwise you could just write a journal saying yay me. Also you could do that was another trope, the Calabrating X Picture, generaly cheese/beefcake and giving EVERYONE a little tiny something instead of a few people a big something. You may be trying to attract new viewers. People post about the contest or talk about the contest and the idea of free art gets them to look at your page and hopefully stick with you. Maybe they'll watch, maybe they'll buy something if they don't win. Even if they just fav something you get more exposure because it expands your networking. You might be comunity building, getting your fans to interact and participate, keeping your page livly and vibrant and interesting. So are we achieving that?
Well... you've got a bunch of grumpy people who don't like the results. Some who didn't understand the rule and some who got bit by the rules. That's not celebrating, that's a downer. You've got people who didn't even try to participate because of past experiances with Kiribans and their flaws. That's minimizing your returns. Or atleast not maximizing them. You're also, potentialy, getting your participants mad at eachother, which isn't good for community building at all. And this is from a well planned, well run Kiriban. There are some real disasters out there...
So is there something that can be done about it? SURE! Lots of options... but almost all of them involve more work. Kiribans are easy because basicly everyone knows how they work so there isn't much effort. But if you're going to take the time to do one well, then there are some really competitive options. And I say if it's worth doing it's worth doing right. First, clearly define your rules, being as specific as possible. Muddy rules can only bite you in the arse later. Learn from other people's contests and see what did and didn't work for them... but also watch to see how many rules you're getting up to, if it's hard to particupate, or confusing, people arn't going to want in. Also be aware you might be forcing people not to participate, like the dual moniter example. If you're getting too many rules, maybe you should do a diffrent kind of contest.
You could always have more prizes... but since the prize is usualy free art this is obviously more effort. But offer what people seem to like. If the reason people are watching you is you're a damn good colorist, one full color pic will probably get you further then five sketches. Similarly, if you have really crisp lineart you could get more milage from a couple inks then if you spent the same amount of time on one 'grand prize'.
ALWAYS include an out clause. If for some reason your rules break down have a predetermined solution, even if it's just drawing from a hat or using a RNG(Random Number Generator). It keeps you from making it up on the fly, and prevents people from thinking you have a bias.
Consider using the RNG as the win determinate. Any gamer will tell you about strange dice superstitions. Everyone hating on the RNG can actually be comunity building since it has a common enemy, and it's not a person. It's suprisingly carthotic, and dirt common. Kingdom of Loating even has a RNG NPC you can curse or give offerings to, it's a prevasive beliefe. Tap into it, use it.
Do something diffrent. It's more work, you'll have to come up with it yourself, but it will probably be more entertaining AND more memorable.
Adamios has been doing this ever since his first Kiriban brought a lot of these problems to light and they've been enjoyable even if I havn't won squat. I'll probably not participate in another speed based Kiriban again, the problems are too endemic to the format.All of that said... a traditional kiriban probably generates more 'good' results then 'bad' and certainly generates more then not doing anything. So they're not... wrong. They're just so far from right most of the time. We can do better, and I think we deserve better, but any time an artist offers up their work for free we should be thankful. And that's not just drawing your character for free guys, that's letting us see and enjoy their art. This whole FA thing? It's amazing what we get for absolutly free every day. And next time you feel like complaining about someone's commission prices visit your local art gallery and look at the prices... For something you didn't even have any input on the creation of. We the users are spoiled rotten, and we offten forget it. So lets celebrate some artists, even if they arn't celebrating themselves?
tl:dr kiribans are lazy and broken... but not wrong.
And that is a unashamed rant. ^_^