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A realization about FA
14 years ago
General
Lets start this off, by all of you imagining a road, a straight road that goes on indefinitely. On this road, is a vehicle, with an impossibly large cork board, so impossibly large that it's difficult to see it in entirety, it goes on forever.
Now, this vehicle is travelling at a speed just fast enough that you have to jog, almost run, to keep up with it, and there are a lot of people doing just that. Not only are they jogging along, they're posting stuff to this board. Pictures, text, audio, comments and all sorts of various states of interaction. It's an amazing thing to experience. However, you have to jog right behind to keep up with what's going on, as by design anything on this board which has been there for any length of time, falls off onto the road.
There are various spots on this board where there are huge groups of people, and some parts which are almost completely vacant, despite content being posted everywhere. The larger groups of people, well... you can quickly get swallowed up by them, and unless you're only there to contemplate the origional submission, there's almost no point in posting your own note about it because it will very quickly get covered over by so many others.
This to me, is largely what FA is. This 'event' which you have to consistently and continually keep up with. There will be people occasionally falling behind and now and again as something on the road will catch their eye, and they might even add a comment themselves, but it won't be seen by those who are all keeping up with the vehicle.
Even those posting media to the board will occasionally fall behind as well, catching up with something that's been left behind for them to read, but the real fact of the matter is you have got to stay with the board otherwise there is no hope of ever keeping up with it.
The eventuality is, the larger the board is the more impossible it becomes. Each new item only getting a tiny fraction of your attention before having to divert to the next, because of the sheer volume of content. If you want to really pay attention to a piece, you have to stop, while the vehicle leaves you behind, then sprint to catch up.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but what it has effectively done is lower the quality of experience for everyone involved. If a submission is over a few weeks old, it's almost pointless to comment on it because 1, no one will see it, and 2, everyone will be too busy with all the newer content being submitted. It feels as though after a specific number of watched creators, FA becomes a 24 hour a day job.
Case in point, I watch about 300 people. This could generally mean over 60 artwork/story/music submissions, and up to 45 journals. That's over 100 pages to look through, each of which could potentially take anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes of time. That's 1.6 to 16 hours! every single day!
Lets not forget that due to the notification system and comments, what you might have interacted on the previous day, might require your attention the next day... So that number just goes up even more.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I just can't keep up any longer, it takes far too long and There's much more to do in a single day then spend hours on FA trying to keep up. Worse still is those people I watch, who don't watch me back... well most of them won't know or care, simply because of the raw numbers of people that interact with them. For the 'big names' it really has become a very impersonal and business like atmosphere strictly dictated to by numbers.
Nothing for it really, that's just what I've noticed.
Now, this vehicle is travelling at a speed just fast enough that you have to jog, almost run, to keep up with it, and there are a lot of people doing just that. Not only are they jogging along, they're posting stuff to this board. Pictures, text, audio, comments and all sorts of various states of interaction. It's an amazing thing to experience. However, you have to jog right behind to keep up with what's going on, as by design anything on this board which has been there for any length of time, falls off onto the road.
There are various spots on this board where there are huge groups of people, and some parts which are almost completely vacant, despite content being posted everywhere. The larger groups of people, well... you can quickly get swallowed up by them, and unless you're only there to contemplate the origional submission, there's almost no point in posting your own note about it because it will very quickly get covered over by so many others.
This to me, is largely what FA is. This 'event' which you have to consistently and continually keep up with. There will be people occasionally falling behind and now and again as something on the road will catch their eye, and they might even add a comment themselves, but it won't be seen by those who are all keeping up with the vehicle.
Even those posting media to the board will occasionally fall behind as well, catching up with something that's been left behind for them to read, but the real fact of the matter is you have got to stay with the board otherwise there is no hope of ever keeping up with it.
The eventuality is, the larger the board is the more impossible it becomes. Each new item only getting a tiny fraction of your attention before having to divert to the next, because of the sheer volume of content. If you want to really pay attention to a piece, you have to stop, while the vehicle leaves you behind, then sprint to catch up.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but what it has effectively done is lower the quality of experience for everyone involved. If a submission is over a few weeks old, it's almost pointless to comment on it because 1, no one will see it, and 2, everyone will be too busy with all the newer content being submitted. It feels as though after a specific number of watched creators, FA becomes a 24 hour a day job.
Case in point, I watch about 300 people. This could generally mean over 60 artwork/story/music submissions, and up to 45 journals. That's over 100 pages to look through, each of which could potentially take anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes of time. That's 1.6 to 16 hours! every single day!
Lets not forget that due to the notification system and comments, what you might have interacted on the previous day, might require your attention the next day... So that number just goes up even more.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I just can't keep up any longer, it takes far too long and There's much more to do in a single day then spend hours on FA trying to keep up. Worse still is those people I watch, who don't watch me back... well most of them won't know or care, simply because of the raw numbers of people that interact with them. For the 'big names' it really has become a very impersonal and business like atmosphere strictly dictated to by numbers.
Nothing for it really, that's just what I've noticed.
I'm not saying this is the way it is for everything, and everyone here. But it is a very large percentage, enough to shift my personal policy around.
In a way if everyone did this method, comments might end up actually being worth something for everyone. Although don't toss out the possibility that if all 50 comments are nothing but "Love it! Keep it up" you might actually get noticed if you talk about how the pic makes you feel, as you do. You know, like actual artwork does. X)
I'm watching a lot of people. When I'm clearing my submission messages, I only go to the ones that catch my eye, or are important in other ways. Because that's just how art works. I do the same with journals. On here, you really need to be good at reeling people in, or you'll get 'left behind'.
I browse the site, at leisure, by content. I seek out art when I feel like finding it. This can consume as much or as little time as is desired.
It's understandable that one can be overwhelmed that there's more out there to see than can be seen by one person... but growing up on Planet Earth we should be used to that.
I have noticed, though, that an awful lot of users actually complain about their overflowing new submissions lists... as though it's a chore to go through them.
As if they had some externally-imposed reason to do so, beyond their own enjoyment.
...The moment exploring this site for goodies stops being fun, something's wrong.