Potential Activity

[Ma3vis]

Read Helm's Mod retirement thread http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=16242.0

3. More activities, challenges and commercial critiques

If there is a way to increase community activity through give-aways, competitive prizes, etc. I'd be happy to contribute

One idea so far has been paid or word-of-mouth advertisement, which while possible, does not service the users already here I think

Please offer your ideas with a response below and I'll see what I can do

Admins and Mod team have been contacted as well

[CFKaligula]

Doing a giveaway via other social media sounds like a good idea. Not sure how that would work with the website, if they would have to make an account or something.

[Runensucher]

Now that I think about it: In another forum I was active a long time (ago) there was a pool of giveaways for forum activities like quizes and stuff. Everyone was able to spend for this pool. We shared old video games, shirts, figurines... it was a german community though. The shipping costs for these giveaways were paid by the new owner. It might not work this way in a world wide community.
The giveaways were ranked with points. For example, a winner of any contest could choose one gift for three points or three gifts for one.

It was quite an interesting concept.

[Ma3vis]

Giveaway does sound nice, there's some videogames and collector's stuff I can donate. I'll research some methods to put this together. But if anyone already knows of sites or ways to arrange this, post or let me know via PM.

If we're seeking new users then eventually it'll need to be advertised via social media, which will require other people's participation. Traffic can be bought on Reddit and Facebook, not sure about other sites. Also anyone should feel free to pitch in, I imagine novelty prizes would generate a more direct influence on traffic should we advertise. Right now I can throw in some videogames, magic cards and other consumer related products. Any ideas on what items should be included in the giveaway?

[eishiya]

Do giveaways bring in enough people who stay to be worth it? It seems more like a way to get a lot of temporary, but ultimately worthless, exposure and a bunch of dead accounts.
I think it would be more effective to instead toss some tendrils out to other platform in the form of Twitter/Tumblr/whatever posts promoting stuff from the feature chests, weekly "good thread" features that aren't quite feature chest material, that sort of thing. Things like that are more likely to get the attention of the sorts of people who'd actually end up using the site.

[wzl]

I think it would be more effective to instead toss some tendrils out to other platform in the form of Twitter/Tumblr/whatever posts promoting stuff from the feature chests, weekly "good thread" features that aren't quite feature chest material, that sort of thing. Things like that are more likely to get the attention of the sorts of people who'd actually end up using the site.

That sounds really good actually!

[Ma3vis]

Do giveaways bring in enough people who stay to be worth it?

Directing traffic to the forums and having pixelart contributions be an entry requirement seems the best way to encourage long-term stays and discourage a flood of dead accounts. Active contributions as a prerequisite will provide an obstacle from freeloading troll accounts.

Also I'll try to maintain regular giveaways if possible, which should encourage new users to remain and win a chance at the next giveaway. Getting users to stay is more of a gamble or dice-roll, and will always be some fraction of the traffic, not all of it. It's simply more efficient to just cast a wider net with community advertising the giveaway through social media and hoping the prizes as well as the community are relevant to the users' interest.

I can do promotional stuff too, certainly demakes and retro versions of current trending or popular games drive some traffic. But this requires encouragement or some sort of payoff to create these things to drive community exposure otherwise they're very rare occurrences I would think.

[Ryumaru]

Do giveaways bring in enough people who stay to be worth it? It seems more like a way to get a lot of temporary, but ultimately worthless, exposure and a bunch of dead accounts.
I think it would be more effective to instead toss some tendrils out to other platform in the form of Twitter/Tumblr/whatever posts promoting stuff from the feature chests, weekly "good thread" features that aren't quite feature chest material, that sort of thing. Things like that are more likely to get the attention of the sorts of people who'd actually end up using the site.

Yep, we should have been doing that for a while now. We were about to use the pixelation twitter for more than just status; just never got around to it. We can certainly start there.

[CFKaligula]

Could the giveaways be in a from of a free commission? Like a small sprite by one of you really good pixel artists. Then you don't have to be annoyed with shipping costs and stuff, also you only attract people who are interested in pixel art.

[eishiya]

@CFK: People who are interested in getting free art xP I thought this site's purpose was to help each other improve their own art? Getting a commission can serve to that end, but most people who do something for free art are usually just there for free art. Seen a lot of people use small freebies like that to try to promote themselves, their other projects, etc, never worked out well ):

I feel like any activity with some sort of reward is best as a little extra for people who are already on the site, not as a way of promoting the site.

[CFKaligula]

@eishiya, the giveaway is purely to get attention. And since we want as many stayers as possible, I think a pixel art commission would create more stayers than a video game or whatever giveaway. Since pixel art is what the site is for.

[MysteryMeat]

Perhaps instead we start a fund to start paying new artists to do commwork for the site?
Could get a few mascot ideas together, for example.
Bonus to this is we get to support artistry and that'll give people a moral reason for liking the site as well as a subject-matter reason.

[Crow]

Please set your goals first Do you want to promote Pixelation, or make it more attractive to the users who are already here? I feel like the latter should come first, in any case. This sometimes isn't as easy, since we all also lead normal lives and time is expensive, as you all know. If you have any activity ideas or want to jump right into starting any, I'd say go ahead. If it's cool and you're okay with it, we can make it official. Do consider that we also (sometimes) have plans of our own

[yaomon17]

Don't worry crow, I am the best web dev in the entire North northern hemisphere.

Seems like the goal is promotion. If that is the case, might as well use giveaway money to buy out ad spots on more popular art sites :|

[wzl]

But yeah, whoever is in charge of the pixelation twitter account. Maybe its a good step to start promoting interesting threads, with mad edits or insight.

Also in terms of activity, there haven't been any lately. no challenges, no hexes, no quilts. I think these have a bigger impact and pull more artists than material gains.
However i'm not opposed to have challenges that have a prize money or rewards.

[Ma3vis]

However i'm not opposed to have challenges that have a prize money or rewards.

See this is my rationale as well.

Challenges with prizes will bring in new users and reward the people already here at the same time. Whether anyone wants to participate is entirely up to them, it's simply a motivational opportunity. And with pixelart submission requirements it keeps trolls from participating, and brings in new users with relevant interest in pixelart

Then have a community vote on who earns the prizes. I guess I can sort out the prizes by value, Idk. But the only obstacle in this area would be promotion and shipping costs I think

Seems like the goal is promotion. If that is the case, might as well use giveaway money to buy out ad spots on more popular art sites :|

While I am not opposed to donating towards promotional ads, I don't know how much this costs or if the effort is worth its investment as far as a return on increasing activity or simply the addition of new users

[MysteryMeat]

Hm, there's a neat few ideas in that actually. Could get a whole webstore going, pay artists royalties or w/e for t-shirt contests to get in the store just as one idea

Hm hm hm
Like the polar opposite of what hot topic does

[Crow]

Ads aren't gonna happen. If you want to host activities with prizes, feel free to do so. I suppose you can also contact me or somebody else from the mod team if you'd like to discuss making it an official thing.

[Ma3vis]

Since I am hosting, can I ask what prizes would everyone in the community want?
I know money is one, t-shirts could be second-place prizes.

Any other suggestions?

[yaomon17]

Steam gift cards, food, computer peripherals.

[CFKaligula]

Why would new people participate in the contest if they know they have no chance of winning? I know that its mostly meant to be for fun, but not everyone sees it that way. I think you need to randomize the winner or find a different way to make newbies have a chance of winning.

[MysteryMeat]

Why would new people participate in the contest if they know they have no chance of winning? I know that its mostly meant to be for fun, but not everyone sees it that way. I think you need to randomize the winner or find a different way to make newbies have a chance of winning.

I think running two contests would help mitigate any saltiness on skill-focused artists. One for technical skills, and one randomized. However, randomization seems to be a dangerous path since people could stuff votes with quick and crappy junk art. Obviously moderation could mitigate that, and it would be neat to have kind of a "speed draw" contest to see who can pump out the most at once. Thoughts?

As for prizes, fancy hardware for sure. Donations for a prize pool would help fund neat stuff like cintiqs for bigger contests.

[Ma3vis]

you need to randomize the winner or find a different way to make newbies have a chance of winning.

I could use Community Critiques as an entry requirement instead, then select the winner like a lottery.
Those who post critiques under multiple topics would be entered in multiple times
This encourages and gives an advantage to users with frequent activity
It also allows newbies to participate

But there'll need to be a content restriction to prevent low-effort posting, which probably leads to trolls
Similar to what situation MysteryMeat described about stuffing votes with quick, crappy junk art

[32]

I actually like the idea of a collaborative critique based competition. Something like all entrants submit a piece and are assigned some number of randomly selected participants who have to work with them to help develop their piece. The winner is the person who's piece shows the greatest level of improvement (decided by popular vote) rather than the "best" overall piece. Probably their assigned buddies would also get some share of the glory.

I feel like any outright competition undermines the ultimate goals of the site to a degree, but something like this would support our values.

[Runensucher]

I actually like the idea of a collaborative critique based competition. Something like all entrants submit a piece and are assigned some number of randomly selected participants who have to work with them to help develop their piece. The winner is the person who's piece shows the greatest level of improvement (decided by popular vote) rather than the "best" overall piece. Probably their assigned buddies would also get some share of the glory.

I feel like any outright competition undermines the ultimate goals of the site to a degree, but something like this would support our values.

This sounds great. I want!

[eishiya]

I also like that critique idea. It's "get your thread featured: prize edition".

[Crow]

Well, there's one thing we discussed in the Slack earlier.. it was only a rough idea, but I'm gonna throw it out because it's awesome and I wanna do it at all costs. Some of you may have seen that we changed our Twitter handle (to @PixelationToday). Will also do a small announcement about it soon. We intend to be more active on Twitter, featuring news about activities and cool threads/art. And what I'm most excited about is, we want to do activities on a regular basis for the Twitter banner. Basically collaborations to create a cool banner. I'm guessing with a certain theme and fitting restrictions, but we'll figure that out later. Any ideas in regards to that are welcome.

[32]

That sounds like fun crow

I thought about my idea a bit more. I'm thinking maybe the best way to keep it organised and not have dozens of threads to monitor would be to group people and have it be more of a team activity where you get to help the same people who are helping you and you're all working toward a common goal.

In sign up week everyone would submit a WIP piece. Then whoever is running the thing could sort people roughly by skill (just like, novice, intermediate, advanced) and then based on that we could create a number of groups with a good mix of skill levels. Then we would create a thread for each group with the WIP pieces in the first post and the group just turns into an utter chaos of edits and updates for a month

At the end each person gets to vote on which group they think improved their works the most. I call it Sensei Showdown

I wouldn't mind running something like this but I might need help from someone with some programming knowledge to do the group randomisation. We could certainly do it on a per person basis like I suggested in my previous post but I feel like that would be a lot harder to organise and critiquers would have less motivation to help the people they are assigned to.

[MysteryMeat]

Another idea I had just before I passed out: something like the annual hex pixel thing but with animation, an iterative pass it along game where we start with a concept and have people animate 10 or so frames of it and try and get it to a full x-minutes length or so.
It sounds like a fun way to get some people in animation and would get an interesting collaborative result out

[eishiya]

Another idea I had just before I passed out: something like the annual hex pixel thing but with animation, an iterative pass it along game where we start with a concept and have people animate 10 or so frames of it and try and get it to a full x-minutes length or so.
It sounds like a fun way to get some people in animation and would get an interesting collaborative result out

I like this general idea, but something like this has to be done serially, by one person at a time, doesn't it? The great thing about the hexquisite corpse and most other collabs is that parts of those can be done simultaneously. And with animation, the wait times are probably going to be quite a bit longer, and later participants are likely to feel more pressure and restrictions to continue the style/story/mood set by the earlier animations.
I'd love to see an animation collab, but I think these are issues that need to be addressed for it to be more accessible and fun.

Perhaps it could be done like an animation version of PJ's ISO collabs: there is a fixed number of animation slots along the timeline, N frames each, and the first few participants can pick any slots they want, as long as they're non-adjacent. Once about 1/4~1/3 of the slots have been taken up this way and a few finished ones have been posted, later participants have to select a slot that's adjacent to a finished one (i.e. right before or after), and animate it so that their animation flows into the other. As the project gets closer to completion, people will have to fill slots that have animations just before and after them, and they might have to "blend" between two very different animations.
In this way, multiple people can work on entries at the same time, and the eventual "story" can be some hexquisite corpse-like nonsense because the animation is seeded by a larger number of animations by people who haven't yet seen each other's entries, rather than just one. Each of the three "stages" of this project (1. creating bits of animation in isolation, 2. flowing into/out from one existing animation, 3. filling in the gap between two finished animations) provides a different sort of challenge as well, which might encourage repeat entries (if those are allowed) and different stages might appeal to different people.