New guys (and some old guys) READ THIS THREAD

[Helm]

It seems a lot of new people sign up and completely skip the reading of the rules and regulations, and just go right ahead merilly posting one-liners. Some (I'd like to say most but there's so many posts, I'm sure for every one that we catch, three give us the miss) of these get deleted and then we have the good-old PM dance between new user being all HEY WHY DID YOU DELETE MY GLORIOUS COMMENT and some moderator pointing the user to the clear word of the faq where it says 'do not post one-liners' and then the user goes 'oh... sorry  '.

I know this will have to be reality for such a huge board where there's new users all the time and they think they're too good to read the rules of the forum and for the most part that's understandable because most people don't need to read rules to behave sensibly on the internet. But the one-liner thing many people do not understand right off the bat because they've been conditioned in DeviantArt type boards for a long time and they thing whatever comment comes out of their keyboard is gold that enriches the forum and the thread they're posting on. It's not. 'I like this' and 'omg good colors' are not useful to anyone. So, I make this thread and will keep it afloat for a while to let new - and some old - people know: If you absolutely have to let somebody else know of pleasantries that are not critique like 'you're my favourite pixel artist' or 'dang that's awesome!' do it in a private message.

The reason we're agressively moderating one-liners is twofold: first of all if the forum is clean from them then new users will think 'wait, this doesn't seem to happen here, so I guess I shouldn't be the one to start doing it'. It just breeds good habits. The second reason is that the point of the critique board is to be educational, not just for the people who are posting on the threads right now, but for whomever decides to read the backlogs 2 years from now. Have you ever been in this situation where you know someone has posted something useful in a deviant art comment, and you return to it 2 years from now and have to go through MILLIONS OF ONE-LINERS before you can dig up that comment again? This is what we're trying to avoid. Ideally, every post in a thread should have to do directly with bettering the art in question. Some deviation is welcomed and aknowledged, we are not robots (*hhrrk* SAD-LY! *bzzt*), but no one-liners.

Discussion on the no one liner policy is welcome in this thread as well as ideas or directions on how we could streamline the process or whatnot. If you think one-liners should be allowed, this is your time to speak out too.

[ndchristie]

I do think that there are times when a single, brief statement says as much as a short essay, provided it is to the point.  One of the most useful critiques I have recieved recently, "Adarias: more nosetril studies," does not quite qualify as a sentence, being that it lacks a verb, but at the same time specific in it's critisism, direct in it's suggestion, and highly motivational.
I am for the most part assuming though that you specifically mean posts devoid of both body and merit, in which case i wholeheartedly endorse this rule.
I also think that sometimes a post which essentially says "you have achieved what you set out to do within the context of this piece." is not altogether without value, although if those should be discouraged too, I do understand the reasoning.

OT posted here based on the fact that it is directed at the same user groups:

There have been a startling number of posts recently with titles including such phrases as "rate me" and "comment this."  I am not a mod, but I do feel that this is hardly the place for that.  We do not rate, and asking for comments is the fastest way to not get any.  In addition, a number of posts come with titles such as "my crap."  While humility is admirable, this is rather annoying.  Why should someone offer advice on your junk?  We want to offer advice for something you're going to work on.  "my shit" implies that you really did not care about it and really do not anticipate improving it.  Even if you are not happy with a piece, at least make it clear that you intend to make it as good as you can within whatever boundries you or god has set for it.  This isn't supposed to be a second-rate gallery space, it's supposed to be a place of constructive criticism or at least working feedback. [/rant]

[ptoing]

I could not agree more with you guys. (I am aware of the irony of this post)

[am_pm]

I agree with a lot has what been said here. The one thing that really needs to be stopped are the comments that are not only useless to the artist, but also bring the artist in the wrong direction he or she might be taking. Comments that tell the artist to do a complete overhaul without any teaching or points on what was wrong, and bring the art to a standpoint that the "critique-er" would want to see, rather than what the artist would like to achieve. Also, comments that are just composed of "Wow that really sucks, do better" are something that nobody wants to see.


edit

[LoTekK]

Truth!


...Oh, right, no one-liners. ^_^
Adarias, you brought up a pet peeve of mine, that of people posting art and screaming "ZOMG THIS SUCKS!" If you as the artist insist it's so awful, why should anyone else think differently? More to the point, why should anyone else put their time and effort into giving any critique, if you yourself can't even take any sort of pride in your work? As you've said, humility is one thing, and self-deprecation can be charming, but don't push it too far.

I agree that ass-patting can be nice for the artist, but as Helm has pointed out, the more one-line ass-patting that goes down, the more difficult it is to sift through and find solid critique (I've seen this happen a lot on CGTalk, among other places).

Here's another pet peeve, while we're at it. "Check this out, I spent like 5 minutes on it!"
And I will spend exactly 0.5 seconds skipping that thread.

am_pm: Also good points. Complete overhauls sometimes have their place, but those comments should, nay, must, be backed up with some solid direction, whether an edit, good explanations and reasoning, etc. That way the OP can at least make relatively sound judgment.

[Helm]

I do think that there are times when a single, brief statement says as much as a short essay, provided it is to the point.  One of the most useful critiques I have recieved recently, "Adarias: more nosetril studies," does not quite qualify as a sentence, being that it lacks a verb, but at the same time specific in it's critisism, direct in it's suggestion, and highly motivational.
I am for the most part assuming though that you specifically mean posts devoid of both body and merit, in which case i wholeheartedly endorse this rule.

Actually I do not think 'more nosetril studies' is the sort of comment that should be actively encouraged for the main critique board, and it's only okay because it was in the OT-Creativty section, regardless of how you took it and what you did with it. Users should always be encouraged to expound on their suggestions and on what they've spotted. Better be safe than sorry. Surely a constructive one-liner stands a better chance to remain alive (for example souly going 'the eyes are too close' in ben2theEdges' thread where seemingly nobody else had noticed the issue) than a no-content one, but still, one-liners aren't the best of ideas most of the time. People need to understand why they might have an error in their art and what they can do about it, not just blindly go 'oh, I recieved a comment, I will now mindlessly change things until that user is happy'.

In fact my nosetrill comment lead you to a self-betterment thing through making new art. I wouldn't post that about a piece in question without saying more. If someone goes 'okay here are my drawings, give me general critique on what I could improve for future pieces' then okay, I can understand short and concise pointers. But not for wip art that needs to become better right now.

I also think that sometimes a post which essentially says "you have achieved what you set out to do within the context of this piece." is not altogether without value, although if those should be discouraged too, I do understand the reasoning.

Usually after a thread is 'done' we allow congratulations-posts and the like, that's fine.

There have been a startling number of posts recently with titles including such phrases as "rate me" and "comment this."

I support this as well. We don't rate here, and we don't just mindlessly comment either. If someone sees your thread and was something constructive to add, they will.

I agree with a lot has what been said here. The one thing that really needs to be stopped are the comments that are not only useless to the artist, but also bring the artist in the wrong direction he or she might be taking. Comments that tell the artist to do a "complete overhaul" and bring the art to a standpoint that the "critique-er" would want to see, rather than what the artist would like to achieve. Also, comments that are just composed of "Wow that really sucks, do better" are something that nobody wants to see.

I disagree with this really. Sometimes the art is made on such fundamentally broken assumptions (anatomy, spacing, construction, lighting) that nitpicking on aa and dithering won't cut it, and that's when you tell someone to start from the beggining while keeping in mind this, this and that pointer about the fundamentals. Best scenario, such a critique post also has drawings to go with it to further explain. Nobody wants to see a cold 'start over, lol' message about his art. We won't stand for that.

But we won't stand for 'oh, omg what did you do to my super custom personal style?!  either, so get used to it. Substance over style, style under will.

[LoTekK]

nosetril

[OT + english nazi]nostril[/OT + english nazi]
:p

[Helm]

I ban you

[AdamAtomic]

Hey if anyone is wondering where their one-liners went, I deleted them!  A clean forum is a happy forum.  My apologies if I went overboard, or conversely underboard.  Tried to put myself in the shoes of a visitor browsing threads for advice and progress, without stepping on too many toes.

[ndchristie]

How about making it such that posts with fewer than say 100 characters can’t be posted?  Like the regular character counts, just much higher?

If someone goes 'okay here are my drawings, give me general critique on what I could improve for future pieces' then okay, I can understand short and concise pointers. But not for wip art that needs to become better right now.

Ah, good point; I forgot about the context.  It would be rare to get a really good single-line suggestion for a working piece.

[Sherman Gill]

I will ban you.

Now that's not very nice.

Also, I don't like that idea, Adarias. I mean really, 100 characters?

[Rydin]

Let's not lose focus here and make everybody be overly complex about what they say though.  If one's only two-cents is "I think the anatomy on the back needs to be adjusted to compensate for the new head." and it's pointing out an entirely blatant mistake that has been overlooked, wouldn't it be wasteful to force the critic to go on?  It's poor practice to add fluff into writing--I mean sure, for those writing assignments with word-count requirements, who doesn't add fluff?--but I think we should strive to be concise,  as being so does translate into the pixel environment (using 8 colors to do the Mona Lisa opposed to using 256-color gradients).

I vote that the whole 'one-liner deletion' reaction should be modified to include a review of content before deletion.  I hate the omg-post as much as the next forum reader, but I'm a big fan of hard-hitting, blunt comments.

[Helm]

We tried a character limit once in pixelation, it didn't work out very well.

And the moderators see a dump of one-liners so they know what has been deleted? I don't really see the usefulness of having that dump be public (I can see a lot of people pointing and laughing at some users that literally have had their one-liners deleted 10 times in two days or something) and you shouldn't worry about actual critique getting deleted, it never does (as far as I've noticed).

[ndchristie]

I suppose it would require massive codework to implement something like a collasped (rather than deleted) post the way they have on that digg thingy?

[robotacon]

Policy:
I'm not sure it's the short comments that are the worst ones. Moderating one-lines is much easier (easy to rule out) than moderating longer posts hence the bad rap for one-liners.

Technically:
I once implemented a function that showed posts that where under 32 chars in a compressed form with just the name of the poster, the message and the quote button. That worked out quite well because then those posts didn't take that much space. No need to collapse the message, just skip the avatar, sig etc.

[ptoing]

Policy:
I'm not sure it's the short comments that are the worst ones. Moderating one-lines is much easier (easy to rule out) than moderating longer posts hence the bad rap for one-liners.

You can be sure that the admins and mods read EVERYTHING that is posted.

[Feron]

You can be sure that the admins and mods read EVERYTHING that is posted.

Hell not just the admins either, im sure im not the only non-mod who reads every new post everyday, almost religiously.

quite often i look back through all the old posts too to see what i can find.

[ndchristie]

You can be sure that the admins and mods read EVERYTHING that is posted.

Hell not just the admins either, im sure im not the only non-mod who reads every new post everyday, almost religiously.

You are not alone

[dragonrc]

same here

[junkboy]

I think that if you'd remove the post-counts and ranks, you'd see less newbies posting one-liners.

[Rosse]

I don't think that the postcount /-rank matters (at least not for me). I think it is more that they try to make one's name.

I think the most important part is the content of a message. If it is pure fan-boy-ism like 'OMFG, THIS ROXX' or the opposite 'BHAA, THIS SUKS' then of course one lines should be deleted. But even if there is a long message (a few hundred words) and the content is like the afore mentioned, then it should be deleted as well, wheather it took time to create the message.

The other way round: if a short message contains every aspect like a longer, but not that well phrased message, why should it be deleted? Maybe the emssage sounds a bit harsh, but if the content is the same (and it is possible to get it) why should this be a bad habit? My mother tongue is german and I haven't got many experience in talking english, thus my answers may be phrased more complicated then needed. Maybe a native speaker could formulate it in one sentence where others need a dozen?

Uhm.. I hope I didn't got anything wrong 

[Helm]

Long messages will never be deleted because there usually is something useful in them although most of the message could be OT. If there is something the artist could grab onto and do good with it, it stays.

Pixelation quality control (on the critique board) is pretty simple: if it's not critique, it is a candidate for deletation. If it is critique of any kind (even the kind most would consider bad), we let the artist himself choose whether they want to follow faulty advice or not. Other users might feel inclined to counter-critique the bad critique and this is fine, everybody learns from that. But I don't want to hear any of you asking that bad critique should be deleted (like that xhardcorex croc). It never wil. Just post in the thread with a compelling counter-argument. The original artist has a brain, they will use it.

[Blick]

Unless it's a well structured list of relevant points of concern, I'd rather not read multiple paragraphs of critique. Personally, I'm not a fan of filler, I don't like the idea of fluffing my posts to make myself feel more accomplished, but I do understand that this isn't necessarily about that. I don't think removing post counts and ranks will remedy this. It's something people just have to keep in mind is all.

Seems like we have this sort of talk about once every year. Serve up a better than average critique periodically and everyone breathes a little easier.

I don't know why I posted this. To stint Ptoing and Adarias' productivity, I suppose.

[robotacon]

What about the reverse situation, people posting artwork for criticism that are simply too small and/or effortlessly done?
Anything smaller than 16x16 should either be animated or atleast feature some kind of skill.
I think there should be a rule about that as well.

[Feron]

Anything smaller than 16x16 should either be animated or atleast feature some kind of skill.
I think there should be a rule about that as well.

We all have to start somewhere, and id rather a 16x16 sprite than a 400x400 oekaki anime drawing with shit anatomy that will help nobody improve regardless of critique.

[bengo]

While I've been a bit of a problem myself, I noticed that alot of newcomers are expecting us to you know, animate for them without even attempting themselves, what should we do about that?

[AdamAtomic]

We should not post oneliners referring to ONE specific poster; its rude and unnecessary as the situation was already handled.

[Helm]

What, one person did this? Nobody's expected to make stuff for other people. Do whatever you want (even make their art for them if you feel like it, for all I care) as long as you don't break the rules of the forum. Best idea is to ignore such users, if they don't get what they want they leave. This isn't a usergroup-consensus issue so there's nothing to discuss unless it becomes a strong trend, and then it will be crushed by FAQ amendment.

There's so many things people do that we never thought anyone would attempt, which are not covered in the FAQ and are delt with on a case-by-case basis until they happen too much.