Room of the Month Revamp + discussion

[Vismund Cygnus]

For reasons I stated over here, this poll exists to see what you, the community, think should happen with the Room of the Month contest. Please cast a vote and discuss stuff over here, and keep on dropping ideas like they're hot over here.

[Vismund Cygnus]

Here's my two cents on this anyway;

The whole reason for the contest being changed in the first place was that the numbers and standards of entries for Room of the Week were incredibly low. Changing it to monthly was deemed necessary by the community to bolster said numbers or at the very least the quality of the submissions, which obviously hasn't worked. The other change made, private submissions, was so that people wouldn't be discouraged from entering when they saw what other people had submitted, which was a thing that was happening apparently.

That said, the main problem with RotM at the moment seems to be that the lack of discussion around the topic is sort of making people "forget" about Room of the Month, which is causing a drop in submissions anyway. Plus, with Room of the Week it was generally a group of about 3 or 4 people entering on alternating weeks, the same 3 or 4 people that seem to be the only ones submitting for Room of the Month. Perhaps the interest in room-showing-off just isn't there?

With all of that out of the way, I think I'd like to see the format stay monthly, to give lots of people time to really work on a room and focus on making it aesthetically incredible. However I think making submissions public would help keep Room of the Month in focus, and hopefully encourage people to submit stuff of their own. But I believe the longer time period is still necessary to build up a larger number of high quality submissions (despite that not happening in the last 3 months. >_>)

[Parabox]

Wouldn't this be a little better if this was a multi-selected (tiered/preferenced maybe even) poll? I'd be up for old RotW or bi-weekly and I'd like to indicate that.

[Vismund Cygnus]

Fair call Parabox, I've updated the poll so you can edit/add more votes.

[Lunaria]

If we can get enough entries in RotM, then I'm not sure what makes people think we'll get enough entries if we switch back to a weekly format.

The only way I can see us justifying having it a weekly contest is if we have several authors wanting to submit content more often than monthly. But as it stands, we don't even seem to have enough people that want to submit enough content to keep even a monthly contest interesting.

[snarfblam]

Well, the apparent effect is that the RotM format is less noticeable, less engaging, and therefore garners less interest. Fewer submissions per round combined with far fewer rounds means that in eight weeks we've had four RotM submissions. RotW certainly had its lulls, but so far RotM hasn't been any better than the worst of RotW.

I'm not dismissing RotM outright. It looks like virtually everybody would prefer public submissions. That alone would probably make an appreciable difference. The majority would also prefer a shorter interval. Bi-weekly would still give people more time to make rooms, if that's really a factor. But I would say switch to public submissions first, and see how that goes.

[Grimlock]

Well, Snarf pretty much said it but I would say go biweekly with public submissions at a minimum IMO.  I would actually prefer the original weekly format with public submissions during the week and voting on the weekend. 

I think what has crippled ROTW in the past is some people taking it too seriously.  People just need to have fun with it.  Who gives a Metroids azz if you win, just submit something interesting and have fun with it.  ROTM put bluntly is dry, boring, and lifeless.  In order for people to stay engaged in a community activity it has to be constant, as in either something is happening or something may happen at any given moment.  Public submissions would help in this regard but it's probably still not enough if the voting happens once a month.  Biweekly would be a step in the right direction but it'll have it's dead spots similar to ROTM. 

[Quote58]

So, when is this poll ending? It's been tied for a long time

[Quietus]

And split the difference, with public submissions occurring every 10.5 days. :oh: