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I was thinking about hosting some tournaments with PRIZE MONEY that I would get from donations towards the server. What do you guys think about that? SELLOUT mode? I got the idea in the back of my mind at the moment.
I feel like no one really wants to join free tournaments anymore with no real prizes, as we've seen in the community challenges section. But maybe with some money and a hall of fame for winners, more people would be interested?
Basically how it would work is, once the donation counter reaches a certain number, a one month tournament would get hosted and half of the money from donations would go to the winner of the tournament and the other half to the server, and the winner would get their work put in a Hall of Fame section, and posted on facebook for exposure.
Does this sound too scummy? Let me know what you guys think.
I have to finish up this client work first, and if everyone is okay with the idea we can get it started, if not that's fine too.
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I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not sure if this is the kind of mindset you want to encourage.
The reason why tournaments that exist just for the sake of learning and having fun with group activities aren't a thing anymore, so far as I can tell, is that the mindset people have when it comes to how they spend time on the internet has changed.
The reason why this shift in mentality has taken place should be pretty obvious. Social networking is about creating a network with you as the centre. Facebook wants you to feel like people recognize you, not make you recognize them. Youtube, Twitter, tumblr, etc., all push that same message: 'You're pretty cool and people should pay attention to you!' Individualism is nice, but when it's taken to the extreme it turns into a general attitude of selfcenteredness, which translates into the death of community as a concept. People are too concerned with getting exposure for themselves, and noone wants to be a part of something bigger, because everyone's busy fighting their own fight. I think that's the kind of attitude tournaments with prizes promote as well.
It's up to you of course. If you believe that having big tournaments again is worth the prize, then go right ahead. Maybe you have to move with the times. Who knows, something good might come out of it after all.
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Na, it's up to you guys whether or not this takes place. I don't wanna do anything unless the community is okay with it. Thank you guys for the feedback so far.
Just trying to figure out something I can do for the forum to liven things up. Mostly it's just people doing their own thing or passing by, but there's really not much going on besides that. Maybe that's okay?
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I'm not sure about tournament with people's donation, but the tournament idea sounds fun. How to drive donation to server is the more important and main problem here. You could say for example "anyone donating $10 gets 1 raffle ticket to win prizes" and prizes are also donated. So someone donating $50 gets 5 raffle tickets. The work will fall on you greatly or whoever the organizer is because to draw the raffle you'll probably have to write down every participant's name on a piece of paper, sometimes writing the same name 5 times, and then actually draw them out.
Prizes are divided into packs if items are too small to be a prize on their own. Prize could be anything from money, to donated prints from admired artists like Sula, Arvalis, Nathan Fawke(if he sells print), to new copies of LazyNezumi/Colourus/a couple months subscriptions to Adobe/to Autodesk/to DitigalTutors/other-digital-art-tools, to donated trad art supplies (must be new or 95%+ new with only the wrappers off and maybe 1 used tube of paint for example). To ensure trust the organizer and donator need to be willing to spend postage so the organizer can personally collect these to mail out later, unless people really trust or know the person behind the screen name donating the prize for direct mail.
Just some thoughts I don't really know if that'll work. I've only seen and not personally organized any fund raiser for cause, other than selling cakes on campus and cleaning garages for people.
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I'd also be sceptical of using donations in this way, to be honest, unless there'd be a specific separate donation pool for just the contests, so people could chose what to give for.
But considering Lodratio's comment up there, maybe we could use the shift in mentality to generate interest in a contest without the need for a monetary incentive, by just offering the exposure/Hall of Fame. Honestly, even if it were just a forum thread dedicated to the winners of some ongoing competition (like I believe there was with the Golden Boy?), this would already be an incentive for me, not even for the exposure, but just for the feeling of accomplishment of making it into that list of names - like a "challenge cup" that you get to engrave your name on. It's a result to your efforts that you can see, so it feels like something. As it is, once a contest is over the next one starts, giving them more the feeling of one endless painting game than actual separate contests. Maybe that's just me though. I've never been an avid participant of contests, and prizemoney won't change that. If anything, I'd actually be less inclined to enter, because it's unlikely that I'd win, so if it's all about the money - why bother. If it's all about the achievement on the other hand, I might actually want to prove to myself that I can do it, even if it takes many attempts.
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This isn't too on the topic of having a contest with prize money, but I do have an idea that's somewhat similar. What if we did a contest that results in a bunch of people's work being included in a book? Open to any members, we could possibly even have multiple contests and themes and multiple winners and than the prize at the end is that we put it together in a book, put it on kickstarter, and get it published. I think it would be an awesome community challenge that would really bring us together and it would be great exposure for the winners.
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I personally have no issue with donating and having it go into a prize pool or used solely for server costs. Talk about giving money and all of a sudden people get real cagey about what it's to be used for. I have no issue if it goes to a "random stranger", it would go to a fellow artist and dagger, so I don't see that as a problem.
I'm sorry to be a broken record (again!) and I really don't intend to be critical of the status quo and always want to support new initiatives, but the reality with forums such as this one is that the critical factor to lively participation is a lively admin team to keep things pumping IN the forums consistently. I don't think there is any automated process that will have the same effect that increased admin time would have.
Also useful to keep in mind that learning artists (no offence intended to people here) are sycophantic as hell. They will sell their own mother for a chance at a folio review or time with a well-known artist, or to interact with them personally in some way. I'm pretty sure it didn't hurt the Bloodsports turnout because the prize was a crit/review by D&D and the guest judges. I'm not saying it is possible to bring that back, but that kind of prize is probably more effective. I participated in the Gnomon forums monthly challenge for a while, and the prizes are absolutely fantastic. I won over 1000 dollars worth of gnomon dvds as first prize on one occasion, and there were more for 2nd and 3rd runners up. Alex the admin is mostly non-existent, for obvious reasons. You know how many people submit work there? I only saw a max of 7 or 8 each month. Given the prize dollar value you'd imagine there would be many more. I think that is very telling.
Anyway if you truly wanted people to participate more I would somehow get some dedicated admins on board. I know that's going to be hard to find, and even then they would be fighting the post-and-run mentality that faceboob and the ilk seem to have cultivated in our species. :)
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Yep, the Gnomon forum challenge turnout is one of the reasons why I dont think money will help much... it certainly doesn't there.
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I did'nt know we even had a donation thing for the server, i'd happily donate, contests or not.
I like Mariyans idea of putting inspiring sketchbooks up at the top of the forums, I also remember you guys were experimenting with a system to highlight hard working artists so their sketchbooks get visited more, what happened to that?
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I'd be down to participate in a tournament with cash incentives, but I like the idea of new systems that highlight the hardest working artists or artists who've grown the most even more, like what Mariyan and Triggerpigking are talking about with the sketchbook thumbnails.
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Not sure about the specifics, but I like the general direction this discussion is going.
I think it might be cool to have a slideshow of the best paintings and illustrations that have come out of CD challenges over the years. We could start by including some of the all time favourite art that's floating around and update it over time as we get new cool stuff coming in. It'd give first time visitors an idea what this site is all about, and It'd also serve as motivation for getting more people to join challenges.
Or if you want to link to a sketchbook of the month you could do that. Just remember that we would have to decide what to feature and someone would have to update it each month. It might be cool at first, but it could also turn into a chore after a while (unless you create some kind of randomized algorithm that chooses between artists who have updated their sketchbooks in the past few days and have more than x posts in their thread).
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Yeah i also like Mariyans idea about having the top sketchbook frontpage or something, nothing better to open crimson daggers and get a kick in the ass when seeing the best of the best.
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Nice idea. I had the same idea about thumbnail gallery a while back. Guys, the problem with that is that it probably requires a lot of development time on Dennis's part and it does pretty much nothing to get people to participate in community activities more even if it does get implemented. This thread isn't about giving people a kick in the ass to do their own work, it's about community participation.
What would make you get involved more, and not just post-and-run and hideout in the sketchbook threads only? That's where the ideas might be good.
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I too think that having some kind of featured sketchbook/or images would be nice, but as Amit and Lodratio pointed out, that needs a bit of work to maintain. Maybe make this a community thing as well with a vote system of some kind? So that people could give a vote on things they think are cool and at the end of each month, the threads with the most votes get a feature of some sort. Though in my opinion, this is not the best solution, only the one with the least amount of ongoin work that I can think of right now. I feel there needs to be some kind of human involvement in the selecton process.
As for the donation, I would be fine with donating to the general upkeep of this site, whether that's server cost, contest prizes or in some way benefit the community. As long as it's made clear from the start, I'm pretty sure it's okay.
On a related note, where can I find the donation? I never realised we had such a thing.
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Personally I think if a forum is quiet or busy it's still a success. When people become disheartened during the quiet times and choose to abandon projects, or the forum altogether, that's when it fails. You wouldn't abandon a business after a hard month.
And as far as users just swinging by and not having much involvement in community challenges - in this day and age unless you're already working in the industry or are sponsored by ninja art enthusiasts, most people will be like me with a day job (or several) and occasional visits are as good as it's gonna get.
Either pop a paypal button up for a month and feature those who contribute, or hold a competition it's up to you. Having new competitions or topics every time I come back is definitely worth the time but just don't think that buying out users with a prize pool will be a definite boost in traffic. Our offline life is simply a stronger influence.
Frequent user or not, Daggers is a great place to come and learn or just chill. I'd be happy to contribute to its continuation, just know some of us are only as involved as we are able.
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Interesting perspective from all of you guys, I'm still not through reading everything here in-depth, and I'm still considering some of the suggestions you guys already came up with.
But to answer the donation thing, I've never had a donate option, because I didn't like the idea of taking money from hard working artists. I myself know the pains of living as such. And I feel like shit just asking for it.
I may POSSIBLY have some problems with the server costs soon, so this is where the idea came from. It's around 150-200 dollars a year for a server, so it's not exactly too much money. The idea with the tournament thing was more like, you donate a dollar, and you have a chance to win maybe 20-100 depending on how much was donated. And those willing to donate would probably be more eager to participate because they put money in, and in turn would get more people interested in doing something as a community.
I'll try to reply again to everyone soon, just a little busy with some work at the moment.
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I like it a lot, fits the forum aesthetics as well.
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Ok, I'll try to make my 2 cents as short as possible:
Big tournaments - big yes!
Payment for winners - no
The sad truth is that Bloodsports and Dan/dave's streams were what kept this forum alive in 2012. It was a crowded place with losts of hard working, motivated and active people. Once the contests stopped the forum simply went dead. Most of the people I remember from 2012 aren't here anymore. Some become a well known artists, some lost interest and some moved elsewere. I did not post for a long time as well because I felt the community fell apart.
Today the forum is not what it used to be a the beginning. There is no event that would unite this community. Although some people still post here, everyone is pretty much limited to their private area of interest - it's like New York without Times Square or Paris without the Eiffel Tower.
I really like Mariyan's idea of visiual additions on the forum. This could be a prize in the contest along with something else (maybe Dave Rapoza could dontate some prints? It should not be a big deal for him).
I would propose to organize 2 major events:
- Work of the month (for best artworks - decided either by voting or a jury)
- Theme contest ( with the same principles as Bloodsports - just with different name)
If you're for it, I can give a helping hand in organizing it, but I'd need someone else to help as well. I plan to start streaming and i know some people have a history of successful streaming and some experience with mentoring etc - if someone like that was willing to help it would be great.
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(02-07-2016, 06:12 PM)Dennis Kutsenko Wrote: I may POSSIBLY have some problems with the server costs soon, so this is where the idea came from. It's around 150-200 dollars a year for a server, so it's not exactly too much money. The idea with the tournament thing was more like, you donate a dollar, and you have a chance to win maybe 20-100 depending on how much was donated. And those willing to donate would probably be more eager to participate because they put money in, and in turn would get more people interested in doing something as a community.
I feel this is the most important statement in this thread.
You can pretty much hear an echoing "nope!" in the distance whenever someone says "tournament! cash prizes!"
But hey, when it comes to server costs - a dollar (or two, or five) donation ain't gonna hurt anyone. That's a cup of coffee!
I love the idea of having a sketchbook + bloodsports showcase - so long as it doesn't add to the expense of the server costs.
If it does, that's fine.
Wake up, work hard, stop being a loser.
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Yeah the main topic of this thread is $200 a year out of Dennis' personal pocket so all of us can be here doing what we do is taking a toll on him, and he might need help with paying that soon.
Even living at home with mom it's not like I never touch money or can never get a coin from her even if I asked. So what will be a nice and motivating way of saying it to entice people to buy just 1 carton less of eggs this year and donate that $ towards Crimson Daggers instead?
Even raising just $100 out of people here to help with 50% of the Crimson Daggers cost will surely relieve Dennis from between a rock and a hard place.
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