I think a good way to get people to participate more would be a community artist vote, instead of how much badges an artist has. Have some kind of poll that has different featured artists every few months chosen by the members of the site, this would let artists who usually get un noticed to be able to have their time to shine. The community poll would make it so that more people would be willing to help the site gain a positive reputation with people who have never heard of it. Back in the day SheezyArt before it went to crap had this feature and artists were hand picked by site members and mods to be represented for a month on the front page. I noticed to get featured artist on the front page you have to earn tokens or buy them so any artist who has money to throw around can get up on the front page if they spend enough on tokens which I feel is not very fair to any artists who don't have deep pockets.

That's merely my two cents on the whole idea but who knows if anyone can come up with something a bit more proactive that would be awesome.

Interesting idea. I'll give it some thought.

You don't need "deep pockets" at all. Mere participation on the site earns you credits with which to buy tokens. You earn credits every time you comment, post on the forums, upload new content, etc. You never have to spend a cent if you don't have the money or don't want to directly buy credits.

-- BK

It's a good idea in concept. However, it could become a problem. I've been on sites with voting like that before and they always skew toward the user with the most friends/followers, which is much more unfair towards those who, as you said, usually go unnoticed.
As someone who is regularly unnoticed, I think the system Side7 has currently is pretty great as it is. You don't need to be here long or have a lot of friends to get featured -- You just need to be an active part of the community.

Forum keeps saying 500 error when I make a post but posts anyway.
And yes credit by quantity of posts isn't a good idea just like with paying for it, it leads to unfair advantage and would deter people and encourage spam.

Rewarding commenting I think is a good thing to do, particularly quality comments. Ability to like comments can evaluate that, even if no score is shown.
By getting people to interact and comment instead of just passively favouriting is proper participating.

A requested critique system with points also would be in part helpful to people growing, and groups that harbour tutorials and critique requesting.
Other sites just don't have much participation on other people's posts, no one even stops to look at others' art sometimes. Probably because they just want exposure of themselves or are even jealous of skills or popularity.

Commenting imho should be rewarded with exposure; and exposing other people's art should be rewarded with their own art being exposed.
Or just do a site tally and reward visibility to those who participate more.

Not everyone has all the time in the day compared to others though so it should be capped for what is possible in 2 hours a day I'd say.
Particularly encouraging 2 hour a day participation at least will reduce burn out and over-rewarding those who have more free time than others.

Combining featuring as a lottery as well as with participation reward would be encouraging. Especially if you literally say "participate to get featured".
And obviously this would get harder to gain notice should the site really grow. So you would may be want to add artist featuring on actual user and group pages, those who comment to a certain user/group regularly can be "recommended" more, so to speak. This can help build common-interest communities, too.

Yeah, I don't know what this new bug is that has cropped up. I'm investigating it, and it's on my list to repair.
-- BK

Yes it's a strange one indeed.

So if I may make an input
Generally it seems art sites like this tends to all have the same problems in interaction
This is most likely due the site itself tending towards similar people (people leaning introversion and wanting to become famous artists, which generally leads to even more self interested perspectives)

I would say the way to increase interactivity is twofold
1) to try and appeal to other types of people and getting more outside reach
2) Appeal to interests other than just our own art in the current S7 community

The first one is very difficult, with possible solutions I can think of being something along the lines of S7 promoting its artists in other social media sites (essentially S7 becoming more popular in general)
The second probably has many possible solution but one I can think of is the promotion of groups and contests. (groups to draw people of similar interests together and contests to draw a little bit of competition which intrinsically brings about interactions.]

Just my two cents

Always welcome.

One of the ways that could work would be echoing recent posts on social media. We would need to obtain special permission from each artist that wanted to participate so that we have the rights to use their art for advertising. I have ideas on how to do this programmatically, at least up to the point of sharing uploads. Unless we just make arbitrary advertisements or social media posts (e.g., image posts on Instagram, Facebook, etc.).

Groups are coming in the next update. So that part is handled. Contests is something that I'm wanting to bring back, but just don't have the time and attention to keep up with in the long run. I would need dedicated help with that.
-- BK

As BK explains it, the Featured Artist widget solves for overexposure by weighting the index toward people at the back of the queue. The number of tokens doesn't affect priority, it just means you're on the list. (My last freebie feature was June 24; I bought ten at the end of July when it looked like the roster was running out of faces, and you haven't seen me yet.) It's quite an ingenious system, and a heckuva lot fairer than popularity- and volume-based metrics used by other sites.

The site actually has a good framework in place: Credits rewards cap at five per category (uploading, commenting, faving, following) per day, flexible enough to encourage robust activity while throttling obvious attempts to farm through spam. Incentivization without gamification.

Fun fact: Comments are actually the second-most-valuable engagement after submissions themselves: 5c v. 2c for fav/follow and 1c for forum posts.

Something I've been hemming and hawing over, and encouraged by this thread, is running some sort of organized play-by-post adventure in Forum Games. I made a lot of friends through a CountryRP-themed community over on CivFanatics, and before a toxic chat culture drove me off the board, I ran what I consider my magnum opus: an unholy fusion of Freeform D&D with Civilization II. Given the creative-types here, I imagine a collaborative project would be a perfect fit.

uu-hime:

Something I've been hemming and hawing over, and [encouraged by this thread](https://www.side7.com/forums/thread/772), is running some sort of organized play-by-post adventure in Forum Games. I made a lot of friends through a CountryRP-themed community over on CivFanatics, and before a toxic chat culture drove me off the board, I ran what I consider my magnum opus: an [unholy fusion of Freeform D&D with *Civilization II*](https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/roll-ii-rule.611783/). Given the creative-types here, I imagine a collaborative project would be a perfect fit.

Yeah I think something like this would work, of course the problem is the effort needed. It doesnt really need much in the form of features and tech (a forum like this honestly works at bare minimum) It just needs a motivated GM (or similar role). Has someone done something like a group rpg or OCT here? Are there any features to aid in this?

I mean, llama badges were initially made as an April Fool's joke, but they took off, so they decided to keep them. I'd say they're just a trendy gimmick, you're not really missing out on much. xD

We should have rules against blasphemy.

Can I get a 'Hallelujah'?

Thorvald:

uu-hime:

As someone who is regularly unnoticed, I think the system Side7 has currently is pretty great as it is. You don't need to be here long or have a lot of friends to get featured -- You just need to be an active part of the community.

[As BK explains it](https://www.side7.com/u/fragmented_imagination/journal/298#c620), the Featured Artist widget solves for overexposure by weighting the index toward people at the back of the queue. The *number* of tokens doesn't affect priority, it just means you're on the list. (My last freebie feature was June 24; I bought ten at the end of July when it looked like the roster was running out of faces, and you haven't seen me yet.) It's quite an ingenious system, and a heckuva lot fairer than popularity- and volume-based metrics used by other sites.

Inafox:

By getting people to interact and comment instead of just passively favouriting is proper participating.
...
Not everyone has all the time in the day compared to others though so it should be capped for what is possible in 2 hours a day I'd say.
Particularly encouraging 2 hour a day participation at least will reduce burn out and over-rewarding those who have more free time than others.

The site actually has a good framework in place: Credits rewards cap at five per category (uploading, commenting, faving, following) per day, flexible enough to encourage robust activity while throttling obvious attempts to farm through spam. Incentivization without gamification.

Fun fact: Comments are actually the second-most-valuable engagement after submissions themselves: 5c v. 2c for fav/follow and 1c for forum posts.

rollee:

Appeal to interests other than just our own art in the current S7 community

Something I've been hemming and hawing over, and [encouraged by this thread](https://www.side7.com/forums/thread/772), is running some sort of organized play-by-post adventure in Forum Games. I made a lot of friends through a CountryRP-themed community over on CivFanatics, and before a toxic chat culture drove me off the board, I ran what I consider my magnum opus: an [unholy fusion of Freeform D&D with *Civilization II*](https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/roll-ii-rule.611783/). Given the creative-types here, I imagine a collaborative project would be a perfect fit.

You just reminded me of something I would suggest (if that's the right word) to BK. Adding this to what you said.

Long ago, when I signed up for Quora, one of the things that initially surprised me was that there's a feature where viewers can tag another person's work. As in, instead of the uploader of something like a tiger photo inserting tags like "photography", "tiger", "big cat", etc. it's the viewers who insert what fits. I wonder how much easier it makes the popularity balance, since the whole thinking aspect of it is done for you. Does this inspire BK? I can't remember the last time it was applied to an art website.

The local level of faith as a newly realized fact def takes me by surprise this morning. That's good, your dedication to the word pleases the presider of the net.

I know boorus crowdsource the metadata; on the one hand it would help to standardize certain tags (and index older works from before tags existed), but on the other it'll open up tagging to edit wars and trolling if there's no vetting process. It also means authors lose control over curating their own work, which can be a significant turn-off.

Abuse of it would certainly be my chief concern. I could see something where you could suggest tags to an artist for their work. They could decide to add or ignore them as they'd like, but they'd be in charge of making their own tags as well as accepting suggested tags.
-- BK

So I've been enjoying this site for a few months now, and while I don't have any out-of-the-box ideas for activity increase at the moment, I would like to share my personal #1 killer that has made me log off immediately after logging in on most days.

Junk notifications.
To be more precise, notifications for me are flooded any time someone I follow uploads. Now don't get me wrong, I want to know when someone I follow uploads! That's why I followed them after all! But isn't that what the museum is for?

Logging in and seeing 99+ notifications where 80% of them are "[USER] posted a new art piece." is annoying. Not only will my notification page refuse to load all 99+ notifications but now I need to scan through each one to see which is not a new upload.

I've stopped doing this and have been clearing them every time I log in. This has 1000% decreased my screen time here, unfortunately.
I want to jump in and enjoy conversations, but I can't reply to comments if they're buried in those junk notifications. I do not have the time to scrub through these things.

If notifications are streamlined and less "junky", for lack of a better term, I would be logging in much much more frequently.

Also if this is a user issue - lord help me lmao. I've turned off every single Notification setting and still have this issue. [/i]

Agreed on the notifications.
Maybe we could make them stack somehow?
Example: "User A has uploaded 3 new art pieces and 2 journals" vs a separate notification for each update?
Or give the user the option to decide what they want to be notified of? I'd love to turn off the journal notifications but leave everything else on.

Yeah, admittedly the notification system needs an overhaul. It's not a minor issue, either, unfortunately. When it was initially designed, traffic on the site was low so I didn't anticipate this kind of problem. And that initial design was bad. An overhaul is coming soon.
-- BK

The good news is, I should have my gallery fully mirrored by September 15. :X

Thorvald:

TeaLeo:

Logging in and seeing 99+ notifications where 80% of them are "[USER] posted a new art piece." is annoying. Not only will my notification page refuse to load all 99+ notifications but now I need to scan through each one to see which is *not* a new upload.

The *good* news is, I should have my gallery fully mirrored by September 15. :X

This made me laugh so hard XD but it's all good, I love seeing everything from the ones I follow. Just wish it was more streamlined and not so messy.
Glad to hear it's being worked on though :>

I think a "Mark all notifications as read" button will alleviate the tedious portion of the problem

One does exist. It's just on the "View All Notifications" page. Again, badly designed. But I will endeavor to make it better.
-- BK

A question I have about groups: What's the current protocol regarding multiple groups having the exact same function?

Err, to demonstrate what I'm asking... there are places like DeviantArt where people freely make groups of any specialty even if other groups like it have already been made... on the other end of things, there are places like old Twitter where each specialty gets one (two?) maximum groups per that specialty before people began to not tolerate it (in this scenario, someone might step in and say "why are you making a second and third group for Alternate History, we already have things that satisfy that and we don't want to waste software space?")

Which... is understandable? Maybe? But what's the norm on that? I know there are caveats of both.

I'm okay with there being multiple groups on the same topic. The groups rules may be different, or there might be a slightly different focus between groups. Or, it just might be that members get along differently in one of the groups over the other. Either way, I don't have anything against multiple groups on the same topics.