[spoiler=Foreword]In July, we discussed the <<hypnohub.net/forum/show/39312|future>> of our <<hypnohub.net/forum/show/13457|Monthly Themes>>. Long story short, the general consensus was that they should be continued. So they will be. Sort of.

Monthly Themes have been getting almost no participation, and felt overall lackluster due to that. There was more emphasis and activity in choosing the theme then there was in partaking in it. Often, once the poll closed and the theme was chosen, the theme also felt like it was concluded. That's...not very conducive of participation.

After brainstorming what to do for a few months, Henry and I have decided upon a set of changes that should help the themes become a nice community event once more. I want your opinions on this before we put it into action, however.[/spoiler]

Below, I'll explain how the Seasonal Themes work, and how they fix what problems that the Monthly Themes had.

h2. Seasonal Themes

The new Seasonal Themes will work quite a bit like the retired Monthly Themes. Every season (Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall) will have its own themes. Submissions for the season's themes will be placed in a pool specifically for that season. At the end of the season, the pool is locked and the themes for the season come to a close.

Here's where the Seasonal Themes will differ from the Monthly Themes:

* Every Seasonal Themes will begin on the 1'st of the month that contains the first day of a new season.
** For example, Winter's Seasonal Themes will begin on December 1'st, because December 21'st is the first day of Winter. So, the Seasonal Themes intervals are:
*** Winter: December - Februrary
*** Spring: March - May
*** Summer: June - August
*** Fall: September - November
* Every season will have three concurrent themes. Submissions may relate to any or all of the three themes.

* The themes for each season will be intentionally vague concepts, probably 1-2 words long, ideally based on something pertaining to that season. "Spooky" is an example for a Fall theme, due to Holloween happening during the Fall.
** More on this in the "What's This Fix" section below.

* The themes for each season will no longer be decided by a poll.
** This may seem like a step backwards, but please consider my mention of this in the "What's This Fix" section before drawing any conclusions.

h2. What's This Fix

Some of the changes we're making to Seasonal Themes may seem a little arbitrary, so let me take the time to explain what the problems with Monthly Themes were that this transition attempts to fix:

* Moving away from monthly themes forces us to halt the alliteration of theme names and gives us the better theme focus of "things that happen within that season". This should result in a greater variety of potential themes while simultaneously helping our themes not seem entirely arbitrary for the season of which they are part of.

* Themes being open for an entire season (three months) instead of for just one month gives artists and other contributors more time to create their work. This lowers the barrier to entry into the themes by allowing contributors to feel less rushed to create a piece. After all, participating should feel fun, not make for a stressful schedule.

* There being three concurrent themes helps avoid users feeling disappointed about the chosen theme - if a user doesn't like a chosen theme, they can take consolation in the fact that there are two other active themes that they may not dislike.

* The themes being vague concepts allow for more artistic freedom in what could be created for submission to the theme. The old themes often felt restrictive because they were basically "make something that involves X", where X was the theme. The new, conceptual themes are designed to instead feel inspirational, as they are basically "make something inspired from X, Y, and/or Z".

* With there being a "buffer" of three concurrent themes per season to help ensure that users will most likely be able to find a theme they like, as well as how the themes are much more open to interpretation, individual artistic expression, and taste due to them now being conceptual prompts, there is little reason to have these themes voted on. It's extremely unlikely that anyone will dislike all three themes in every way they could be expressed artistically. No longer needing the poll to decide themes will remove the focus from choosing the themes and, hopefully, refocus attention to instead participating in the Seasonal Themes.

h2. In Conclusion...

This is the outline of what Henry and I cooked up as a replacement for the retired Monthly Themes. The current plan is the begin the first Seasonal Theme, Winter 2016, come December 1'st. That gives us around two weeks to talk about this before we get the ball rolling.

I'd very much like to hear what you all think. Any thoughts, questions, or concerns?

This seems pretty good all round, and I look forward to seeing the art this new system produces.

Still totally want a theme about tags with less than 20. Uncommon characters, different scenarios.

One thing to note with the new system is that it makes it particularly difficult to make specific themes, such as this one. Maybe, once in a while, we'll throw in a sort of "Bonus Theme" or "Bonus Objective" that will run throughout the season alongside the Seasonal Themes, but will not be conceptual like the new themes are.

Not sure if we'll actually do this or of the details in how it'd work, but it's something to keep in mind. For now, I just want to try our first Seasonal Themes and see how things go, so even if we decide to do something like this it definitely won't be this Winter.

This sounds like a good plan. Looking forward to seeing more themes.

Yay finally glad themes have been fixed up. Hopefully this will all work well! : )

So just seasonal in general or stuff like the beach for summer and school for fall?

This feels like a really good step forward, particularly in that a month could be short for some who want to draw but can't because of personal reasons or even for people who want to commission something but can't get the money and the art made in time for the theme

Also I like the no more voting, it really felt like it was just making people upset their suggestions weren't picked or something else barely won instead

I hope we get some nice new art inspired by these seasonal themes and I look forward to winter.

Thanks so much you guys for always working to improve the Hub and bring the community together. The community here really is like half the reason this is my #1 fetish, such awesome folks we have here!

*inhales deeply*


For simplicities sake, making them actually last month 1-3,4-6,7-9 and 10-12 (starting with january) would have made more sense in my book, but it doesn't really matter. It's just a minor thing that doesn't sit right with me, but doesn't actually have any impact whatsoever to the whole idea.


So instead of having 1 theme per month, we have 3 themes that last 3 months. I can already tell you, by the mid of that 3 month period, people (and by people i mean artists) will have lost interest in them. You don't need 3 month to put your idea out. I don't think time constraints were ever an issue.
In addition by offering 3 themes most artists will only pick one, no matter if they have 3 months. You pick what is most attractive to you, while with 1 theme a month, you might think about taking part anyway and do all 3 in succession.
Then, by watering them down to making them even less thematic, the themes lose their identity. Instead of being something more unique and hopefully get artists interested, it'll just be a bunch of random things that may or may not fit into some random work. I don't think that this will get an artist into thinking "Oh boy, oh boy! I'm gonna make some spooky MC pic - I will, I will!"


Or, we might actually use our brains to find some decent themes instead of relying on the seasonal theme that formerly was a combination of "use the month it happens in a funny mix up name that sounds clever but is just tryhard". Now it'll just be "look what we have - winter - snow - christmas - *find random fitting theme for that holiday*" which actually is not an improvement over the old themes at all.


Which was never a concern. There was no barrier to entry, there was simply no incentive to take part. How is "a month" a stressful schedule? You are making up reasons why people did not participate which never have been an issue at all. Did you two even really think what was the core issue or did you just arbitrarily do changes and hope it will revive the idea? You don't need to fix something that was never broken -_-


Oh dear ... so now you give us 3 themes, there will still be disappointed people (can't satisfy them all!), they will be disappointed longer and after 3-4 weeks everyone will have forgotten that there is even a seasonly theme running. The only improvement this gives us, is that instead of a monthly pool with 2-4 contributions, you will have a seasonal pool with 10-12, probably some more for the first season, because new stuff gets people excited. And this might be even bigger, depending on how vague the themes are.


It waters down the whole concept. The monthly themes weren't really very restrictive. You had a lot of freedom to bring your idea into the theme. Yes, you will have more freedom if you loosen them up, but there's no point in having THREE themes that are very lose in their concepts. Now, if you'd loosen up one theme, I'd still not like it because of the mentioned reasons, but I'd see your point. With 3 vague themes it'll either be boring or you'll put every other picture in it "just cause it randomly fits".


It will also make it extremely unlikely that people will especially like them. They will like them if they do match up with their tastes, but most people will just feel indifferential to them. It could just be another picture on the board.


Good. That gives us about 2 weeks to find something better, 6 weeks if you move it to next year. Because that idea doesn't change anything. In fact, some of the changes make it worse.

I am Sorry Van. Both you and Henry were probably thinking about it hard, but instead of coming to the obvious solution, you came up with a bandaid that does neither improve anything relevant to the problems, nor fix the core issue why nobody has really been contributing a lot to the themes in the past couple of months.

The Question you have to ask yourself is the following: "Will these create a decent amount of extra pictures on the Board that would have otherwise not been created?" And I don't think the answer to that question is yes.

Maybe you think so, but what I see in that is that somebody new to the hub, or newly active after a while of being gone, won't see a theme that's just ended or will be ending soon, and panic because *fuck*, it was their favorite idea and they have so many things they want to do and (month ends)
And who says that the themes will be watered down? Last I checked, our monthly themes were one or two words at most anyway, just with the month tacked on at the end.



Again, who says we'll be doing that? We've got plenty of ideas, and with three themes at once we can even do both. What, did you think that December-February's themes would be "Christmas, Snow, and (insert other winter holiday here)"? Even if one was Christmas, the other two could be literally anything.



Perhaps you believe so. But I have myself pointed out that the fact that it's only a month long makes it very easy for...ya know what, I feel no need to repeat myself, read my above argument. And I think I'd end up repeating myself for the rest of your arguments, too.

Overall, personally I believe that this is a great idea -- maybe not completely well-executed yet, but as always, we've got time to notice actual flaws instead of perceived ones and go ahead and fix them as they pop up. Looking forward to seeing it in action!

That's a rather weak argument, don't you think? That's probably not something that happens on a regular basis to a lot of players and was why the old system didn't work - don't you think? And in addition to it not being any relevant to the overarching problem, it makes the whole thing worse. It's not even a step forward, it's just 2 steps back.


Van himself mentioned they would be vague concepts to make them more accesible. It's a textbook description of simplyfying/watering down.


I am extrapolating on the example he gave - and it fits perfectly because I only changed the season but gave the same example. Well, not totally, maybe if you go one step further and look at something christmas makes you feel, as he used spooky from halloween. Not that we do not get these pictures during halloween season by default - and that's the point.


Repeating weak arguments and wrong statements doesn't really bring your point across.


It doesn't change anything. It's basically the same thing as before, with a 3 months intervall with 3 themes that are "less restrictive" but will also make things less interesting. Doesn't solve the reason why people did not contribute, but will increase the pool of pictures for the theme because it's 3 times as long and just randomly covers more pictures posted. That's about it.

All right, I don't really want to get into a huge argument on this, but I figured I'd point out one thing since it occurred to me.



Sure. But if you actually look back through the years...the earliest monthly themes were pretty damn watered down themselves. And look at how much more popular they were. "Digital December", for example -- no flowery description, no lengthy suggestions, just that single word -- digital. And look how many quality pics got posted on that theme. In my eyes, what Van's saying is that we're returning to the roots of the concept, but with some overall improvements to hopefully revitalize the whole thing. And I'm looking forward to seeing how it works -- and making polite, helpful suggestions to improve it if it turns out that some part of the concept turns out to be flawed in practice.

You are proving my point. I'd argue that the vast majority of these pictures weren't done FOR the theme but just fit into it because it was so broad. Therefore, claiming that the theme was popular is rather misleading.



I just don't think it will do any good. It may look like there are suddenly more pictures, but in the end the amount of additional pictures contributed due to the seasonal theme will be negligible. I'd prefer if I was wrong, because I like the idea of themes, but in my opinion, this is not a fix. It's a bit of new paint and overall changes that don't improve the idea, but make it worse in my opinion.

Do you know what I want? I want Vahn_Yourdoom battling it out with Myuk, zko and yakai for the top spot, I want great manip battles between cradily, princess lucina and hypnosisisgreat and I want disgustinggirl and me crashing the party with manips that half the board has blacklisted but STILL get decent ratings just because they incorporate good stories/ideas. I am sorry if I forgot people, I can't name all of you, but you know what I mean.

And what I want most of all is people to learn from these and a new challenger to appear that suddenly creates something amazing and makes the rest work that much harder on our next contribution.

Yes, that is hard to do. But maybe it would be a good idea to ask these people what would bring them to actually contribute on a regular basis in these themes, instead of bandaiding it up, but not solving any of the problems they have. If you cannot get the a good chunk of this boards contributors on the same page, you might as well just scrap the idea and start something else from the ground up.

I'd enjoy watching that happen. You know how you make it happen? Call 'em out. See if they're interested. Challenge them. Commission them if necessary. Don't just say you want it, help make it happen.

For that you need to ask THEM what would make them join the themes. I don't think that has happened. If I am wrong, Van, please feel free to correct me, but that sounds like a good first step to see in which direction the themes would need to go.

Send our constant high performance contributer a dmail and ask them like that - not in this thread. I'd really be interested to see in which direction this will lead us.