Help With Themes

[Elsinore]

Hey guys,

As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t been posting the theme for next week on Fark until Saturday for awhile now, and that’s usually when I’ve posted a week or two’s worth of themes on here as well. That’s not working well, and I know it. Part of the problem has been my lack of attention to Farktography, and for that I’m truly sorry and promise to work harder at keeping things moving along better here. But another part of the problem has been our lack of available themes on the Themes Board. Yugoboy has been very diligent with suggesting themes there and keeping the tallies of which themes have the necessary votes, but we need more help from all of you there as well.

1) We need more theme suggestions!

–Please consider suggesting themes that are more open to participation from a wide variety of folks, casual through dedicated regulars, digicam and DSLR shooters. We can certainly still have our occasional photo nerd themes like HDR and Hootenanny, but we need to consider keeping the door more open to general/casual participants. And of course my underlying thought there is turning casual participants into regulars by hooking them with more open themes like most of us were hooked with 😉

–Please also consider suggesting more unique themes or even similar themes to others but with new/creative names. We’ve done tons of repeat/classic themes lately, and I think we could use new stuff.

2) We need you to vote for the themes!

–Please take a moment a time or two a week (the day you post your images to the Fark thread is the perfect time for this!) to vote on theme suggestions. The current vote threshold for themes is 7 votes. That’s not an unreasonable number, but it’s taking a long time to get to that point for a lot of themes, which is making it harder to move them into the Hopper and to schedule them. While anything in the Hopper is fair game, it’s helpful to have 4-6 themes scheduled at any time so more casual folks who might not interact here can see what’s coming down the pike. But to do that, we need more themes voted up and Hopper-ed.

Thank you to everyone who has been suggesting and voting on themes, and to everyone who has continued to stick with Farktography as much as you can. I know meatspace life interferes (and takes precedent!) with all of us, but it’s still cool to see how far Farktography has come over the years. To that end, if anyone has any suggestions for how to improve things, by all means, please let us know!

[orionid]

I’ve actually been thinking about most of this lately. I was just lamenting to my GF that in the “glory days” the top ten would have more votes than an entire contest now. On the bright side, the last few months have done wonders for my overall NVC stats. 😀

But yeah, I totally get this, completely agree, and worry that the one thing that truly helped me blossom as a photographer may slip away into the annals of the internet. I think perhaps one thing that can be done that would work well is cross-posting with other social media. Ravnostic and I would share our Farktography shots to facebook and G+ in times past, and that would often generate questions of interest.

That said, is there a way we can ask Mike or Drew about the 24 hour cool-off period? There’s been a LOT of times that I’ve told someone about a theme that they’ve had a great photo for and that they should submit it, and then they turned away after registering their fark handle and being told they couldn’t post for 24 hours. I know it’s an incredibly effective anti-spam tool, but so is active modding and rapid-post detection algorithms. I know there was discussion previously about fark traffic as a whole being down as reddit becomes more dominant (I’ve seen reddit posts like “People still use fark?” and “Fark is so 2006.”), is there something we could do in concert with Fark as a whole? Are Drew and Mike doing things that we could help with to drive traffic?

[Elsinore]

Hm..for some reason I thought the 24 hr period had already been lifted. I can look into that. Someone also suggested awhile back about maybe getting Farktography bumped back to the top of Main after a couple days to generate more interest. I can look into that, too.

[orionid]

Oh, it may have been. It’s been a while since I recommended a theme to someone from outside.

[nobigdeal]

In the age of instagram and countless phone photography apps, our puritan rules regarding processing are going to be the downfall of Farktography. If participation is what we are after I suggest we do away with the processing restrictions, let folks go hog wild and let the voters decide.

[ennuipoet]

In the age of instagram and countless phone photography apps, our puritan rules regarding processing are going to be the downfall of Farktography. If participation is what we are after I suggest we do away with the processing restrictions, let folks go hog wild and let the voters decide.

We already HAVE Photoshop contests! 😛

I am not going to throw rocks in a glass house since my own participation is WAY down. This is mostly because I haven’t been shooting much at all for months, and months, and months and months. (Got a lotta crap going on in my life, still).

I suggest two things, first we DO relax our rules more frequently, not ALL the time, but every other theme or so. We could call it Hard Core Farktography or something like that when we say, what is the kids call it #nofilter? Second, rather than keeping theme submission and voting here in our private garden, open it up to Fark as a contest itself and let regular Farkers submit and vote on themes. Take the top five or ten and run those and then do it again.

Fark is cliqued and clannish, and we are no better. If we want new blood, we are going to need let the new kids in the lunch room sit at our table.

[Elsinore]

Hm, those are some good ideas, and I appreciate the feedback from all of you!!

[linguine]

While I would be ok with opening up the rules some I don’t think saying anything goes is the way to go. The biggest problem with trying to open it up more is it may just turn into big lists of what is and isn’t allowed.

[Yugoboy]

Hey! I’m back.

I support all extant suggestions.

I also recognize that Fark as an entity is not what it was in the days before Reddit’s (whatever that is) ascendancy. (Seriously, I’ve never bothered with it.) I’m not sure how to “fix” what’s wrong with Fark. I believe a portion of the issue is that Fark keeps the site intentionally clean enough to avoid filters at work, while Reddit doesn’t care as much.

[stupido]

Theme suggestion which leaves me out. We have had straight out of the camera before. How about straight out of the phone camera?

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