[Denied] Bring back SOTM or something similar

I was browsing outdated stickies and noticed that Sythe used to run Signature Of The Month (SOTM)
My suggestion is to bring back this event. It doesn't have to be every month, but every so often throughout the year. I think it would benefit our hard-working users who produce fantastic graphics.

(@BrandDesigns @Izad and @BlackBlasses, sorry if I didn't mention you. You are still relevant)

The prizes do not have to be extreme. They could be some BTC, a funrank, discord rank, or something else small.

 

Suggested this several times before. Staff's argument against it:

• GFX community is dead
• It excludes non-gfx artists
• We don't want to inflate the minirank market

Gl tho

 

The whole forums is dead compared to what it used to be, so if that is their argument, then everything should be discontinued.

It does not need to be anything extreme, but I am pretty sure if there were a competition of this nature, someone like you @Izad would participate.

 

i strongly support this !! this would make the community come together for something creative, I would happily help out in any way I can to make this happen! great input @Juws

 

I will have to vote no support because our main goal is to keep site as dead as possible sorry :/

 

This belongs here, as it is a function of CDT and has been suggested many times: Community Development Team Suggestions & Feedback

No support for SOTM, but support for an event that allows for satire, if desired, as the community seems to engage on the holiday events that revolve around funny designs/pictures/ideas/etc. Otherwise, you'll have a pissing-match between three or fours of the same users every time because the rest of the community isn't any good at GFX.
I personally led an effort to make this a thing back in Q2-Q3 2021. The reward could be these miniranks
I was faced almost entirely with opposition, so I eventually stopped trying. Candidly, I understand where a lot of the arguments that were being made against it came from.

Some of the arguments I received:

SOTM, on average, only had 3-5 participants per event despite having really good prizes.
SOTM devolved into an event where sometimes the graphics that won weren't even signature-style graphics.
Barrier to entry on a true SOTM event is incredibly high [which is true].
+ what Izad said.

SOTM was primarily skill based. The event was established to highlight and favor GFX expertise. If a future GFX related event is held, but has a much lower barrier to entry and has a satirical aspect to it, then it'll allow for non-skilled folks to win.

 

Although I'm tired of trying to argue for the revival of this event, I'll add my counterargument to the main reasons SOTM was discontinued:

SOTM had many more participants in the beginning than towards the end. The reason people were discouraged to participate was that the same person, namely DSC, won every single time. That is why I previously presented "Concept of the Month" which means that we would have several different design tasks every month and not only signatures.

Frankly, it's more active than ever. Just browse the Graphics Marketplace. There are 22 active shops as of December and keep in mind that's during the holidays.

"Concept of the Month" would NOT exclude non-graphic artists. We see time and time again that people with little to no skills in the creative process win CDT design competitions. Just take the card design competition for example.

Just add non-tradeables. Duh.

 

Not to stray away from the conversation, but I wanted to say that is why I said, “or something similar.” It does not have to be a SOTM. I believe the graphics community is doing well, and there should be more events (it doesn’t have to be monthly) for those people. We have the miniranks in place and an event winner discord role too for something extra.

 

Quarter or as deemed necessary, IMO. It doesn't even need to be on a schedule, something like how we handle poker tournaments. We do a few a year, but they aren't on a "We're doing it x-date and x-date" schedule.

 

Or to pause the event during other CDT events

 

I will be the first to say that this won't be a monthly thing. Even getting folks to take ten seconds to nominate a MOTM has become a challenge at this point. We're not going to hold another monthly event that takes significantly more effort and drastically narrows the participant pool. With that said, I personally think it would be best to run it outside of any specific timeline. This way, if there are consecutive months throughout the year with high activity, the option of running it back-to-back-to-back months exists. However, if the opposite is happening, we can spread them out.

 

After reading through the comments, I like the idea of not having it on a set date. There definitely seems to be interest in GFX events, so CDT hosting a GFX event on a spontaneous day would seem to grab more attraction. Also, I still like the idea of using the miniranks that are already made/in use. Realistically speaking, if there are 2-3 GFX events all year, and someone happens to win all of them, it would still take 2 years to grab the “5 GFX wins” minirank.