Sooooooooo
Apparently wwoec has a hard time giving good discussions. Lots of pointing fingers and saying "no your wrong" kinda stuff. So I'll bring this here in hopes to get something good from you guys.
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Copy & Pasting this:
Everyone here is completely aware of how ridiculous the internet can be. People and their dramatic acts to gain pleasure in this alternative reality. Rather it be because someone has a messed up real life and thus creates their fantasy world here on the net, or someone who is just looking to make a whirl pool and watch. The net may never change...
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Observation:
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I have two favorite artists. Just two. One of which is BlackToe who is a member here at wwoec. I’ll do my best to give a more realistic observation rather than exaggerate everything because I admire his art. Some of you might actually already see this problem, but some of you might not; which is why I want to bring this to your attention.
If you take a visit to BlackToe’s
You must be registered to see the links
, you’ll find that there are two sections in which he allows people to vote on his images. The first thing I noticed was that the highest ranked image has a rank of 3 out of 5 (it changed because of me, keep reading) and happens to be the full colored Mrs. Incredible picture. Everything else has ranks that vary from 2 to 1 or even below 1. Next thing I noticed was the ranking counts. They all seem fairly equal, a good 30-50 votes average. Last thing to “understand” is that BT doesn’t draw bad. He draws pretty damn good (trying not to exaggerate, it’s killing me here). When I compare to other artists and for the time I’ve been around the aspects of such; no artists, that draw as good as BT, would ever receive such votes.
Through a logical understanding, BT draws to an average point, which by all minimums, the lowest vote he should have is 3 (out of 5). Nothing less than 2. However! In the same respect people might not find his art as good as I do, so they won’t vote higher than 4.
Someone here doesn’t like BT and is voting his images the lowest rating because of it. Perhaps to destroy his confidence or something? Usually things like this can depress people.
HOWEVER! There is one last observation to this little trick. Which should prove my point. The coding system BT is using for his votes, allows any user to erase their history and re-vote. Thus, anyone who does hate BT, could easily take a little time to fuc* up his count.
Also, note that his counts are probably a little higher because I secretly tested this out a few times, giving him a lot of 5 votes. Not that it helped much...
So, as my conclusion. Someone is being a dick and messing with BT’s votes.
Why is this important? - because it’s a clear cut example that people are willing to do things that would manipulate the thoughts of someone else. This is also a reason as to why WWOEC NEEDS to reform the rules and become more strict. I'm not asking for new rules. I'm just asking that things get a little more uptight with how people treat each other.
I really hate seeing awesome artists who draw great, or are developing their skills, stop and quit because of these things. It’s not a matter of sucking up your gut. It’s a matter finding and pushing these as*holes aside.
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The Conclusion:
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When people choose to do things that go beyond simple expression, they imply an alternative. To say the least, they want something personal from such an action. So as the observations I gave, some person is wanting something from what he's (or she) doing to BT's votes. Now what that something is, isn't the point. The point is the completely unnecessary form of segregation (trying) to be caused.
You also have to consider that there are viewers who look at things, like vote count and comments, and will even form an opinion based on such. So for example:
If someone who doesn't really like hardcore material, a very vanilla person, runs into BT's works. He'll see the art and think "it's okay, maybe not for me". However, the person then sees the extremely bad vote counts and from the understanding he already has, he'll add more to it. So he'll turn that "maybe not for me" into "this stuff sucks". Thus, the manipulation just worked by pulling down someone's opinion further.
It's not needed at all. Artists and authors should just be able to show their stuff, perhaps talk about and develop it... but anything that provokes a sense of pushing that artist aside... is wrong.
Part of the real point to this thread, is making people aware that others are willing to go above the standards to try and gain something...
Perhaps if everyone here was aware of such a fact, then maybe every artist would be okay with all that random trolling and even maybe, they'll all learn to ignore it. That's just another problem of course. Some artists and authors arn't aware of the manipulation and thus take it quite personal.
So it actually might be possible to stop all this manipulation, if we made all people aware of it. Thus, the trolls would have no purpose to make such attacks. At the same time, it's a heavy duty task to make all people aware of it. It's just a bunch of misunderstandings that all lead to the manipulation. When 1 person isn't aware of such issues, then they are a potential victim to the manipulation.
There is no reason to oppose someone's artwork or stories. The criticism can be acceptable, but only if the criticism is constructive and the artist wanted it.
