i think i would echo a lot of what has already been said in this thread. people (including myself) love the idea of SotW et al., but clearly we don't love it enough to actually contribute to it and make sure it's thriving. it would be a shame to see it stop, but it might be a bigger shame to see it limp along until we have to put it out of its misery. somebody mentioned that people don't care about the competition aspect as much anymore, and i think that's probably true. it's not necessarily a good or bad thing, i think it's just indicative of the way personalities and site culture have shifted. if we had a swarm of zc newbies show up who were super competitive, it'd probably make for a fun weekly competition. however, people are probably more into just seeing content at this point in time, not necessarily ranking it against other content.
my gut reaction to all of this is to be sad, because it's how things have been for over 2 decades. however, upon a little bit of reflection, it doesn't have to be a sad thing. change can be good and although i'm like most people in that i resist change, sometimes it's just better to usher in new things and let the past be a healthy memory.
A few months ago, I wasn't sure about the possibility of letting SotW be retired but I'm definitely more at ease with it now than ever. That said, I have the suspicion that SotW has been limping to an end for a few years now. I think the first four or five months that it was back last year wasn't necessarily a false dawn, but rather people genuinely enjoying that it'd come back after nearly a year in purgatory, while other factors that happened in the community have contributed to it reaching this point of a proposed retirement of the contest. It was pretty disheartening to see SotW 800 get 12 entries one week, but only to have to delay SotW 801 due to a lack of submissions the following week. For me that doesn't scream "I'm submitting because I want to be part of Screenshot of the Week", but rather "I'm submitting because I want to be part of the Screenshot of the Week milestone".
As you said, it's a shift in site culture and the personalities that are around here now - and maybe that's something people that have been here forever (like you and I) have to accept. Change sucks. Resist change always.
- Have the voting done on discord, since that is where the vast majority of community activity is taking place now. There are discord bots that allow you to do polls, so I'm sure something could be rigged up in like a day to get this running.
- Post the contest no sooner than one week between getting a certain number of entries (e.g. 3-5). If activity picks up, this sorts itself out to being weekly. If it stays quiet, then nothing much is really lost. If things are very quiet then a reminder message could be sent out occasionally, just less frequently than when contest organizers currently request more entries.
(this is also a response to Twilight Knight bc discord stuff)
I think a lot of using Discord for these kinds of events would also depend on whether anyone would use them to begin with. The event dropbox has seen some activity, but I'm unsure whether that's a case of it being utilised as often as we would have expected it to be? We also have the Event Announcements role set up, but aside from myself and David, only nine members of the 400+ users on the PureZC server have that role assigned. The ping roles themselves are underutilised, but I also assume people dislike being pinged and would rather see announcements in their own time.
I suppose what I'm saying is... a Discord pivot could work, but it's also incredibly likely we'll be in the same position now a few months down the line. I hate being negative about these ideas being put out here, but I'm skeptical that it'd bring a massive change, if any.
I don't think changing the schedule would benefit it at all either. Through one reason or another 2021 only had five contests, with a big factor in that being lack of entries. I would expect that to be consistent if we moved SotW to a "whenever we have the minimum entries" schedule.
- Merge SoTW with Screenshot Rebirth, but the theme is completely optional. A theme gives people some structure to build on, but since both contests have kind of been dry, pooling them together might help with more activity.
How would you feel if Screen Rebirth stayed over SotW but the schedule shifted? The bar for entry is a lot lower with the base screen, and everyone who enters would be working off of the same baseline as a result.
again, to echo what's already been said, i think there are probably ways we could adapt SotW (and other competitions) into something newer. 90-95% of the voting takes place within the first 24 hours of the contest being posted, so maybe there's a way to leverage that. or maybe there could be some kind of incentive to actually provide thoughts/commentary instead of just clicking a poll option. i feel like zelda classic has enough of a critical mass of quality content at this point that we don't have the same need to push the envelope of quality as we did, say, a decade ago. now we can sample different quests of different styles, both graphically and playstyle-wise. i don't know what the answers are right now of how we could leverage this stuff, but i'm sure we could brainstorm something as a community. obviously nobody here (or at least most) don't need to be convinced of the validity of still using a forum in the year 2024, so at least we don't have that hurdle.
I do wonder what the incentive would be to get people to just even provide thoughts, be it positive, constructive or otherwise. The users who do use the forums know their way around them and what they want to say, but just what would they feel comfortable with in terms of providing any sort of commentary or feedback?
Both, SotW and MotM could just be converted into one singular Display Showcase or something. With more of a focus on promoting what you're working on. That could also open the door to having a gif or a short video of the thing you want to show off as well.
That's precisely what we're aiming to do with the Monthly Feature if we retire SotW and MotM. It'd focus on the work that the community's done, rather than any sort of competitive angle. The way forward is looking more like being through content curation rather than contest curation, but it's also a matter of the community wanting to engage with it as well. There's no point shifting to a new focus if people just aren't interested in engaging.
