To all the people who have sent me their good wishes and compliments for running this club, I thank you and appreciate every one of your kind words. I may not have time to write an in-depth thorough message of thanks to match words with how much that elevates my heart, but I do want all of you to know that your approval of the new club system is really cherished.
That's what I'd like to focus on. The new group system. I'd like to share some down-to-earth clarification for why the club does what it does, and why it doesn't utilize some features offered with the groups system. In particular, the gallery submission feature.
At the moment, members are unable to upload images to the club gallery. This has raised some confusion amongst newer members, and I've gotten suggestions from veteran members pertaining to this feature's absence. There are a number of reasons why this feature is not available, and why we have moved to a dedicated 'Collections' system of archiving work.
DevWatch Spam
I'm sure many of you have joined other groups, and share the same frustration I do with some groups obliterating our inboxes with hundreds of...let's just be frank here...REALLY BAD IMAGES. I have been forced to take a few groups off my own devWatch because of this problem, and I know I'm not alone. It's one of the most common complaints. The Groups system streamlines the submission process, so it is almost instantaneous for members and admins to submit-then-approve deviations, resulting in a loss of perspective. Both parties fail to realize how much work is going up.
When the #color-me-club switched to a Group, we had the gallery upload system in place, and it worked beautifully. And that was the problem. It was too simple. Way too easy. After my personal inbox got flooded with a plethora of #color-me-club submissions, my personal inbox was quickly flooded with a plethora of 'Can't stand this rubbish, I'm unwatching the club' notifications from members as irked as I was.
Thus, the gallery submission feature has been stricken into oblivion, and will never, NEVER, make a return. Unfortunately, a number of other highly-popular groups are plagued with this problem, and I hope they, too, make that jump.
I would like to make a formal recommendation to the team of coders maintaining the Groups programming. Please include a separate module in the devWatch specific for images submitted to Groups galleries.
The 5,000 Image Gallery Limit
While inbox spam comprises 90% of the decision to remove the gallery submission feature, there are still other quirks and bugs that support the move. The biggest of these technical snafu's is the fact that new images aren't showing up in the gallery anyway. It seems we've hit a limit, and nothing more can be added.
Heck, I could have greatly shortened this blog to just say 'sorry guys, no new gallery contributions, they aren't showing up.' But that isn't an honest assessment of the situation. It's just one of the reasons, and if it was the only reason, I would work hard to find a workaround to that snag, and get the issue resolved by my own means.
We Don't Appear in the 'Found in These Groups' Box
You may notice on some deviations that there's a 'Found in These Groups' box listing all the groups the deviation has been submitted to. By using collections instead of a gallery, our icon doesn't intrude into your deviation description.
I want you to have full control over your deviation's real-estate. If you want our icon represented, feel free to place it in your own image description. If you don't, by all means, it's your work, you have no obligation to do so.
The #color-me-club does not strive to put its name and icon on every piece of work that cycles through it. We don't even make it a requirement for our color artists to mention they got it at our club. We don't require our club members to mention they're a part of our ranks in the footer of their journals. Why should we? That's your journal, your image description, your artwork. The #color-me-club exists because of your hard labor. If anybody should be crediting anything, the #color-me-club should be showering you with admiration and love. Not the other way around.
I Can Utilize the 'Show Collections' journal feature
When I write the 'Images Submitted xx/xx/xx' journals, I have a lot of thumbnails to post. It would take me hours a week just to copy every one of those and paste it into the journal. However, with the 'Show Collections' feature, I can drag and drop from my own Fave folders, and more quickly post the 'Images Submitted' journal. I'm just speaking for my own convenience here.
Closing Remarks:
There are still a ton of features and fixes I'd like to see implemented in the groups system. For example, I'd love the ability to search the #color-me-club gallery and collections like you can with any regular dA user. Why did they take that out? You'd think it would be way more important to have it for groups than regular members, so why is it backwards?
I'd also be jazzed if they'd fix some of the bugs in the administrator's message box, like the ability to drag/drop thumbnails into collections. And why can't we send messages for +Fav suggestions? It would be so helpful to explain to club members why images were refused, so that way, they could remedy the problem and get their work in our archives easier.
But for now, these are just ideas of mine; things I'd like to see done.
On December 12th, 2009, when the #color-me-club was officially converted to a group, I knew it would take time. And I asked all of you for your patience and saintly candor. You all have certainly delivered upon that request, and then some, and I can't thank you guys enough for it. As of now, the club is in a pretty consistent means of doing things, so no major changes are in the works. You're all free to put your attentiveness back down to comfortable laziness, because if you've got the hang of it now, you should have the hang of it for a long time.
A lot of other groups are struggling to keep their members interested in their activities, and they're losing members at troubling rates because of the cursed 'easiness' the new interface opens up. The #color-me-club will work hard to keep spam at a low (an occasional irreverent whimper in the polls section), and continue to keep its mind open to suggestions and complaints our members have. That's right. If anything bugs you about the club, let me know right away, and I'll work my hardest to ensure you are satisfied with your club experience. I may not be able to fashion a solution, but I will heed you my mind.
Much thanks again to all of you who gave your compliments and applause. While I appreciate it a lot, I feel the credit truly goes to the network of thousands of contributors and followers who have made this club what it is. Without all of your support and hard work, and without all of your artwork streaming into the club's collections, we simply wouldn't be.
I'm just the custodian, you know. I just tack it on the wall. It is the artists who deserve all the respect in the #color-me-club, and that is something I'll never forget.
Best of luck to everybody in 2010. And one last little mini-poll to end this blog:
What is the shorthand pronunciation of the year 2010?
1: Two-thousand (and) ten.
2: Twenty ten.
3: Oh-ten.
4: Ten.
5: Two ten.
6: I'm terrible at remembering years, I still sign checks '2006.'
2: Twenty ten.
3: Oh-ten.
4: Ten.
5: Two ten.
6: I'm terrible at remembering years, I still sign checks '2006.'
