Posting art packs versus many individual uploads
Hello,
This is my first post on OGA, and let me just say I'm loving the site. My hat goes off to the contributors and webmasters of this website.
I've found that when you upload something, you earn medals. This is probably done to motivate more people into uploading stuff.
However I've also noticed that some people are clicking the "Submit art" button for every piece of art they have, from the same art project. In a way this is unfair, as they earn more medals while others have the same amount of content but stored in one big upload or pack. Can you imagine someone uploading each individual 32x32 tile out of their 758 RPG items pack as a separate upload?
For example, when searching for "tileset" I will find some valuable stuff on the first few pages. Then from the 6th page and onwards I see 3 pages in a row that are claimed by the same contributor and that are related to the same art project. It would be much more convenient, fair, and clean if these would be packed in one big upload.
Hopefully you will understand what I am talking about. Thanks for your time and again thanks for this wonderful website!
Nick
I somewhat agreed with you, but there's also the possibility that one creates a single piece per time - and upload them just when created. Maybe the solution could be a function to merge some previous uploads on a single one (like the "collection", but removing the old ones), or something like that...
I see what you mean. And it's possible to update a submission, so you can add stuff as you make it. I think the real issue is that we've never really (officially) decided on how large submissions should be. On the one hand, if you're looking for a placeholder and don't care if it "fits" it can be useful to have individual pieces show up. On the other, you don't want to wade through pieces that don't interest you.
On the fairness issue, that's harder. For example, grouping all parts of http://opengameart.org/content/painterly-spell-icons-part-1 into one pack might be better - they are very uniform. But that would only give one "point" for something quite huge. It may be better - if more contentious - to award medals based on appreciation.
There's also some overlap with art collections, eg. http://opengameart.org/content/painterly-spell-icons .
I think we'll have to get better at this. Browsing can already be a bit messy, and it'll only get worse as we grow...
Welcome to OGA! :)
That's a real issue. I did that too, uploading two pieces of art separately, even though they are part of the same project and should arguably go together. But somebody liked one of them while completely ignoring the other, and indeed I can easily imagine each piece being used by itself.
Also, what ceninan said: it's hard to draw a line.
Part of it is an artifact from the beginning of the site when a bunch of older assets were being put up, mostly from Dan Cook's Lost Garden site by Bart, the admin. It made sense at the time to get things started, but I agree that it's become unwieldy. That should probably be corrected at some point.
(Ignoring the issue of how points are awarded for a minute...)
A distinction between individual assets and packs could be useful.
I tend to feel each OGA art page potentially representing a "pack" and uploading individual assets to that page may be the the way to go - solely because, via a bit of web programming, individual assets can be bundled into a single download dynamically. Taking a set of uploads on a particular page and dynamically creating a 7z / zip / tar.gz of them all, I don't think is too difficult. Heck, you could even put check boxes next to each asset to include/exclude individual items and automatically generate a license-info.txt file that always gets included in the zip.
If nothing else, the individual uploads approach would have the advantage of possibly providing a preview of each asset within the pack.
On the upload side, there could be an option to automatically extract zipped files into individual assets - so it's not a pain if a large amount of assets need to be uploaded (upload one file, let some PHP code reshuffle things to look like multiple uploads).
Just thinking out loud. I'm sure there are also good arguments against approaching things this way :)
Indeed, additional programming could be done but I doubt this website has the resources/manpower to do all that right now (it would take months).
A better solution (for now) would be for moderators to put all similar art into one big new "upload" and then re-calculate the medals for that user. Or heck, just do it from now on. Perhaps make a rule that uploading individual art assets is forbidden?
Or, to make a more radical change like ceninan said, award medals based on user feedback. Put a five-star rating next to each project. That removes all the hassle, provides a fair medal system (your quality artwork that took months no longer earns the same medals as my mspaint pixel guy) and leaves only one problem: the database that is currently full of stuff like:
Hard Vacuum: GrssMisc
Hard Vacuum: GrssCrtr
Hard Vacuum: Grss2Lav
Hard Vacuum: Grs2Watr
Hard Vacuum: Grs2Mnt
Hard Vacuum: Grs2Crtr
Hard Vacuum: Grs2Crtc
Hard Vacuum: Grs2CrtB
Instead of simply making one asset called "Hard Vacuum" :)
I guess a general clean-up wouldn't hurt. Very low quality stuff could also be put into a seperate category to be removed later unless the original creator objects.
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http://freegamedev.net
I think that there is a system for that separation (based on completeness, quality and game-readiness or somesuch) planned for the future, though it's been a while since I heard Bartk talk about it.