Friday Q&A

Questionable Retirement

Greetings yet again, crickets and trolls. Welcome back to the Friday Q&A, the only feature that isn't afraid to tell you what day of the week it is. We had some interesting developments at Fark, so I'm not going to be able to chastise TheSniperZERO for being an arrogant prick, or taunt that hollow-brained meat puppet Edward Boner into changing his Blogger template again. There is simply no time for such nonsense today, regardless of how mindlessly enjoyable it is for me. Let's just get to the questions.

Q: Did you receive some troubling news?

A: I sure did, and it had nothing to do with the results of my syphilis test. The week had been pretty benign until I saw this message. It seems that StovepipeBender, longtime proprietor of the Honor Roll, has decided to close his site forever. In all honesty, I'm having trouble finding a way to put a positive spin on such a tragic event. This is a day of mourning here at the Picture Clinic.

What I find the most disheartening is that someone who once cared so much about our community can now simply "fail" to. I guess that's the nature of humanity. Life is just a series of passing fancies, and the things you care about today might not be the things you care about next year.

My main gripe with the loss of this resource lies in the fact that StovepipeBender implicitly states he won't provide the site code, and not to even ask for it. Why not? I may be missing something, but I don't see what the big deal is. While it's true that the Scrutinizer does a better job of tracking Fark PS contests, I always liked the presentation and interface of the Honor Roll. It was simplistic, and easy to use.

Many thanks to StovepipeBender for providing such a great resource. It certainly was handy for checking out other people's work. I guess the Scrutinizer is the last word in PS archival for now. If anything happens to the Mr Squirrel, we're screwed.

Q: When was the Golden Age of Photoshopping?

A: This is actually a pretty good question. A plagiarized composite of a PSAEF debate, but a relevant query nonetheless. The discussion of the StovepipeBender's departure prompted an inquisition into the current relevance of photoshopping in the Fark community.

Some claim voting is down, and that the quality of work has degraded to a sub-par level. They use evidence gathered from the Scrutinizer to show that the average votes per contest have declined, and conclude the high turnover rate of participants proves that viewers are leaving in droves.

Apparently, though obscured by the mists of time, there once existed a halcyon paradise of photoshopping delight, where every entry got over 100 votes and nobody used clichés. This Golden Age, the storied past of our once-great community, now exists only in the memory of a few survivors. It is the duty of all Silver Age 'shoppers to pass these legends along to the Bronze and Aluminum Age. Otherwise, how will next generation know that the photoshoppers of the past were better in every way? Suck it, future!

Q: So why is voting down?

A: It could be any number of reasons. Lunar cycle, gypsy curse, swamp gas, or it may even correlate to the migratory habits of waterfowl. There's just no telling. Everyone has their own hypothesis, and it would take far too much time to list all of them here. Personally, I believe that the lapse in voting is due to the dispersal of Fark's audience. There are way more news aggregate sites and PS contest forums now then there were a few years ago. It's only natural for people to spread out, get tired of "the same old shit" or otherwise move on with their lives. When they leave, their votes leave, too.

If users get tired of Fark and set out for greener pastures, it really has nothing to do with the quality of the photoshop contest entries. There are much larger forces at work here, like varying standards of rule enforcement, an unpopular redesign, and persistent server errors that cause the entire site to crash. Shit like that is hardly our fault. Every time Fark fucks up, where do you think people go? Somewhere else. I guess a few of them stay there, too.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. I was going to debut the newest Clinic feature today, but recent events have convinced me to hold off briefly. I'm just going to close out the post by reminding everyone to keep things in perspective. Regardless of how you feel about the current state of Fark PS, try to remember that the present is all we have. At least until I perfect my time machine.

Stay tuned for more temporal displacement from the Doctor!