Friday Q&A

Questionable Insinuation

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Q&A. Each week, I take a look at issues relating to the Photoshop community at Fark. You may recall that last week's post dealt with some proposed changes to the voting system. Users may soon be able to vote for an entry as either best, funniest, or crap. This brave new idea has been very popular with TheSniperZERO, but not so much with everyone else. Wow, the former proprietor of TFPTC supports an option to vote for someone else's work as crap. What a shocking revelation! Someone please alert the media whilst I continue with this week's questions.

Q: Why is TheSniperZERO wrong?

A: We don't have nearly enough time here to go into all the various nuances of why TSZ is a hopeless dickhole. Look for my upcoming book on the subject, available in the non-fiction section of your local book store. For the meantime, let's just focus on the issue at hand. Good old TSZ is unfortunately misguided in his support of the pending changes (also known as Proposition BOOOOOO). He thinks the possibility of ending up on the crap list will deter people from posting what he considers to be substandard entries. After all, he tried doing basically the same thing at his blog and look how well that turned out.

Q: Does negativity have a place in Fark contests?

A: Certainly, provided you can channel your negativity into the form of a Photoshop. Fark's moderators have thankfully deleted text-only trolling for as long as I can remember, presumably to keep the contest threads from derailing into flame wars. But soon we may have a new option to let the trolling be done anonymously. You won't know who hates your work, or even specifically why. It's really no surprise to me that TSZ supports this idea. Let's hope its success is equal to that of his thread critiques.

Q: Is there any word on a replacement for the Scrutinizer?

A: There were some recent PSAEF rumblings about a new contest archive site to replace the ailing Scrutinizer. We've been promised such things in the past, so I'm trying desperately not to get my hopes up. Estimated time of completion for the project is towards the end of the year, which means we have a bit of waiting to do yet. Still, news that the Dark Age of Photoshop may soon be coming to a close sounds good to me.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. Given that TheSniperZERO has come out in support of multi-option voting, I think we safely flush the idea. Besides, the lack of an official response to one of the biggest forum uproars in recent memory indicates that the whole thing may just have been Drew's way of trolling a drunken PSAEFer. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

Stay tuned for more wishful thinking from the Doctor!