Friday Q&A

Questionable Composition

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to another edition of the Friday Q&A. This regular feature covers issues relating to Fark's Photoshop community. As usual, I hope you had a great week. Assuming you agree with me, of course. If you don't, I sincerely hope we can come to some sort of mutual understanding about how wrong you are.

Q: What's your favorite kind of Fark contest?

A: I tend to prefer themes, simply because of the diversity in subject matter. Your basic "O" competition tends to get repetitive in my eyes. When everyone uses the same picture as a source, there's only so much an individual can do to stand out. Even the narrowest theme is going to have a broad level of interpretation.

Q: Why isn't there a better mix of contest types in the queue?

A: The ratio of themes to regular O-based contests seems to be in a constant state of flux. Sometimes it will be about 50/50, other times we'll be lucky to get one per week. It would appear that some admins remember to greenlight themes, whilst others clearly seem to forget they exist.

Q: Why not just approve themes exclusively?

A: Because no matter how strongly you feel about something, somebody else feels the exact opposite, and also thinks you're stupid for believing the way you do. As much as you love beer, there's always someone who prefers liquor. You might love the Picture Clinic (oh, say that you do), but there exists an embittered retard named TheSniperZERO, who would like to have a word with you about that. If only he could talk without spewing bile. In a similar fashion, there are people who hate themes. I don't claim to understand theses sad individuals, but they're out there. Fark exists for everyone, therefore both interests must be addressed.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. And don't worry, TSZ. I know you don't really hate the Picture Clinic. If that were true, you would have taken your leave of this place a long time ago. I'm glad you stick around week after week. It would be sad to lose my favorite reader.
I would get over it, though.
Stay tuned for more reverse psychology from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Organization

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Q&A. Each week, I decide which issues are currently the most important to Fark's Photoshop community, and then proceed to ignore them whilst blindly attacking TheSniperZERO. Why? He knows why. This time, however, I'll be taking a brief respite from mocking our erstwhile Critic friend. You might recall that I recently blogged about some upcoming changes to Fark. It seems we're only just now seeing the first of them.

Q: Should we be prepared to get over it?

A: The most recent changes are actually pretty thoughtful. The My Profile section received a serious overhaul, and is now sub-divided into different categories. I find this preferable to the old style, which involved dumping all the info into one huge page. After years of Farking, I've acquired enough favorited articles and users to keep me scrolling for most of the day.

Q: How are the new changes being accepted?

A: I honestly don't care what anyone else thinks. It doesn't seem to have been bad enough to trigger a mass exodus of users, so I will chalk it up as a success for the powers that be. I'm glad that Drew and company have learned from past mistakes, and are taking this redesign one element at a time.

Q: Why not just update everything at once?

A: There's bad history of success when it comes to taking that particular tack. Fark was lucky to survive the disastrous 2007 remake. If something like that happened today, there are many more competitors that would be glad for the extra users. The ruination of Digg and the subsequent mass exodus of that site's user base sent a clear message that the era of "you'll get over it" is officially dead.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. Hopefully, the rest of the new changes to Fark will be put into place without a hitch. The site has worked well all these years, and I'm glad they seem to be taking special care to preserve what works.

Stay tuned for more guarded optimism from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Degeneration

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Q&A. Each week, I take the issues facing Fark's Photoshop community and crush them into a fine paste, which I then proceed to smear upon my body like the war paint of an old world tribesman. Also, a lot of drinking is typically involved.

Q: How do you feel about the Beer Looter?

A: Being as he's a resident of Cliche City, the Looter has been a close personal friend of mine for quite some time. As I'm sure you are aware, he appeared on Fark in 2005, in the wake of Katrina. He's remained a source of consternation in our community ever since.


Q: Why do people hate the Looter?

A: It might have to do with seeing him appear in ever possible body of water, from the Gulf of Mexico to swimming pools, and even the occasional fountain or bathtub. He's proved himself to be extremely exploitable in situations where liquids exist. All that exposure, or should I say overexposure, has taken its toll on his public image.

Q: How can we stop the Looter?

A: I don't think we can. That beer he stole is probably long-since been consumed. What's more, there still seems to be plenty of water left on Earth. We would need to eliminate all forms of matter that exist in a liquid state, so that the picture is no longer exploitable. A better bet would be to just let it go, and allow people to have their fun on the Internet. It's a new concept, but one that I'd like to see catch on.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. Whether you love him or hate him, the Beer Looter isn't going anywhere soon. Unless we have another bad hurricane, in which case he will probably try to restock his liquor cabinet.

Stay tuned for more predicted alcoholism from the Doctor!

Saturday Q&A

Questionable Innovation

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to very special Saturday edition of the Friday Q&A. I held off on posting, in hopes that Fark's new site design would go live. I've been anxiously awaiting its arrival so that I can comment on how much I hate it.

Q: When will changes take effect?

A: No one knows for sure. A Fark blog posting from 2/24 heralded the upcoming changes, but Drew and company have been silent on the issue ever since. This means they most likely learned their lesson from the disastrous Fark redesign of 2007, and are ironing out any kinks before the premiere. What a novel concept. No doubt they want to avoid the pitfalls suffered by former competitor Digg.

Q: Why change anything at all?

A: I was never a fan of the 2007 redesign. Not just because of the size restrictions imposed on images, but also because of the eye-raping color scheme chosen seemingly at random. The latter issue to be solved with this new design, but I've seen no mention of whether or not we'll be getting our pixels back.

Q: Why not fix the images restrictions?

A: I can think of $everal rea$on$ why. Spoiler alert: all of them have to do with money. I just can't see Drew relinquishing any precious ad space, especially with the economy in the shitter. Fark has bills to pay. They're the only non-corporately owned site involved in the ongoing nuisance lawsuit that was filed against several popular news aggregates. Besides, I think we're pretty well adjusted to the change at this point. As long as they don't limit the size further, or place banner ads in everyone's comments, I think we'll be okay.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks for stopping by. I hope all the new changes at Fark go off without a hitch. Drew and company seem to have paid close attention to the recent failures seen by competing sites. Let's hope this knowledge, along with the hard lessons learned in 2007, are enough to forestall any negative consequences.

Stay tuned for more cautious optimism from the Doctor!