Friday Q&A

Questionable Celebration

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to a special edition of the Friday Q&A. I'm glad you joined me on such an important day. Many of you are no doubt aware that this August is the Clinic's fifth anniversary of serving the Fark community. That's five years of dedicated hatred and unassailable opinions.

Q: How did the Clinic start?

A: Once upon a time, some cretinous moron got the idea to start a Fark hate blog. No, not me. A different, earlier cretin. The result was a terribly-written weekly screed against those Photoshoppers whom he considered to produce inferior quality work. Whether or not he realized that a large number of the low quality stuff was being produced solely to troll him, we may never know. Given that he still reads this blog every week, I'd say there's a 15% chance of him absorbing the information. At any rate, my time with TFPSTC showed me what a great platform Blogger is for twisting the facts to fit one's shallow world view.

Q: How did you get the idea to be the Doctor?

A: As previously stated, I had already chosen Blogger as the site of a brilliant new hate blog, one that would vastly outshine the previous idiot's pathetic attempts to speak for our community. Still scarred from his attacks, Fark was in dire need of some healing. And who better to deliver the medicine than a licensed physician (if you count my driver's license)?


Q: Why do you have a butt for a face?

A: I just have a thing for brown eyes. Besides, I think we've all made an ass out of ourselves on the Internet at one time or another. I happen to do it on a weekly basis. So I wanted an avatar that might warn my readers to take what I say with a grain of salt. Except for the parts about me being great, and also the ones about them being stupid.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by, and for supporting the Picture Clinic all these years. They say the traditional gift for the fifth anniversary is wood. Well, it gives me wood just knowing you're around. We may have our differences, but I think I can agree I'm always right.

Stay tuned for more anniversaries from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Perspiration

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to an all new edition of the Friday Q&A. Each week, I take a look at issues facing Fark's Photoshop community. You'll have to forgive my eagerness, but I'm just so excited to have made a difference. What's that? You didn't notice all the great new themes in the contest queue? I suppose you'll say it's just a coincidence that I made a whiny blog post concerning the lack of themes, and a few days (or possibly weeks) later we're awash in them. There can be no other explanation. Please refrain from assailing my unassailable logic.

Q: Didn't other people submit those themes?

A: First of all, that's a good question. Secondly, shut the hell up! Those people were obviously either inspired by me or inspired by people who were inspired by me. Possibly inspired by people who were inspired by people who were inspired by me. I'm just that inspirational. At any rate, the result is the same: Fark's queue is imbued with the proper mixture of themes and "Photoshop this O" contests. All that's left is for someone to step forward and claim a kind of vague personal glory from having stirred the change. Allow me to nominate myself.

Q: Why has it been such a problem to keep themes in the queue?

A: There's a lot of moving parts in the system that we rely on to get contests approved. First, someone has to actually submit a theme. It has to be good, and hopefully not something we've done a bunch of times before. Upon submission, an Admin has to review and approve the contest. If he's not paying close attention, or having a bad day, or just doesn't like your phrasing, it's a no go. Many, many great ideas have been lost due to lack of perseverance on the part of those submitting them. The standard course of action for contest submitters should be "try, try again."

Q: What if the problem arises again?

A: It won't, because my inspirational words of excellence completely overstep the common boundaries of what you think will happen, and what you know will happen, and also what has happened probably 10 dozen times before in recent memory. Problem's solved, please excuse me whilst I knock the dust away from my hands in a casual fashion to signify a job well done.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. Looks like I've solved our community's problems once and for all, hopefully for at least a couple of days. I just want to say to myself, good job, I knew I could do it.

Stay tuned for more self aggrandizement from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Direction

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to another fine edition of the Friday Q&A. This blog has always been about keeping track of the cutting edge when it comes to image mangling. To that end, this week I'll be taking a look at some of the ways we might be pushing pixels in the not-too-distant future.

Q: Is image mangling dead?

A: Talk to any Photoshopper for about five minutes, and it's a sure bet they will mention the decline of image mangling no less than a dozen times. We PSers have a lot to say on the subject, and can often chart the demise of our community to the advent of some random and seemingly minor cliche.

Q: How much time do we have left?

A: No one knows. Fark is a bit like an old grandmother. In that I've listened to it complain about its health to the point that I'm ready to push it down a flight of stairs to put it out of everyone's misery. There's a good chance that things will keep on chugging along there forever, barring closure of the site or some blatant mismanagement of the contests. What concerns everyone is not so much the death of Fark, but the death of public interest in our pastime. Personally, I couldn't care less what the average idiot thinks of how I spend my time. Losing some votes is an acceptable trade off to being free from the slack-jawed gawking of the general public.

Q: What will be the successor to image mangling?

A: This is the question everyone is asking. Some people might tell you that video editing is the wave of the future. Those people are ignorant fools. We're way past the point where video lost its wow factor. And the other stuff is still too inaccessible. Don't look for daily Flash contests to show up on the main Fark page any time soon. My money is on scrimshaw or daguerreotype making a big comeback, but that's purely speculation on my part.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. As always, thanks for stopping by. I think Photoshop's throne as official time-waster of the Fark domain is safe for now. But you never know. Maybe the doomsayers are right, and all the cool kids switched to video, and to then something else because video is obviously not cool anymore either. If we Photoshoppers truly are lumbering dinosaurs of a forgotten past, I get to be the Triceratops.

Stay tuned for more paleontological preferences from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Exertion

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to another superb edition of the Friday Q&A. Each week, I examine issues facing Fark's Photoshop community. This blog should be considered a paragon of journalistic integrity, seeing as I rarely make things up. This week, I'll be delivering another alarmist rant on the subject of theme contests. In other words, possibly the only thing I bitch about more than TSZ.
He's still an ass, by the way.
Q: Why don't we have more theme contests?

A: It's a question I've been asking myself for a while now. Fark's contest queue has traditionally contained a mix of themes along with the standard "Photoshop this picture" contests. However, recently the themes started to become more and more infrequent. Where we used to have three or more a week, now we're lucky if we get one at all.

Q: What sparked this decline?

A: There are a few contributing factors. First off, Fark has been around for a while now. Many of the good ideas for themes have already been done. It gets harder and harder for theme submitters to think of something fresh. Even if someone does come up with a usable idea, they still have to get it past the Admins. Sometimes it seems as though the powers that be have switched from the role of gatekeeper to goalie. Entire batches of carefully-considered themes will get shot down without much apparent consideration.

Q: What can we do to get more themes in the queue?

A: First of all, people have to actually submit them. Admins can't approve what hasn't been submitted. Complaining in the PSAEF sometimes gets results, though you may have to first distract the group from ranting about the Beer Looter cliche. Also, sending a Farkback will at least give the powers that be something to openly mock and read aloud in a whiny, falsetto-toned voice.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope there's room at Fark 3.0 for my favorite kind of contest. Perhaps if we work together as we did in the past, we can get more themes in the queue. Otherwise, I'm afraid the whole concept of a theme contest may fall into disuse.

Stay tuned for more alarmist rants from the Doctor!