Friday Q&A

Questionable Obfuscation

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to another edition of the Friday Q&A. Each week, I take a look at issues facing Fark's Photoshop community. Thanks for joining me once again. As you might have noticed, some changes recently went into effect at Fark. Non-votable comments are now hidden in Photoshop contest threads, requiring the user to either click a link to expand them, or disable the hiding feature by selecting the appropriate user option.

Q: Is this a good feature?

A: I have my doubts about completely hiding users content. The way it is now, it's like the non-voting comments aren't even there. The thread looks cleaner, but it also looks devoid of life. I think it comes down to those ever-elusive elements of Fark Photoshop. The non-voting entries, the troll posts and "attaboy" comments all work together to form what Fark contests have classically resembled. Removing them makes the thread look cleaner, but also more barren. I guess if you value a professional feel to your contests, this is the way to go. 

Q: Why does this matter?

A: I don't mean to insult the intelligence of the average Fark contest browser, but I just don't think a lot of them will realize what they're missing. Or even that a change has occurred. Someone, somewhere will miss a chance at a good laugh because they didn't realize how many funny comments are hidden.

Q: So it's a bad idea?


A: There are a number of trade offs. On the upside it makes the threads look more professional, or at least cleaner. That will probably appease a few people's OCD at least. But on the downside you get funny non-voting entries that go unseen, and participants are forced to enable voting if they want a sure shot at even being noticed. I just don't see the value in hiding people's work for the sake of cleaning up the threads. So it's a feature that I will most likely leave disabled.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. Hopefully this new feature will be one of the ones that gets quietly discarded after a few months. It won't serve to drive the quality of the threads up, if anything slapdash vote enabled work will become more common.

Stay tuned for more prescient commentary from the Doctor!