Award icons.

[Linaze]

You are forgetting one thing Pyritie, special awards, such as Respected User and Donator.

 

[Pyritie]

I was... uh, getting to that.

Edited!

 

[anarchianbedlam]

i think awards should be in 1 line, but then "special" awards (Ex. respected user and paypal doner) should be tiny icons next to their name, or on a different line than the contest awards. because they connote, not just resource making prowess, but an actual rank or physical contribution to the site. Those are more important than contest awards, and as such, should be separated from them.

and to pyritie, i think your idea is great, in havingt only 5 prioritized award icons show at a time. we dont want someone to enter every contest and SPAM award icons for "runner up" sort of thing.

 

[Pyritie]

i think awards should be in 1 line, but then "special" awards (Ex. respected user and paypal doner) should be tiny icons next to their name, or on a different line than the contest awards. because they connote, not just resource making prowess, but an actual rank or physical contribution to the site. Those are more important than contest awards, and as such, should be separated from them.

and to pyritie, i think your idea is great, in havingt only 5 prioritized award icons show at a time. we dont want someone to enter every contest and SPAM award icons for "runner up" sort of thing.

Posts are already pretty tall, vertically speaking.

 

[anarchianbedlam]

well maybe you could make it so it wont take up extra space. like put it on a pre-existing line or overlay it on their sidepanel, like this or this

 

[HappyCockroach]

PayPal/Respected user are fine imo.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I'm going to throw it out there that because there are so many bronze/silver/gold award icons dispersed between so many people, the concept of an award icon is quite meaningless now. It's barely a reward at all when so many have more icons than can even be displayed.

I still think the old way was better, where the icon would be reserved for the winner since the runners up get reputation boons anyways. I doubt it'll get reverted, though. That's a travesty, but oh well.

I don't think the donor or respected user awards even need icons. They should just be awards in the profile and nothing more. This'll make it so any award icons the user has visible are all from contests. (Which is consistent)

 

[Linaze]

I agree with Dusk on basically all points, I guess.
The current amount of awards makes awards pointless, and like Hawkwing said in the poll thread, it is quite foolish to not include "the old system" as a poll option, as there seems several people are against this new system.

 

[PurplePoot]

That would look horrible... Well, the paypal isn't bad; the respected user banner, however, is.

 

[anarchianbedlam]

lol. just a suggestion. I realize that it is hard to balance people wanting the recognition that they got the award and people wanting the award to have significance

*shrugs*

i was just throwin' out ideas

but i still think that people should get 2nd and 3rd place, in silver and bronze (respectively speaking)
but i also agree that the "runner up" award seriously defeats the purpose of the awards.

Maybe we need to draw a more distinct line between the Winner and the 2nd/3rd

:just throwing another suggestion out there - maybe we could have the icons (in addition to having the gold/silver/bronze border, have a gold/silver/bronze small number in the corner, (either 1, 2 or 3) so the number would represent their place, as opposed to the modeling contest number. (because that is the point of the picture/ and you can hover over the icon to see which competition it is from anyway)

 

[Gilles]

I'm going to throw it out there that because there are so many bronze/silver/gold award icons dispersed between so many people, the concept of an award icon is quite meaningless now. It's barely a reward at all when so many have more icons than can even be displayed.

I still think the old way was better, where the icon would be reserved for the winner since the runners up get reputation boons anyways. I doubt it'll get reverted, though. That's a travesty, but oh well.

I don't think the donor or respected user awards even need icons. They should just be awards in the profile and nothing more. This'll make it so any award icons the user has visible are all from contests. (Which is consistent)

I entirely agree, although I'd like to see respected users to be reverted back to having a special icon instead of a profile thing.

 

[Hakeem]

I agree with everyone at once.

Since that would take a lot of time and programming, I "agree" with Gilles entirely, and subsequently Dusk.

 

[Pyritie]

New poll here!

This poll is about how icons should be displayed next to a user's post.

 

[67chrome]

I like the idea of animated trophies
Loads of shiny stuff kicks ass!

I don't think it is really necessary to differentiate trophies for different contests that much, you should leave out the contest number in the icon at least. You can see that well enough when you mouse over the award, and there are a few inconsistencies in contest numbers anyways. All that really matters is that whoever has the icon is #1 at what the award was given for. I know from the standpoint of designing things it is really easy to get carried away with wanting to create as much variety as possible, but I think simplicity is often a more appealing route. Most of the miniature icons are rather hard to make out any ways, and a system of award icons like the one Happy Cockroach proposed would offer a decent amount of aesthetic variety as well as a clean and systematic approach to displayed awards.

As far as gold/silver/bronze icons to mean something though I think only silver and bronze awards should be given if they go to someone who ranked above 75% of the competition, requiring at the very least 12 people to complete the contest to give out a bronze icon. For consistency I'd be happier with only seeing winning icons under portraits though. With looking through the contest forums and seeing the turnouts, finding an award under someone that says "contest number runner up" really just tells me the person participated in the contest though :/
if all the contests had an average turnout of 20 completed entries I would have a different view. I say if runner-up awards are kept contests must be advertised more heavily. Have a link on the home page to contests, PM people, something. It took me at least a month to stumble across the contest forums since I first became a member of the site and after being interested in why several skins in the download section had a description of being done for a contest. Maybe offer members to be notified when contests start when they become a member or get a resource approved, then just set up a system that notifies the subscribed members when a new contest stats

 

[Pyritie]

Alrighty, so I finally got ralle to give me back ACP access for a little while so I could make the changes. Turned out it wasn't as straightforward as I thought so he had to help as well. ;D

Thanks for voting, etc everyone!


EDIT: Oh, one thing. I didn't ask ralle to change it so all award icons are visible (instead of just 4) since the only person with more than 4 is ragingspeedhorn.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I'm glad that only first place rewards are visible now. It's so much cleaner this way.