On Making Requests

I’ve noticed a large influx of people as of recent requesting the creation of resources, and I hope perhaps people that make requests inform themselves before asking something of the community, especially so that people don’t have to repeat themselves.

I don’t want to intimidate with a long message, so I’ll just keep the intention brief, and then go into details.

Please don’t make a post asking for someone to make something for you.

If you want something, take a chance and try to make it yourself. If it doesn’t work out, ask for help, the community is very helpful!

Alternatively, there are many talented spriters willing to make things for you so long as you are willing to compensate them or you are able to impress them with the project you’re working on. People won’t be motivated to make something for something they have no interest in, and of course this applies differently for every spriter. Maybe you’ll get lucky. All you have to do is start the project thread and just keep working regardless of if the assets you need come in. Placeholders work.

Speaking of placeholders, if you need something for your project, there are many, many sources of free to use sprites, music, and even free to use ASM that changes the game! Most of them can be found here.

If you’re new here, please don’t feel intimidated! We’re ready and willing to help. Just know that, as our family here grows, so do the number of people that want things, and as much as I’m sure most of us want everyone to have everything they need for their project, we exist to support the development and health of our community, which means making sure everyone is treated fairly for their work and in all areas.

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I think it’s also worth noting/remembering that people making the resources are just that, people. A lot of people have other things going on (school, work, etc.), may not always want to work on things, or may be knee deep in their own projects or commission work, limiting the availability of just who could do the work to create the assets.

I often see comments asking about progress on things (not just limited to graphics) and it’s important to exercise patience. If someone has an update to post, they’ll post it when they have something that they want to share.

(For example, it took me almost a calendar year to go from the last WIP stage I posted to finished on the stat screen BG that I posted, mainly because I had to figure out how to do the shading and detailing and then had to will myself to actually make progress on it and a large portion of that calendar year was spent not working on that project at all.)

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I personally don’t have anything against this - I think it’s nice for people to show interest in something, and it gave birth to the :soon: meme, which is a godsend. In my experience I’ve always had more motivation to work on something when I know that people are waiting on me. I wouldn’t want for us to have a culture where people are afraid to post - remember FESS and the whole “Sigh. Care to expound on that?” thing? I feel like that killed the spriting community.

I definitely agree that low-effort posts with little grammar or content from new users is a blight. That being said, isn’t it up to the actual content creators to actually make something? It’s not as if everybody is obligated to actually fulfil a request. Would it be reasonable to have a middle-ground where if people make a request, they have to also give context as to what it’s for, what the status of their project is, and whether or not compensation is involved?

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Maybe it would make sense to have a requests thread where people can ask for stuff versus having individual threads for each ask.

Especially when many requests threads are met with “lol good luck”, it would probably be better to keep them in a central place so it doesn’t clog the forum.

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1 heart for pandan = 1 signature to show arch

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Like how this thread is going to end up, within a week’s time it’ll get buried and newcomers will end up just making their own threads again.

At that point the only people who’ll know about it will be the regulars, but regulars rarely make threads asking for assets, they either go directly to asset creators or have asset creators come to them.

It’s not uncommon for a newcomer start off with a request thread, giving zero proof of progress aside from “I’m making a hack” only to have them get meme’d on by regulars and then they ghost.

The problem isn’t that people are making request threads (there’s literally a category for that), the problems are:

  1. Newcomers typically don’t show their progress (if any) when making requests.
  2. Regulars meme on them for doing so (i.e. some form of gatekeeping).
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Well, usually it’s just the first one. I’m not going to name names, but we do have someone that participates in this activity despite joining multiple years ago. It’s not the nicest thing to meme on people, especially if they don’t know better, but if they don’t read the community rules and guidelines first then that poses a problem. They should know what they should be doing before they go and start a thread.

There’s nothing wrong with people asking for stuff, considering how there isn’t much of a better way if they don’t really know who the important names are. It’s only the matter of making new threads that bothers me, as it creates unnecessary clutter which, at the moment isn’t really an issue, but could be one if the community ever feels even a fraction of the force of Fort Mangs. Already the cheap e-mail verification method Arch uses is falling behind because of the number of new accounts. I don’t know how many people that means, but it could be potentially more than that in the future.

Pandan’s idea is pretty solid; just have some mod start the thread and have it be pinned to the top of the requests category or something.

Newcomers just need to be guided into partaking in a code of conduct that best befits the community. I don’t think FEU will be the next big huge thing, but the least that should be done, I feel, is to set a precedent of openness and understanding, especially in regards to tradition and unwritten rules of conduct.

Edit: I know we have a thread for requests, but those are usually for more advanced requests, like pieces of ASM and such from people with established reputations, which I feel fit into a different category. It’s a whole new ballpark of a “bounty”.

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You can pin the thread, but I think if there is a central thread for requests, it’ll change the responses from “lol no one is going to help you” to “hey welcome, there’s a thread for that”. Even if the threads continue to get made, which they no doubt will, at least we can point people to a single place. Additionally, even if no one helps them with their request in the thread, at least it doesn’t clog up the forum or feel like a personal attack when someone is told that they won’t get any help.

We should try to discourage memeing on the new people who don’t know etiquette - a thread with some best practices where they can drop their requests that people point them to is probably better than being told that no one is going to help them IMO.

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Pinning a request thread and guiding new people to it would probably reduce the gatekeeping, however it’ll result a boatload of ignored “I’m working on a hack, make me a thing” requests in one place. Having a request thread with no substance probably isn’t the best thing to have as the face of the forum. Regulars are probably going to mute/unpin it for themselves.

You just need to get people give proof of progress when they ask for assets.

I’d rather a single place where people get ignored where we can at least lay out all of the etiquette versus clogging the forum with these requests and explaining to people over and over again what they need to show to get people to help them.

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While I understand this approach, I don’t think that this is going to make things any better. The kinds of users making low-effort request posts probably aren’t bothered by forum etiquette (or just etiquette in general) and will likely continue to keep making new topics for their requests, after which we’d still have to direct them to the request topic. In the current format, it’s easy to see when requests & questions have been answered. It’d be nice if it worked like the FEBuilder thread, but that thread works because @7743 does such a wonderful job of checking and answering questions, and other users are happy to help as well.

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My point is that I’d rather have a thread for people to be pointed to when they do inevitably make low effort requests than be told that no one is going to help them.

If I’m new and don’t know any better, it is a pretty unwelcoming experience to be laughed at and told no one will help me.

I fail to see how it isn’t easier to track what’s been asked before in a single thread versus across the forum.

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The newcomers are just a part of FEU as the regulars, I find. They should be welcomed and pointed in the right direction. A request thread would definitely help in that regard, especially if it’s pinned. Right now, the whole request issue is never something explicitly stated to be forbidden in the rules, so nobody ever thinks to search up whether somebody has already asked or not. Sure, it makes complete sense to most regulars on FEU who know the non-stated guidelines, but for most new users, they just have the rules to go off of.

The assumption that “newcomers should know better” doesn’t hold up considering that many newcomers truly do not know better. It’s running off of the logic of higher-ups who know mostly everything about the site, not the newcomers actually making the requests. If these newcomers’ posts are being condemned for being repetitive for their lack of know-how with FEU, then perhaps creating a request thread is only the beginning. Our community’s focus towards the regulars and the elites is coming at the cost of discouraging the newcomers from having a say.

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We could title it something along the lines of “Resource/Asset/Graphics requests and etiquette” and pose it as a resource for newbies (Here are some unwritten rules and best practices for requests, links to the repos, etc.) And this way they can also see what else people are asking about before posting.

If it is pinned then there is no excuse to not direct people there and may reduce the amount of threads that get made.

I agree with flasuban.

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That would be a massive help for the newcomers who do not know the implicit rules. Right now there are only two pinned posts, one for a community to-do list and one for hard rules. A third for unwritten assumed rules would go a long way, instead of assuming that most newcomers would eventually understand how FEU works.

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Digging into the categories, “Questions” has a pinned guidance thread so it should be natural enough to have one for “Requests” and point people to it. If activity keeps increasing, utilizing Categories’ll likely be the future anyways.

And I totally agree with flasuban (heck I’m currently discouraged by the amount of clique antics going on). We should be welcoming newcomers and offering at the very least patience and/or some guidance for them, instead of berating them for simple missteps.

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I think something that would be helpful is links to artists who do commissions and their rates. I recently put a commission request here thinking it would get as much traction as it would on DeviantArt and was sadly mistaken.

It would be helpful as a consumer, yes, but from past experience it’s a nightmare to keep updated. Also the resource pool for the community is just too small and subject matter too niche for that sort of system to thrive. On DeviantArt/Pixeljoint you have members who are seeking to (or are) working at the professional level and actively searching for jobs to take.

Here, most are doing it as a hobby/fun, and it’s just as well to know the artist/their style and if they open a commission slot matching your needs and budget then it’s your lucky day.

At the least it’d be a good idea to have a sticky in requests explaining “how to get help with your hack”

And it explains that you should do work yourself first and post a .ups with placeholder assets, then your chance of someone helping goes up a lot. Of course some people won’t read it, but some will.

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