The Dark Side of the QT

Table of Contents • In the beginning • Chaos • Where are we now • Problem #1 - Self-escalating Notification Growth • Problem #2 - Notification Abuse In the beginning Yes, and no. The idea behind it is great (imho). It started when a few of us started challenging each other to make an image of a specific type or style. According to @EternaSky 's QT List blog, that was @Sealine , @justrob , and me. We would make our reply pieces and tag each other in the posts and then ooh and ahh and sometimes laugh at each other's work. Great fun. Then people started seeing those posts in the feed, and more and more people wanted to participate. Chaos It became chaos pretty quickly. Everyone was individually keeping track of everyone else who wanted to participate. Soon only some people's lists were being updated. That led to frustration, and it became readily apparent that something had to be done. We petitioned BudgetPixel to build a framework for this 'QT game', and it was put onto the list of features that would someday be added to this platform. In the meantime, we created a single source of tags that everyone would use in their posts. It was called the QT List, and it quickly evolved into the blog @EternaSky made. Where we are now The QT phenomenon has swept through BudgetPixel like a plague, infecting everyone. We all want to make QT's because it's fun, and it gets a number of eyes on our work. As it grew, everyone's notifications started increasing to the point where they were looking less and less at the feed. The result being, if you didn't make your post a QT, almost nobody would see it, which made the problem grow even faster. That's Problem #1 . Problem #2 is, in my opinion, a failure to realize the consequences. Making multiple unnecessary posts for the same QT just increases everyone's notification load, exacerbating the entire problem. Right now, the notification load very heavy. For example, yesterday, my own list of notifications passed 300. Yes: 300 . I sat there for a long time, going through each notification, and if it was a QT post, I immediately deleted it. After that, my list shrunk down to just over 100. The load is so heavy that some people are leaving the QT List, at their own cost. Some of them making their own little lists of friends that want to participate with them, ensuring that their art at least gets some viewership. Problem #1 - Self-escalating Notification Growth People are being forced into making their art into QT's because that is the only way to get their art seen by anyone. What can be done We continue to wait for BudgetPixel to step up and tackle that new feature we've been asking for, but until then, maybe reconsider making everything you have into a QT. Maybe you don't need to send out ten QT posts every day. Maybe you can cut it down to one or two. That way we will all have enough time to actually look at the feed again. Remember, the QT was supposed to be a game. It is not a game right now. Let's bring it back to where it belongs. Problem #2 - Notification Abuse People are making several related images, and then instead of posting them in one single QT post, they send out multiple posts with one or two images in each. This causes the notification counts to swell dramatically. When you look at your notifications, you will see several QT posts, and in them, you'll see large blocks of them from the same individuals. What can be done Recognize that what you are doing affects everyone on this platform. When you make images for a specific QT, put them all in the same post. Each post can only accept up to six images or up to 1 image. It isn't ideal, but the only reason to make a second post is if you can't fit it all into one. Please be kind and considerate while our current system remains as a hack.