| Forums: War Room → Future of 'Fan-Art of the Month' | 
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I've come back with another discussion to start, this time on the future of the 'FanArt of the Month' section.
Sure enough, take a closer look at this section, and one will find out that only one fan-art has been featured - 'SHiE unconscious' by Minnichi. Started by HammerOfThor on May 2020, only one fanart has won this award, the month after the award was instituted. After this, this section remained untouched. Now, you will ask me this question - The User of the Month and Featured Fanon of the Month too have seen long gaps, so why have you started a discussion on the Fanart of the Month?
Sure, I have a proper answer to this question.
Because the User of the Month and Featured Fanon of the Month were instituted for good reasons.
1) UOTM - To recognise the hard work of the users who have been active for quite some time and have done notable work.
2) FFOTM - To recognise fanons that need recognition, since there are several of them that have been well-written.
Also, User Awards and Fanon Awards have been organised to recognise the wikians who have done notable work for a year.
The FanArt of the Month, to me, wasn't supposed to be instituted. In fact, fanons are mostly recognised by story and characters. As I have seen, most fanons just use a title image to show the title and character images to show the appearance of the characters. Other images are just used to depict important events or maybe just for entertainment. So, fanart isn't something that is mostly considered important unless it shows the title or characters, that's it.
So, to be frank, I just don't think that FanArt of the Month is needed, though there may be alternatives. One of them can be hosting a monthly fanart contest, with a rule that only one fanart can be submitted per user, knowing that quite a few will actively participate. The community, or a team of selected artists, will vote on the best fanart. But still, I don't think this will work much since, these days, the number of users present, including admins and artists, varies everyday.
So, provide your opinion, on the fate of the 'FanArt of the Month' award, below.
Yohan Mavely talk
18:31, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
- I kind of agree. It does seem to be the odd one out of those other awards, and you can't upload an image anyway without it having a reason, like being on a Fanon (which it would have to be for Fanart), so by that logic it's good to just keep the Fanon awards. Zacatero • (Wall) •
18:45, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
- There's another reason for why this award isn't needed, fanons take a good amount of time to complete, if you have the will to do so. But fanart can be done within hours. Yohan Mavely talk
18:52, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
- There's another reason for why this award isn't needed, fanons take a good amount of time to complete, if you have the will to do so. But fanart can be done within hours. Yohan Mavely talk
- I agree with discontinuing this monthly award, though I do not agree with some of the reasons that have been presented and would like to address them, as I think they are unnecessarily harsh and frankly untrue.
- The introduction of the "Fanart of the Month" came from this War Room forum, with the intention being to provide recognition in some way to various artists on the wiki that had worked hard on creating fanart for their fanon that might otherwise be missed or overlooked. To say that this was not instituted for "good reasons" is false, and I think has the unintended implication that fan artists are undeserving of recognition in the way that other users or authors are. One may consider a piece of fanart unimportant or something that "can be done within hours", but to the person that created it, it is anything but unimportant. And the amount of time that has been put into it is irrelevant. So, since the aim was to provide some recognition for this work, I think it was absolutely implemented for good reasons, and would reject any argument that it should be discontinued for this reason.
- Despite this, the reason that I support discontinuing it is that, given the lack of activity since the initial award, it clearly has not achieved what it was intended to achieve. It seems unlikely that this will change any time soon, even with increased activity overall on the wiki, and so I think discontinuing is the best option. Implementing a "similar" alternative seems unnecessary as well, as it would only run into the same issues. I would add as well that I find it rather ironic that this iteration of the fanart awards should be so roundly criticised for being no good, and yet an alternative is proposed that is essentially exactly the same. HAMMEROFTHØR (wall) • 19:24, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
- Perhaps instead of just getting rid of Fan-Art of the month, we widen its scope? There is plenty of Fanart on the Discussion Boards, for example, that is of good quality, but isn't eligible for nomination due to it not accompanying a Fanon. Furthermore, there are quite a few different users who create Fanart there, so we can have a variety of nominees. I certainly think the award doesn't work right now, but perhaps with a few alterations to the requirements it could become relevant again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aang on a sec (wall • contribs) 19:39, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
- I agree with discontinuing the award for the reasons described here. It was a good idea that I believe didn't work for the same reason the fanon of the month isn't chosen every month or why the Fanon Awards haven't gotten enough attention to start yet. There isn't enough activity in the fanon side of the wiki for now, which we know is something that varies with time. And I agree with Thor's last idea: implementing a similar idea seems unnecessary. I would put this on hold until we're sure the fanon portal gets more activity and more active users. Dcasawang1 • wall 21:16, 17 August 2021 (UTC)