AnotherContestGroup News Gone Issues!

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missimoinsane's avatar
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missimoinsane
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As most of my watchers will know I am the founder of super group AnotherContestGroup and we have massive problems with journal entries due to data size limits.  There is a maximum data allowance per journal and this is covers the allowance of characters, text, thumbs, emoticons and all coding etc.  The maximum data limit of a journal is 64kb eg:

The following image is an example of all the script including links, icons, emoticons, thumbnails and all relevant listings from all October journals merged together in a 'test' journal including skin just to show what happens when you try and save an image:


Which has caused lots of problems for us as a contest group!  We have tried to work around these problems by splitting up monthly journals into 2 monthly journals but we went from listing around 200-300 to listing around 800 meaning we needed 3 monthly and even 4 monthly we're now having to create a silly amount of journals each month (in October there were 5 journals just for contests ending on 31st October and there was 7 journals for contests ending any other date in October!) this causes spamming problems as we have to notify our watchers of these updates which is causing us problems.  Many watchers are unwatching and 99% say it's due to spamming of journal updates.

So we tried to compromise this situation by every month (sometimes bi-weekly) creating news articles containing all contests (the last one contained 1365+ contests)!!!  Now that News Articles have been disabled and replaced with journals we have come to face 3 major problems:
:bulletgreen:  Group journals are seeming to be unnoticed by the new method of journals.
:bulletgreen:  We are no longer able to post mass content as we still have journal limits and news articles have been disabled.
:bulletgreen:  We can no longer post news articles as they show up as journals…  This has caused a lot of upset as founder of the group I don't want my latest journal to be group related as I do try and keep the two separate.  I was a bit cross that news articles had to be published by myself and not by my group and so it didn't notify group watchers unless they were also my watchers so we had to try and direct group watchers towards the news articles.  But now I have to post stuff (such as this) in my journal which I really don't want to do but I am trying to appeal for something to be done.

I have asked dA staff time and time again for journal extensions so that we can do massive features and/or include a lot more content.  Even if it was just a premium member/super group privilege and not all dA members.  But still I remain ignored or get abusive comments from haters and trolls.

I feel that while the new upgrades are great in that journals are now having the chance to be seen.  I really don't feel that removing news was really the best way to go about things!  I don't see why we can't have both!!!  

So while yes this is a complaint, it is also a plea for staff to up the journal allowance.  We would seriously apprechiate this more than anything else but if you could we would also like you to bring back news articles and/or make it so groups are able to publish journals.  This would be a fantastic aid I am sure not just to AnotherContestGroup but also to other groups.  Futher more we would apprechiate if we were able to change the order of journals in the journal navigation box and to not have restrictions on the amount of journals we can show at once.  But as said we'd apperchiate a much higher journal allowance and/or unlimited especially now you've removed news.  People are still wanting to do huge features but because of this situation you as dA staff have put us in it is causing many problems and concerns.

AnotherContestGroup members/watchers/followers/fans/staff etc ACG Mass Features, Features, News Articles etc… Are being suspended until further notice.  We will keep compiling everything into our journals and lots of journals but we're sorry for all inconvenience caused.  

Regards AnotherContestGroup & founder missimoinsane





Thank You

:iconanothercontestgroup: :iconacg-pointsdonations:

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© 2011 - 2024 missimoinsane
Comments74
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sambeawesome's avatar
sambeawesome
Sorry for a reply on an old journal/issue, but while I'm here, I figured I'd post my two cents.

Why not add on a third option? Instead of posting a multitude of journals for each month (or popular dates), why not just post everything on a separate website? Purchase a domain and post the contests there. Programmers can make it easy to submit a new contest (either by staff or user. If user then it can be moderated) such as a place to include a link to the information, the end date, have the selection of emoticons to choose from to add to it, and possibly add keywords. Keywords would be for a possible search engine on the site where visitors could enter in, say, "traditional fanart" and all contests that have that keyword would show up. Maybe have options to the side where they can choose what month/end date and narrow down their choices until they find their perfect match. Contests that are past their end date could be set to automatically delete themselves. The website could almost run itself leaving you and your staff team relatively stress free.

You could keep updating, advertising, featuring and doing all the normal things the group does while also hosting a website. This keeps watchers free from spam and you can keep all the same months in one place with no worry about taking up too much space. For users who want to stay notified, you could do a weekly (or something similar) journal post about new contests added or offer a newsletter automated by the website to email out subscribers.

Obviously coding this would be a lot of work, but I think it could be worth it all in the end.

Regardless if you use/like the idea, I do support the desire for larger journal space. As it is right now, I don't see news articles ever returning, but I think increasing the space available for journals could still open for debate :)