I think most of us know the blogging section has been going down in quality for the past few years.

I was originally going to do one entire blog covering each section of the blogs and how to fix the issues, but I realized a much more organized and detailed way was to do each section indivdually. 

First off, I want to thank all of you for the incredible outpouring of support you are giving me on my latest blog. It really warms my heart to know that you guys find my work entertaining.

Ahh...interviews. Such a lovely and inspiring way to get to know other popular users on Planet Minecraft, is it not? There are so many ways you can do them. The possibilities are endless!

...Which is exactly why 95% of interviews ask the same stale, boring questions each time and offer absolutely no input on the interviewer's thoughts and reactions.

Now this is a MASSIVE problem. It seems most people do interviews these days just to get some quick XP, not because they genuinely want to get to know the person they are interviewing. It's a shame, really, that even some of my close friends are guilty of this (I would know). I'm going to discuss what most interviews are doing WRONG, and how to fix them with examples of what to do INSTEAD. If you've ever interviewed people before or ever been interviewed yourself, I hope you learn something from this so we can stop the gerneric interviews clogging up the blogs section.

I'd first like to share some personal interviewing experiences myself. I've only ever been in two interviews (go look for them yourself), but both left a bad experience in my brain for months to come. Both people who interviewed me are very close friends of mine on PMC, and since I don't want them to feel embarrassed or have this blog removed for blacklisting, I'm going to call the two interviewers Person #1 and Person #2.

Back when I first joined the site (about five or six months ago), I requested to be interviewed by Person #1 to let my name be known on PMC better, as this Person #1 was a very popular user on the site. I had already seen some of his interviews before, but being new I didn't understand it was customary for him and other users to use what I call an "interviewing template", which is basically asking the same ten or so questions for each and every interview they do. Person #1 sent me the questions, and mildly disappointed, I answered them as best I could. He eventually uploaded the interview (custom picture with my old profile picture on it xD), and after browsing thoroughly through a handful of other ones he did, it became clear to me that these interviews had no special thought or planning put into them beyond the picture and one short response. To this day, the interview still has less than 100 views and 10 diamonds.

I later requested to be interviewed by Person #2 (this one's much more recent), and I thought it was going to be a bit better. Unfortunately, I was VERY wrong. Instead of giving me questions as an individual, me and three other people were lumped into the same PM with the excuse that he had a lot of interview requests to do. Most of the questions were the EXACT SAME as the FIRST interview I did, but I tried to answer them and act as civilized as I could. When Person #2 uploaded my interview first, I was just as disappointed as last time. Only one of the questions had a short response, the questions were generic, and the interview once again wasn't a very successful one.

Looking through the interviews now, I can see that nothing has changed.

The first major problem that you can tell urks me the most is the absolutely generic, overused questions used for each and every interview a person uploads. What's even worse is that these "interviewing templates" are almost exactly the same for each individual interviewer. For those of you who aren't very familiar to interviews, I will be happy to showcase the Top 5 Overused Interview Questions on PMC. I am NOT kidding when I say at least two or more of these appear on just about every interview I've ever seen posted.

5. Do you have any advice for new members on PMC?
4. What's your favorite submission you've/I've made?
3. Who inspires you the most?
2. How did you get the name -insert name here-?
1. How did you discover Planet Minecraft?

No, no, no! These questions are ALL wrong. Interviews are supposed to help you learn more and dig deeper about each and every individual member. That isn't even possible with questions like these anymore.

The answers are almost just as bad. I'm not saying that the answers are something you can control, because you can't, obviously, but I've seen so many of the same answers to the same questions that I can basically predict an entire interview at this point. So many of the answers include "I was searching up for Mincraft skins and I stumbled across it", "Make sure you have fun with what you're doing and make some friends", and "My PMC friends are my inspirations" that it makes my head hurt. Don't you see? Asking the same questions over and over will basically guaruntee you will get the same answers over and over as well. The problem with that is that you aren't truly learning about a member in-depth; you have less than a basic idea on the type of person they are because you see the same answers to shallow questions time and time again.

Having been interviewed twice now, I can say that both times it really ticks me off when i see the infamous "interviewing template" in my inbox. It doesn't make you feel like an individual anymore, I can tell you that much.

As is customary for my "constructive criticism" blogs, I am going to name a number of things you as members can do to improve your interviews.

Being an interviewer myself, I from the beginning have taken hours searching through my interviewees' profile and submissions to understand a basic idea of who they are as a person, and then take that information and find bits of knowledge that I can expand upon or question in my interviews. The results are perfectly varying topics, questions, and ideas for each separate person. Yes, I will admit it takes a lot of time and effort, but nothing (and no-one) on PMC becomes successful if that wasn't the case.

If you know you and the interviewee share a common interest, expand upon it! Don't just ask them to explain what the interest is, though; maybe ask them what they enjoy the most about it and what they would recommend to other people. Make sure the interest is something the audience can relate to, however; confusion in an interview never works out.

The next big issue I have with today's interviews are the lack of responses/critiques from the person asking the questions. I'm not the first person to cover this topic, either; Azie the moderator once made a blog explaining her feelings as well. I apoligize if you think that quoting from her blog is unoriginal content, but she speaks the truth far better than I can for this one.

"Over the past few months, I've been interviewed by a number of people and just recently a thought occurred to me: all of these people are just copying and pasting the answers I give them and that's all their blog is. I've written blogs for these people and they've posted them. They've made no effort at all to add their own input regarding my answers and the whole thing felt very one-sided once I read the end product on their profiles. This thought has been circulating in my head for while, but I just have to say how frustrating it is for me as a writer and a moderator to see these people doing absolutely nothing to write their blog besides come up with 5 or 10 questions while I write them a few paragraphs of answers, successfully generating an entire blog for them. "

I know there's a lot of you out there that have mixed feelings for Azie (;-;), but I for one think Azie is perhaps one of the most genuine and intelligent members on PMC at the moment. Her message could not have been more clear, and there's not a single opinionated blog on the site that's as relatable and sympathetic to this one in my eyes. Really, this matches SPOT-ON to my own views on the subject of interviews, so I applaud her for that. Think of Azie as a moderator as you want; just take a moment to appreciate her effort to change PMC for the better.

What we need to do as interviewers is spend another half an hour or so trying to relate to the people we're interviewing. Ask rhetorical questions, praise or flatter them (legitimately, please), comment on your own personal experiences, whatever, just take the time to do it. It makes you look like a lot better person in the long run than just one who selfishly uses other people to write an entire blog for them to get dem diamondz and viewz. Who knows, you might even start a friendship that was never there before.

The last subject on interviews is not as complained about as the others, and actually can relate to all other blogging types on PMC at the moment. The last problem I have with interviews is: Pictures.

Yes, some people on PMC really try hard with their cover pictures and look very professional and unique. Sadly, though, this is an uncommon case, especially with interviews. 

Really, the most common ones I see are unbelievably lazy and seem to only exist so that the interview looks better and can gather more attention than just leaving the picture blank with the ugly stand-in picture we all know and hate. I think we all know that most bad blogs never even have an uploaded picture, and even good blogs without one are considered spam and low-quality, which I really don't blame. In my personal opinion, no matter what the blog is about, at least find a picture relating to your topic off of Google Images.

It isn't any better, though, when a handful of interview cover pictures I see will consist of simply the interviewees' profile picture or a desperate stand-in picture from NovaSkin. I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaally hate blogs with a NovaSkin picture as the cover picture, no matter what it is or what the blog's about. NovaSkin pictures take about ten seconds to make and are basically a poor excuse that you couldn't bother to create something unique and better.

Now, before this blog turns into a rant or you guys begin to dislike me because you think I'm targeting you, I actually understand that this is not always the case. Some of the much younger users on the site simply don't have access to picture-editing programs or don't understand how to use them. For them, a Cinema4D-created NovaSkin fill-in picture looks cool and inviting. I will say that NovaSkin pictures do look pretty cool, but after understanding their origin and realizing that the user did not create them themselves, you really begin to groan every time you see one.

Profile pictures are just as bad. I can see why you would use a user's profile picture as the cover picture, but the reality is is that this does not work well to score points for creativity and originality. Sure, it helps the audience understand who's being interviewed (as if they couldn't tell from the title already :P), but it looks so boring and uninviting after seeing a large amount of interviews with them.

There's also anothe reason why I really wouldn't recommend using the profile pictures. Most people who use them never bother to increase the size of the image, so the picture looks very small when you're browsing through the blogging section. It's even more cringe-worthy when a transparent profile picture is used. The border around the image is larger than the image itself, so the unoccupied space is simply...empty and transparent.

For my interviews, I use Blender and some Mincraft rigs to make interesting-looking renders using skins of the person being interviewed. Starting from Interviewing Sparki Wolf, all of my interview cover pictures will be remakes of either fanart or their actual profile picture, with some effects from Pixlr Editor if necessary.

I hope that this blog will teach users how to improve the quality of their interviews for the better. Interviewing can be just as fun and as creative as making anything else if the proper care and effort is put into it. Stay tuned for my next "blogging improvement" blog coming out as soon as possible, likely in 2016. See you then, and PEACE OUT!