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Introduction
As stated in many blogs, the quality of recent submissions to PMC has significantly dropped, to the point that dirt houses are being posted as projects, and you can see different eye-colored BajanCanadian skins. This isn't even mentioning joke blogs and "I Need a Build Team" blogs.
This blog is dedicated to point out the problems in these low quality submissions, and ways to fix them. To make this easier to navigate the blog is divided into many sections, one about Projects, one about Skins, one about Banners, one about Projects(Coming Soon), and one abut blogs themselves. If we can share these blogs to those who post low-quality content, or even stop posting low quality content ourselves, we can make a difference. Enjoy the blog.
Skins
Back when I was looking for a new skin because my robot skin was getting old, I was searching PMC for a good Caesar skin. Why Caesar? I'm that guy that only talks to certain people and knows that flat airplane wings don't work; they need to be airfoils. Now, as I ask myself how we got from low quality skins to airplane design, I'm piloting this blog back to the main point.
Personally, I have nothing wrong with skins that are not shaded. If I had started playing Minecraft in Alpha, I would have an old skin. However, the part that bothers me and feels unfair is that many of these skins are not being shaded due to laziness, and I'll say it here: laziness is the enemy of quality. Quote me if you must. If you don't want to spend a lot of time on skins, don't make skins, or if you don't know how, check out all of the great shading/skinning tutorial blogs.
Next, we have those pesky teen skins. The problem is, these aren't really teen skins. How many people IRL do you see with a creeper hoodie and hair covering their eyes? Not many, eh? If you want a teen skin to represent yourself, don't have a skin that thousands of members of our community have. Instead, read somebody's shading tutorial and make a skin that represents you.
Oh, and let's not forget about the altered YouTuber skins. There are so many of them. What bothers me more is the fact that these shaded and high quality get altered, and certain parts that had layers or shading lost the high quality and good look to laziness, yet again displaying itself as the enemy of quality.
Why do people alter YouTuber skins? Well, after some research, commenting on those skins, and seeing the reactions of the skin thieves, I can tell you this: XP. These people think that people at high XP levels create better content. The truth is, many great bloggers and other content creators aren't on level 103. Many aren't even at level 15.
Skins are needed for many parts of the community to flourish. However we need good quality skins and dedicated skin makers to be able to have skins that will actually be downloaded. Also, whenever you come across one of these poor quality skins, give the creator some constructive criticism. There is a chance that the person will listen and maybe become a good skin maker one day. You never know. Oh, and we aren't off topic! How lovely.
Now, since I gave some solutions, but not the full idea, I'll describe to you the perfect skin. The skin is very nicely created with shading that uses just the perfect colors to create the illusion. There are layers, giving the skin detail, such as the sandals and laurel wreath on my personal skin. And finally, the skin is original, not based on a YouTuber or anything. Straight out of the creator's imagination.
There isn't much else about skins, really. Just remember that skins mean a lot. Try to express your emotions and feelings when you skin. Don't modify skins as it is against the rules and gives you a bad reputation if you do it constantly. Now here's what you note down and quote: skinning is a game; after a few wrong turns, you're out.
Blogs
Blogs are the written wonders of our community. No matter what you want to read there are always blogs about it. Because there are so many bloggers now days, the quality of blogs is drastically decreasing, while the quantity is skyrocketing. It even becomes sad to read something that has no capital letters... Okay, let me quote from this tutorial on scoreboards, "mess with scoreboard and you better know what your doing! it can change........... your name tag color create game objectives and more." Yes. This blog actually got a, "Thank You. Diamond," comment, but in worse grammar. Anyways, on with the blog.
As noted above, grammar is a huge problem with newer blogs. I don't mean the occasionally misspelled word, but the first letter of every single word is capitalized. Or, as shown in the quote from the scoreboard tutorial, even the first word of each sentence doesn't have any capital letters. Not bad enough well, prepare to see worse.
What can be wore than no capital letters? Well, I'll tell you. No capitalized letters and numbers for words with 50% of the words misspelled. You know the leik instead of like, and your instead of you're. Here's a tip: if you see a blog with words spelled like that, just stop reading it and read something else. That is my personal rule on the internet.
Another issue relating to grammar is proper titling. I don't mean if you are writing something about cows don't title it "My New Shoes". I mean what words need to be capitalized in titles. I mean that old 4th grade grammar lesson. You only capitalize the the first word in the title. Same with and, but, to, etc. You also ALWAYS capitalize all of the first words in the title, nouns, verbs, certain adjectives. This isn't a grammar lesson anyway. If you need to learn grammar rules, google it.
Ok. I could rant about grammar here all day, but there is also content to cover. Whenever you write a blog, there is a warning above the title line talking about how quality work is important to the community and to post original content. Well, in the past week I have seen about 5 command block tutorials, most of which were less helpful than /help. I showed you the quote from the scoreboard blog. That blog happened to be one of them.
Original and quality content. What exactly does the phrase really mean? Original means never seen before or at least not done often. Taking in consideration those command block tutorials, and the fact that I saw 5 this week, original content is rarely found. The solution is simple: search the recent blogs list. See if somebody created the blog already.
Up next, let's talk quality. Please note that everything in this blog corresponds to quality, but is organized by type of error. Ok. The first element under this category is word choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know nobody cares whether you use sad or depressed, but good word choice can be a part of good quality.
Continuing on, effort is 40% of quality. If you really put time and effort into a blog, chances are people will enjoy it. Many of these blogs have a point, and it can clearly be understood, but there isn't enough cream between the two cookies of introduction and the point; there isn't a given piece of evidence to support, which costs effort. Again, laziness is being the enemy of quality here.
Finally, thumbnails. I know graphics aren't everything, but many people don't look at blogs without thumbnails. They have a sense of being bad quality and lacking effort. So, if you have Photoshop or any advanced photo editing/rendering program, take the time to make good quality thumbnails yourself. If you don't, try to avoid screenshots, unless using very fancy HD resource packs along with cinematic and better animation mods and shaders. If you need thumbnails and you can't do what I wrote above, there are many people taking thumbnail requests over at the art blogs and forums. The thumbnail on this blog was provided by CheatSource, a very cool guy.
Concluding the section on blogs, we can identify the base ingredients of this text soup, or find the main ideas if my boring food jokes are making you hungry. Blogs are the written form of art on PMC. The problems that are dropping their quality are mainly bad grammar, unoriginality, and laziness. If those weren't enough food jokes, this is the recipe for a high quality blog:
1. The grammar is checked over and corrected so that all necessary capital letters are on place, there are commas with lists and conjunctions, and all of the other grammar rules.
2. The blog is worth reading with vivid vocabulary and a clear display of the author's best work for the community.
3. The blog has at least a semi-original topic and is written better than the other blogs dealing with the same subject. Possibly has jokes that the audience finds funny and relative to the blog.
4. The thumbnail counts! Don't forget that when you look at blogs, the thumbnail is the very first thing you see right above the title.
Now, in order to show you how bad the situation gets, this is a graph showing the types of blogs that I found by clicking the latest button under articles and scrolling down a little. This particular graph was made on Valentine's Day 2015.
Banners
Ever since they were implemented, they have been a major game changer that has been used to greatly improve Minecraft, but there is of course a dark side. PMC banners have had 2 main issues: unnecessarity and unoriginality.
First, let's tackle unnecessarity. Now, I'm not trying to say that we don't need your cool design, because that's what PMC is about: sharing your Minecraft experience with others. However, there are some types of banners that just don't need to be here. I'm mainly talking about banners with your personal SMP server's logo. I personally don't mind a few, but it's sort of like the Minecraft heads reddit. You post player heads that the community could use, not promote yourself.
Next, we tackle the biggest problem with PMC banners: unoriginality. I'm talking about the hundreds of simple flags that get copied and posted as your own. Now, some of these flags differ in the sense that Bob's French flag might use cyan, while Joe's uses light blue. That's fine as long as the difference is clearly visible.
Flags aside, many banners on PMC are just copies of other people's original work. Just imagine inventing something, and then having someone who made an exact copy profit more than you. That's like copying and pasting this blog on your own blog. An outsider might not care, but it really sucks to be plagiarized, although you created the banner. This needs to stop, and you can do something to improve it!
Now, I know, you're very lazy and you don't want to compare the dates of when all 50 Russian flags on PMC were made, I get it. But, if you want to use the banner, do it anonymously. Unless you are sure that this person is the original creator, just use the banner without showing support for the "creator" that actually copied. Now, I know how brutal of a tactic that is, but you can't support thieves, right?
Helpful Resources
More on Blogs
More on Skins
Grammar Help
A Shading Tutorial
To Be Updated...
Updated 2 time(s)
Thank you Jimmy for reading this long blog. I would appreciate you showing me some support by posting a comment below. I also wouldn't mind a diamond and/or sub. Thank you guys for 10 subscribers! You guys are awesome and thanks for supporting my work.
As stated in many blogs, the quality of recent submissions to PMC has significantly dropped, to the point that dirt houses are being posted as projects, and you can see different eye-colored BajanCanadian skins. This isn't even mentioning joke blogs and "I Need a Build Team" blogs.
This blog is dedicated to point out the problems in these low quality submissions, and ways to fix them. To make this easier to navigate the blog is divided into many sections, one about Projects, one about Skins, one about Banners, one about Projects(Coming Soon), and one abut blogs themselves. If we can share these blogs to those who post low-quality content, or even stop posting low quality content ourselves, we can make a difference. Enjoy the blog.
Skins
Back when I was looking for a new skin because my robot skin was getting old, I was searching PMC for a good Caesar skin. Why Caesar? I'm that guy that only talks to certain people and knows that flat airplane wings don't work; they need to be airfoils. Now, as I ask myself how we got from low quality skins to airplane design, I'm piloting this blog back to the main point.
Personally, I have nothing wrong with skins that are not shaded. If I had started playing Minecraft in Alpha, I would have an old skin. However, the part that bothers me and feels unfair is that many of these skins are not being shaded due to laziness, and I'll say it here: laziness is the enemy of quality. Quote me if you must. If you don't want to spend a lot of time on skins, don't make skins, or if you don't know how, check out all of the great shading/skinning tutorial blogs.
Next, we have those pesky teen skins. The problem is, these aren't really teen skins. How many people IRL do you see with a creeper hoodie and hair covering their eyes? Not many, eh? If you want a teen skin to represent yourself, don't have a skin that thousands of members of our community have. Instead, read somebody's shading tutorial and make a skin that represents you.
Oh, and let's not forget about the altered YouTuber skins. There are so many of them. What bothers me more is the fact that these shaded and high quality get altered, and certain parts that had layers or shading lost the high quality and good look to laziness, yet again displaying itself as the enemy of quality.
Why do people alter YouTuber skins? Well, after some research, commenting on those skins, and seeing the reactions of the skin thieves, I can tell you this: XP. These people think that people at high XP levels create better content. The truth is, many great bloggers and other content creators aren't on level 103. Many aren't even at level 15.
Skins are needed for many parts of the community to flourish. However we need good quality skins and dedicated skin makers to be able to have skins that will actually be downloaded. Also, whenever you come across one of these poor quality skins, give the creator some constructive criticism. There is a chance that the person will listen and maybe become a good skin maker one day. You never know. Oh, and we aren't off topic! How lovely.
Now, since I gave some solutions, but not the full idea, I'll describe to you the perfect skin. The skin is very nicely created with shading that uses just the perfect colors to create the illusion. There are layers, giving the skin detail, such as the sandals and laurel wreath on my personal skin. And finally, the skin is original, not based on a YouTuber or anything. Straight out of the creator's imagination.
There isn't much else about skins, really. Just remember that skins mean a lot. Try to express your emotions and feelings when you skin. Don't modify skins as it is against the rules and gives you a bad reputation if you do it constantly. Now here's what you note down and quote: skinning is a game; after a few wrong turns, you're out.
Blogs
Blogs are the written wonders of our community. No matter what you want to read there are always blogs about it. Because there are so many bloggers now days, the quality of blogs is drastically decreasing, while the quantity is skyrocketing. It even becomes sad to read something that has no capital letters... Okay, let me quote from this tutorial on scoreboards, "mess with scoreboard and you better know what your doing! it can change........... your name tag color create game objectives and more." Yes. This blog actually got a, "Thank You. Diamond," comment, but in worse grammar. Anyways, on with the blog.
As noted above, grammar is a huge problem with newer blogs. I don't mean the occasionally misspelled word, but the first letter of every single word is capitalized. Or, as shown in the quote from the scoreboard tutorial, even the first word of each sentence doesn't have any capital letters. Not bad enough well, prepare to see worse.
What can be wore than no capital letters? Well, I'll tell you. No capitalized letters and numbers for words with 50% of the words misspelled. You know the leik instead of like, and your instead of you're. Here's a tip: if you see a blog with words spelled like that, just stop reading it and read something else. That is my personal rule on the internet.
Another issue relating to grammar is proper titling. I don't mean if you are writing something about cows don't title it "My New Shoes". I mean what words need to be capitalized in titles. I mean that old 4th grade grammar lesson. You only capitalize the the first word in the title. Same with and, but, to, etc. You also ALWAYS capitalize all of the first words in the title, nouns, verbs, certain adjectives. This isn't a grammar lesson anyway. If you need to learn grammar rules, google it.
Ok. I could rant about grammar here all day, but there is also content to cover. Whenever you write a blog, there is a warning above the title line talking about how quality work is important to the community and to post original content. Well, in the past week I have seen about 5 command block tutorials, most of which were less helpful than /help. I showed you the quote from the scoreboard blog. That blog happened to be one of them.
Original and quality content. What exactly does the phrase really mean? Original means never seen before or at least not done often. Taking in consideration those command block tutorials, and the fact that I saw 5 this week, original content is rarely found. The solution is simple: search the recent blogs list. See if somebody created the blog already.
Up next, let's talk quality. Please note that everything in this blog corresponds to quality, but is organized by type of error. Ok. The first element under this category is word choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know nobody cares whether you use sad or depressed, but good word choice can be a part of good quality.
Continuing on, effort is 40% of quality. If you really put time and effort into a blog, chances are people will enjoy it. Many of these blogs have a point, and it can clearly be understood, but there isn't enough cream between the two cookies of introduction and the point; there isn't a given piece of evidence to support, which costs effort. Again, laziness is being the enemy of quality here.
Finally, thumbnails. I know graphics aren't everything, but many people don't look at blogs without thumbnails. They have a sense of being bad quality and lacking effort. So, if you have Photoshop or any advanced photo editing/rendering program, take the time to make good quality thumbnails yourself. If you don't, try to avoid screenshots, unless using very fancy HD resource packs along with cinematic and better animation mods and shaders. If you need thumbnails and you can't do what I wrote above, there are many people taking thumbnail requests over at the art blogs and forums. The thumbnail on this blog was provided by CheatSource, a very cool guy.
Concluding the section on blogs, we can identify the base ingredients of this text soup, or find the main ideas if my boring food jokes are making you hungry. Blogs are the written form of art on PMC. The problems that are dropping their quality are mainly bad grammar, unoriginality, and laziness. If those weren't enough food jokes, this is the recipe for a high quality blog:
1. The grammar is checked over and corrected so that all necessary capital letters are on place, there are commas with lists and conjunctions, and all of the other grammar rules.
2. The blog is worth reading with vivid vocabulary and a clear display of the author's best work for the community.
3. The blog has at least a semi-original topic and is written better than the other blogs dealing with the same subject. Possibly has jokes that the audience finds funny and relative to the blog.
4. The thumbnail counts! Don't forget that when you look at blogs, the thumbnail is the very first thing you see right above the title.
Now, in order to show you how bad the situation gets, this is a graph showing the types of blogs that I found by clicking the latest button under articles and scrolling down a little. This particular graph was made on Valentine's Day 2015.
Banners
Ever since they were implemented, they have been a major game changer that has been used to greatly improve Minecraft, but there is of course a dark side. PMC banners have had 2 main issues: unnecessarity and unoriginality.
First, let's tackle unnecessarity. Now, I'm not trying to say that we don't need your cool design, because that's what PMC is about: sharing your Minecraft experience with others. However, there are some types of banners that just don't need to be here. I'm mainly talking about banners with your personal SMP server's logo. I personally don't mind a few, but it's sort of like the Minecraft heads reddit. You post player heads that the community could use, not promote yourself.
Next, we tackle the biggest problem with PMC banners: unoriginality. I'm talking about the hundreds of simple flags that get copied and posted as your own. Now, some of these flags differ in the sense that Bob's French flag might use cyan, while Joe's uses light blue. That's fine as long as the difference is clearly visible.
Flags aside, many banners on PMC are just copies of other people's original work. Just imagine inventing something, and then having someone who made an exact copy profit more than you. That's like copying and pasting this blog on your own blog. An outsider might not care, but it really sucks to be plagiarized, although you created the banner. This needs to stop, and you can do something to improve it!
Now, I know, you're very lazy and you don't want to compare the dates of when all 50 Russian flags on PMC were made, I get it. But, if you want to use the banner, do it anonymously. Unless you are sure that this person is the original creator, just use the banner without showing support for the "creator" that actually copied. Now, I know how brutal of a tactic that is, but you can't support thieves, right?
Helpful Resources
More on Blogs
More on Skins
Grammar Help
A Shading Tutorial
To Be Updated...
Updated 2 time(s)
Thank you Jimmy for reading this long blog. I would appreciate you showing me some support by posting a comment below. I also wouldn't mind a diamond and/or sub. Thank you guys for 10 subscribers! You guys are awesome and thanks for supporting my work.
| Credit | Thanks to CheatSource for the awesome thumbnail. |
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Update 1.1 : by TheCastleCraft 02/14/2015 4:01:47 pmFeb 14th, 2015
Added the blog type graph and edited some grammar.
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The perfect skin wouldn't be straight out of the creators imagination. The perfect skin would have a simple design that people think is cool or can relate too. I mean a ninja-cyborg-horse might be original, but I can't imagine anybody saying "Hey, that is the best skin ever! I want it on my player!"
I could also go on a long rant about how shading isn't nessecary so long as you can depict detail without it, but then I'd be here all day.
The problem is, as you mentioned, the amount of people not putting in enough effort is skyrocketing, and along with it, a larger population that doesn't care wether something is poor quality or not. It's like a spiraling black hole of doom.
As the ammount of people who don't put in quality grows, so does the number of people who don't care. This bothers me so much, especially the skins as you mentioned. Teen skins that took three seconds to make will now get more veiws than something which someone took alot of time and effort to make, AND it was an original idea.
Please, PLEASE continue this post. The PMC community needs to know that this is becoming a huge problem.
+1 Diamond for you, keep it up!
I give this a 100/10