【Leader Insight 101: Featuring】

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Hey guys, Lukeario here, with the start of a brand new series that I may start. This is leader insight 101 where I will discuss and share my views as a leader towards various topics on amino, about its general topics and things like modding. I hope this can help bridge the gap between the confusion people feel at certain things and why the mod team or other people do what they do. Today I will be talking about featuring, something is at the centre of amino and something that is often the subject of rants and views. I hope you guys enjoy as I will delve into featuring, the decisions behind it and why we do what we do.

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『What Is Featuring?』

To put it simply, featuring is a way of Amino to express itself in the form of different creative mediums in the form of a front page section dedicated to these posts. It is a showcase of creative arts and crafts which everyone sees as they enter the app. This is where artists can spread their wings and produce fantastic art, that if featured, is shown to the rest of app. This means that there is a certain standard to be featured and the post has to be of a certain quality to be featured. As you know, we, the mod team have the responsibility to feature posts as well as sorting out the front page. Now to the next section.

『Criteria for Featuring』

Now there is no strict criteria to featuring posts. There are certain things we prefer to have on a post but it’s not always a definite as it can be hard. Here are a few things we prefer on a post:

- good quality (every post obviously).

- WIPs (pictures of work in progress) as it helps to determine if you have stolen it or not plus it’s interesting to see.

- Some form of a description about what they did

- Some other information, maybe an intro etc, just a few words from the person to show more professionalism or care about what they made

- No inappropriate content or racist/ slandering comments

Now, these things are things we look for in blogs when featuring, particularly quality (obviously) and a few words with WIPs. Now, many times we have featured things that do not have WIPs or descriptions and we acknowledge this as we try our best not to do this. Often times, it’s quality makes it more desirable to feature than not feature. However, this is rare and many times we try to actively avoid these cases where effort is lacking in writing and WIPs.

『How Do I Get Featured?』

This is now the most common question I get asked, as of now and it’s a difficult one to answer. To get featured, you need a post that matches the criteria. You need a certain level of quality to be featured and it’s something that I don’t like discussing with people, because one, all art is good in its own right, two, I feel like people are trying to get a feature when asking and three, telling someone how good their art is makes me uncomfortable. We are here to showcase good crafts and arts, not feature things because we feel sorry for someone or they beg for it. Sorry but that’s how it works.

『Why Do We Feature It?』

I would like to address one thing before we continue, Art is subjective. We feature the posts we feature because we think they deserve it and posts that have matched the criteria have a higher likelihood of being featured. Some mods may agree or disagree on a post because it was featured or not. Some people may not agree with some of the features we do. The problem the team often have that leads to this is either we lack posts of a certain quality to feature and so we prioritise fresh content that may not be as higher quality as other posts around them or we follow what some people think deserves features in the post but many may not agree with this. We may feature blogs as the feed may not be full enough and so we would compensate for that lack of posts with other pieces of work. Linked to this, is that we don’t like to see the features being in the same place for hours at a time as there would be nothing fresh for people to see and the same picture being showcased for too long wouldn’t diversify the feed or show off other people’s artwork/ crafts. It is very hard to please everyone and we do our best to feature fresh, new and good quality content. Some may say that there are posts we could feature, but we decide not to feature for reasons I will discuss later on. Of course, we aren’t blaming you guys but as stated before, art can be very subjective and opinionated, with some thinking that a particular piece of art is a masterpiece whereas some may think it need improvements.

『Why We Don’t Feature It?』

Besides not matching the criteria or quality that is needed to get a feature, there are other factors that may stop us from featuring. One big reason is diversity. We want many different types of content on the feed but it can be really hard to do. Often we don’t feature s because they get featured too often or because there isn’t a gap (which we decided was 3 days) between their posts if they were to be featured. We often don’t feature art that is old because it unfair to recent artists who may have to give a spot on the feed to someone who may not even be active anymore or to a post that was created over a month ago. Sometimes, we don’t feature because the feed is too clogged up with other features and so we wait until other posts automatically unfeature (as we don’t like to do it manually as it wouldn’t be fair)

『Diversity Of The Feed』

Diversity is another big thing that has often been addressed in rants which I think is totally warranted. But like everything, there are reasons for this. As everyone knows, we feature a lot of art, more than any other medium. There are small amounts of cosplays, stories, poems amongst other things. However, it comes down to one single factor, we can only feature what people produce. As stated before, the feed needs a certain level of quality to maintain. Much of the time, other mediums either lack this quality (such as stores being too short, too many errors etc) or are non existent. Compare this to the artist of this app, many of whom are high in quality and produce great art and it’s easier to feature them to maintain that standard than featuring other mediums with less quality which may sound unfair but is something that has to be done to keep the feed functioning.

Art makes up the majority of content created as it is simply easier to do and is something that can be done with not as much time as other things such as cosplay. I believe that diversifying the feed is something that needs to be improved on, by maybe increasing different challenges or pushing people into other crafts but it is difficult when people don’t provide that content without the need for pushing by us. If art is the only thing that can reach that level for the most part then we will have to keep featuring it until quality in the the other mediums improves. Cosplays have gone up slightly I’m pleased to say thanks to a few notable individuals as well as stories sometimes. Lets hope this happens in the future to other mediums.

『Diversity In Individuals』

Another type of diversity that is frowned upon is the constant featuring of certain individuals, all the time. To put it simply, the people who are consistently featured, are the people who the criteria always and their quality is outstanding in of their posts. If these people keep producing high quality blogs, then the likelihood of consistent features increase. We have tried to curb this by adding a rule stating that featured posts for EVERYONE must have 3 day gap between them. Through this, we can give more opportunities for other people to be featured. But this isn’t as simple as people think it is. We do try to diversify the features we do but please understand that not everything, even with featuring, is as simple as 123.

『Bean’s Thoughts』

“The Front Page is meant to show content for others to enjoy, it is there to inspire s into creating works in hopes to make it. Sometimes the content we receive isn't what we expect, there are lots of other areas but we also need to think about the quality. Example, stories. I honestly like them, I enjoy reading them and featuring them gives us diversity. The problem is finding a story with QUALITY. Grammar and Spelling is important in these post and is something that can affect a possible feature. We have to that some of our s see "quality" in different views. If we don't have many stories, we don't have many quality ones either. Since we have lots of art, lots of it will be quality too. The Moderation team tries to increase the amount of works we get. Example, The February Challenge. The Challenge had been for poetry, that month we had gained more poems then we normally did. that we try to do everything for the satisfaction of our s, but it isn't as easy as you all may see.”

『In Conclusion』

Featuring is something we take seriously but in the end we are all human. We try to please everyone and give out fair features without favouritism or biased opinions. Simply put, we try to feature the best content possible, created by you guys, suggested by you guys and for you guys. We can only feature what you guys produce, a while we try to help diversify and grow more types of art or people, it’s hard to do when we are busy and we can’t also match the appeal of art. In the future, I hope to host more challenges and maybe some other things to create, fresh and new content. But we will need help with that and any help is appreciated. I hope this has given you some idea of what we think about when featuring and why we do/ don’t feature certain things as well as the diversity of the feed. I will see you all in the next Leader 101.

If you have any questions, tips, advice or constructive criticism, comment them below and I will try and read as many as I can. If you think I’ve missed out a section, I will review and take a look. Thanks!

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I hope this series can bridge the gap between the mod team and it’s decision and you guys who use app. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic and stay tuned for more Leader Insight 101.

Peace out~ :wave:

Shoutout out to Gello for the TPL

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