As the self-appointed Minister of Tempering Expectations and Steadying-On, I hereby announce that our local self-appointed County Clerk of Derpibooru County, Secretary of State, and Moon Princess impressionist has jumped the gun by quite a margin here. So to avoid a mad scramble, allow me to assuage concerns with the following official announcement:
There will be ABSOLUTELY NO OFFICIAL DEADLINE ANNOUCEMENT until the background is ready and the vector assets (chairs, tables, bar stools, etc.) are made available to all users.
Please forgive the weird brainfart-salad that this thread has turned into, this is the first time we’re organising this event, there was a little bit of feature/scope creep and it’s become a small portion of pure madness as a result.
But; the good news is that we’re gradually solidifying into something coherent and consistent and we’re determined to finish this project.
In order to do that however, we need to stop being overly optimistic and excitable with setting “official deadlines! TM” for the sake of having reasonable expectations of the time we’re all asking of our community members and artists who will be drawing people’s submissions. Unless I’ve greatly misread the situation and the mafia will murder my fellow volunteers if they don’t see casino ponies before Spoopy-Month, then I see absolutely no reason for the mad insistence of “It neds turr be dun bi SEPTEMBHUUUUURRRRRR!!”
We haven’t even started this project until Late June, the scope of the collab is much larger then normal (requiring an entirely new background and assets commissioned specifically for this event) and it’s being run by random users from the community who have to do this while managing their day jobs. Consequently, this is going to take us longer then normal and that’s okay. A Collab delayed for the sake of making the best quality picture is eventually good, a Collab rushed for the sake of saying we can do this on a DB timescale will be bad forever.
I’m already not happy with how soon we even had this poll anyway. if Mr. Moon Prince of the Exchequer, or indeed anypony at all had actually consulted me about it first, I would have preferred to have had a display of all five of the originally suggested themes available for viewing before we even began to vote-and that includes at least two suggestions for “on theme” clothing/outfits for people who couldn’t think of what they wanted their ponies to wear to the event.
But setting official dates and getting that link at the top of the page is just so exciting, isn’t it so here we are now, after asking everyone to vote on it completely blind. XP
Rest assured, that next year I will be imposing a strict “no poll until all themes are ready for appraisal” rule so this mess doesn’t happen again.
Regardless, being a passive-aggressive little shit about things isn’t helpful so I shan’t indulge myself in snark any further, typing this post has served as suitable catharsis anyway. What I ask my fellow volunteers now is that we need to be closer with communication and have a cohesive vision for the project. I hate to suggest some kind of private Discord chat or something of that nature as I’d prefer that all the discussions and updates about rules be 100% transparent and available to the public. But this thread over the last week has been an absolute fucking mess and an insult to the very concept of organisation and co-ordination so we need some way of making sure we’re all working on the same page and with the same itinerary lest we start having fights in the threads over what the rules and standards of our own project should be. If a private Discord chat is the lesser evil in this regard then we need to grit our teeth and bare it.
So again, just to re-iterate:
There is currently NO OFFICIAL DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS. Deadline to be determined at a later date when WE ACTUALLY HAVE A COLLAB TO ASSEMBLE.
Thank y’all for your time. ^^