[I] Confusion with what is/isn't allowed with customs/bribes

[JadeEye]

(I just want to thank the staff for allowing this forum to be opened <3 I really hope things are solved this way!)

One of the things that has bothered me for a long time is that there is very little uniformity across all the colorists in terms of what kinds of edits are allowed and what kind of edits are not. I've seen several instances of people being told no to certain edits, yet within a month or two the very thing they were denied is being allowed with another person. It really isn't fair and gives the impression of favoritism, even if that's not the case.

I think part of the problem is that colorists are not being told what is allowed, point-blank, and when they need to ask if the line is fuzzy. I also think that people are getting very creative with finding ways to 'cheat', meaning that the illusion of the illegal edit is there , but it's not genetically there, so it hasn't really broken the rule (I hope that makes sense). However, the go-around is so seamless that intense confusion results; people think that the edit is now allowable.

::A few instances I have witnessed::

==Hippogriffs being denied at first, then the WoW event allowed soquili in that had beak 'masks', yet it was not clear that these were masks ONLY. People denied hippogriffs then become angry. THEN, another hippogriff soquili comes out and that one looks 100% genetic, not masked.

==Issues with pelts and what is/isn't allowed on non-skinwalker soquili vs. true skinwalkers. It gets to the point where it's very hard to distinguish what actually is or isn't a skinwalker. I believe there was an instance of a non-skinwalker breeding that the colorist thought WAS a skinwalker. It resulted in the colorist having to redo the soquili from the breeding.
Clarification:

Kamiki

RE: the skinwalker/non skinwalker breeding.

Since this was my breeding here's what I understood happened.

There were rules set that there was a SMALL CHANCE that a purewalker x not a purewalker could produce purewalker foals.

So Kumiho (purewalker) bred with Cerb (pawed mutant) and the colorist made 2 of the babies purewalkers because no set percentage was set.

But someone (or someones) went ballistic that "HOMG PUREWALKERS HAVE TO BE SO RARE!?" that they made the colorist redo them.

Now, I like pawed mutants just as much as skinwalkers, but this kind of leads back to my thread I made on the extreme crazy rarity of purewalkers.

........... I guess I just wanted to clarify what I understood happened there because I always felt so damn bad the colorist had to redo 2 of the foals from scratch over a misunderstanding and over-reaction.

SO YES...

I do think there are things that are kind of off kilter about what's allowed and isn't allowed.

==Soquili so edited, you can hardly tell there's a horse under there.

==The rules regarding mutants completely blow my mind. I've been with this shop for years and I still don't entirely get it. I see things that have body changes that don't get labeled as mutants...yet from the rules, they should be? Please clarify and stick to it! crying

: razz roposed Solutions::

I think that colorists need to be expressly told what is and isn't allowed and a list of such things might need to be posted in the colorist forums if it hasn't already for a reference. Freedom for colorists is great and all, but there really needs to be a defined line of either Yes! or No! in terms of what is allowable. Colorists need to be held to this and if they don't follow it, then they need to be reprimanded and fix the problem. I don't want to create more work for anyone, but if there's anyway someone can okay projects and stuff before they are released, that might help.

In terms of the buyers, they NEED to stop trying to cross the line. I know the shop is huge, but there has to be some way to get people to agree to certain rules and abide by them. I think if the rules are cleaned up and cut down, that might help. Less reading = higher likelyhood it actually gets read.  

[Pepzilla]

Agreed at trying to cross a line.

@people-
If the horse isnt a ******** horse anymore it doesnt belong in Soquili, end of story. Keep your frakenmonster mashes out of the shop. Quit trying to one up the next person with the coolest edits youve ever seen.
(This also goes for like.. wings... the amount on Soqs is becoming really absurd)

I think that a clear set of rules can be dug out of the pile of wordyness that is already in place. The restrictions are all there but hidden under this and that and easily stepped over and loop-holed through. =[  

[Kamiki]

RE: the skinwalker/non skinwalker breeding.

Since this was my breeding here's what I understood happened.

There were rules set that there was a SMALL CHANCE that a purewalker x not a purewalker could produce purewalker foals.

So Kumiho (purewalker) bred with Cerb (pawed mutant) and the colorist made 2 of the babies purewalkers because no set percentage was set.

But someone (or someones) went ballistic that "HOMG PUREWALKERS HAVE TO BE SO RARE!?" that they made the colorist redo them.

Now, I like pawed mutants just as much as skinwalkers, but this kind of leads back to my thread I made on the extreme crazy rarity of purewalkers.

........... I guess I just wanted to clarify what I understood happened there because I always felt so damn bad the colorist had to redo 2 of the foals from scratch over a misunderstanding and over-reaction.

SO YES...

I do think there are things that are kind of off kilter about what's allowed and isn't allowed.
 

[JadeEye]

King Inversitle

Agreed at trying to cross a line.

@people-
If the horse isnt a ******** horse anymore it doesnt belong in Soquili, end of story. Keep your frakenmonster mashes out of the shop. Quit trying to one up the next person with the coolest edits youve ever seen.
(This also goes for like.. wings... the amount on Soqs is becoming really absurd)

I think that a clear set of rules can be dug out of the pile of wordyness that is already in place. The restrictions are all there but hidden under this and that and easily stepped over and loop-holed through. =[

XD I know the restrictions are there...I've seen them myself at one point, but like you say, they are so buried that no one is going to bother to look. The average gaian has an attention span of a gnat. :<

If there's a way to police it, that would really help. Maybe one dedicated person to check the forms of people who win things that the colorists can confer with and reach an agreement on anything that looks to be attempts at getting through loopholes or whatnot. I mean, hell, this could be a job for Sirenz if she has the time. Consistency is really important and customers need to know that there are boundaries. heart  

[JadeEye]

Kamiki

RE: the skinwalker/non skinwalker breeding.

Since this was my breeding here's what I understood happened.

There were rules set that there was a SMALL CHANCE that a purewalker x not a purewalker could produce purewalker foals.

So Kumiho (purewalker) bred with Cerb (pawed mutant) and the colorist made 2 of the babies purewalkers because no set percentage was set.

But someone (or someones) went ballistic that "HOMG PUREWALKERS HAVE TO BE SO RARE!?" that they made the colorist redo them.

Now, I like pawed mutants just as much as skinwalkers, but this kind of leads back to my thread I made on the extreme crazy rarity of purewalkers.

........... I guess I just wanted to clarify what I understood happened there because I always felt so damn bad the colorist had to redo 2 of the foals from scratch over a misunderstanding and over-reaction.

SO YES...

I do think there are things that are kind of off kilter about what's allowed and isn't allowed.

Thanks for the clarification. *goes to add to her original post*  

[StarieMichie]

Please, please make the customs rules clearer. I only figured out how everything worked by asking a long time regular. I honestly would have never figured them out on my own. This is clear by the number of questions in the custom forum's thread for that. I mean, can't there just be some blanket rules and a bit more TL;DR going on?

[edit] And when I think about it more, most of the problem I had was looking at Soq when being new to the shop and going, "OMG PRETTY SUPER COOL WINGS" and then finding out that they were mutants, and you couldn't get that in customs... and then finding out that changing almost anything made them a mutant... and then finding out that you can only get custom mutants in bribes...  

[Juliette06]

See, the thing I think is confusing about customs and such is that there's no specific definition on what's 'minor edits' 'moderate edits' and 'major edits'--it all varies by colorist. Which is fine, in theory, but it makes questing for Soqs and even filling out forms and stuff hard because you could get an extra 100k tacked on for something another colorist said was too small to even worry about.

I just...I wish that I didn't have to look in allll the different colorist's custom threads at their examples of minor/moderate/major and go "D: Is mine minor or moderate...it's not major...oh, but that colorist's major edit is kind of like mine...', you know? I would like there to be express, written examples of what each one of those consists of.

-scuttles back to her corner-  

[Pepzilla]

As tacky and annoying sounding as a police would seem it actually makes things a hell of a lot easier to deal with. Out of personal experience, and as funny as this is, Ive had customers pm me during customs at whatever shop Im working at to rat out someone's rule breaking. I have had to police my customs in multiple shops before and have been overwhelmed by forms that are just not right. Then you have to pm the person, then they have to fix it, you dont know if they should be disqualified or this or that and its just awkward for both parties.  

[JadeEye]

StarieMichie

Please, please make the customs rules clearer. I only figured out how everything worked by asking a long time regular. I honestly would have never figured them out on my own. This is clear by the number of questions in the custom forum's thread for that. I mean, can't there just be some blanket rules and a bit more TL;DR going on?

I think the issue that caused the rule-plosion is that they were trying to close down loopholes that a very few people were trying to use to get around the original rules. Most people would have never tried to cross the boundry but because there's always someone who will toe the line, new rules were made to tell them specifically 'No, you may NOT do that'. I think in a lot of these cases, someone telling the buyer privately that they can't have that particular thing would suffice and reduce the text clutter in the rules.  

[moineau bavarde]

I saw the over reaction post about the skinwalker breeding in the breeding FAQ thread before it got deleted... part of the beef was that the person thought that skinwalker foals could only be obtained through purewalker x purewalker pairings and was upset that they had missed out on purewalker opportunities or some such. Basically assumed rule inconsistency.  

[JadeEye]

King Inversitle

As tacky and annoying sounding as a police would seem it actually makes things a hell of a lot easier to deal with. Out of personal experience, and as funny as this is, Ive had customers pm me during customs at whatever shop Im working at to rat out someone's rule breaking. I have had to police my customs in multiple shops before and have been overwhelmed by forms that are just not right. Then you have to pm the person, then they have to fix it, you dont know if they should be disqualified or this or that and its just awkward for both parties.

If a non-colorist were to do this job, I think it'd really help keep the insinuation of 'favoritism' down because 1) you aren't going to have to color what is being asked for, so you won't say no/yes to something depending on if you think it'd be SUPAR COOL/A GIANT PAIN IN THE BUTT and 2) You have no other obligations that require you to divide your time up from having to read the forms and okay them, THEN color.  

[JadeEye]

Juliette06

See, the thing I think is confusing about customs and such is that there's no specific definition on what's 'minor edits' 'moderate edits' and 'major edits'--it all varies by colorist. Which is fine, in theory, but it makes questing for Soqs and even filling out forms and stuff hard because you could get an extra 100k tacked on for something another colorist said was too small to even worry about.

I just...I wish that I didn't have to look in allll the different colorist's custom threads at their examples of minor/moderate/major and go "D: Is mine minor or moderate...it's not major...oh, but that colorist's major edit is kind of like mine...', you know? I would like there to be express, written examples of what each one of those consists of.

-scuttles back to her corner-

The rules regarding mutants completely blow my mind. I've been with this shop for years and I still don't entirely get it. I see things that have body changes that don't get labeled as mutants...yet from the rules, they should be? lol  

[StarieMichie]

JadeEye

The rules regarding mutants completely blow my mind. I've been with this shop for years and I still don't entirely get it. I see things that have body changes that don't get labeled as mutants...yet from the rules, they should be? lol

THAT is the part that bothers me. I've seen some and thought that same thing.  

[JadeEye]

StarieMichie

JadeEye

The rules regarding mutants completely blow my mind. I've been with this shop for years and I still don't entirely get it. I see things that have body changes that don't get labeled as mutants...yet from the rules, they should be? lol

THAT is the part that bothers me. I've seen some and thought that same thing.

Thanks for reminding me of this issue. *goes to post it up top*  

[Aria Starstone]

Definitely a clear, set standard on edits. I have no idea, some days, if the custom I'm going for will match the colorist in question's definition of 'moderate' or 'minor', when they did with a different colorist. It means I'm left staring at the colorist's post about what slots they're opening, and IF they put samples, sometimes trying to judge why Soq A is minor but Soq B is major and C over there is moderate, when I can't really see a huge difference between the edits on say, C or A.