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Hi, everyone.
The SCP Wiki has a problem with artist discoverability — there is no on-site resource that consolidates artist pages for the interests of authors looking to collaborate, people who want to see particular types of art, and artists who want to showcase a portfolio of their work. The closest thing we have is the Artwork Hub, which is difficult and inelegant to use, as it does not distinguish between individual artwork pages and artist pages. Looking at this, you can see that the situation is grave for the artist community…
To solve this issue, LOVEMARGINAL and I have teamed up with the brilliant EstrellaYoshte to create the Artist Directory, an exciting and innovative new page for SCP artists everywhere!!
Essentially, this page serves a similar purpose to Authors' Pages, but with the added option for artists to list their specialties and the ability to filter the table by artistic medium. We are aiming to add this page on the navigation bar so that it can be enjoyed by the public.
The initial response to the page has been positive in the eyes of community artists. However, when it was shared with other staff members, a tumultous debate ensued and many concerns were raised. The principal issues that arose at the heart of the discussion are summarized below:
- Clarification on certain terms:
- Artwork Page: A page containing one or more pieces of artwork. Most commonly, an artwork page centers around an individual work. Consider this the equivalent of an SCP article or a tale.
- Artist Page: A page containing a portfolio of the artists' works. These were the only art pages on the wiki before a policy change that allowed artists to post single works as individual pages. The Artist Directory is a hub listing all artist pages. Equivalent to an author page.
- Should the creation of artist pages and their submission to the Artist Directory require a number of works on the site, similar to Authors' Pages?
- Context: We originally planned to allow artists to submit their off-site portfolio or social media page to the Artist Directory, as long as they contained SCP-related works. However, it was suggested that only on-site artist pages should be permitted, which led to further discussion about who gets to post artist pages.
- This requirement is a change to current site policy, which permits any site member to create an artist page without any prerequisites or restrictions. The aim of this change is to achieve parity between Artist Pages and Author Pages.
- Should new artists be required to create novel works to fulfill this requirement, or should they be able to port existing off-site works for this purpose?
- This suggestion arose due to concerns about new artists rapidly posting their work to fulfill the above requirement. Additionally, this measure ensures that new artists are contributing to the site.
- What number of works should be required? Our initial proposal is three artwork pages in order to post an artist page.
- How should old artist pages be grandfathered into the Artist Directory? As of present, there are over 200 artist pages in existence and it is unclear how many of them actually meet the above requirements.
- Lastly, do we actually need any of the above changes, or should the Artist Directory be permitted to exist without additional caveats? It should be noted that the Artist Directory is entirely compatible with existing site policy.
Please discuss these at length for a duration of 7 days.
Thanks! 🤸♀️