This is completely off-topic. But it’s my own thread. And it’s me who is unfairly accused. I don’t feel like starting a new thread just for it. So please bear with it, or skip this post otherwise.

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mterek Posted:

You’re also a hypocrite.

You claim to be good at submitting styles, but most of your styles are near carbon copies of styles that were already doing well for several days before mysteriously getting a surge of downvotes right before the forum gets posted.

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So, I’m both a sore loser and a hypocritical plagiarist? Now I’m very disappointed. I don’t expect this to come from someone like you. And what the hell is mysteriously downvoted? Are you implying that I commit voting fraud, as well?

I don’t know what do you mean by “most” of my style. As far as I can remember, I have won in style design only 6 times. There were TravelAnimosity (June 28) and RAWR (July 26). Then recently I hit a streak AskThieves, Outside, PeTV, and Nientendö, missing only Fashion Fascists. (Seven wins, if you count BattleThreadz Lamebait.) I don’t think you can remember the first two wins of mine, so I’m bumuming you are ****ed off because of my most recent wins.

And every one of them, I submitted early. PeTV and Nientendö in particular gained huge leads on all competitors from start to finish. For PeTV, I consider them my masterpiece. It won in a landslide. For Nientendö, I never really like it, because the logo that narrowly lost was mine (hence the bitter style name “Seriously, the other loger [sic] is better.” ) I submitted the style and left it there in disgust. Turned out it won.

For the other two, I still submitted them early. And as you said, doing well for some time before being voted down. What do I do? I resubmit. I already know the colors used, I just tweaked some little things and submitted again, and won. For example, when the style Brave New World for Outside didn’t do well enough, I changed a few things and submitted it as Brave New World Redux, which won.

So, as you can see, your accusation of “most” of my style are carbon copies are false. If I was plagiarizing anyone, it was myself. And I believe there is no rule against submitting more than one styles, or submitting styles with a few minor differences from others.

As for my “secret” for successful design? This:

Shii Posted:

You do realize that there’s basically one way to win Forum Style, and that’s to copy the colors in the logo as closely as possible, and that typically results in many very similar forum styles.

It’s intuitive, really. The style must match the logo. You can’t pick an entirely different set of colors and hope to win. Because it usually turns out very ugly (unless you’re a damn good artist who can get away with that.)

So how do I pick the right colors? With GIMP. Its color picker tool can show color code in RGB format (i.e. 000000 – FFFFFF) which is, of course, perfect to use in ForumBuildr style submission. I downloaded GIMP to use in designing logo and topic icons for Web 1.0 Veterans in August. Before that, only two of my styles won. None of them required precise color selection. RAWR consisted of primary colors: black, white, and red, which is very easy to select. And TravelAnimosity used an entirely different set of colors (and yes, I could get away with that, and I consider it another of my masterpiece.) With help from GIMP’s color picker, I can get the exact colors, leading to my recent winning streaks.

This method doesn’t always work, though. In a logo with few primary colors, it can get boring quickly. That’s why my styles for Doprah’s Book Cult, Pushy Parents, and Fashion Fascists didn’t win. The winning styles are from people who use their own imaginations and add/tweak colors around so they aren’t too repetitive.

mterek Posted:

This is true, but it doesn’t explain why one of several seemingly generic styles gets a lot of votes at the end, netting Kitty-san 4/5 past style wins. Clearly, people must place huge value on Arial font and slightly enlarged margins, because honestly such dramatic changes don’t really impress me that much.

The keyword is seemingly generic. You see, when styles are so similar (forced by colors of the logo), it’s minor details that count. You think dramatic changes are unnecessary, because default font and margins are good enough. Voters, on the other hand, see them as boring. Hell, I’ve seen people complaining about how tables are always 600 pixels wide, center aligned, even though they look best that way (and I, for one, will not going to change it, no matter how repetitive it is.)

And you want to know my secret criteria on how to choose font and margins? Easy, there are three fonts. Since Courier has a very limited use, we actually has two. What’s their difference? Arial is tall and thin, Verdana is short and wide. If the forum logo uses tall and thin texts, I switch to Arial. If texts are short and wide, I leave the font at Verdana. Simple as that. Of course, if the logo itself uses either of these fonts, it is an obvious choice to use in the design as well. For Courier, I once tried using it in Outside, because the logo itself used it. Turned out, Courier-font-using Brave New World was voted down. So I switched to Arial, which the logo also used (Arial Black, or maybe Narrow Condensed), resubmitted with exact same colors as Brave New World Redux, and won.

For margins, there are no rule at all. I choose what looks best. Design is art, after all. For my 6 winning styles, two have body margins, one have body and logo margins, and the other three have none. Also, half of them use Arial fonts, the rest use the default Verdana. So your accusation of me using Arial and margins as a gimmick to win is also false.

I design all of my styles with painstaking attention to details, with correct colors, font, and margin, to create the best-looking forum, at least to me. I never rush anything. Even the Nientendö one, which I hate, I took time to pick the right colors, from a non-uniformed background with hundreds of color shades. That’s my commitment to design. If there is no way for me to top the existing designs (which is rare, because now I always submit quickly) I don’t submit and vote for it instead. Sometimes people agree with me and vote for me. Sometimes they don’t. I can live with that.

In the end, mterek, it’s you who’s not creative enough. It’s you who doesn’t care for minor details. It’s you who doesn’t change things from default. That’s why you lose. Now that I’ve told you my secrets, either follow it or devise a way to counter it. And stop complaining and accusing already.

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Sorry for the thread derailment. Now you can resume discussing about this week’s entry and how to fix it.