The forums literally have no moderation right now, though. Only one person is running this website.
Unfortunately nothing like this will be possible until that changes.
I really need to get this out here because I for one am sick of the laid back punishment given out to those who don't follow through with their claims.
This is such a bad issue to where we have a spread sheet just to get people their part of the art. And yes I know it's been there since the art game forum begun, but it's depressing to see all the unclaim'd people and all the people who decide to not fill their claims. I have only seen one user get taken care of in the art forum games for their various claim ghostings. Things should be the same for others who don't finish their claims either.
What bothers me the most is that the people who ghost claim are almost never punished. All they get is a slap on the wrist and a 'warning'. That's literally not even a punishment, because they will end up doing it again. Warning a person does nothing, and banning them from your own thread does very little when they have a vast assortment of other art game forums to ghost for free art.
I cannot fathom how many times I have been ghosted, having to contact the claimer, having to put my own name on the google doc. I have had two experiences that have quite literally drove me up the fucking wall. I will not state which users are who to refrain from calling out said persons out to protect their identities. On one occasion I was claimed same person twice, but in two different time frames. Both times I had to go out of my way to contact them. The first forum stated 1 month while it took them 3-4 months to 'finish' a drawing that didn't match the forums description. On the other forum I was claimed by the same person for a, 'design a character above' thing which took them at least the same time frame which the deadline for that forum was the same time limit of one month. When I finally received the character after months of waiting, it was unfinished. Uncolor'd and not up to the expectations of the art forum games rule of being 'flat color'd'. So I redrew the character, color'd them, and gifted them to my lover. This person had the audacity to go to my partner and request to have the character BACK. To which he gave the character back, I was so infuriated just because of the effort I had to put into the characters ref, knowing I had to finish the job while this person just swoop'd in and just wanted their design 'back'. For gods sake, what I joke.
The last time I was ghost claimed was about a good year ago where this different person outright refused to do their claim. The 1 month deadline rolled by and I sent a friendly 'hey, you forgot to fill your claim'. Instead they read the message and decided not to respond. And I KNOW they decided not to respond because I can SEE that they READ the note. That drove me insane, because you would expect a 'sorry' or 'I'll get to it soon' but no, they read the message and ghosted me.
I am tired of there being no repercussions for not finishing a claim other than a 'warning' or a 'ban' from a singular game. There needs to be a policy about unfinished claims.
I believe there should be a system where if there's an unfinished claim from a user posting on art forums, they should be given a warning box on their comment whenever they post within the art forum games only. This would show that this person has an unfinished claim from a past art forum that passed its deadline. The only way a person would get this box is if the owner of said art forum game has the option to mark it on the users comment claim, the ghost claimer would also not be able to delete their comment if their comment was marked with a box warning. To get the warning off, they would simply just have to send their finished claim to the person they claimed, including the forum owner. That way the forum owner can remove the warning from the claim'd comment. If the forum owner is inactive then the ghost claimer could send in a ticket with the following, needed, information ; Link to the forum game, link to their claim'd comment, and photo evidence of sending the finished product to both the claimed and forum owner. If you are wrongfully warning boxed, because the forum owner either messed up or just has a biased against you, you can either message them about the missunderstanding or just got straight to the ticket desk and file a ticket with evidence that you finished your claim and how the forum owner messed up. But this system would need the help of the mod, and from what we know as of now, the mod is no help with the ticket system at the given moment. So I leave this as it's own suggestion.
I know that people mess up sometimes. That people forget about their claims. And that's ok. But it happens so often with certain users to the point that it seems like it's not an accident. If you know you can't finish something within a timeframe, then what's the point of even claiming if you're not going to follow through with your claim. It's tiring to continue to let these people just get away, scott-free, without any punishment. Knowing fully well they'll do it again.
I for one would at least like stricter policies in the art games. It's one of the reasons why I barely play in the art games anymore.
^ Agree with above user. Unless we the users of the site can come up with a little makeshift moderation system or something (I don't know, since yes only one mod ever does exist and that same mod is focusing on the coding of the site), I would say this would only be possible once there are more mods existing. :"/
^^I do agree with the both of you. I know there's little to no moderation at the given moment, but hopefully in the future there will be a better moderator team. Especially one for the art games. Since the only thing we can do is simply warn and ban users from singular threads, it's pretty much impossible or just about unheard of to take this sort of thing into our own hands.
Because even the ticket system is useless to trying to report someone for getting away with art ghosting is just about impossible now, knowing the mod is more focused on one thing when they should really be paying attention to the ticket reports. While coding the site is important, various users still have unopened tickets. Most of which are extremely important.
My main concern with putting all focus back on the helpdesk is that Lulu would risk crunching down on a billion unread tickets and sacrifice their own health for it, hell crunch is my main fear about improved moderation. I'm all for more mods, but with the current state of the site, there's nothing else we can do other than wait a while longer.
Back to the suggestion, yeah. There's too much rulebreaking in the Art Games, and that's the reason why I stopped participating in that forum.