The designs that won are nice... If this were a contest on nicest looking blogs, I could see how the judges scored the way they did.
However, I'm concerned that many of the designs that won are not suited to being themes, as they're rather unadaptable.
So, I think the majority of the dismay comes from a mis-communication somewhere.
I think this contest ended up being good for the community, if for no other reason than it got people showing off their themes. Any redux done now would be in poor taste, however, I do feel that once the userbase gets larger, and there is a site dedicated to themes, and the public can vote on themes, another contest would be helpful to bring in new themes.
Speaking of, I know that Geoffrey had posted that the typogarden.com will continue hosting themes, I don't know if he's planning on maintaining it, or someone else will be, but I'm glad it's there as a resource, and hopefully the site can be developed into an easily accessible repository.
On 12/21/05, Marco van Hylckama Vlieg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi guys,
I'm the author of 'Lush' so I feel an urge to respond here if you all
don't mind.
As some of you may know I've been royally pissed off by the results of
the Typo contest.
I've seen a month's hard work being beaten by half-finished, unpolished
themes that have been
whipped up in one or two days. I can honestly say that didn't feel very
nice.
HOWEVER: This has absolutely nothing to do with Geoffrey, the sponsors
and / or anyone else
who helped organizing this contest. It has everything to do with a (I
still strongly feel like this) very
poor job done by the 'esteemed judges'. Even though I'm not 'a
professional designer' I can clearly
see these results don't make sense at all and many people (including
other professional designers) have
told me the same thing. Therefore I'm not saying 'the judges are
awesome', simply because they aren't,
no matter how big their names are.
I feel they haven't taken this contest seriously at all. A clear signal
of this observation is the total lack
of coverage of this contest on any of their websites. Not even a link,
nothing, zero, zip.
I'm all for giving credit where credit's due but the judges aren't the
ones who should get much of that
when it comes to this contest. My credits go to Geoffrey and anyone else
who worked hard to
make this contest a reality.
That said, even though I hated the contest results, I'm totally against
this whole petition thing. First of
all I believe what's done is done and secondly I believe it's damaging
to Typo, Geoffrey, the sponsors
and anyone else involved. Typo is a great piece of software, it's
community is totally awesome
and it really doesn't deserve this kind of bad publicity. Personally I
haven't heard anything of this
whole petition thing but if I do I'll tell whoever approaches me with it
that I don't agree with it.
I'm seeing sites powered by Lush popping up all over the world including
blog.leetsoft.com which
is an enormous honor to me. Probably even better than winning a
powerbook in the long run.
Therefore I'm all in favor of letting this thing go and move on. I'll
post a notice on the Lush demo site
too.
Thanks,
Marco
thomas Aylott wrote:
> Woah there. I certainly hope that's not the case!
>
> Personally, I was surprised by the results. I thought Lush was going
> to get 2nd or 3rd.
> But, It would be pure insanity for anyone to complain about it at
> this point. The results are it. The winners have been chosen. The
> prizes have been given out.
>
> It comes down to this: The good themes will be used. The crappy
> themes won't be used. If you didn't win a prize and you DO get a
> bunch of people using your theme, what better prize could you have
> asked for? If you don't get anyone using your theme, maybe your theme
> sucks, let it go! Complaining about the results of a contest 23 days
> after it ended is not going to win you a lot of friends.
>
> The whole point of the contest was a HUGE success. We got like 150
> new themes for Typo. We got a huge amount of publicity. We smoothed
> some of the rough edges in the way Typo handles themes in a new
> stable release.
>
> This has been totally awesome!
>
> I think everyone would agree that… it would take a serious loser to
> want to dowse the flames of success with the fetid pond scum of
> negativity.
>
> Don't worry Goeff, most people actually do appreciate what you'd done
> to make this contest work. The judges are awesome. You have put a
> serious amount of work into the Rails community and now the Typo
> community.
>
> All the 1337 hax0rs out there, lets give Geoff and everyone who
> submitted a Theme, all the judges, and all the sponsors... a huge
> round of applause! <insert MP3 of applause here>
>
> — Thomas Aylott
>
> PS: Check out subtleGradient.com for the award-losing subtleTheme &
> subtleSpeed Typo 2.6 themes. ;)
>
>
> On Dec 20, 2005, at 4:59 PM, Geoffrey Grosenbach wrote:
>
>
>> From my vast network of informants I've heard reports that some
>> people are passing around a petition to complain about the results of
>> the Typo Theme Contest.
>>
>> I hope this is not true, but if such a petition does exist, please
>> inform the perpetrators that:
>>
>> * The contest was made possible by very generous sponsors, and
>> bothering them with your post-contest woes is not a good way to thank
>> them.
>> * No one was guaranteed to receive any prize. You should have been
>> motivated by a desire to improve Typo and to give back to the
>> community.
>>
>> I put at least 80-100 hours into the running of this contest and
>> never expected to receive anything in return. Tobias, Scott, Piers,
>> Patrick, and many others have put thousands of hours into the
>> development of Typo and have not received either a PowerBook or a
>> free pony for their efforts.
>>
>>
>> I really hope this is the last I hear of this and that we can move on
>> from the contest (which was a great success). However, please contact
>> me directly with any complaints.
>>
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Geoffrey Grosenbach
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> IRC Nick: topfunky
>> _______________________________________________
>> Typo-list mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/typo-list
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Typo-list mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/typo-list
>
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