I'm realy enjoying this, thanks Barb!!

OK, forget my comments on improving the HOT20, because this looks very much like the HOT20 I wished to see all along. A fantastic pick, and anyone visiting our community will have a pretty good idea of the diversity and quality in fractals posted here. Excellent work, I would V for you if I could .... LOL

Maybe another idea might be: deserving your right to vote. Say we have a place where you can post 1 image each month, a bit like the Monthly Themed Challenge, and anyone could vote for it there. No names, like in the MTC, so the work would be anonymus. Say that if you make the top 3-5-7 or whatever 3 times, you get the right to vote on images in the main gallery. And you could just vote for fractal images, since you earned your rights in the fractal community. Want to vote for Terragen images, then try to get yourself voting rights in the Terragen community. And maybe when you get yourself voting rights, there could be an obligation on your part, to never let anyone know for which work you voted, so no more "V"s. Breaking that rule could lose your voting rights, and you would have to go through the same qualification process again. Just my thoughts for the day ;-)

That is not such a bad idea, but it already exists. If I go to the gallery, I get the latest images, if I click on next page, I get 18 others... But there is something in your way of thinking, maybe we could use this for the images who have been voted on ?

After reading all these usefull suggestions, I still think that the main thing is getting rid of the competitive element, with limiting 1 image per day in the Showcase20. That way we could, like Rick once said, get into competition with our only worthy competetor, ... our software. For those of us who are a lot in the hot20, you can try to achieve 7 different images a week. That's going into competition with yourself. That's healthy, and that's how you make progress in your work. But it will leave at least 10 places open for other worthy artists here. Let's not be selfish, let's share. And if you want competition, enter the monthly theme challenge. And yes, it IS anonymus there.

I'm not so keen on a panel picking the images, anyway that happens already once a week with the showcase image. Maybe we also could (with 20 artists for 20 images) do away with the ranking in the hot 20, no Top 20 anymore, just show the 20 images without numbers and randomly. That should get another part of the "HOT" competition away, and lead us to a representative showcase of 20 good and-or popular images each week. Think Rick's idea of voting when posting in a certain gallery is also a good way to settle fragile nerves. And I see his point around that whole 'V' thing. I always used it for exactly the reason he stated, nl, to encourage people who make progress in their work. To show that I found an image special. But I'll stop doing that from today, cause I see that it can hurt as much as help.

Well, about six months ago, when I took up about a quarter to a third of hot 20 positions, I got fed-up with the whole thing. That's when I asked (privately) to restrict the number of hot 20 entry's in one week to 1 work (the best one at that time) for one artist. That way we would see at least 20 different artists and (hopefuly) styles in the hot 20. That would give us a more representative view of what the fractal community has to offer. But as you stated many times before, for the whole thing to work, people have to vote. No matter what system.

Hi Miche, Think we might be slightly off message here in the fractal forum... LOL... But Urchin had a very good chihuahua friend, called Oliver. They went to dogschool together in the late '90s, and were the perfect odd couple ;-)) Posted some pics for you in my gallery. We used to say that when it rained, the only thing Urchin had to do was open his mouth, to shelter Oliver from the rain... LOL Dirk

Hi Miche, Thanks for this pic!!! I like Borzoi's, we see them always when going to shows, as they are in the same breedgroup (sighthounds). Although they are both huge, you can see more of a fast moving sighthound in a Borzoi, where our Irish Wolfhounds are much more massive, fitted for long and exhausting chases on moving targets (like wolfs or deer). I once had a Borzoi in our Animal shelter for a night, (he got lost), and he almost couldn't get through the doggie door to go to the outside of his cage...LOL Just posted a pic of Dyflinn at 14 weeks in my gallery. And i might just have a pic of this borzoi in our shelter, gonna look it up for you (it's not that good a pic, taken with our low-budget digicam we use in the shelter). Thanks again, Miche have a nice day Dirk

Well, XD has a bit of a steep learningcurve. If you look in my gallery, you will find that about 80% of my fractals are created in Xenodream. If you want the .xep files of any of them to study and play with, just mail me at dirk.monteny@skynet.be and I'll send them over to you. Just ask away ;-) Mind you, I'm only about a year working with XD, so I certainly don't know all the answers.

Realy qiuck before i'm of to work. i must agree with most of what Keith has stated here about the hot20. Last time i looked i had 5 images in there. Now, I know they have quality but are they realy that good, to give me 1/4 of all places? I doubt that very much. I see the work of grb, qaryon, jockc or encrypted to name just a few, and i'll ask myself, what do these people have to do more to get some final recognition ? I believe the hot20 is a refelction of the mix of quality AND popularity. I don't believe it is popularity on it's own Keith... But anyway, don't take it too seriously, i still have to recieve my first cash for being in there ...grin... have a great day all !!

Right, this is becoming clearer by the hour. In my gallery there are about 10 images, made totaly in Xenodream, a fractalprogram, but by the technique I'm using, containing not one fractal. Is this allowed ? If not, can someone tell me where I should post them? They are not MM by a long stretch of the imagination. Anf if I'm allowed to post non-fractal images made in a fractalprogram, why can't people, who use at least a fractal amongst other elements, post them ? One of these examples is my Alchemy, the secret chamber. I use metamorphs on free holons to create this effect, but as Keith (Deagol) correctly pointed out : "Is there a fractal in there someplace?". The answer is no, but the funny thing is, i could put 10 fractals in it, and nobody would notice any difference to the image... Which brings me to my next point, what if, in a next version of XD, i could transport/transform xepfiles into objfiles, and move them into a 3D application (like Bryce). Would i still be able to do that and post in the fractalgallery. And what if I could in the future bring .objfiles into XD, would that be OK? Would XD then be categorized as a MM program? What if a group of people, who liked tubes, (just as the people from UF liked the idea of layers, of perspective, mapping on spheres, etc...), developed a fractalprogram, where you could also make your own tubes in it, map fractals on those tubes, and layer them? Would that still be considered a real fractalprogram? What I'm trying to say, is that the fractallandscape is evolving fast, and evolution has a nasty habbit of leaving purists behind ... Have a creative day, everyone Dirk

OK, this is, as far as i can remember, my first input into the fractalforum. I started out here on RR in early march, and it took me about 3 months before i figured out what those V things meant ... That was at the time that i discovered that there was such a thing as a "hot20". To my surprise I was in there ...grin... I started using that V in my messages, because that way i can let someone know his work is something else. Just telling them that their work is realy special, doesn't do much good, since 99% of comments are telling the poster that his work is great and spectacular. So, I use it as a Xtra gradation on a work. I know i could do that with IM too, but i can hardly keep up with the massive amount of work posted here already, i never write "thank you" IM's, and then i still have to create my own work, do my work in the shelter, keep my house in order, go for long walks on the beach with my dogs and try to keep Linda happy ... So, a system where, with one click, i could let someone know that her or his work means something special to me, would be a great help and a real time saver. As for "playing the favorites game" I can see and understand that point, but doing the voting anonymous, wouldn't do much to stop that practice, because people can still IM each other to tell them that they voted, so ... Ah well, back to the comments, think I'm about 3 days of works behind ;-)