[Clipart] August2010 Clip Art Package & future suggestions

[Brad Phillips]

Everyone,

I want to send out my thanks to those who've contributed to the new monthly package releases.  I hope we can continue to grow these releases and push for new content!  

I've been wondering about next month's release.  August seems to be a bit of an "in-between" month, as far as seasonal or holiday themes are concerned.  I think this might be a good opportunity to branch out into a themed package that is a bit broader in scope.  What are your thoughts on possible themes for this new package release?  In researching notable events in August, I keep coming back to the kickoff of the American football season.  American football seems a bit specific to me, though, so I was thinking maybe we could announce an "Outdoor Sports 2010" theme that would also be somewhat tied to the seasons we're in.

Do you think continuing with the theme/year tagging structure is still appropriate at this point (i.e. outdoor_sports_2010 or sports2010)?

Also, I have been trying to think about ways of getting more artists involved in these new content pushes each month, and I wanted to propose a few ideas to you all.

Firstly, I think a great way to entice new work from existing members is to devise a rewards system for those contributions.  Does anyone think it could be appropriate to incorporate an "Artist of the Month" feature for each OCAL release?  Perhaps a major contributing artist to the previous month's package could be featured in the next month's announcements, as well as occupying a portion of the landing page on Open Clip Art Library.  I know that contributing artist are already featured, via the "Artists" tab, but this is rather generic and dependent on amount of uploads and the length of time the user has been registered, rather than the quality or persistence of their contributions, in the current landscape.

Some questions I have about this solution involve the selection of the 'Artist of the Month.'  How would this happen?  Could it be based on number of downloads that particular works have attained within the package for that month?  This seems a little biased to me, as the first uploaded works of the package have the most exposure & time to attain downloads.  Could each artist's number of original (non-remixed) uploads for that month be incorporated in the selection?  Could there simply be nominations each month, via the mailing list?  Could there be a poll on the packages page asking users who've downloaded the package to nominate their favorite works?  Or could it be based on ratings of individual clip arts?

I also think that infrequent or passive users may not even realize these packages are open for submissions, at this point.  Perhaps, the 'Artist of the Month' homepage link could begin to spread word about the themed packages, or maybe we could simply announce each new package (in similar ways that we've done with the logo design contest) on the front page.

If we can get general consensus on these ideas, I would be more than happy to begin implementing them in the next release!

Cheers,
+Brad