Group's Submission Limits Changed

I have changed the submission level from two pieces per week per artist to two per month per artist.

I can always change it back or to something else later if need be.

When I was first a moderator of this group, at co-founder status, I think the group had about 500 or so members.

After I inherited the group from Jussta and became the new founder, a couple of months ago, the group was around 1,500 members.

We are now at 2,200 members.

We have been getting a little more art sent in the past few months than before, or so it seems to me.

We have one co-moderator who's pretty consistent about voting at least once per week or every other week, and some of the other moderators are very busy with their careers and personal lives and don't have time to drop by often.

I appreciate any involvement with the group the moderators put forth, but a lot of maintenance falls to me pretty regularly.

It's kind of hard at times keeping up with a group of 2,000+.

I would like to see if lowering the submission level from 2/wk to 2/month will make running the group a little easier.

New Co-Moderators Welcome

If you are someone who would be interested in co-moderating the group, please feel free to contact me via the group's note system to inquire about that.

Maybe if the group had more co-moderators who visited regularly, we could accept more art.

Other Group Changes

I will be moving some time next year.

At that time and shortly before, as I will be packing up my things, I won't have time to visit the group and vote often.

I'm also not sure what my internet situation will be like after I move.

If you think getting your art accepted or declined is slow as molasses now, just wait until it's time for me to move. Things will really grind to a halt.

Art that violates the Group's Rules / Maintaining Group Galleries

This group does not accept photo manipulations, filtered photos, or edited photos.

Despite having that rule in place, sometimes art that violates the group's rules gets past our moderating team and ends up in our gallery.

The moderating team is not perfect. We make mistakes.

Sometimes, the art that slips through that violates our rules is art that two other moderators voted on that I never even saw.

However, since I'm the one who most frequently visits the group's admin area and who responds to artist inquiries, I get the brunt of the criticism and complaints from artists over declined work, or whatever else.

It's not always easy to spot legitimate digital paintings from filtered photos, photo manipulations, and edited photos. It's not always obvious which are genuine and which are not.

If a piece that looks suspicious comes through our group voting queue, I sometimes ask the artist for more information on how the work was made so that the other moderators and myself can gauge if it's a legitimate piece or not.

I am not comfortable coming right out and accusing artists of fraud and dishonesty.

I have had moderators at other groups accuse me of art theft and other things that were not true, and I know how offensive and insulting this can be - and which is why I try not to automatically jump to conclusions.

If the other moderators and myself talk to an artist in private about a work and their explanation sounds honest and compelling enough, we will usually vote the work in. We are taking the artist at his or her word.

On other occasions, we get so many submissions per week, we don't strictly investigate each and every work that comes through the queue.

I simply do not have the patience to sit there and construct a politely worded inquiry on every questionable work that is sent to our group, and the moderators don't always have the time, so we have to make a judgment call.

I took this group over as a courtesy, otherwise Jussta, the original group founder, would have closed it over a year ago.

Nobody is paying me to moderate this group. I do this so that people can share their celebrity art with other people.

For this, I usually end up getting lambasted and chewed out in private by artists who are unhappy that their art was declined, or they complain that we moderators are horrible at running this group, complete with suggestions on how they think we should be doing our duties.

Someone suggested to me in private that I need to go through the group's galleries once per month and pull each fraudulent piece - first of all, it can be very hard to determine what is a legit piece and what is not.

You may think it's a piece of cake to spot the forgeries, but it's really not.

And removing art is not so simple when you're the one who gets confronted by angry artists wanting to know why their work was removed (or declined).

Secondly, I don't know if I would feel comfortable unilaterally pulling art that is already in our gallery that the other moderators voted in.

If I began removing art the other moderators voted in, it sort of makes their moderating participation a mockery and a waste of their time. I'm very grateful for whatever time they contribute here and don't want to insult that.

If you go through the Famous Faces group galleries, yes, you may find artwork that appears to violate the group rules, and maybe it actually does - as I said, the moderators make mistakes like every one else, but we do try to maintain a certain level of quality.