Elle_Eccentric wrote:
I'm not a fan of custom ranks.
But I know some who are.
Are you opposed to us doing the work and giving are prizes to others.
It's not as special that way I understand but some people just don't have the time.
Or would it be frowned upon... because we are in some ways doing their homework for them.
For me, that's part of it. Working on a wiki and then giving the rank away to a board friend smacks of cronyism. Form a clique and exclude all the "have nots", and so forth. It smacks of immaturity and cheating.
If the rank is won in a contest, giving it away to the bottom finisher, or someone who didn't even bother entering, is a slap in the face to all the other people who entered and scored higher. Don't they deserve it more than the loser? And isn't it also an affront to the OP who ran the contest and the judges who worked in it? These people dedicated a lot of time and effort to fairly select the top entries; and someone just comes along and tries to overrule them by jumping the rankings to pamper a friend.
Under conditions like that, would you even bother to do the work of entering a contest? All you have to do is get close to the really talented front-runner off-board and convince them to bestow the prize on you. After all, they win a lot of contests and can spare one of the rewards.
I'm not against customs. They make the place fun and rewarding for those who are willing to work to get them. They also represent a lot of work on the part of a lot of people, including those who petitioned for them and had to determine a fair way of giving them out. But there are too many people who want to "beat the system" at everyone else's expense. That takes the fun out of it.
The same way you see people complaining that kudo-sharing "cliques" have formed, we will soon see the same accusations about ranks if the giveaway practice keeps going on. As much as some people enjoy reading the drama that ensues, I think that others will get discouraged and disgusted and just abandon the boards as a result. They aren't part of the "in-crowd" and have no chance of sharing the wealth. So why stay?
In the end, customs defeat the very purpose for which they were created, if they are abused. Like you said, everyone should be doing their own homework.
Humbug has turned down my requests for customs in the past because there are so many. You can bet that I would not be happy if someone would take a rank I worked hard to get approved and just gave it away on a whim.
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