Kyphis the Bard

I like this proposal. It solves the problems of 1) the same votes always going to the same players, and 2) having to decide which player to "dislike" when there are no active players in the list who I actually dislike (I usually end up choosing at random amongst the player names I don't know well, which I'd prefer not to be forced to do, especially since sometimes those might be newer players).
I would also like to bring attention to the karmic cantrips proposal I wrote up at https://miscellaneum.wordpress.com/2023/03/19/popular-≠-interesting/ (section at the end, quoted below). Could be a standalone alternative, or the cantrips (and the reasons given) could be included along the player names as context. This could help with creating a more timely reputation system as well (e.g., I could vote based on the ratio of blessings to hexes a player has received in the past month, and whether or not I agree with the reasons given, rather than a long held grudge or rather I think they picked a cool name at the time of account creation, etc.)

 
 

The recent changes to the popularity poll made in Announcement 6231 have, to my perspective, made the popularity poll even more frustrating to engage with. I've personally never liked the idea of giving a "disliked" vote to someone, and feel like I'm arbitrarily downvoting people because I have no option not to.

To combat this, I'd like to propose a change to how the votes are actually carried out - instead of voting one person up and one person down, why don't we use a ranked voting system? Pick three names from the list, and place them in the order of most liked (value of say 3 to the first choice, two to the second, and 1 for the third).
I do recognize being able to say you dislike someone is valuable, so we could perhaps also have an optional option to rank upto three people negatively (-3 through -1), with the option to not fill out all three slots (so you might vote -3 for one person, -1 for another, and leave -2 blank but the system still accepts it as complete).

Thoughts? Something like that would probably take slightly longer to complete, but only by a few seconds and we'd no longer have to say we don't like people that we in reality just don't have an opinion on (while still having the option to express our selves if there are actual issues in the community).
Does anyone have alternative ideas on the popularity voting?

The recent changes to the popularity poll made in Announcement 6231 have, to my perspective, made the popularity poll even more frustrating to engage with. I've personally never liked the idea of giving a "disliked" vote to someone, and feel like I'm arbitrarily downvoting people because I have no option not to.

To combat this, I'd like to propose a change to how the votes are actually carried out - instead of voting one person up and one person down, why don't we use a ranked voting system? Pick three names from the list, and place them in the order of most liked (value of say 3 to the first choice, two to the second, and 1 for the third).
I do recognize being able to say you dislike someone is valuable, so we could perhaps also have an optional option to rank upto three people negatively (-3 through -1), with the option to not fill out all three slots (so you might vote -3 for one person, -1 for another, and leave -2 blank but the system still accepts it as complete).

Thoughts? Something like that would probably take slightly longer to complete, but only by a few seconds and we'd no longer have to say we don't like people that we in reality just don't have an opinion on (while still having the option to express our selves if there are actual issues in the community).
Does anyone have alternative ideas on the popularity voting?

Dear Death Ray, I do not know who you are speaking about in the case above, but as the person who used to be Ailith, I confirm my personal view of MD will never be destroyed.
It took MD and certain people in it to make me realise I had been in a debilitating deep depression for 40 odd years. I have now finally been able to recover.
I don’t know all the bad things people have done to me (in MD or outside of it), and I genuinely don’t care. I forgive them. 
I will say this in response to what you said here, whatever Mur has done or allowed – and again - I DO NOT CARE WHO HAS DONE WHAT - I forgive.
Because without MD and Mur I would genuinely not be here now. And I am grateful for that because I am in a very, very happy place.
Belated Happy Birthday, MD.

Oh man, I should have read your reply here before doing anything else, Ledah. I just did the sacrificing traditional way, directly sacrificed a 3,000 days old creature on an altar, and I was like "What the". 
That process you mentioned still works.
Poor me.

Perhaps we should discuss a settlement.

check the screenshot, its so funny.. It was supposed to know just what was written in the book (both!) and yet it gives a nice answer about something unrelated..that fits because obviously both the book and md have a coherent thought behind them, that fit in certain aspects.
 
Let me know what you think

Are you an aspiring quest creator looking to enrich the community? Do you have an idea that you think will be fun? Do you wish you had more rewards to offer your participants?
Well you are in luck, because that's where I come in!
As a relatively retired long, long time player, I have a decent stockpile of things that, simply put, I don't need to have. If you have a quest you are looking for other players to sponsor, please send me a short forum message telling me about your quest and I will happily help sponsor it.
Mostly I will be offering Silver Coins, Gold Coins, and Credits, however for the right quests I will even offer Items and Creatures.
This is a permanent offer until I post on this thread saying it is no longer available. 

I'd suggest to have Ledah replace the elf he killed.
All we need is a nice costume and a proper make-up, I bet Confused Santa won't notice the difference. 😄

Wings
I like the symmetry in this one. It's the best "circular frame" I got so far. To get this one, I pulled a continuous stream from the bottom and another from the top, with a slight difference in length on the latter. The trick is not to pull all the way to make the streams meet. I left some space between them to create the center shape.

Gotr icon

 
Pentagram (inner lines later on disapear into a clear star)
 

People that get a wishpoint for their creations and/or efforts to explain how they might be reproduced are:

Ailith, Aelis, Aia, Iashtal, Kyphis

for now. 
 

This contest ends within a week, and i will be more strict for future creations.
 
And there is a change: I am boosting up the rewards, but remove the reward for less awesome creations. I had to change this because many posted trivial creations that maybe look nice but they represent not big effort to reach them.. so, its either wishpoint for creating something very cool and at least trying to explain how to reproduce it.... and i am adding a winner reward, a spell, for whoever gets the most likes (counting any sort of positive votes)
(a spell? what spell? .. the heat spell. If you already have the heat spell, you can pick any other except admin spells, summon and chase)

 

I've been working on creating this isolated circuit by first placing four unconnected lines, then using single point clicks to weaken the feed in flows. Haven't quite isolated it fully; cancelling out the currents inwards is very difficult.

It's likely that different locations to perform single point clicks will achieve the desired isolation faster. The pattern shown above cancelled almost all of the counter clockwise momentum, but didn't do enough to mitigate the clockwise momentum (unsurprising, since the core circuit is a clockwise momentum)

You can create a sharper line by putting in two converging currents and letting them flow for a few seconds. You can then pull the resulting current around where you want for more defined results. For sharper corners, just create currents longer than your desired line then cut it short with your new current.

Sharpened the whole thing up by starting over and adding an outflow line

Smile! I created these "teeth" by placing short currents downward opposed by short currents upwards.

The whole thing collapses after a few seconds so it took me quite a few tries to get it to work satisfactorily. Below is what the above turned into after a further 15ish seconds.

Smile! I created these "teeth" by placing short currents downward opposed by short currents upwards.

The whole thing collapses after a few seconds so it took me quite a few tries to get it to work satisfactorily. Below is what the above turned into after a further 15ish seconds.

Here is my Toast Lamma

This is awesome! Here is my submission (for now):
The Heart-Seeking Wasp.

Please welcome the allmighty One-eyed Whatever!
 

Instructions (I'd say reproduction is quite hard):
Position the mouse at the upper middle part of the screen (both outside and inside the particle region seem to work), then move it down quickly and then hold click (I think click -> release -> click again might also work) while moving faster enough so the screen "thinks" you hit two slightly separate regions (the lower one slightly stronger than the upper). Then you just have to let the particles flow. I tried to aim for horizontal symmetry, but I think the slightly asymmetry made the cool effect towards the bottom.
 
I think I got really lucky with the "sting" on the first drawing (lowest part of the screen ). I tried reproducing it today and the best attempt I got was this (I ended up "activating"/clicking three regions). One thing that helped slowing things down for more control was having another tab with google meet open and my camera turned on.
 

Menacing eyes
Reproduction instructions: don't remember exactly 😅. I think perpetual motion makes things harder. I remember starting from the top with a couple pulls towards the bottom, then two small upward pulls on the inner part of the "eyes". After that, I made a lot of little adjustments that I don't remember and let things flow from there.

Symmetry is somewhat possible, provided one follows the same direction as the existing flow. The above was drawn by merely drawing two (diagonal) figure 8's.


This is my attempt at laminar flow:


This was achieved by moving from the top to the bottom in parallel lines in one direction only. When there are small eddy currents, these can be laminarised by simply drawing over them - again, in the same direction.

Exercises in symmetry, trying to obtain a Chewbecca-ish face:

Theme: Explorer Archivist
Account: Kyphis

(Also I just wrote this as a lark; it is a serious entry but if I win I would like to donate my prize to the first entry that did not otherwise win a prize)