I'm just happy to be here.

I can honestly fully agree.

I'm just having fun bro

This is what i thought too.

"the first 3 positions should always be the highest quality pieces, position 4 equally good, but maybe not as original. 5 & 6 good quality, but maybe lacking originality, or in some other aspects.
The last one should be the place for people that are trying hard, but the art is not as good as the rest"

"Was this artist listed before? (How often? Maybe it's time to give a chance to someone else"

I mostly agree with the list.
First place, is truly a very well made piece.
I would move your 2nd pick lower, while semi realism is hard, this piece lacks sharpness and is a bit too smudged for my taste. In comparison, 3rd place on your list has more definition to it.
I would also swap 6th and 7th picks

Also, I went over last week's entries, and I would put this pixel icon on the winners list - while the work itself is of small format, it is a well made pixelart piece, with proper color palette and idle animation.

https://peakd.com/gif/@captainglondo/splinterlands-art-contest-week-163-venari-crystalsmith

@aak23 I appreciate that you actually took the time to make the list you would have selected. I think you have some interesting points in your critiques... though, i think there is a difference between constructive criticism and just negative criticism.

It's good to have this list to compare and contrast how we went about selecting last week's winners. Ironically, we actually applied some of the things you don't think i consider. Thanks for the suggestions and moving forward we will keep in mind some of what you have expressed.

I wish you guys would support the art you like in the comments as much or more than you do agreeing to disagree with the winners. I think you all should start your own SL art contest and curate your entries with your upvotes and give out cards or packs to your selected winners.

Thanks for the response.

I won't comment the choices that were made: as in sports in a contest, contestants just have to comply with decisions. I mainly use the contest as a personal trial, forcing myself to follow guidelines in a certain delay, so I'm happy my own piece was selected among the winners as a bonus.

Although, I like the part of @aak23 's text highlighted by @Ryoudo, as it gives a neat checklist to apply at each round of selection process, adding a bit of technical objectivity in a highly subjective domain:

"the first 3 positions should always be the highest quality pieces, position 4 equally good, but maybe not as original. 5 & 6 good quality, but maybe lacking originality, or in some other aspects. The last one should be the place for people that are trying hard, but the art is not as good as the rest" "Was this artist listed before? (How often? Maybe it's time to give a chance to someone else"

thanks a lot for this !! means a lot

Well if you think about it it's a bit redundant that they are choic choosing winners to make nfts for the community that expresses they don't like them LOL. and it seems the only reason they are picking the number one is because they wa want to release 3D art nfts of their individual cards. Period. maybe hire him then instead.

Thank you for giving your opinion @fortheloveofsl and @kennysgaminglife. A voting system sounds like a good idea, but the people would vote for their "friends", thus making the results biased. Maybe we could find some extra features to make the voting valid?
Another suggestion would be to add more juries, every single one of them would make a list of their picks and each position would have different scoring, for example, 1-3 place would get 3 points 4-6 2 points, 7th place 1point. Then everything would be counted and the final list would be created based on the score.

I don't want anyone to feel discouraged from participating or from using their creative engines to produce art of something that they enjoy. People of all skill levels should be free to express themselves and receive recognition and positive feedback of their hard work and effort.

I've been doing this for a long time, this is how I put bread on the table. But it's taken me a lot of hours to get to that point. I'm comfortable with not winning, because I'm at the point where I do this for a living anyways. However, If you've pursued a creative medium before then you've been at that starting line, and being directly compared to others can be uplifting, but it can also be equally as damaging to be reminded that you're not at that level yet.

It's a difficult situation. I feel like when there's competition and placing involved then this debate of objective/subjective criteria follows close behind. Especially when prizes are involved. I'm almost curious to see what people would think about shifting focus to something more akin of a "Community Spotlight", still having it be open ended, but choosing a number of participants and distributing rewards equally amongst them to avoid this sort of hierarchy.

Could also say don't put too much stake in the results and just do it to have fun, but it's hard to satisfy everyone.

Just my 2 cents.