Aug. 17, 2019, 7:56 p.m.
友 Hoshino☆ EN

Sukutomo Q&A

Communication, transparency, and clarity are extremely important to us here at Sukutomo! While they are skills that always have room for improvement by our staff, we’re dedicated to make those improvements due to its high priority for us! We want to hear from you guys directly~!

Introducing this Q&A that will help us in providing answers to any of your questions and concerns! Have a question for us that you’ve been meaning to ask, but not sure where to put it? Click below, ask us your question, and submit! You’re all set after that~ We’ll be editing questions and answers into this post. Please keep checking back to see if yours was posted!

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Questions that start with (-) were added by staff and don't come from the form.

Answers containing (->) mention actions taken thanks to this Q&A, or shortly before.

We are answering ALL the questions and concerns you have, so go wild!

About this Q&A

Why is this not anonymous?
- Anonymity can make people agressive and we care about the mental health of both users and staff who have been going through a lot simultaneously as of late. In addition, we want to be able to come back to posters for clarification when needed.
(-) Why this now?
- We have read a lot of public acusations, which resulted into heated debates which never led to actionable solutions or conclusions. Both sides feel they've been talking to a wall and the hopes for this Q&A is to reduce that stress.
- We want you to know that you are heard and that we care. We find it a priority to be able to listen to anyone who expresses concern for the site, because Sukutomo would never be the best Sukutomo it can be without feedback from you!
- We want discussions to be productive and result in possible solutions. We believe this can be achieved by keeping both questions and answers short, clear and concise! By keeping all the responses in one place, this reduces the chance of repetitive questions and responses, inquiries getting lost in translation through posts and comments, and the like~!
How can we trust that you really will answer every single question?
- We're gonna start by writing all the controversial and inquired questions we could think of in the Q&A first, to show you we're not here to brush over things! Of course, it's up to you to trust our good faith. We want to reach out to the community in an honest manner, as we have no reasoning to not answer a question.
(-) Who is writing the answers and the (-) questions?
- This is a combined effort from our staff team. We write together on collaborative documents before posting anything publicly. This helps especially in making sure questions get answers!
You can respond to people's criticisms without going "we're really clumsy and unprofessional omg :(" it looks like you're after pity
- We're not looking for pity, but we're looking for understanding. Understanding that you can't have the same expectations from big social networks like Facebook, and small hand-made sites developed and moderated by a small group of people on their free time.
Why is the Disqus on the Q&A post locked?
Not a question but y'all disable commenting so uhh...stop self-deprecating whenever issues are bought up.
- Heated debates in the comments have not been going anywhere so far, so we would like to write short, concise and clear answers to short, concise and clear questions.
- We didn't allow comments at first to avoid more heated debates and keep things approachable and easy to read for everyone.
- (->) After receiveing some feedback, we decided to open the comments. They'll be moderated for the reasons listed above.

Questions about Fan Awards

Please take a look at our giveaways FAQ!

(-) What are the judging criterias?
- See guidelines
(-) There have been incidents in the past of judges/staff not following the guidelines. (Post criticized as "too long", for example)
- Though we try our best to proof-read, we don't always have time to do so, or things can get past us. We apologize for these past incidents, and we would like to ask you to talk to us if you're not happy with a past judgment.
- (->) All votes critisizing length were deleted.
- (->) In the future, if we can't pre-moderate before posting, we will wait until we have time to do so! We will post the winners later, with apologies.
(-) The guidelines for judges are unclear.
- The guidelines came from feedback we got earlier this year (sadly not through the feedback form but through public discussions). We did wat we could to improve the guidelines at the time, but we acknowledge there’s always room for more clarity and ideas! We implore anyone who wishes to improve them to contact us if they have any suggestions! A kind user came to our Discord and is working with us on re-writing the guidelines. If you would like to contribute to that, please Contact us or use our feedback form! We understand that the judging process is very important, and want to make the necessary changes that could make events involving them fun and welcoming for everyone~
(-) Awards are organized in an unprofessional way.
- Indeed! We are not professionals, just fans hosting these for fans. We understand we’ve made mistakes in the past, and we will undoubtly make mistakes in the future. This does not stop us from wanting to improve, as we strive to make the Fan Awards as accessible as possible. This is also why user contributions are so helpful because we can learn from these instances, and try to apply a better solution for next time! Please be patient, understanding and compassionate towards Love Live! fans like you who show interest in these events! We gain nothing besides the joy knowing we could create fun, exciting and innovative events like these for fans of a franchise everyone is passionate about. Together with staff and user support combined, we can make events like the Fan Awards a positive way to display love and appreciation!
(-) Entries with merch or that show money spent always win.
- Our guidelines explicitely make sure money spent is never taken into account, but rather things like stories behind items or ways to present items (or lack of). If you look at winning entries, they always have something more than simply merchandise that show their love, passion, and effort, and those were the reason they won. We do not take money spent into account, but want to give those who enter to still have the opportunity to express themselves (an instance of this being if items have meaning or sentimental value and they wish to explain how and why).
- (->) In addition to the existing giveaways FAQ, we've added a more explicit line on merch in the rules directly! Please take a look!
- We considered banning merch altogether, but decided against it as shrines (with or without officially licensed merch) are a way to celebrate birthdays and show appreciation to the girls we all know and love.
(-) Are only judges allowed to vote?
- Due to our lack of judges, we also allow staff and contributors to judge. They didn't go through training and strict selection, so when time allows it, we try to pre-moderate votes from non-judges.
- (->) A weight has been added to votes from judges in score calculations.
- (->) We changed the judging form to emphasize more on the updated guidelines.
- (->) In the future, if we can't pre-moderate before posting, we will wait until we have time to do so, and we will post the winners later, with apologies. We want to be able to have something constructive for those who participated to read, and we’re working to make that more expressed in these posts!
(-) Who organizes the Fan Awards?
- The staff member in charge left the team a few months ago, so we currently don't have anyone who can take care of organizing the Fan Awards.
- Though it's not their role, db0 currently takes care of them as a backup solution. Their tasks from their main roles (Developer, Circles manager and accountant) have a higher priority for them, which means tasks are optimized with scripts and manual tasks are kept to a minimum:
  - posting the announcement post, closure post and winners post
  - asking the judges panel, staff and contributors to fill the judging form and sending reminders when needed
  - computing scores for all the entries and generating the list of winners
  - messaging winners for their details and participants for their feedback
  - asking artists and designers for digital prizes and messaging them when their deadline passed
- We received suggestions of things we could do to make sure those who entered feel loved and recognized, or just to improve the Fan Awards in general. We were able to implement some of them, but any suggestion that requires more manual work from the organizer cannot be implemented as long as we don't find a new organizer who can dedicate more time to polishing these events. We hope that despite the lack of a sole organizer, that the staff collectively can provide a positive, fun, and non-stressful way to join things like the Fan Awards!
(-) What's the best way to give you feedback on Fan Awards?
- We have a feedback form. We read everything that gets posted there, so please send in any thoughts you may have! Each and any is a huge help to us improving, and we greatly appreciate it!
(-) Have you even done anything to fix the awards/giveaways?
- We have!
  - A huge rewrite of the "Birthday Giveaways" has been done earlier this year after we noticed using the term "Number 1 Fan" got us more entries, which also made us rename to "Number 1 Fan Elections".
  - Afterwards, while the feedback form was mostly positive, we got some public backlash and general distaste regarding the name. As a response, we renamed them to "Fan Awards".
  - In addition, we put more emphasis on our judges panel to ensure the awards weren't "an unfair popularity contest" or in favour of anyone.
  - To show more recognition to participants who didn't get winning titles, we added a section called "Honorable Mentions".
  - When people brought up that entries with merchandise were more likely to win, we wrote guidelines to ensure money spent was not taken into consideration, but to empathise passion, creativity and effort as the focus of posts (with or without merch).
  - When we were told winners were sometimes announced late, we changed the announcement time to a more reliable time and we made scripts to announce the winners. We also took less time reviewing judges comments, which turned out to be less effecient (see below).
  - When we saw some participants feeling left out, we decided to write a small comment on all entries and include all of them in the Honorable Mentions section. Sadly, this took a lot of time and we weren't able to keep it going without burning out. It is encouraged to staff and non-staff to show support in entries and overall to express good sportsmanship in any posts they’re able.
- And now?
  - (->) Fan Awards details have been fully re-written to emphasize on the community coming together to show their love rathen than a contest against each other. This includes explicit rules to post with the hashtag without wanting prizes, the importance of participations, emphasis on prizes being only for people who went all out and not invalidating anyone else, and more. Refer to Chika or Honoka awards for all the changes.
  - (->) Judging form has been changed to include what stood out in a selected entry, between Creativity/Originality, Passion, and Effort.
  - (->) We decided to take the time needed to review judges comments to ensure guidelines are followed thorougly, even when it means announcing winners later than planned.
  - (->) A new judge who joined recently offered to take over the task of writing a comment for all entries! \o/
(-) Why did you start the Fan Awards (previously Birthday Giveaways)?
- A lot of our users were only using the cards side of School Idol Tomodachi, and we wanted to bring more users to our social network.
- Ultimately, after kickstarting it ourselves, we wanted it to be fully organized by the community without our help, and we wanted the prizes to be given from community members to community members.
- In the end, it's mostly existing members of our community who participated and the giveaways didn't help the social network grow. We also didn't get enough people who offered prizes, so we kept offering prizes ourselves.
(-) What are your motivations to keep running the awards?
- It makes us happy to see the community come together to celebrate our idols birthday. The passion and creativity we see blow our minds every time.
- Our feedback form receives a lot of positive comments of encouragement that motivate us to keep them going.
- However, we won't be able to keep them running indefinitely, and we hope you'll understand it when we close them in the future.
Why don't you open up applications for giveaway judges? You admit you don't have enough of them and it gets round the issue of winners almost always being too close to the judging panel. Would make for fairer analysis imo
- It is definitely true that we could use more judges, and more judges help with proving accusations such as someone winning because of any relations to the judging panel to be entirely false! They are currently open, and get frequently posted! Applications for judges have been posted on the bottom of results posts to the Fan Awards for months. They can also be found in the opening post for Chika’s and Honoka’s Fan Awards this time! If you're interested in becoming a judge, please refer to Chika's/Honoka's posts as we included our updated guidelines alongside the judging application!
i brought this up before and feel it hasn't properly been fixed. under birthday contests, it should be explicitly stated that certain ranks cannot get certain prizes depending on how many you can give out. it's still too vague.
- (->) Thanks for your feedback. We have changed the sentence from "Winners are eligible for digital or physical prizes based on their rank." to "Winners are eligible for digital or physical prizes based on a calculated score and may vary from awards to awards.".
- We tried our best to make it clearer, but we're open to suggestions.

Questions about other community events

When will non-birthday giveaways like petit idol studio be returning?
- We are currently preparing Petite Idol Studio 2019, which we want to organize this fall to cover a different season.
- The School Idol Cafe will also be organized this fall.

Sukutomo Q&A

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About this Q&A

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