Hi all,

I have been considering adjusting the rules to eliminate the "three pieces per type of artwork per artist in the gallery at one time" rule and just keep things at some sort of time-based submission limit.

This rule seems to be unpopular with the members (at least the vocal ones), and also requires a lot of work on my end to maintain.  I keep a separate spreadsheet of every members' submissions that I must update manually.  

However, I hope that you understand my motivations for having such a rule.  The idea was to encourage members to only submit the pieces that they truly feel are the best of their best works, and not just submit everything they ever create.  This group is meant to showcase your masterpieces, the pieces where you went above and beyond your usual level, the pieces that you pushed yourself with.  This rule was meant to encourage that sort of attitude.

In addition, if you keep pushing yourself like that, you enhance your skills and gradually raise your own bar.  If you look at something you created that you thought was a masterpiece three years ago, you would probably be thinking, "I could make this even better now".  I hoped this rule would capture that spirit of growth, and prevent our gallery becoming a place of stagnation.

I'd like to clarify that this doesn't necessarily mean that your masochistic pieces must take you ever longer and longer to create, until eventually you are spending years and years on them.  There is nothing that says that a quick artwork cannot also be masochistic (and, with the pieces that take a long time, you might just work very slowly, without actually pushing yourself all that hard; I personally have this problem sometimes).  I'd also like to clarify, to be masochistic, an artwork does not have to be super-crazy-detailed, until eventually you are adding in microscopic details.  There is nothing that says that a seemingly simple artwork is not also masochistic; it's just a bit less obvious for people to notice sometimes, and it's harder for me to detect and invite such artists to the group.

Finally, this rule let me be more objective in accepting submissions.  If the artist wants an artwork to be one of their three ultimate masterpieces showcased here, who am I to argue with that?  Without this rule, I might need to act as more of a filter for submissions, and I worry that my subjective biases might infect the process.

What do you think?  Please leave me comments if you have any thoughts, and thank you for bearing with me as I experiment in an attempt to make this group the best it can be.