OK, OK, so I'm a little more 'inspired' about the Inspiration Points update at Deep Dreams. Since I last wrote about it, (HERE), I've come to realize how ingenious it really is!
As I mentioned in my last post, it's a great way to reward the creators who write prompts, (or successfully re-use them from others), by giving them a new 'likes badge'. Now there's even a "Dreamers" page that ranks the top 100 inspired artists, from who had the most people use their prompts down to who had the least.
On this top 100 Dreamers list, the top 5 used/inspired designs from each artist appears beside their name, for a total of 500 top rated used prompt designs.
(Top 100 artists list = top 500 inspirational images)
So what's the purpose of all of this? Why have the site admins at DDG gone through so much time and effort to introduce all of these Inspiration Points? Is it really just a new ranking system designed to show off the most popular prompt creators?
Well, YES and NO!
Certainly it rewards the artists, ranking them and showering the top contributors with many inspiration points. The system is designed to inspire these artists to create ever more desirable prompts that will be used by others.
But I think the REAL purpose of all the effort put into this new system is to attract, (and keep), NEW USERS to the site.
The top Dreamers page is a sort of shopping list for the newer users and others that don't write their own prompts. An easy to find list of the top 500 designs where people have hit that TRY IT button!
Now instead of just seeing the trending designs from the past 30 hours, or clicking on an artist's name to view their most popular worX, newbies and others who create using other people's prompts can browse a list of the most popular 500 TRY IT designs from the past 30 days.
Really, it's all quite ingenious!
Established artists are inspired to create ever more popular prompts, and newbies are inspired to use them by browsing through the new shopping list that is easy to find and access. And of course it goes without saying, hopefully EVERYONE, regardless of their eXperience at Deep Dreams, will become hopelessly addicted to the new system!
As of this writing, a few days ago DDG introduced a new algorithm for ranking the top new designs at the site, and yep, the Inspiration Points also play a part in how the site ranks its fresh artwork now.
Preference is given to Text 2 Dream designs with eXposed prompts for others to use. Publishing a design made with Deep Style or Deep Dream is automatically a disadvantage for ranking.
I feel this is wrong, designs should be ranked by their likes alone, and I feel like I should do a lot of bitching and complaining about it! But really, what good would that do me? Now that I understand the big push for Inspiration Points at DDG, I totally understand their reasoning behind it, even if I don't happen to agree with it.
The Deep Dream Generator is an ever evolving website. I'm sure that there will be many more things coming in the future, and some of them I'll absolutely LOVE, and others I might not be too crazy about.
What I do find really 'inspirational' about the DDG site is the obvious care and interest the site admins have for it, and their continuous hard work spent on improving it and keeping it popular and relevant. We really have to take our hats off for them in appreciation of all the hard work that they do there.
Now that I have a better understanding of the Inspiration Points and why they are playing such a big role at DDG, I can appreciate the new system, even if I'm not personally taking part in it all at the moment.
"X"
July 19th, 2023