https://www.reddit.com/r/place/comments/u27cth/communitycleaned_and_repaired_version_of_the/
created by theon502 on 12/04/2022 at 19:33 UTC*
19395 upvotes, 251 top-level comments (showing 25)
TL;DR: The Final Clean canvas, plus upscaled, diff, wallpapers, before/after, and popular overlays
It’s been eight days since r/place concluded, and we at The Final Clean are excited to finally reveal our **final canvas** following four days of cleaning and another four days correcting the little mistakes we made. In total, we received over 2000 submissions/corrections, around four times as many as in 2017. We also gathered a team of over 80 artists, doubling our numbers since the last time. In total, about 10,000 work hours were put into the project.
It was quite the journey, and not without bumps in the road. We’d like to share our experiences with you, and explain our methodology in the process.
From the get-go, we had already learned several things from 2017’s Final Clean project. First of all, better organization and bookkeeping was required. In stark contrast to last time’s “gather corrections from the Reddit comments” approach, we decided to take template submissions right from the start and compile them into a spreadsheet, with statuses to keep track of each submission. With that problem solved, we also needed to deal with possibly controversial pieces of artwork on the final canvas, such as streamer raids, cryptocurrency promotions, extremist imagery, and malicious voiding/griefing. Luckily, we hardly had to deal with the latter two, but streamer raids and crypto turned out to be a massive can of worms that we were at first totally unprepared to handle.
In general, our policy for art restoration was: If the art was present and at least somewhat recognizable on the final canvas, it was eligible for restoration. Art covered up by new art would not be restored, since it wasn’t there at the end, with the exception of if the art was covered in such a way that returning it to how it was would not affect another artwork (i.e. if the art was covered by a flat color).
There’s no arguing that streamers were a major point of contention during r/place this year. No one liked seeing their artwork completely overwritten by a streamer purposefully placing down flat colors or random pixels over theirs. However, we had to remain mostly neutral when dealing with situations like this. Our policy for streamers evolved over the course of the project, and was unfortunately unclear to some as a result, but in the end we settled on a satisfactory approach. Generally, we would analyze streamer raids/artwork under the following criteria:
In most cases, the answer to these three questions was art, no, and no, in that order. For these set of circumstances, generally streamer art would be kept, since a visitor who had never seen r/place before would have never known it was created by a streamer. This is why, for example, the Arkeanos logo is still present instead of the AnarchyChess 2 board. There were also cases of malicious streamer art, where streamers or their community would harass and tease the communities they were displacing, in which case we would remove their griefing in favor of the art underneath. All in all, there were many edge cases to deal with, and our contributors handled it well. Additionally, a group of members on our Discord server has created a spin-off project where they plan to create a totally streamerless version of the canvas, so if you’d like to participate, feel free to!
This one was a tough nut to crack. At the very start of our project, we had decided that cryptocurrency and NFT promotion would not be permitted in our final work; however, we didn’t just want to leave blank spaces. As a result, we decided to keep the cryptocurrency logos, but remove their text. This would let people familiar with those cryptocurrencies recognize the logo, while others less knowledgeable would just see a piece of artwork. This worked out in most cases.
However, things got tricky when we got to the Superstonk artwork. During r/place, the artwork had a very controversial URL on it that was under constant attack by others, due to its nature as an NFT marketplace promotion. Additionally, several users came to us detailing Superstonk’s connection to cryptocurrency and NFTs, pushing us to attempt to obscure the Superstonk artwork somewhat. We were also concerned about some of the posts in the Superstonk subreddit, that could have been interpreted as extremist in nature.
In between our first and second drafts of the canvas, we replaced basically all of the text, including the GameStop logo, with amogi. After a large amount of community pushback (i.e. Superstonk brigading our subreddit), and a realization that we had been rather overzealous, we restored most of the artwork, barring the subreddit name and the stock symbol for GameStop, since those were more directly linked to the financial side of the operation. It was a massive headache for all involved, and very annoying considering how close we were to releasing our final product at the time, but we managed to get through it in a reasonable way given the circumstances.
For those who still wish for the full GameStop/Superstonk artwork on their copy of our work, please keep reading!
We’ve all been there at this point. r/place was incredibly dense this time around, with very little room to move things around in case of conflicts. As a result, we had to say no to a larger proportion of submissions than last time. However, we want to make the following message very clear to those who feel like certain art should have remained/been restored:
Again, we offer our sincerest apologies if your art couldn’t be restored, but our goal from the start was to create a version of the canvas as similar to the moments leading up to the Great Whiteout as possible, minus the noise and malicious takeovers.
Now that the boring part is out of the way, we’d like to thank some people for their help regarding our project:
We hope you like our work, and we’ll see you at the next r/place!
1: https://i.imgur.com/rzUhL4w.png
2: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VYmR_YdYUrWupgEjqKVSrITZctk7wDUn?usp=sharing
3: https://i.imgur.com/CqFQluD.png
4: https://i.imgur.com/tKSTE5h.png
5: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/298563322041860096/963642976263864390/8K.png
6: https://imgur.com/a/ppNicS2
7: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WIeime-PHer3mVmfQSPYl_CMAwm-Mt7h/view?usp=sharing
(and remember, if you see something you want to change on your copy, just change it (and give credit if you post it)! We aren't your parents!)
Comment by 3Dee8 at 12/04/2022 at 20:18 UTC
2316 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Great! Now someone needs to make a dithering system that packs as many amongusses as possible into the image.
Comment by Danielq37 at 12/04/2022 at 22:03 UTC
210 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Sad, the RimWorld community, for wich I faught lost a lot of territory in this version. I guess nobody submitted ours and we were overlapping with the Windows overlay at the bottom.
Comment by ThoLoeSto at 12/04/2022 at 21:52 UTC
303 upvotes, 3 direct replies
You messed up the Canada flag!
Comment by [deleted] at 13/04/2022 at 01:16 UTC
154 upvotes, 4 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by Tittzo at 13/04/2022 at 01:27 UTC
46 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Sad my one and only contribution that stuck and wasn’t covered immediately was removed. Big sad.
Comment by OD_TDS_Guy at 12/04/2022 at 20:21 UTC
1472 upvotes, 11 direct replies
You guys removed the random amongi. Big sad.
Edit, MOST of it. Still see the deliberate ones, just can’t spot any more of the hidden ones :(
Comment by beeurd at 12/04/2022 at 22:54 UTC
135 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I think you've cleaned up the Star Wars poster a little too well, at no point did it look that perfect. 😅
Comment by ItsameAnthony at 12/04/2022 at 20:47 UTC
695 upvotes, 7 direct replies
I love the more authentic, original piece because I feel like a clean-up takes away some of the charm, but I still admire the hard work you put into this. Congrats
Comment by SinanEDG at 12/04/2022 at 22:08 UTC
128 upvotes, 2 direct replies
you guys removed the 1453 from the canvas of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, that was a good part of it man
Comment by SophisticatedSloth at 12/04/2022 at 23:17 UTC
23 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Tfw the Dong (DK) isn’t fixed
Comment by GooeyCR at 12/04/2022 at 23:36 UTC
21 upvotes, 1 direct replies
You guys removed the green pixel from the log and saw for the construction logo from RuneScape. Smh
Comment by FN-1701AgentGodzilla at 13/04/2022 at 01:01 UTC
21 upvotes, 3 direct replies
I wish the chessboard on the top right was back
Comment by bakedtran at 12/04/2022 at 23:07 UTC
148 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Although I committed 90% of my time to two communities dear to my heart, I stepped out for the other 10% to help tiny communities of interests I loved too. They routinely got stomped by much larger communities, but I see many of them on this version. Thank you very much for offering this as an option. Not everyone will love it and that’s alright; I see a lot of my favorite little guys here and I appreciate your time.
Comment by chiron42 at 12/04/2022 at 20:24 UTC
152 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Your before/after photo shows one of the QR codes was changed at some point between them. The one near the top-right has been changed to a 2nd rick roll link but it wasn't one at any point in the canvas' history.
Comment by Dustin- at 12/04/2022 at 20:19 UTC
535 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Incredible work by an amazing community. I can't believe how big it got compared to 2017. 5,000 people, dozens of contributors, over a thousand requests for alterations from hundreds of Place communities. What an achievement. Congratulations all!
Comment by Prancing_alpaca at 12/04/2022 at 23:17 UTC
64 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Kinda bummed someone changed what were supposed to be wires into blush on the art piece that the community I'm in worked on. We worked really hard to make sure it made it to the end only for people to change it again. I know its only really 2 pixels but still feels bad
Comment by ReaUsagi at 14/04/2022 at 00:14 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thank you, and I want to voice up against all the rude people who just seem to throw shit at you because they can't understand what you did.
I read a few comments, people are downright insulting you for your work which, second me, just shows how entitled people are to their absolutely unsolicited opinion. I hope they will eventually grow up and understand that they can save, print, and look at any version of the whole r/place artwork they wish and that the final clean-up by no means should replace anything.
You did great work, I can imagine the chaos it was to get this done with all the requests and things to consider and I am very happy to have a clean version (next to all my not clean versions from various states of the artwork, because people, that's something you can do. You can have MULTIPLE versions of the canvas saved. Unbelievable I know... Technology man, Technology.)
Comment by AlaraBanana at 12/04/2022 at 21:44 UTC
26 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I see my pixel!
Comment by zooberwask at 12/04/2022 at 21:53 UTC
386 upvotes, 9 direct replies
It's really weird you guys felt the need to police the canvas and delete things you didn't like. I thought the purpose of your community project was to clean up stray pixels, not be the arbiter of what is deserving or not.
Comment by DrunkenIronworker55 at 13/04/2022 at 00:41 UTC
54 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why remove a subreddits name from there art piece while leaving others names untouched seems odd
Comment by DualLeeNoteTed at 13/04/2022 at 00:51 UTC
51 upvotes, 4 direct replies
I might get hate for this, but it feels weird that Superstonk's URL was edited out.
To be clear, I fully get the disdain for crypto/NFTs, and even as a Superstonk member myself, never liked that they were in our final design. However, I also believe the underlying technologies are recieving a bit of unjustified hate because the current use of NFTs as a technology is basically scam JPEGs auto-generated from assets. That's not what the marketplace is going to be as far as I understand, but instead will use the technology of NFTs to bring digital ownership of in-game items (i.e. skins, sprays, etc.) to a new level and allow for the trading of them all on a unified platform.
Anyhow, despite this, I get it. NFTs, and crypto in general, are currently filled with grifters and bad actors all trying to make money off of the next guy who buys in being a bigger sucker than they were. So I think removing the names of the Blockchain technology companies was a fair and fine move. Heck, even removing/replacing the logos would have been fine I think.
But why remove the subreddit name itself, especially if keeping all the GME related art (DFV, Ryan Cohen, Power to the Players, etc.) created by and associated with that sub?
Not looking to flame or start any arguments, genuinely just curious about that.
Comment by bannerlordthrow at 12/04/2022 at 22:32 UTC
79 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Lrc and immux got removed but, nano can stay, polygon can stay, doge got 50/50'ed. Cant find shib and btc again, probably just blind. Feels like if I went over with a comb would find more that just got not recognized as crypto and got to stay.
Comment by [deleted] at 12/04/2022 at 20:44 UTC
38 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I don’t know if this was ever mentioned, but how would you conclude on last minute raids like what the swedes did to Hungary and the fox? I see it isn’t reverted in yours but just wondering about the decision behind (I am danish so it was technically my gang that did it, however many of us didn’t agree with the decision to attack and it was almost completely a Swedish invasion) Edit: ps amazing work!
Comment by revdingles at 13/04/2022 at 02:01 UTC
54 upvotes, 2 direct replies
So as a person that thinks GME subs, including and especially superstonk, are detached from reality, glorify ignorance, and present dangerous false promises of wealth -
removing the name of the sub from the cleaned up version is pretty BS. Any extremism is reasonably moderated and the sub remains within good standing with site-wide rules. Can't be making arbitrary rules just because it fits a small group's version of righteousness, next it'll be you.
Comment by [deleted] at 12/04/2022 at 20:34 UTC
45 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
