Hey guys!
I have been active on the OTH spot for about 6 months now, and I have noticed some things that have been greatly bugging me and getting worse and worse by every passing day.
I don't know if this is classified as a rant or what, but this spot has become some sort of a war zone, where everyone always seems to be fighting.

Here are some of the main issues I have noticed that have been plaguing this spot for quite some time:

-Ratings & Cheating: Ratings have been getting ridiculous! I was looking through the videos and fan art/photos section and I was stunned to see how many really good pictures were rated 3 stars or worse 1 star (these are pictures with good tags and credit). Come on people, we can be a little bit mature. When you rate something, you're not rating the person who uploaded or the character the image/video is portraying. You're rating its quality! It's not fair that the person who is uploading all that stuff and spending time on it gets to suffer just because you have a grudge against him/her or a certain character. So please try and rate fairly whether its a Peyton icon or a Brooke icon or a Leyton icon or a Brucas icon...it doesn't matter how much you hate the character or the ship, if the icon deserves a 5 star rating give it a 5 star rating!
A couples of months ago, we had this rating argument escalate to the point where a couple of One Tree Hill fans were banned from fanpop, and we don't need a repeat of that experience.

The complete opposite of low/unfair ratings is also true. We have some items being extremely overrated. For example, some icons have 5 5 star ratings while some just on the next page (or even on the same page) have none. I mean wth? If 5 people can rate half a page of icons, then I am pretty sure they can rate the rest of the page as well. Getting a medal means nothing if you cheat to get it. I know a lot of people here, who try to rate as much as possible, so people don't have to find other means to get their stuff rated. So please just be patient. I find it completely ridiculous when some people with like 400 pictures and 50 videos have a fanatic here while some people with like 3000 pictures and 300 videos just have a die hard. How is that fair? So please guys, be patient, ratings and medals will come, but everyone needs a fair shot at them.

And lastly, while we are on the ratings topic...please rate people! It is very disheartening to see pictures with 20 views or something and no ratings. Or worse, pictures on which people have left comments on and haven't bothered to rate. It takes 2 seconds to rate something, and if you can click on it to see it, you can make one extra click to rate it. Proper and fair ratings are going to make everybody very happy, and hopefully put an end to this constant rating drama!

-Repetition: Another big issue is repetition, which is most usually seen in icons and picks.

First, icons. We have more than 180,000 icons on this spot. That number in itself should scare you a little...lol! I know we have a huge fan base, and almost 150 episodes, but I don't think that even that account for 180,000+ icons. Repeated icons are extremely annoying and its not fair to the user who found them and posted them first. I know that sometimes its hard to identify if an icon is repeated or not, so if it happens once or twice its okay, but if its becomes a habit then it becomes annoying. We don't want to see the same icons again and again, and we definitely don't want to rate the same content again and again either (This is another reason that puts a lot of people off ratings). So if you're not sure if something is repeated or not, go back a couple of pages and see if the stuff you want to add is already there or not, unless of course you're the original creator of the material, or you found it on livejournal as soon as the user uploaded them there!
Most of us get our stuff from livejournal, and usually if the material is a day or 2 old there, there's a high chance that its been uploaded here (You will be surprised at how fast things from livejournal are uploaded here!). So, please check if you're unsure if you're repeating an icon, especially if there are a whole bunch of them. I mean how would you feel if you went through the whole process of uploading like 50 icons, and the next day someone uploaded the same 50 icons. Not only does it push back the originally added stuff it also deters ratings.
A good thing that I have noticed around here about repeats is that whenever someone does upload stuff that has been added before, a lot of users have started to point that out. I don't mind that in the slightest, and it shouldn't be seen as a diss or an attack, because it just prevents future repetition from the same user.

Next, repeated picks. I think this a much bigger issue, and has been causing a lot of hostility from the other fans. The bottom line, we don't want to answer the same blasted Brucas vs. Peyton or Brooke vs. Peyton pick again and again. It doesn't matter how many times this question asked, or how many different ways you word it, the answers are not going to change. Now repeated picks are just a ploy to start arguments and its just getting ridiculous. You might be new, and curious to see how many people prefer Brucas over Peyton or vice-versa, all you have to do is put Brucas vs. Leyton and about 50 fan pick questions will come up, and you can analyze the results to your heart's desire. This goes to any other pick as well. If you think that a question you want to put up might be a repeat, please use the search engine...its there for a reason, and the one minute you will spend searching up that one question will save you a lot of sarcastic/angry comments from fans who have seen the same pick a billion times. So it's a win/win situation for all =)

-Bashing: And finally the elephant sized issue this spot has been dealing with for a while now- Bashing. Guys I don't know if you have noticed or not, but this is the One Tree Hill TV show spot which includes ALL the character and shippings of the show. Obviously no one is going to agree with every character/ship, and you can't expect everyone to have the same opinion either, but that doesn't mean that you have to bite off a person's head if they don't ship the same ship as you, or agree with you on a certain topic. I am NOT pointing ANY fingers here, so don't think while reading this that oh my god she is talking about me, or she is targeting me, or something. I am talking about and issue this spot has been facing as a whole, and everyone is in one way or another responsible for it. I know there are a couple peacemakers out there, but their voices are usually drowned by the constant debates, arguments and bickerings. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and honestly you're not going to change anyone's opinion by swearing at them or calling their thoughts and ideas as wrongs. There is a reason they are called opinions guys,because there is no right and wrong between them, its based on your personal preference, and who are you to call someone's preference "wrong" or "disgusting"?
There has been so much animosity in the spot lately, and that's a huge reason for the lack of activity in this spot, because seriously nobody wants to be in an environment where their opinions and comments are constantly dissed by other people. The past couple of months have been the worst in my opinion, because during that time, EVERY single pick somehow became an argument between Brucas and Leyton, and sometimes it wasn't even relevant to the topic. The pick that stand out the most as I talk about this, is the "Are you excited for Season 7?" My god a simple question like that turned into a 3 page war. Another example would be the whole fiasco we had while picking the new spot banner. That was just wow...it was just a banner for god's sake, it really didn't need to turn into WW3 like it did! I think sometimes we forget that the people we are dissing are real human beings with feelings. We really need to put a stop to all this bashing and belittling because it gives the whole spot such a bad name and creates such a divide between all the fans.

We have to remember that on this spot, we are all fans of ONE show, and while we all have different opinions and likes/dislikes in the end it is still about One Tree Hill. So please, learn to respect all the fans, you don't have to agree with them but you don't have to put down their opinions either. If everyone does a little, this spot can become great, because we honestly, truly have so many amazing people here, who care so much about the show.

So this is the end of my really LONG rant...sorry if I bored you all to tears, it was just something I have been thinking about for a while, and needed to get off my chest. Also, I want you guys to know that I was not singling out ANYONE in this whole rant or whatever you want to call it. This is not directed to any one fan, but is something that we all need to work on just a little bit. A lot of you might think of me as crazy once you're done reading this and might completely disagree with what I said, but that's okay, because after all it is my opinion and not everyone has to agree with it. But I do hope, that some of you will take what I said into consideration because seriously it will make this place so much better and make fanpopping such a better experience for us all!
Thanks for reading =)