@Carpy48 and @Julio Tokolosh please give this a read.

As most of you are aware, the issue of delay in graded media has once again raised it's ugly head, this time in the form of the Graphics department. If you aren't aware of the issues of recent, feel free to mosey on over to the retirement thread of some guy who threw a tantrum.

I am not here to crap on the graphics graders. I want to start a discussion about how things can be improved moving forward, and open a dialogue about how people feel about the current state of the department.
The first thing I am going to say is that the graders have done a fantastic job of clearing the backlog in recent times. Despite the reluctance of some to admit it, it had become a problem. That problem is now going away due to their hard work. These are two facts and they cannot be disputed, so I think we should all stop focusing on that side of the argument.
For those out of the loop and who care, they have constructed a panel style of grading that eliminates arbitration and aims to give a fairer rating to the submissions by averaging out the scorers each panelist provides. I see this as both a positive and negative thing personally, as an averaged out score could be better or worse, and not being able to argue the case for it is disheartening. The addition of constructed critique in their discord server to balance this is nice and is helpful at improvement, but honestly is only going to be beneficial for those who want to master the art.
And that is where the main issue of the graphics department really lies. The entire point of the graders is to grade peoples art. Art is subjective, and is very difficult to grade, hence why the graphics department has had a borderline revolving door of graders as far as I can recall. Despite all of the head's efforts to make the process a worthwhile task, it just isn't for most. This is where the first fix needs to happen. The graders need to be paid more, and there has to be more of them, depending on whether or not they can be available for their panel discussions at any point in time. I propose that a alternating teams would take on the schedule, so as to eliminate peoples conflicts of in real life demands, and to ease the strain on having to be subjective and potentially hurt peoples feelings when they hand out grades. It's not easy to do. I say all this without being apart of the department myself, and from a purely constructive point of view. If Carpy and Julio believe they have enough members to satisfy the current demand for grading, then I wholeheartedly endorse their assessment of their own department. If the wheels of the wagon fall off though, the blame can only be on the department itself. I don't know what the current salary of the graders is, but it obviously isn't enough to keep the less interested around. People like money, we have a false economy, let people have money. Let more people have money. It doesn't affect anyone else but the grader. More money is a key to more interest. More jobs are a key to more interest. We should be aiming to keep our rookies and young members engaged and let them participate actively, both on the site and off of it in respective discord servers.

The talk of money brings me to my second point. Bar the talented and well experienced members of the graphics community, there is absolutely no incentive for anyone to ever make graphics and have them graded by the committee. The money is absolutely pitiful, and the rubric is an absolute gauntlet to jump through. I personally have learnt to not expect a high grade or payout and I am fine with it, I'm not a good graphic artist. I very much appreciate the feedback offered to me and took it on constructively, but from an income standpoint, I quickly learnt it's not for me. That's fine and all for me personally, but for the new people who come to the site and are interested in making money through graphics but just can't get the hang of it, it's a huge turn off of the league. They can't make decent money and are strictly judged to the point where they give up. I could name many members who will never submit graphics for grading again because the money was pitiful compared to the amount of time invested or the judgement they were given was strict to the point of extreme. This all comes back to the fact the graders inherently have to be strict to conform to some kind of standard when you have extremely talented members vs absolute newbies. It's a hard task to tackle this specific situation but I have two suggestions. The first is one that the graders themselves introduced with the most recent challenge. Have separate grading categories for users depending on their skill level, money earnings, length of time on the site, whatever works the best. I've already said that I am not a member of the team, so I'm not the best person to suggest as to what that criteria should actually be, nor the limitations on where the lines are drawn. The second suggestion I have is that all gradings are given a massive boost in earnings. You can keep the level lower for the more experienced members so as to not create super inflated bank accounts by implementing both of these suggestions. But even if only the second suggestion is implemented, it will help to convince members to stick around, keep improving at their submissions, and generally increase their own talent and professionalism.

I implore fair discussion on the topic, this is not 'us vs the graders'. I want what is best for everyone so that the community may grow, people remain interested, and we keep our site a place of positivity. If these things are already being discussed between the heads and HO, then I am happy. And if they aren't, I hope this is a start.