Ask a Simple Question, Get a Simple Answer (CAP V. 3.0 READ THE OP!)

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Why is collaborative work not allowed for CAP art submissions? (hopefully this is the right place to ask).
The answer to this question is VERY long, so I’m not going to answer it fully here. In fact, there is a long 2,000 word post that I made more than 10 years ago in our private CAP Staff forum that contains the complete answer to this question in excruciating detail, including lots of staff-only info. I’ll just put a brief summary here for public consumption. If the answer below isn’t satisfactory, or if it prompts you to point out alternatives or to ask more questions — please don’t. This isn’t a discussion thread. It’s a simple question, so I’ll give my best simple answer. But there won’t be any more answers or follow-ups to this.

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The rules against collaborations on art were not put in place to prevent good, well-meaning collaborators from working together and contributing positively to the CAP project. Like all rules, they are there to prevent bad actors and idiots from causing problems for everyone else. I won’t go into all the history of bad or stupid people doing things in the past that led to the collaboration rule. All that is for mod eyes only. But here are just a few of the many problems associated with or made even worse by collaborations:

Plagiarism - People steal artwork from someone else and claim that it was “a collaboration”. Or the reverse, some jerk swoops in and claims a CAP artwork (perhaps even from a past project) was actually stolen from them by a supposed “collaborator”, and that they are the victim of CAP’s theft of their creation.

Credit - Who gets credit for collaborations and how much? Should it be considered all equal and credited equally, even if 90% of the artwork was done by one person? What if there is debate as to which collaborator did the most and deserves to be listed first? Like the plagiarism thing, what if someone claims they “helped” an artist with their artwork and demand to be credited as a collaborator?

Multiple Submissions - CAP allows one submission per artist, but what about collaborations? If a collaborator just does a little helping (the art equivalent of GP editing in C&C) should that prevent them from being able to make their own full submission? How many collaborations and of what magnitude are going to be allowed in the submission limit rules?

I could go on and on. Collaborations are a hornet’s nest. And the benefit to the CAP project is not worth the hassle of allowing it. If everybody played nice together all the time, it would be great to allow fun, positive collaborations. But, harsh reality has taught us that the juice just ain’t worth the squeeze.
 
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