Submitting a picture
You bring the sound-alike idea. The house draws it, or you do. Then it's checked, voted on, and if it wins, it ships to every phone. Here is each step, and the rules that decide what gets through.
Start from the word
Submitting needs a plan. Plus members can have pictures drawn from a keyword; Studio members can also upload their own. On the free plan you vote, comment, suggest words and report, which is most of what decides a word. Every word page on the community site has a submission box. If the word has no picture yet, the box is the first thing on the page. If it has some, it's below them, and the question to ask before you add another is: does mine hook the sound better than what's there?
The keyword is the whole idea
A picture is only as good as its sound-alike. Cerradura (lock) became "cereal door": a door made of a cereal box, padlocked. The keyword should:
- Sound like the Spanish, said out loud. Spelling doesn't matter; sound does. "Sarah, the door!" and "cereal door" both work for cerradura.
- Be something you can draw. An object or a short scene. "Freedom" is a bad keyword; "free dumb bell" is a good one.
- Connect to the meaning in one gesture. The cereal door has a padlock. The pear-oar dog is a dog. The meaning should be in the picture, the sound should be in the keyword.
The optional "why it works" line is where you say the gesture out loud: "a door made of a cereal box, held shut by a big padlock." The person drawing it, human or house, uses it.
Route one: generate
Type the keyword and press Generate for review. The house draws it in the app's style, in about fifteen seconds: flat cartoon, bold outlines, one solid ground in the word's gender colour, and no writing. You see the exact prompt before you press, and only your keyword and your why are in it; the style is the house's. The button locks while it draws, so one press is one picture.
Plus includes 25 drawn pictures a month today, Studio more; being right in votes earns extra credits on top. A small daily ceiling also applies to everyone, as a cost backstop. What each plan includes.
Route two: upload your own
Studio members can upload a picture from outside: a drawing, a photo, a collage. The same rules apply, and the checker applies them the same way:
- One clear object or scene, in the app's flat style or close to it.
- The ground is the word's gender colour, edge to edge: coral for feminine, teal for masculine, sand for none. The reviewer checks; a wrong ground is the commonest reason an upload is refused.
- No writing anywhere in the picture. Not the word, not a sign, not a brand on a t-shirt.
- Nothing you don't have the right to use. Nothing that identifies a real person.
The gate: every picture is checked before anyone sees it
A new picture is born pending. An automated safety scan looks at it first; a clean result releases it to voting with no person involved. A flagged or unreadable picture is held, and a moderator sees the reason and decides. Until the scanner is switched on for a language, a moderator releases every picture by hand. Either way: a vote can rank a picture, it can never admit one. Safety is not a vote.
What happens next
- Released. Your picture appears on the word page and in the home page's "fresh pictures" strip. You get an email if you've added one.
- Voted on. Members vote it up or down; learners on the phone pick it or another. Comments tell you why.
- Settled. When one picture leads clearly enough (the three conditions), the word settles.
- Chosen. The winner is published to the app. Your name carries a "picture chosen" badge from then on.
Or it isn't chosen, which is fine. A picture that stays at five or more downvotes from five or more people for 48 hours is retired by the system as "community rejected". No mark against you; three removals by a moderator in 30 days is a different matter, covered in the rules.
Reporting a picture
Under every picture: report this image, with a reason. It goes back behind the gate at once if enough weight is behind the reports, and is re-scanned when the scanner is on. Reports that stand up pay; reports that don't, cost. The numbers are in Reports, penalties and how they lift.