Congratulations on the milestone. NG as a forum community was never something I leaned into. I just stick to making stuff.
Joined on 3/4/08
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Comments
Problems of the future, past and present. FOREVER.
I'm creeping up on ten years too, now that you mention it. The traffic and adrev stuff I can't really comment on, but I also can't forget that Tom actually added my school's senior showcase - an in-person event in a tiny podunk town deep in the woods of upstate NY - to the site's calendar when I (possibly drunkenly) told him about it. So that was cool.
I think that Newgrounds functions well for many artists as a transitory place where they can develop their own unique voices, because the greatest strength I'd always seen in its community has been variety and a constant quest for originality. It's been the place where creators of all levels and disciplines could go to hatch their own stories, much moreso than other sites. Its community is just close enough, despite this inherent disparity, to keep from forming cliques like other platforms, which is great because fuck cliques.
I dont blame you for not remembering given the circumstances but DJ-RI tried to DOX you too.
lmao, what a stooge
You've said a lot of stuff so I'll address a few things.
1. Shad's art got progressively worse over time, going from being an edgelord to straight up catering to pedophiles. You're right that the old art hub gave him a bigger spotlight because it showcased popular content, while the new art hub no longer does that. That change came well after Shad was no longer active here.
2. When NG is missing a feature, it's not because we're making a deliberate effort to not have it, it's because we have two developers who are spread extremely thin. For example multi-author and proper multi-image posting in the Art Portal have been a top priority for years now but still haven't made it out the door. Our backlog of features traces back well over a decade. This is why everything isn't exactly how it should be at any given time but I think the site continues to progress in the right direction.
3. You're saying that NG makes our money by getting kids to view adult content. The adult ads on Newgrounds require visitors to go to those websites and spend money; kids don't do that and there isn't revenue being made from kids stumbling into adult content. We're also continuing to make it harder to stumble into, much of that goes back to #2. Filtering has been gradually expanding to more and more pages of the site with each ongoing update. Somewhat related, the long-term goal is for NG to be 100% ad free, so our focus is on paying supporters, not ads.
4. I think you'd enjoy yourself more if you stopped treating the forums as some sort of burden you've taken on. Maybe not everyone wants to hang out with the regulars in the forums, that's their choice. There are lots of pockets of NG community spread throughout various Discord chats and most people prefer those small pockets of community.
You also act like nothing has been done on behalf of the forums but the forums were completely overhauled to work on mobile, integrated with notifications, updated to allow emote responses and to compose messages with a rich text editor, including multi-image support. It's actually a lot of development effort when you add it up.
If you are limited in time, the important part is really just the last paragraph, everything else is just addressing your response.
It's complicated to answer something like this and I had to search myself for a while to think about how best to approach it. It feels kind of futile to write this but I also feel like I have to in order to get some kind of closure.
Through the years you've always taken the time to respond, and that's something I would've included as a positive in my assessment of my experience this past decade but it would've been awkward after basically calling you a suit and a coward. I just want to voice my appreciation in your presence here despite what I said in even taking the time to read, let alone respond to something like this. You were probably hoping for something more positive when you clicked that link. I have no idea how often you face direct criticism though I am sure you are buffeted by every permutation of suggestion in every waking moment. I feel like few content creators are willing to risk openly criticizing you directly on account of how much influence you can potentially have. Yet I feel like I have nothing to lose and thus nothing to fear.
1. You seem to feel there was a gradual change in Shadmans art... I feel like there was one year (2009) when Shadman was just an edgy artist. By the next year he was already drawing kid Link getting raped in the ass. It's still there, go check it out haha. The changes that were made to the way the portal displays art DID come well after Shad was no longer active here, that's the problem. It came well after Shadman had drained all he could out of the site and he no longer needed to post here, I would call it a parasitic relationship but I know that the site benefited from the traffic he generated, even if he especially in the end benefited little in posting his work here. It was like that for years featuring his content and you by doing nothing were complicit in that system. The crackdown really only came down on those types of people as soon as people in other places started talking about it and it started impacting the image of the site, as it was mysteriously ignored or defended by everyone when it was cool to post on the portal. (s/)Its just drawings after all, how can it be bad? Haha. (/s) That is why I called you what I did. Creating the curated system of the art portal that you have today is much better than the old system. You fixed the issue but it was broken for years. This post was a decade long retrospective, not a summary of what is today.
2. I agree with you that the site is progressing for the better, it's the speed of progression that is really the issue. Having emojis, notifications and being able to post two images at once should not be the cutting edge for a site that's 26 years old even if, on an individual basis of it being literally ONE guy making it, it's very impressive. I can't imagine that its easy or cheap manipulating stuff that's so old to be more modernized. Gonna state the obvious here and say maybe you need more guys or better guys or faster guys or maybe the two guys you do have need more resources? I assume you've already thought of this many years before I even joined the site and simply cant afford more manpower. I dont know what goes on in the back end but it seems to the layman like me that something isn't being run right, even if there's literally only two guys.
It's a bit moot though for a following point (4).
3. As assuredly amusing as the conversation would be regarding kids using this site I feel like it wouldn't lead anywhere constructive so I'll just say that it's funny how the definition of a what a "kid" is changes as you get older isn't it? I hope you didn't take my accusation literally. Regarding the flow of income though the goal is a 100% ad free focus on paying supporters, not ads right? There's a huge flaw in that though.
4. Almost all of the benefits for donating to the site are forum based perks.
.....The forums stink. (aside from the music portal, I feel that one is by far the most curated and controlled. It also has the most active mod presence, curious.) There are some very basic things that could be done to improve them without actually implementing any new technology.
You seem to have given up on the idea of people establishing themselves in the forum culture in an attempt to make it better and support the outsourcing of the Newgrounds experience to unrelated and fragmented third party communities. I understand you cant compete with social media with what you have, but it seems like you've completely given up on us. I have been a primary user of the Art Forum for the past ten years. The animation forum, which should be the heart of the site is completely abandoned, there are no Regulars there and at least as far as I've been around it has never functioned. You posted there once to a friend of mine that you lamented the fact that people were using discords instead of the forum, what changed since then? Content creators who have a vested interest in Newgrounds are the lifeblood of your site, but your strategy seems to be courting twitter artists who already have an established following presumably so they can bring their work and their followers here. Even if you were successful at that, this is just another platform (that can't compete with Youtube or Twitter in regards to raw exposure and money) to them. Another stop on their multiplatform content dump. Whether I would ENJOY newgrounds more by parasitizing it isn't a consideration for me, I am here to try make NEWGROUNDS better, not gain clout in my discord server or to redundantly proselytize the artists and animators on Newgrounds. What I enjoy doing is making the art forum a better place to post. What hurts is that it seems like the staff has given up on the forums and people like me give up and leave. They're probably smarter for it too but I dont feel like I _fit_ anywhere else.
--------------------------------------------TLDR-----------------------------------------
The various changes made with development projects have had little to no impact on the culture of the forums, which is really what my post is complaining about because I am a forum user.
You seem to want me to abandon the idea of improving the forum. I want to make Newgrounds a better place. Give me a real direction to point my efforts, please. I know I am just a mediocre version of Gatekid who objectively offers little to your site with my art, music and games, but you follow me here so you must think I at least have some potential. What do you want me to do on Newgrounds going forward?
I still have idea what to do about the dang art forums, here’s to many more years of us all messing with the kids who ask the same question 5 times a week
That aside, fricken congrats!!!! I’m not sure if I qualify as one of those art forum friends (tho I feel I am right?), but either way I’m glad I got to be a part of this community too!!
What a blast!
cool let’s collab again soon
Congrats on the 1K and ten years!
This really adds some backstory to your recent Incremental Improvement Club post hmm.. I don't dabble in art that much, so hopefully it'd seem natural that's not a forum I personally frequent that much, but the few times I've stopped by it seemed alright. A lot of showcases. Some other general threads. Functionally, I wonder how you could encourage activity further...
Automatically create showcase topics with user artworks as they're submitted?
Allow users to link specifically to showcase threads via their profiles, similar to the collaboration links?
Just add a forum link to the art portal?
The latter seems simple enough, if it'd help...
The writing forum seems to be in a similar state. Not so active. A lot of them too. General's the big stream. Maybe the age of individual forums here is over; it'd be just as well to merge them? Or better little activity in each than none? Better you still have the venues, lacking users or no, than none at all?
I'm a little surprised you see the site as you seem to see it otherwise though. Wherever I go here lately there's always something going on. Can't keep up with it. Artist news is booming, the rankings are getting fun again, General's a new place entirely with the new userbase, we recently got two-pass and backup features and everything... I'm pretty happy with the way we seem to be headed.Woth Tumblr wave, the Twitter wave, the YouTube wave, the FNF wave most recently... the past few years have been a surprising surge. Personally: this is the only social community I'm on. No Twitter. Discord only if I have too. NG's more than enough.
Hope the art forum livens up a bit too somehow someway.
never knew the site was black listed
Projects-Dev
yeah I never fit into dA either. I was ready to just prioritize my work in Discord/Instagram, but NG immediately seemed like a better option than both combined (I still keep instagram on the side though)