If you were ever stuck into Deviantart long enough ago; DA muro was the tool of many great works of art and simultaneously half arsed wank constantly spat out by pseudo artists to garner attention.

I could even say the same for audio submissions on this site.

No doubt great music and dialogue will be recorded, but a lot of hack bullshit will follow too.

It's the nature of that freedom, I don't see it necessary or helpful to micromanage or ruthlessly police it.

Great art will always swim in a sea of mediocrity, and genuine work will always shine in a pile of cheap, half arsed trash.

I don't consider photography to be inherently creative, sometimes it is; but often it is not. Photography is easily one of the easiest avenues for unartistic, mass-produced, attention seeking garbage... But photography as a pursuit and technique is still valid.

I've been around enough to have been on Elfwood, and those standards were too strictly and subjectively enforced, it was frustrating and oppressive. They had rules forbidding uploading drawings being done on lined paper for example.

I believe it's better for an art site to start out with the very fundamental, morally indisputable rules first... Then modify in measured, well though out response as new issues arise.

I'd be more concerned with the participation of artists that want to be seen for the efforts since that's why many come from other sites. Most people look for the freedom to be treat respectfully rather than be underappreciated in favour of what is most posted. It's one of the biggest things that makes people dislike AI as well. If proper categorisation isn't a form of censorship, then flooding is even more so And sure you can make decent oekaki, just not most of it. Same goes with MS paints. Having administrated DA groups you'd be surprised how much gets posted. It's not up to the site to censor but provide users the ability to find and expose by ability. Got to sort things properly or it'll all turn to mush.

So?

You want stricter censorship of content?

You want BK to get rid of the Oekaki feature?

What's the actual plan here?

Neither. I just think it's good that oekaki is categorised more so to give it recognition as a site feature, people choosing to hide a category is their personal choice. Like if I go to Chinese restaurant I want Chinese food, that doesn't mean I'm censoring the Italian foods because I'll just go to the Italian restaurant another day unless it makes me feel ill. Diversity is good and as humans we can't process things all at once, so it's good categorise things, certainly you'd never find anything in the supermarket without proper aisle tags and sorting. People will follow convenience.

I go to Mc Donalds and ask for Indian food.

They make it for me.

Because they know not to enrage me.

You want a portion of bhajis with that, sir?

Inafox, one thing I'd like to speak to is the 'oekaki is this, oekaki is that, it will create this problem, it will ruin this aspect' thoughts - none of those things are true in the ways that I've seen oekaki be used. if these problems were present in Sheezy's use of oekaki, but are not present in CS's use of oekaki, then neither the potential problems nor the potential benefits of oekaki are universal, and idk if it's reasonable to view it as though it would be universally bad in some ways that would necessitate filtering. people have spent upwards of 20+ hours on editable oekakis for CS, and there are even extreme realism drawings done purely for the sake of achieving realism within the limits of oekaki as a program. I'm not sure if it holds water to say that introducing oekaki incentives would inherently create the need to filter because people would just abuse it and spam it, especially because people are not currently doing that with the oekaki right now. all my suggestion entails is to include the additional feature of editables. oekaki is already a feature here.

I've been reading over other replies, and I know it's been mentioned before but I'll say it again: Events. I think really what we need is some sort of event, especially if comments or other types of participation are a core part of it.

I noticed a lot of sites make their users pick a team for theirs, which I think would be a good way of going about it (I can't find an exact study but people like being put in groups, which is why YA media does it so often -- your magical school dorm, your faction in a dystopian world, your superhero team, etc). Gaia Online used to do events like this with a backstory behind the groups, in-jokes about them in their announcements, and forums dedicated to the events and the groups involved. (They may still do this but I'm not sure. All I know is I'm #TeamOverseer for life, baby)

If this is a monthly or a yearly thing, it could also bring more users to the site, too -- I mean, lots of people join artfight every year. You could also make it a permanent thing and announce the winning team every week or month like how some mobile games do. Maybe give the winning team credits or something? Idk. Just suggesting

I agree with this.

Anyone who was a forum reg on Deviantart used to be around for the end of year forum Oscars... Even if only to start shit.

Of course mismanagement killed it in the last few years.

But you're right, if an event is good enough- People who might otherwise not post or upload, might just fot said event.

Any ideas on what kind of event?

👆

I love this idea. The hurdles that are in the way for me are: time, management, and keeping it fresh with ideas. For me, personally, I'm currently deluged with code work getting the new site features and requests in place, and fixing bugs. I don't have much more room in my schedule for managing events on top of what is already on my plate. We would need a team of individuals who could design, advertise, and run the events, who would be pretty dedicated and diligent. It takes a lot of work to design and run events (we used to do it fairly regularly back in the day, but I had much more free time back then to dedicate to it). And I'm good with using credits and maybe even site perks as prizes.
-- BK

Well, there can definitely be some creative ways to hold an event of sorts without it having to be labour intensive on your part or having to make modifications to the site.

One example I can think of is Inktober.

It's not hosted or organized or incentivised by any one particular organisation if any... It's merely a cultural aspect of the online art community that year after year, people participate in.

So I'm sure a few out of the box thinkers here may have an idea for something similar, yet possibly unique to Size7.

Something with a broad appeal.

Some of the smaller roleplay forums I've joined in the past do holiday party threads. I've never participated but I can only assume they're filled with games, chatting, and friendly roleplay. There's also stuff like Tumblr prom that isn't official but people participate in every year (probably ironically but still). Maybe we could find ways to mix something like those with some drawing prompts or games?

I'd be down to help out a little! My comic is my number one priority so I don't know how much I could do, but I've run a few events before and making graphics is one of my hobbies.

The filtration is more to serve compatibility with the oekaki program and any transformative licensing in the case of adopts. And indeed some people do make oekaki that can come to look like average art but then that really defeats the purpose of oekaki. It's not that oekaki programs overall reduce quality for the same effort spent, oekaki posting in general pushes for regularity and quantity rather than quality. There is oekaki software that is good or bad, these days you can program fully fledged drawing software into web browsers but the defining feature of oekaki is having a "separate" web-board tied to a given board, and to tie that to the site itself would make the whole site the "oekaki" board. Having nostalgia for "bad" oekaki software is one thing, but these days oekaki tools are almost identical to desktop drawing apps. But the thing is the site isn't an oekaki board, it's the wrong format, the site is a gallery site rather than BBS so in order it to be oekaki we'd need an oekaki board. I think you confuse old oekaki aesthetics with what oekaki is, but then that would be the same as posting native MS paints, no? Nostalgia is nice but it's not what oekaki means. The more incentive to lower quality images through a site-wide endorsed feature like making the whole site an offload board for oekaki will artificially encourage lower quality which will increasingly deter consumers and customers who look to find or commission art of higher quality. It would be nice to make myself some lower quality fun oekaki art without lowering the overall quality of my gallery as well. Oekaki is not a genre of art but rather a form of bulletin board system. Oekaki is defined as "(Internet) A drawing-based message board system, sometimes allowing users to replay a stroke-by-stroke animation of the picture being drawn". I'm not referring to the scribbly quality of some oekakis per se because that depends on how good the software is, but rather the problem is "how" people treat the site. And as with Sheezy I'm just not sure repeating bad history is a good way to go :3

I’m really confused by this because as far as I’m aware, the word “oekaki” just means “drawing” in Japanese? could you let me know more what you’re getting at?

And as for the rest of it, I just can’t agree that those things are true. I used oekaki for the very first time in 2019, it has nothing to do with nostalgia for me. The push towards more, low-quality images is just not true on websites other than sheezy. That was one website’s iteration of oekaki and I suppose it didn’t go very well, but I wasn’t there and that’s not how oekaki functions in other places. Oekaki tends to facilitate creative expression and collaboration. It works well as a web-based program for drawing application and is friendly to beginners and advanced artists alike even though it lacks some features - and that lacking of features would prevent it from becoming too spammy since apart from the collaboration aspect, most artists will tend to favor their own programs. I’m not even personally dead-set on this becoming a thing here but I take exception to the idea that I’m trying to push a bad nostalgic concept onto other people just for the feels when I only wanted to express the positive things I’ve seen oekaki be utilized for in the parts of the web that I frequent.

what if we had like an achievement system, like getting badges for doing x amount of comments, referring x amount of users and participating on challenges and forums, and for each achievement we get credits too

and about referring users, i believe it would be easier if we could generate a link from our profile, then share it somewhere and if people register from that link we automatically get the credits, instead of the user having to type our username when they register

So like the website OurArtCorner? Or more like Yahoo Answers?

i’m not sure, i don’t know that site and i barely remember yahoo

An achievement system is something that I've wanted to do for a long time. It's just been low on my priority list. But, I like the idea of attaching credits to each achievement.

Interesting idea for the referring users link, too. I'll add that to my list.
-- BK

We used to have Weekly and Monthly art challenges on the forums back in the day. It's been a long while, and I haven't had time to come up with any on a consistent basis. Maybe we could have a suggestion box for challenge ideas, and I can pick one every couple of weeks or something.
-- BK

Hm. Yeah, that would be a not-insignificant amount of work to set up. But, that doesn't mean it couldn't happen in the future.

Yes, there is a forums section for weekly and monthly challenges. I could redress them as community-made challenges, rather than Side 7-created ones if there was enough interest.
-- BK

I'd be happy to throw up some ideas for contests/challenges if we make them community made, I'm an "idea guy" by nature so I've already got a few ready. (My current idea is for us to redraw the infamous cat at the table meme in our styles lol)

Do you want to hear about ideas I may have in mind?