In a journal on DeviantArt posted today, 4DCube, CFO of ArtRise, confirms the project dead and that PokeMutt stole their code to build Buzzly.art. The only official employee still aboard the ship, he's trying to refund all donations before formally dissolving the company.

I joined the dA Group amid the lifeboat scramble when Eclipse launched, only to hear virtually no news on progress and a whole lot of rumour-milling in the comments. I was a cursory observer at best and wasn't party to its forum dramas, but it's still sad to see good intentions torn asunder by toxic leadership. It's somewhat ironic that the guy holding the purse strings turned out to be the one with integrity.

That is perfect.

That is in fact IDEAL.

I thank the deity for Side7 and I supplicate to them for the health of this site and it's owner.

I wish only DEATH upon those who govern Deviantart and Buzzly.

With their DA Points and their Buzzly Bee honey comb coins or whathaveyou.

Take them and take them away from me!

I say this, I send out the call to all true believers and those holy warriors among them!

They have taken Wysp from us and now they wish to take this place.

We must fight back against those who would undo or corrupt this place. We must be willing to die for Side7.

Those who are martyred will be admitted to a new world, one where we will not need the internet.

It's a shame when earnest projects like ArtRise shut down, especially when they've been preyed upon by others.
-- BK

We live in indecent and disingenuous times.

The very concept of people being gathered in common interested is profitable for exploitative people.

But they will all be punished in the end.

🙏

It's a shame this project failed, but at the same time maybe it's for the better. I wouldn't trust any project pokemutt has/had involvement in after what they did to buzzly and their former community, I'm honestly surprised that hive of degeneracy still exists after that incident.

Between @Inafox's comments on corporatism and this essay, I'd got to wondering if a site like Side 7 is only possible because it's built and funded in-house. The struggle for most of the post-Eclipse aspirants seems to be over one of two dilemmas:

1. The people that can code don't have the cash, while the people with the cash can't code; thus an alliance of opportunity between disparate interests that end up schisming down the line when the funders start squeezing for return-on-investment;
2. Crowdfunded projects underestimate their budget and become trapped in 'permanent beta' as the coders can't quit their day jobs to devote full focus, and/or can't muster the resources to make the necessary upgrades, warding off the very paying clientele they need to attract; see InkBlot, which still hasn't fixed basic UI glitches present since the closed beta.

The end result is either running out of cash and shutting down, or cutting deals with the devil and watching your original artistic values sacrificed to the profit gods. The tragedy of DeviantArt is that its original founders piloted the ship over that moral event horizon without any visible show of guilt or regret.

There's a Wired piece retrospecting the history of Wikipedia, and it underscores how against all odds, one of the Internet's top ten websites worldwide is a not-for-profit run virtually entirely by volunteers and bankrolled by user donations. So it's proven you can crowdsource your entire enterprise and remain solvent, but there's still no clear guide as to how.

snort

But yeah, how do you shame the shameless?

I will teach him humility.

I was just wondering what went on with ArtRise. I knew it pretty much ended before it started, but I had no idea the reasons or that it had anything to do with Buzzly. Guess they strike again lmao.

It still bugs me that Nym was Buzzly staff and posted this journal the day the site went gold. I can believe no-one knew about Red(Light)Arcanine's private life before the Twitter post, but given the personnel overlap between the two projects, I find it increasingly hard to believe the original team didn't have at least a clue what Buzzly's base was built on.

I'd hoped to interview the ex-mods for a summary postmortem, but they've either dropped off the 'Net entirely or refuse point-blank to discuss it.

I get that, but on the other hand I also get them not wanting to talk about and trying to separate themselves from drama that ended with their own friend betraying them and being outed for disgusting shit if they genuinely didnt know, and AFAIK there's not enough evidence to truly determine anything. I'm not saying it's out of the question however.

I tried buzzly once over my desperateness for Deviantart alternatives until Buzzly's Drama did killed Buzzlyart for even me, from myself got banned from Buzzly for no real reasons

at least we still have Artspacious(which I'm confident this still have more chance to see light of the day than Artrise), while waiting for Artspacious, I use this site for salvage my deviantart posts(outside fill-in memes of course)

also this journal may predicts Artrise's downfall and it's illegal forking into buzzly: [LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN - Links to politically charged content are inappropriate for this site]

and the reason Buzzly are made from forking Artrise codes was: you can't quickly make new websites when you code it from scratch

It's a shame how this all happened. I also remember the highly controversial poll Buzzly had at one point and realizing the intention behind it and what it implies, I stopped answering halfway through and decided to request deletion of my account via the site ticket function since manual deactivation wasn't possible at the time. Looks like they actually listened and deleted it.

I regrettably finished Buzzly's controversial poll so I got banned from Buzzly, and I suspects that poll was a trap

Hoooye!

Hoye!

Yoos knows whats a good site?

Yee ever heard of Side7?

I tried side7 as I'm waiting for Artspacious to open it's doors

I hope Artspacious is everything you want it to be.

me too

the reason Buzzly are made from stealing Artrise's codes was: people can't quickly made new websites when write it's codes from scratch

This basically sums that up:

https://youtu.be/8AkyopcHcEQ?si=4Vlc2kbLjljWbxJt

Pokemutt did found Buzzly from himself fed up over Artrise's delays

Question, what kind of code are we talking about when we use the verb "steal" (as opposed to another verb) to describe what happened?

Basically the fact PokeMutt appears to have forked the website design whole cloth. Granted, I don't know how their corporate charter was written, but ArtRise was a registered business: the developers were working for the company, and so the website they were building would normally be considered property of the company. If your lead dev up and defects to make a mirror project, without official permission, without even acknowledging its provenance (no member of Buzzly staff ever publicly disclosed their links to ArtRise—not even Nym), then that's a moral theft even if it may not technically be a legal one.

And if that ArtRise code undergirding Buzzly was funded by public donations and not the devs' own pockets, there's a case to be made that it's actually embezzlement.

I did personally talk with Nym, and they're among Buzzly staff(after used to work in Artrise) that got backstabbed by Chstark and Pokemutt, this is what I got so far from my personal talk with them

https://www.deviantart.com/comments/4/47281512/5073734880

I come across tumblr page of one of Artrise's devs: https://coldioc.tumblr.com/

It's good art, but none of the posts so much as mention ArtRise so I'm not sure how it's relevant to this thread.