no wonder I attempt to asked him about Artrise via Tumblr's DM

here's his (old) tumblr post that mentions Artrise: https://www.tumblr.com/coldioc/184968633032/discord-emotes-i-made-for-the-httpsartrise

also, anyone want to improve wikifur page of Artrise: https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/ArtRise

I found one of (probable) former Artrise dev in Sheezy: https://sheezy.art/spacialcube

another early deviantart journal about Artrise

I would politely request that further discussion in this thread have a meaningful relation to the original topic (namely, ArtRise's collapse). I'm not sure what purpose is served scrapbooking years-obsolete third-party journals, or playing private detective to track down former staff, but in the latter case recent posts are treading uncomfortably close to stalking.

Agreed.

I know this is a pretty late reply to a post made almost a year ago but hoooo boy I just now saw/read what was linked above and. yikes. wow. Im so relieved to not be on a platform like buzzly anymore. 

I actually didn't know anything about the original code rumors and joined buzzly pretty late in the show before things started coming to light. only had my account for like,, 2-3 weeks maybe? before that awful poll was released. I am currently banned until the year 2099 lol

it's so strange to me because in the past I've personally tended to be more supportive on the side of being very careful with censorship and not necessarily banning "problematic" topics from artistic spaces. I have complex topics in my stories (substance abuse, gang violence, villains involved in trafficking, etc), plus I've seen some truly terrifying things at the hands of "antis" (for example? someone once harrassed me because I have two unrelated characters in one story who are in a romantic relationship, they have the same (also unrelated) mentor/father figure - and I was told this was "incest") and I recognize the dangers that come with trying to sanitize anything and everything. however, the userbase that remained and thrives on buzzly is, like the commentor above, extremely militant (they are not satisfied with discussion with people they disagree with directly; they want power/leadership to "destroy" en-masse) and grow frenzied in their drive to rid their spaces of the "anti" mindset - where nothing content-wise is off-limits, and any questioning of potentially harmful content is an invitation for attack - nuanced discussion must be eradicated by any means necessary.

so when the news came out that pokemutt had also (in addition to the horrible culture war launched on buzzly) stolen code and screwed over the ArtRise team in the process, I was like... not terribly surprised. it was easy for me to believe that someone with apparently so few ethics as far as social moderation would also be lacking in business ethics. it did further disgust me though. my sympathies to all who were so negatively impacted by the collapse of ArtRise - devs, staff, volunteers, and others.

I joined Buzzly in late October 2021 after I'm tired of waiting for both Artrise and Artspacious(unaware of Buzzly being former's not-so legitimate fork, temporarily give up latter until I revisit it in response of Buzzly Drama where I'm optimistic over latter's chance to goes under the sun, unless confirmed otherwise) and deplatformed from sheezy(later temporarily shutdowns) for about 2 things: compromised link in my Linktree(which I use to keep track of the websites I joined) that likely belongs to dead website as well something else(definitely about shipping that makes me demote at least some of my ships into "Just friends" at best), I become more active in Buzzly(as replacement of deviantart) until the release of the awful poll(where I regrettably finished it, albeit even reluctantly) and what become straw that broke camel's back was: I got banned from buzzly until the year 10000 CE lol(I even resorting to ban-evading Buzzly after Kuzai give up moderating buzzly)

in the response of Buzzly Drama, I tried bunch of art Websites including this very one where this suits me best, at least before Artspacious goes even open beta

my mega-crossover story are also have complex topics, in addition of having Children's favorite Cartoon characters among others, I also got harassed by someone that pushed official narratives of events like 9/11 on me for my fan projects dealing with IRL conspiracy Theories(that harassment took place around same days Wix bought deviantart)

I live by the same dilemma: I support artistic freedom as a general principle and have used some tough themes in my work, but I can't stand the loudest champions of transgressive content. At a certain threshold it stops being about creative expression and devolves into shock content for its own sake. I'm of the paradoxical belief that the more permissive a site is, the more it's obligated to enforce some sort of quality control, mainly so it doesn't fall captive to the chuds. A large part of what attracted me here is that the content policy is more liberal than DA, but the site culture isn't evangelistic the way more openly NSFW sites are. That, and the staff actually seems to give a damn about fostering a responsible spirit.

Compare that with Buzzly.art, which I never joined but briefly thought had a real shot as the DeviantArt killer. Excepting AO3, I'd never seen an "all-ages" host with such a liberal content policy: every site I'd known was two-out-of-three and/or genre- or fandom-specific, and here they were teasing a truly universal platform. Instead, they turned it into a basket case so egregious it managed to make FurAffinity look almost respectable. Freedom to post hard topics is not worth legitimating such a barrel-bottom userbase.

I'm pretty late myself, but the fact that most users that got banned were either minors or innocent people that didn't violate any rules makes their comment about "banning the screaming morons" come off as ageist, and ignorant to the fact that not everyone that got hit in the ban wave was a spammer or anti-shipper, they really could have worded it better. I also got hit in the ban wave, so that would make me a moron. (Not that I'm confident in my own intelligence after being called stupid by every other person in my life since childhood, but I at least like to think I'm smart so I don't feel worthless.)

Funny story (in a gross way); when I was just a child, I was accused of "incest shipping" for pairing my own characters on Valentine's Day, because people just assumed that Thunder and Ryan were siblings. What was their proof? Their sweaters were the same color... Yeah.
I plan to dispel this ridiculous logic in a separate post, but just for the record, they're not even the same species, how would they be blood related? The only way they would be related is through taxonomy, as in they share the same subgenus, that's it. 

To quote an Atlantic article: The Cruelty Is the Point. Up until the coup, I'd actually been on relatively good terms with Ragna et al. over common cause re. B*zzly's mismanagement, but the freeze peach warriors always had an air of simmering contempt (go though the most vocal dissidents' conversation logs and they'd inevitably blame it on "wokeism"). I cannot overstate how comical it was watching them pivot from "Buzzly is a lost cause" to "THIS IS THE BEST SITE EVER" the instant Chris announced the policy reversal. It was never about artistic integrity: a self-entitled NSFW clique wanted revenge for being shut out, and was prepared to burn anyone and everyone standing in its way.

It's funny because early in school there were two classmates who were iconic for coordinating matching outfits. :p

well said. wholeheartedly agree. also encouraging to read someone's perspective on the same page as mine, so thank you for the reply!

shortly before Buzzly.art first got announced, Artrise's discord server got sealed shut (permanently)

No problem! I consider myself something of a heretic for thinking hardcore should still have class. XD

*deleted*

That's why I tend to avoid the dreaded freeze peach advocates as well as opposers of it. Overall, I wanted no part in it and in fact, I always despised politics, I just wanted to share my art and tell my stories the way I see fit, I never liked having my creative freedom limited by what other people might think of me or my art. Maybe I should be glad I'm not on Buzzly anymore, and as sad as I am about ArtRise's death, at least some good came out of it. For once, I felt like I was part of a great community of artists that enjoyed doing what they did, even in a world that's been pretty hostile towards artists since the beginning. I do have hopes that maybe another team of coders might swoop in to revive the project, but somehow I doubt that will happen, at least for now.

It's even funnier to me because the only reason why those two characters in particular wore matching sweaters is because I had no idea what else to make them wear other than basic clothing to sort of anthropomorphize them. For all anyone could have known, they might have been that exact pair of classmates, even though my characters didn't go to school in the original story, but the reboot changes that. While Thunder does have siblings, none of them wear clothing that matches theirs.

Thank you!! This is the most reasonable take I've seen on this topic.