what do you think about Artnoodle/artgrove?

back when Deviantart's perma-eclipsing was fresh not long after May 20th of 2020 date, Artnoodle was the most finished and complete of the new Deviantart alternatives, until it's site shutdowns from being a dumpster fire caused by a legally messy thing of it's admin named Blazinflizard, then rebranded into Artgrove

I personally more to Artrise and Artspacious(even when the former goes the way of Half-Life 3(and its forking into Buzzly was the closest thing Artrise goes under the sun) though the latter still has any chance to see the light of the day, it just Artspacious devs are busy from IRL jobs) than Artnoodle/Artgrove so I never even tried Artnoodle/Artgrove

From what I've witnessed, it was more than just a "legal issue", the admin of Artgrove allegedly (have to say for legal reasons myself) admitted to doing things with kids. I'd say you dodged a bullet. I unfortunately made an account there at a time where I wasn't even aware of these allegations, and I didn't find the journal discussing it until much later through the Wayback Machine. It was gross.

I'm glad I never made account in Artnoodle

Can you link me the journal(that's archived by wayback machine) that discussing it?

I remember joining artnoodle soon after it opened, but then it suddenly closed down about a week later out of no-where, so I never got to use the site for long enough to form an opinion. I'm not familiar with the creator/moderators of the site, did some drama happen that caused the site's premature closure?

This archived copy was taking sometime before the owner of Artnoodl shut down the site and deactivated their account on DeviantArt. Unfortunately, some of the commenters admit to being in "dangerous relationships" themselves.

dA Pretender devs don't date kids challenge (impossible). :X

Come to think of it, wasn't a registered sex offender once on FurAffinity's staff?

what about Artgrove rebrand as it's failed attempt to revive that artsite?

I couldn't find ArtGrove anywhere, at least in website form. Maybe there's a specific URL I need to input, but I just get social media profiles for random individuals of the same name.

here's the twitter pages: https://twitter.com/cozy_grove https://twitter.com/ArtGroveNet as well this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M5zNOBua28LuaWHQGgy593rL-PRgNXohrNUn5sUGwj8/edit?usp=sharing as well https://lolcow.farm/ot/res/557173.html#q560317

I see now. It looks like the project is being handled by a team with no ties to Blaze, and I'm thankful for that. I would advise against using Lolcow as a reliable source of information since it's heavily biased, it's pretty much 4chan for catty women. I couldn't find the thread about ArtNoodl due to it probably being wiped, but I did see them accusing an artist of tracing without proof for not being godly at anatomy.

I am going off years old memory so I might be getting some stuff wrong, and this is all alleged.

Iirc he was not the lead director, but someone still in a prominent position (I want to say head of development/coding or something along those lines). He was however in a relationship with the admin, who was his (then?) fiance or girlfriend. The two of them had started dating around when she was 13 and he was 19. She was ~20ish by the time ArtNoodle started development, but I do have some sympathy for her since it sounds like she was probably groomed, and I hope that she's since gotten out of that relationship.

Allegedly the site director (Dragoneer) has a history of knowingly allowing and even helping to cover the tracks of users who've been outed for sex crimes, especially one's he's on good terms with. I'm not familiar with that, but knowing his history I wouldn't be surprised.