>>1135

This is good post thank.

I originally came to the chan because there was awesome 'fic to read, awesome art to look at, and I could both get the constructive criticism that I wasn't getting from the other places that I put my work and give concrit without fear of being piled on for being a "hater" or whatever.

I have no idea what to recommend. Even back when the chan was full of life, a vocal minority took the "this is not a hugbox" as unspoken permission to outright bully people (which is, incidentally, a thing that the supposed hugboxes do just as much as be an echo chamber circle jerk), and when people try to call out the bullies, they get accused of white-knighting, a thing that may be true sometimes, but not true every time. Meanwhile, the bullies keep piling on verbal abuse because "we are not a hugbox".

If the proposed mod policy for people who do dumb shit is "openly mock them until they go away", where do we draw the line? Sure, there are things I don't want in this chan, but posts that don't do anything except say something along the lines of "this is awful, you are awful and you should feel bad" isn't one of them, either.

>>1130
1. I can do this with no problem.
2. I can do this for sure, only thing I'll have to work on is making the hats show up at a /random/ chance.
4. Why did we stop doing joke bans to begin with? I would like to go back to enjoying them as well and doing chan things without the userbase being offended at every little thing we do.
5. This. All I can say.

One thing I would like for us to really work on as mods, or hell, even the community is to get together and hold meetings to discuss shit. Whether it be on the Circlejerk, Mantalk, you name it. I am open to any and all suggestions from the mods and community. We've been failing miserably at getting together to work things out and make things happen, and we've been failing at staying on the same page and being consistent. If we're going to keep the ship afloat, we're going to need make some decisions now.

How did I even miss this thread.

I've been wondering lately if strengthening TF2chan's reputation as a place for good old fashioned crit and improvement would rope in more numbers. Make this a place for people to grow - not just through constructive comments, but through activities that will inspire contributions and feedback. Like, say, the old art boot camp thread(s?). Or taking it a step further and turning them into lessons/something like a meme that needs to be filled out, with an emphasis on posting your results to receive feedback. Maybe a thread about the TF2 Kama Sutra with lessons on lighting, anatomy, I don't know?

I don't feel strong enough as an artist to be teaching others... but hell, if people like the idea and no-one else will rise to the role, then I can step in.

Sorry if none of this makes any sense, I have a terrible cold at the moment and the disease has reached my brain

>>1140
Any meetings planned yet?

I'm pretty in favor of what's been suggested so far; I don't really want to be coddled, I want to meet some cool people and have a more mature approach to fandoms. Personally, I came here trying to get critiques on my drawings and, while I haven't received many, the ones I have received have been gold.

I'm one of the apparently endangered new-bloods 'round here (...holy cow, is Saxton Hale hunting us down?!) and I thought might pitch in my two cents.

While I've been aware of the game for a few years I only started playing a month or two ago and the slide into the fandom naturally followed. So I blazed through the sad few fanfics I could find on ff.net and AO3, and, needing more, looked around for a kink meme of some kind. And, eventually, I ended up here.

What attracted me to this site was (1) the quality and amount of work done here and, (2) the potential for critzkriegs on my own work.

On, say, ff.net and to a lesser extent AO3 because it's so small my stuff gets some nice responses, but always, always there's a little paranoid voice at the back of my mind insisting that they're just saying that to be nice or because any real criticism is seen as abusive. Looking at all the terrible, terrible fics on ff.net especially with huge followings and little merit implied that my readers too might not know a good fic if it slapped them on the face with a rotten fish. Here, at least, if my readers say it's good then it's good, and if they say it's absolute piss then it's worthy of lobbing at suspicious shadows and, if necessary, drinking.

However, the rules are also a bit daunting--while it's great not to have emoticons littering the place like discarded Spy masks, I find myself getting paranoid that I've accidentally slipped one in somewhere or a *doing action*, which is something I rather pathetically do even when I talk.

Whinging aside, though, I'd say the rules generally do more good than ill. In the serious business of Internet entertainment I'd prefer too few hugs and lots of good advice than too many hugs with the combined worth of Doritos dust.

I think it'd be great to actually have people on the servers, like IBrotato said--it'd be nice to actually meet people instead of just reading their posts from three years ago.

Contests, maybe? Or challenges or something, where everyone's challenged to write a drabble or draw a lil' somethin' on a theme or in answer to a question?

And I for one can certainly get behind more hats. This *is* a war-themed hat simulating 'chan, after all. DICKS HATS EVERYWHERE!

*waltzes off to write more excessively loquacious silliness*

...Goddamnit.

>>1130
>2. Raining dicks. Randomly. Refresh a page and there's a chance of just fucking dicks raining. Don't know how this would work, I don't know how to work the webternet.

A Rant on the Subject of Calling Ourselves "A Critique Site" and How To Not Be A Hugbox Whilst Also Not Being Extremely Unpleasant:

I think we have a problem with people policing each-other’s critiques on this site, getting into fights about what is and isn’t constructive, and, consequently, getting in the way of the process of giving and receiving critique. Gaiz, it does no good to sell ourselves as a critique-oriented site if people come here looking to give and receive critique, and see that people spend as much time fighting over critiques as they do actually giving critique. In the past year or so I've started seeing instances on this chan where the authors and artists have had to actively defend their own critics against the censure. And we still call ourselves a community that focuses on quality and constructive criticism.

We need to be respectful of each other’s critiques. Remember that the artists and authors here are grown-ups. They can decide for themselves if they want to take mean and nasty words to heart, and they can decide for themselves if they want to follow dubious or irrelevant advice. But they won’t get to make that decision for themselves if we derail their entire fucking thread just because we saw a critique that we wouldn’t personally have given. You may find a certain critique unhelpful or harshly worded, but that doesn’t mean an artist who thinks or communicates differently, or has a more proactive approach to reading and interpreting critique, can’t get something useful out of it, and ultimately, it’s the artist—not you—who is meant to take something from the critique.
And really, getting into a catfight about whose critique is good or bad doesn’t give the artist anything more useful that they can work with, or something that’s worth staying for—it just makes an already negative situation more negative. If you see somebody who is being rude or unnecessarily harsh about their critique, you should simply post a more politely-worded critique, so that the author actually gets something worth staying for. If you see somebody posting advice and information that you don’t think is accurate, then post accurate information and do a better job of supporting your information than the inaccurate person did. And if you think somebody’s advice is irrelevant to the artist’s style/goals/methods, then post information that you think will be more relevant and let the artist decide which information they want to apply to their own damned work.

End Rant

Also, we need more contests. I don’t know about you, but I was amazed by the number of people who showed up to participate for the Secret Santa—it was the most action this place has gotten in aaages. It got people, such as myself, who for whatever reason choose to lurk most of the time, to finally show their pretty little faces, and it was beautiful.
So, um, I volunteer. If I can get a hold of Kumori. Maybe.

>>1145

Do/can/might you guys ever do temporary thread locks if threads start to get heated and out of hand (I'm talking threads derailing into argument dramafests where the thread becomes centered on the fight instead of the original topic), in the hopes people would cool off before resuming intelligent discussion? Say, a neutral mod would come in, maybe after giving a warning, and give something like an "Okay, I don't care who's right in your little argument here, but I'm locking this thread because it needs to stop. And I'm going to unlock the thread after x amount of time for you knuckleheads to straighten out, and by then I expect it to be back on topic and civil or I'm locking it again." I know it's kind of sad to have to resort to this kind of babysitting, but if we have a huge problem with drama here, it might be a start if people can't chill out. Especially if there's a cartoon dust cloud of kicking and screaming and no one can get out without dirt on them, where people might individually chill out but can't collectively 'cause the fightcloud keeps rolling.

And I know this place doesn't normally have enough activity to have a desire for slowing people down, but...well....I'm sure you guys know what's going on in that one other thread right now. (Hint: /dis/) One or two people politely asked both sides to please be understanding and move on, which would have been some nice ending words before a cooloff period had people actually taken their advice. But it still kept going on strong because everyone needs to get their opinion on the fight in there. This might also apply to the critique incident I think >>1145 has in mind. In any case, it's definitely about a fight. We seem to have a serious problem with drama. That's the biggest complaint I've heard from people dissatisfied with this site.

Then again (regarding temp locks) I guess that might be the point of temporary bans. But that seems to make the banned parties make a big deal and complain about ~injustice~. And, more importantly, other previously uninvolved people tend to dogpile anyway once shit really starts going down. Also, um...if mods get involved in the argument themselves. That's...kind of a problem...

Maybe a combo of both types of temp cockblocks, I don't know. Or maybe just better mod guidance when things are getting stupid. Maybe just sternly reminding everyone to not act like asses might be all it takes to avert some dramapocalypses. I'm just sick of these dumb fights. People won't come here to post, but they jump right into fights and talk their little mouths off. I don't get it.

...Actually, maybe that fighting spirit is why these people are fans of TF2, and thus here. Hmm. Might have to whip out the Freud chair.

>>1147
For the sake of optimism, I’d rather attribute our bickering problem to the fact that there is nothing else to do around this website. We go days without new stories, weeks without new art, sometimes entire months without anybody posting a new discussion thread. Is it really a surprise that people have resorted to less favourable ways of keeping themselves busy?
But I suppose it’s a good thing, in its own backwards way. People wouldn’t be coming here and fighting about whether or not the critiques are good or doing whatever the hell they’re doing in /dis/ right now if they didn’t care about the website. They want to spend time here even if there’s nothing left to do but fight. Maybe instead of putting it on the moderators to babysit us and force us to be nice, we take it upon ourselves to post more art, more stories, more discussion, and give people things to talk about other than what makes Cat Bountry a poopoohead.

>>1147
yeah,we tried that before and we got screams of "admin abuse!"

I was doing a lot of thinking and a little bit of research over the past month or so, and started writing up and adding to a draft with thoughts and ideas, but after the recent dramabomb, I feel like chucking it, along with my brain, right out the window.

In the meantime I guess I can give this. Ideas for themed events/contests/threads/whathaveyou.

• Underappreciated/underdone - In light of those statistics going around on hipstr on class popularity, which I've seen has inspired some people to try to make it up to Demo, what if we had a sort of "Appreciation Drive" where we celebrate underappreciated classes and stuff? So like for Demo appreciation, participants all try to donate a little thing related to Demo. And so on. Uncommon pairings. Maybe do some situations not normally explored. Or less common kinks, so far as people are comfortable with them. Or maybe even doing satire on things that are overdone. Like I recently saw someone complain about too many people being all edgy by making Medic get off on gore and collecting Scout corpses and that sort of thing, so you could do a silly take on him screaming like a girl over it or...maybe not that, but that sort of deal.

• Update-related - You know when updates come out and everyone laughs at/illustrates/makes jokes on the new comic things and Easter eggs and item descriptions and such? And people say "I want to see (someone draw) ___" or "I wonder how long it takes till we get porn of ___" or "waiting for someone to make this joke" and so forth. Like depictions of nude-from-the-waist-down Spy in reaction to the Distinguished Rogue, or Soldier yelling "SHOVE A KEY IN IT" in relation to asses, or Scout sprinkling nutmeg over Heavy and Medic and then running like hell, or Medic's new sex-party-detecting robo-beak. Maybe a thread for update-related hilarity? Because while the discussion on this latest update was a hot mess, it was (as it's been said) the most action we've had in a while. Updates are a good conversation-starter (just...hopefully the conversations can be better in the future). And silly joke art can be good for people who are a bit insecure at having their art picked apart - if it's in a thread like that, I think people are going to be laughing at the jokes more than heavily scrutinizing someone's skills. (Not to say they can't still do that, of course. Also, I've been saying "art" here but this might apply to fic as well.)

I don't know how much more I can contribute in the way of ideas right now, though, since the recent drama sucked out a lot of my brainpower and optimism. I'll probably have to rewrite/delete sections of what I wrote earlier because recent events opened my eyes to things that kind of invalidate some of what I was going to say. Or if you want I can just post that as-is and you guys can take it with a grain of salt.

P.S. I like the little web stat counter at the bottom of the page

>>1153
Post the whole thing?

I really appreciate all the thoughtful comments and suggestions everyone has provided. Let it be known that there wasn't a post that I haven't read or listened to, I've been checking on this thread regularly. I just have never gotten around to post!

Be on the lookout in the next coming day or two, that's all I'm going to say.

Hey, question. I just tried to go to the Left4Dead board, and a great big 'YOU ARE DEAD' thing was there, and hindered my reading of several threads. What is this thing?

>>1157
This thread is really not the place to ask, haha. Just click through the black page to make it go away.

>>1158
Ah, thank you. I was gonna ask in the normal questions thing, but I couldn't find it.

Raining dicks? Awesome. Glad I didn't open afanfic in public place.

>>1154 - Ha, looks like the longer I wait, the less relevant my old draft seems. I dunno what to do with it now. I do have some newer stuff I want to post already, though.

I love the new boxes on the homepage with recent postings. I was just about to ask if something like that would be possible, and then there it was. I've found it is helpful to see activity (Hey look, people are here and talking somewhere!) and to be able to find it, and it also gets me to look at and reply to things I probably wouldn't have seen or bothered to look for myself. Though, if you're not already aware of this: I'm seeing the menu tabs across the top of the front page break weirdly (which changes at different zoom levels and on different menu pages. Screenies attached in gif form.) May I suggest running the menu across the width of the page in its own row above the three columns so it's not restricted to the width of the first column?

And is it possible to change the timestamp format on posts in the threads? I always seem to be getting the day/month/year mixed up because it's in a foreign order and they're all two digits (and then I forget what the order is come next time...every time). I could have sworn it was yy/mm/dd previously (I actually saved myself a note because I kept getting confused) but now it's dd/mm/yy? Would it be possible to change them to the US format (majority of TF2ch's users), or, probably better yet, make them unambiguous for everyone? (ex. 21 May 2013 or May 21, 2013)

Additionally, there was an newbie anon posting someone else's art in yang's thread in /afanart/ because I think they were unaware the thread was meant for yang's stuff and not various porn in general. I noticed we don't have explanations of what stuff goes where (like the custom of dedicated threads per artist for their own art in /fanart/ and /afanart/) anywhere obvious. I think we used to have "this board is for..." stickied on /dumps/ when it was introduced, but that's not there anymore. I also see people not knowing about /resources/ being used for help now, and that one person in the boogaloo thread not knowing what /srs/ is for. Could we maybe get some explanations up somewhere? Like maybe just a dedicated "help" type page/list somewhere that runs down all the boards and briefly explains what goes where.

>raining dicks
The only time I've gotten the dick rain so far, I got to watch it for a brief period of time before my browser froze while attempting to load something from YouTube (according to the status bar). Dunno what happened there. I'll have to see what happens next time.

>>1162
>I'm seeing the menu tabs across the top of the front page break weirdly (which changes at different zoom levels and on different menu pages. Screenies attached in gif form.) May I suggest running the menu across the width of the page in its own row above the three columns so it's not restricted to the width of the first column?
This is something I've been trying to fix for a while now, but the code is so unwilling it doesn't want to budge. It's a native problem in Kusaba (tabs smooshing under low resolution), but I'll keep plugging away at it and see what I can do.

>And is it possible to change the timestamp format on posts in the threads?
I'll see what I can do when I get home from work.

>I noticed we don't have explanations of what stuff goes where
Yeah we do, in the Boards tab on the front page.

>>Yeah we do, in the Boards tab on the front page.
...Wow, I'm an idiot. Please excuse my brain fart.

>>tab stuff with Kusaba
Alrighty then. It would seem like a simple fix if it were just a matter of directly tweaking the source code, but I can see how software can complicate things.

(Oh, and I just got DICKS EVERYWHERE again with no problems this time. Yippee)

>>1165
A'ight, I got the date format changed without a hitch, whew.

>Alrighty then. It would seem like a simple fix if it were just a matter of directly tweaking the source code, but I can see how software can complicate things.
This is what I have tried to do numerous times, including fucking around with the width of the page, width of the news column, etc. I also just tried editting the corresponding css file, including (overflow:scroll;), but to no avail. A Kusaba developer also said there's currently no fix for it.

>>1161
OH GOD THEY GYRATE NOW

These updates make me so happy you have no idea thanku

I only have two suggestions!
1) Would it be possible to include BB code buttons for easier formatting on the fic boards?
2) Any chance of implementing a site-wide search feature? I thought it would be kinda cool to find more threads by a particular author, or search for cross-board threads for easier stalking tracking

>>1169
>Would it be possible to include BB code buttons for easier formatting on the fic boards?
I'll look into it.

>Any chance of implementing a site-wide search feature?
This already exists in the side menu. It's a custom Google search feature. It'll only search for material in all of TF2chan.

>>1170
>mawaru can't read for shit

M'bad. I am, clearly, an idiot.

>>1171
I included the BB code buttons when you go to make a new thread on the text boards. However, due to the nature of the text boards, I've been unable to include the same buttons when you would reply to a thread.

For a full list of BB codes and how to use them, please check the FAQ page.

>>1168
>timestamps
Awesome, thanks!

>menu
I'm not sure how much stuff you're allowed to change manually outside/inside the software, but supposing you had full access to change the source code of the page without software interference, I think you could just cut out the menu from the NewsCell, insert a new <tr><td colspan=3>(paste menu div & contents here)</td></tr> above the existing one, and then remove the padding-top from .last-posts in the styles and set cellpadding and cellspacing to 0 in the table to make things line up more nicely. (Or, actually, you could just cut out the menu div and paste it right under the slogan, completely outside the table, and then clean up the table & cell alignment as previously stated. That would look the same as the other method under normal circumstances, though putting it in a new table row would ensure it stays aligned despite any weird zoom/resolution.)

Like...it just seems so simple, but I can only guess at how impossible the software must be making things from what you've described. (I've only ever coded rather basic websites completely manually via text editors so far in my life, so I dunno what it's like working along with software and limitations that come with it.)

...Well, despite everything, the upside of the broken menu is that it's still usable despite its silly appearance. At least it doesn't totally cover up stuff?

(whoops, meant to upload this one with highlighting)

>>1174
Add me on Steam, because nothing you said is worth any help as you clearly don't know what all goes into editting a Kusaba page.

>>1175
Nope, I definitely don't, sorry. I do take your word for it, that the software is a huge barrier. I just, uh...I'm just kinda stroking my chin at it from afar. I'll butt out, and I apologize if I've been annoying.

Sorry I can't help for beans with coding, though.

So, uh...

... How many of you guys have found the secret boards?

>>1178
Because I am miserable at riddles, I have found only one. But it was very beautiful indeed.

>>1178
So far just one... haven't yet started puzzling out the rest. We'll see where I get with them. It's a neat idea for sure, though.

Also dem raining dicks are starting to grow on me...

>>1178
I've managed to find three. I don't know anything about baseball or baseball fans, though, so that last one's got me stumped.

>>1181

Same, on the baseball front. Though I've only found two, and am kicking myself over the third, because I feel I really should be able to figure it out.

The raining dicks made my browser crash three times in a row. Not so fun anymore, for me.

>>1178
I found two but didn't have anything interesting to contribute since I last looked.

>>1181
>>1183

I didn't write that riddle. I don't know what's going on with it. It's not very clear.

If it were up to me, I'd switch it to something else.

>>1186
oh u

I kinda like nice hugbox stuff because I can vent anonymously and get advice on things that go on in my life, and I don't feel safe doing that on any other site. I'm only up to being an ass to someone who really, really treats nobody with respect. If someone's just a meh artist, but that's their only crime, I don't feel like doing anything to them.

>>1243
I'll one up you and say that in my opinion, people that complain about "hugboxes" are douchebags. People being nice isn't the worst thing in the world.

>contests
Absolutely, yes. Hats, keys, unusuals or TF2 swag could be in order for that - perhaps artists could also offer TF2-related requests as rewards.
I would be more than happy to donate a few keys and my own availability for art requests to get something started here again.

It's been over 2 years now... imo having the raining dicks replaced with hats would be most desirable. I don't know why but they jus... creep me out for some reason???

im literally that tumbleweed rn.
anyone got that scout congo dance gif with the come get her lyrics on top of it?

>>1130
Here from 2019. I see that this site never took off.

Reporting from the future where new players are shafted out of in-game communication of any kind because papa valve sed so.
2020 sucks.

>>1444
it really is a shame, bring back community matchmaking please..
do something