Welcome back to Drunk Duck!

Hey guys (and gals, or you know… womyn or something), if you're here then you know Drunk Duck is back. Congratulations! To… us I guess.

This blog/news post will be a fairly brief rundown of how some things work around here. Keep in mind that some things have changed from the old DD, and some things are the same. I'm not going to go through everything here- most of DD is fairly self-explanatory, and there's also a few different Help areas in the DD Forums. Also keep in mind that not everything is set up yet, though it's all happening, slowly but surely. Little things are getting changed almost every day. Some of the things to come will be pretty exciting! Exciting like a fox! A very exciting fox.

First up, who are your admins? Well, that would be the lovely skoolmunkee (me), the equally lovely (and more patient and friendly) Black_Kitty, the heroic and helpful SpANG!, Ronson (running out of adjectives, help), and Volte6, who does all the real work around here. (Yay Volte!) If you have problems, you can come to us – although we aren't equally reachable, we all have accounts on the forums and are happy to get PMs and emails. We are all also forum admins, so we take care of business there too, along with the multiple magnificent moderators. Generally, I suspect that myself, Black Kitty, and SpANG! tend to check for busywork here the most. Regardless, your pleas for help shall not be ignored, unless you speak some strange space language. In which case, go back to space, you commie.

So, you've set up your comic account, given yourself an avatar, uploaded a few pages, left some comments for others, and now you have comments in return! But oh. My gosh. That person just left. The rudest comment. Ever. What is wrong with people lately? Well, we can't control what people do, but thank goodness we can control what they say! I'm talking about comment reporting. Next to each comment on your comic (if you are logged in to your account), there is a link for reporting bad comments. That gets sent to a page the admins can check. If they agree that it is a rude/offensive post (don't be too sensitive now Pollyanna), or if it is a snipe (def: a score of 1 or 2 accompanied by a rude/offensive comment, or no comment at all, with no attempt at constructive critique), they can click it into oblivion. If they don't find the comment offensive, or they think it was valid criticism, they'll probably end up approving it. When a comment is approved (rather than nixed), it goes back onto your page from whence it came. You can then mute the comment if you really don't want to see it there.

Also, please note that sometimes there are other legitimate reasons for reporting a comment- such as double- or triple-posting, or other genuine mistakes. Don't give us too huge of a workload or anything, but you can tell us about those too. Please note, though: if it isn't obvious to us why you've reported it, you'll have to tell us why. In that case, PM one of us on the forums and explain, and then tell us the specific URL and comments you want gone, we can report and delete them ourselves. Otherwise there is no guarantee some other admin will get to it first and say “What's wrong with these?” and approve them.

So I bet you are thinking, “gee, I can make all the rude/offensive posts and snipes that I want, and they will just vanish if someone doesn't like them! Joy!” (I don't assume the worst of everyone, really.) Well guess what? You're wrong! Because now we have something spiffy we haven't told you about: the Warning system. We have this system because some folks just don't learn. This is basically a score. Everyone starts off with a Warning score of 0%. As you accumulate warnings, your score rises. A high score/percentage is bad! As SpANG! has helpfully summarized:

Rude/profane Post…… adds 10%
Snipe………………… adds 20%

100% (or over) freezes the account automatically. However, there is a daily decay of 1%. But, admins can set the warning level to whatever they feel is warranted. For instance, an Admin may set your warning level at 107%. This will freeze the account for a week. Any level can be set as a suspension. Further, accounts may be manually frozen for repeated offences.

Please keep in mind that when we refer to NEGATIVE comments, we are not talking about comments that are critical in nature. You can be critical, but still be nice. The Terms of Service outline RESPECT for all community members. If you cannot post respectfully, don’t bother.

This is not to say that you can’t run your website with negative comments if you feel like it. If you happen to not mind (or if you even like) rude, profane posts, or even snipes, you are welcome to keep them.

We already have some people who have enormous warnings (up to 200%). Don't be like that, ok? You might think a couple are okay to do, but they start to add up.

Note: Only the bad/offensive comments and the snipes get warnings. Others may get tossed out but not be associated with any warning- sometimes comments are just junky like that.

Also, just a quick reminder- please don't vote for yourself. You shouldn't be able to anyway, but we'll remove it if we find it or if someone tells us about it. We might also send some Warnings your way, or even suspend your account if you are that evil. If you need a couple of votes to get noticed, try posting on the forums to promote your comic, get some advertising, or comment like a very helpful madperson on others' comics. (That will always get you some visitors, guaranteed.) There are also other webcomics forums, like BuzzComix and so on. Networking is helpful really!

The Forums! Here at DD, we love our forums. They may get a little off-topic sometimes, but everyone has a good time and sometimes we actually get to talk about things. We have a good set of admins and moderators and also a healthy dose of hooligans. Many very interesting things go on there! For instance, would you like to get your comic reviewed? Would you like to discuss or debate whether human-animal hybrids will destroy us all? You can even get a forum for your own comic!

Next up on our List of Interest, we have Drunk Duck Volume 3. Some folks may remember we got started with this before our troubles this summer. Well, it really is done. It just needs to be done. I don't have a list of contributors, but I'm one of them. (That should be enough, right?) Also, we have Hawk, Ronson, Mr. Neil, Spambot, HPKomic, Cookie, and many others who I know did stuff and are great, but haven't posted in the thread I'm consulting right now for reference. Keep an eye out for it, there will be an announcement soon. We are looking at Lulu distribution.

Lastly, you get to contribute news announcements! We don't have the system which we want set up yet, but don't worry, I have a solution. (Eventually, you'll be able to submit your potential news items to someplace for someone to approve/deny for the front page, exciting!) Hop onto the forums, look up my username (skoolmunkee) and send me a PM with the announcement you want to make. If it's front-page worthy (high standards here, folks) then I'll post it fer ya. Some examples of acceptable front-page posts:

50, 100, 150, 200, 250, or 300th comic posted (etc)
1, 2, 3-year anniversary of your comic (etc)
book printing (see current CAT! ads)

It has to be important, folks. I'm not going to pimp your comic for no reason. We would also love to see webcomic or DD articles which you've written. You don't want to read boring stuff like this newspost all the time, do you?