I don't know how much any of you pay attention to our webcomic neighbors, but Smackjeeves was bought out, overhauled, and its readers and authors alike disrespected by the new boss, NHN.

Everything that made it unique has been stripped away and worst of all, their community has been silenced by the removal of forums, private messages,and even comment replies and guest comments! All in service of turning the site into a Webtoons/Tapas clone, except worse in every way because even Tapas has a forum, PM and comment replies. The authors are leaving in droves as their personal layouts are gone, pages are broken and unreadable after being re-formatted to the new site, links are busted because of the changed url's, annoying pop-up navigation crowds out the page readability, the “like this page!” plugs are front and center before you even read the comic, and all the new update tags are gone.

Favorites are no longer on the main page but shoved into a library so they can showcase all the “professional comics from talented artists around the world!” they brought with them to entice people into the eventual pay-to-read model they are setting up. My inbox was scrubbed of community messages and now filled with 70 “freemium” manga that I have absolutely 0 interest in and feel immediately hostile to having it thrown in my face with no regard to what kind of comics even interest me! I feel like it's some sort of meat-grinder popularity thing to see which of these comics people actually accept into their library.

This is truly disheartening, Smackjeeves from a mere week ago was something I'd hoped DD would aspire to. I don't think personal URLs or bringing back Premium accounts would've been our way but a return to full customization, if we could just do that and wait on the rest… it wouldn't matter how garish our colors are on the main page.

Looks like they got it all together at ComicFury though, their forum is absolutely abuzz with SJ refugees, and their community is welcoming them with open arms. Good for them! (I wish it were us too, though)

Give Comic Fury a week. They'll ban half the Smack jeeves folks and they'll end up here.

Did I mention they still refuse to lift my ban? My ban is due to enter kindergarten next year.

Dude… what did you do to get banned from ComicFury of all places?!

You may not have seen the harm in what you said, but I can assure you it was not because of some “agenda”. I just hope you've done more research since then as scientific consensus has rather left that school of thought you cited far behind.

SmackJeeves is horrible now. I loved it because it had a very comfortable design, now when I go there it is absolutely horrible.

I honestly thought the new look was going to help it at least seem more organized but now that I see it in action I feel like it's a complete mess.

I left to go to comicfury and I like it there so far. People are nice from what I can tell and I think the design is pretty simple.
I'll definitely still update on smackjeeves but I think I'll treat it as deviantart and update whenever I want to instead of following my strict upload schedule.

It's really sad what has happened. :(

Myself, Bravo and a good few other DD users have been banned from ComicFury. Quite a number of us went there when DD went pear shaped, just as SmackJeeves users are doing now. I hope they don't have the same experience we did.

Most of us, myself included, have never had problems on any other site.

I like a lot of how Comic Fury is set up, but the moderating is way overzealous. I was threatened with a ban, as well. Someone in the forums wanted to justify downloading illegal Photoshop software because he “didn't like their pricing model,” and I pointed out that was sort of like justifying rape because the victim played “hard to get.” The next day I opened up my private messages and had a warning letter that I had violated Da Rules for using an emotionally charged term, and next time I should use something like theft or murder to demonstrate a point like that, as the rape comparison could make people uncomfortable. Jeez! Seriously?!

I could probably hold my nose and still post there, just ignoring the forums, but the fact that the ownership there actively endorses and encourages censorship on a broader scale just really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I'd just rather not be a part of it.

(First off thanks damehelsing for addressing the topic at hand! I'm sorry for your loss on the comic front, I personally couldn't stick around if I wanted to because it keeps logging me out! All the updates are “leaving” announcements anyway, that site is toast)

Wow I stepped in it with my “mourning our free webcomic host neighbor” thread.

If DD members are getting banned from CF, what do you all think that says about the culture here? I know what other people say, but that's not a subject for here.(hint- it's not positive)

@Bravo: I realize what you said wasn't intended to hurt people but to engage in discussion, misaimed though it was. The error you made was it was unwelcome in that space, and attempting to explain compounded the error. We've all been there where we try to explain ourselves and it's just not reaching people or coming out the way we intended, I feel your frustration there. We all have our regrets in how our past selves are the only thing some people remember when our present selves have grown past our previous states of ignorance.

I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with humans having to listen to all sides, because not all sides deserve equal regard. Someone who advocates genocide does not deserve a platform, for example.

Also, there's a time and a place for presenting dissenting views and that's in debate forums, not a support thread. It's like coming into a cheese appreciation thread and going on a vegan screed about the evils of the dairy industry. No one wants to argue with someone who gets their news from PETA. It's not a pro-cheese agenda if the vegan gets banned for spreading misinformation, but it's super obvious the vegan came in with an agenda of their own. That's the point of airing a dissenting opinion, is it not? To push one's own agenda? Everyone has one, after all.
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@Ironscarf: well, my first impression of ComicFury wasn't stellar because the first thread I stumbled on years ago was talking trash about some of the comics hosted here, but I have a suspicion those were ex-DD folks too because ain't nobody that gets that mad about a race they have no horse in. I know some of the worst trolls on DD migrated over at the time too and if the one I know of got banned, he freaking deserved it, and he should have been banned here too. But I don't want to know any more about what got people banned, I only have so much faith in humanity left in me.
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@El Cid: Why would you tell us that like you're some kind of victim in this. You compared someone who pirates software that is deliberately priced out to keep from amateurs, to an act of sexual violence. Your analogy makes no sense and yea,it was a nasty thing to say and you deserved a warning for it, you get no sympathy from me.

So how about you read Adobe's stance on it? Even the money-grubbing corporation doesn't agree with you.

AND YES, SERIOUSLY! People who got raped and have PTSD are upset when people like you think it's a perfectly appropriate analogy to make in the first place in a public space where the subject is not a discussion about rape! RAPE in of itself is an uncomfortable subject for anyone with basic empathy, and grown-@s$ adults know when it's appropriate to bring it up and where to bring it up! Nobody wants to be gut-punched by a rape comparison in a thread about photoshop piracy, and if it was your intention to be hostile to those people because you love the thrill of the shill, then yeh you sure made it hostile, just like you did here in my thread which I do not appreciate.

People that got murdered are obviously not going to see your post and take offense, and theft is the only actual appropriate comparison.

You went with rape because it is an extreme that evokes an emotional response in an attempt to shut down real conversation, and are acting surprised it GOT an emotional response, but one you didn't like.

The fact that you come in here expecting assent from the fora is deeply unsettling to me and goes back to my earlier statement– why are DD members uniquely targeted for bans on CF, apparently? Hmmm. I wonder.
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If y'all wanna kvetch about ComicFury, go do it in your own thread– this was a discussion about a major loss in the webcomic community and how we need to move forward to fill a void it left. We are watching free hosting and individuality die around us!!
But I see this discussion is already effed, because after that response nobody is going to want to stay on the topic. Should probably lock it honestly. I guess I'm the idiot for thinking this would be something people cared about.

…wow this thread took a really bad turn that wasn't even meant to take.

Amelius wrote:
(First off thanks damehelsing for addressing the topic at hand! I'm sorry for your loss on the comic front, I personally couldn't stick around if I wanted to because it keeps logging me out! All the updates are “leaving” announcements anyway, that site is toast)

I keep getting logged out too! D: and apparently no one is getting alerted when a comic updates?? I've yet to check this out/see it for myself.

Amelius

If y'all wanna kvetch about ComicFury, go do it in your own thread– this was a discussion about a major loss in the webcomic community and how we need to move forward to fill a void it left. We are watching free hosting and individuality die around us!!
But I see this discussion is already effed, because after that response nobody is going to want to stay on the topic. Should probably lock it honestly. I guess I'm the idiot for thinking this would be something people cared about.

I'm so sorry this thread went down the route it did, we really did lose something big in the webcomic community. Individuality really IS dying. People there had their own templates set up, it could be cute, simple, original, whatever they wanted it to be. Now everyone there is basically forced to have a tapas/webtoon look to their comic, while yes single page updates are still possible they're looking for us to post chapters now?? No. Not everyone can crank out a chapter weekly. SmackJeeves was NOT meant to be a webtoon or a tapas-kind of site.
ComicFury and the Duck are pretty much the only ones that still show community and originality with the chance of each comic creator showing their own sparkle. :(
I feel like the webtoon look is taking over. I really like the look of traditional comic books. The idea of being able to flip a page but on the internet is super appealing to me. The scroll type is not my thing. :(

I definitely will miss old SmackJeeves, I wish I participated in the forums a bit more but maybe it's a good thing I didn't?? Maybe I would have missed the people and the forums too much.

Amelius wrote:

If DD members are getting banned from CF, what do you all think that says about the culture here? I know what other people say, but that's not a subject for here.(hint- it's not positive)

#SupportThread

I had no idea about smackjeeves, I tried the site years ago but didn't stick around. Not because it was bad or anything, if I remember rightly it was a decent site but I found DD a more welcoming community and focused on here.
I guess it's normal for sites to change and all of us old school DD users know it's not always a good change, in the case of smackjeeves it sounds extreme.

The other aspects that derailed this thread a little bit, well I'm going to start a thread about that if people want to continue down that route.

Actually with the fall of SJ, we may see new sites spring up. So out of something negative could come something positive.

I've seen at least two new platforms launched on Twitter. I'm too lazy to use them and my work isn't worth it but other sites will come forward to take up the slack.

And in point of fact, for someone with a corpus of completed work, putting up whole chapters at a time isn't a problem. Then updates are monthly? I would have thought the internet model of in the moment would argue against such an archaic model as a monthly magazine subscription.

In case it matters, I apologize for hijacking the thread.

Amelius wrote:
You may not have seen the harm in what you said, but I can assure you it was not because of some “agenda”. I just hope you've done more research since then as scientific consensus has rather left that school of thought you cited far behind.

Been five years, everything has changed. Me, I am not so sure about.

I deleted the previous posts because five years ago I said I was wrong. Did a lot of therapy about it and grew as a person. Or so I thought. Might be some lingering resentment that I have to work through. I was wrong to drag that into this discussion.

HAHAHAHA! WOW

That company was in talks to buy out DD last year!
NHN could have been OUR overlords instead ^_^

Man, the amount of work I had to do as part of that acquisition proposal… I worked hard on that. It was something Brian Altounin had set up.
If it had worked out I'd have had an awesome job with a huge salary and the DD moderator staff would have been brought in as well with permanent paid jobs.

But I was really protective of the site and laid out a lot of restrictions on them. After Platinum and Wowio I was going to make sure we retained control and wouldn't screw over our community.
That must be why it fell through. Well I'm happy it did. FUCK NHN!

Amelius wrote:
If DD members are getting banned from CF, what do you all think that says about the culture here? I know what other people say, but that's not a subject for here.(hint- it's not positive)

Sad tho hear that. I've never head DD culture described as not positive… In fact it's always the opposite. While I've often read negative views of the Comic Fury community, although people like the rest of the site.

ozoneocean wrote:
HAHAHAHA! WOW

That company was in talks to buy out DD last year!
NHN could have been OUR overlords instead ^_^

Man, the amount of work I had to do as part of that acquisition proposal… I worked hard on that. It was something Brian Altounin had set up.
If it had worked out I'd have had an awesome job with a huge salary and the DD moderator staff would have been brought in as well with permanent paid jobs.

But I was really protective of the site and laid out a lot of restrictions on them. After Platinum and Wowio I was going to make sure we retained control and wouldn't screw over our community.
That must be why it fell through. Well I'm happy it did. FUCK NHN!

I had no idea. Well it sounds like a lucky escape. I wonder if comic fury has also had such an offer.

They probably did!
Although Kyo is bad at managing his community he has integrity when it comes to his site and wouldn't sell out the way those losers on Smack Jeeves did.

If you're a member of Smack Jeeves I'd advise you to delete your accounts there, the company that bought them out doesn't have respect for your data.

That's for sure, whatever anyone says, Kyo has always been firm about what he wants the site to be.

And to be fair, the events we are talking about happened a few years back. He might be a model of perfect community relations now for all I know but regardless, I would likewise trust him not to sell out his user base.

ozoneocean wrote:
HAHAHAHA! WOW

That company was in talks to buy out DD last year!
NHN could have been OUR overlords instead ^_^

Man, the amount of work I had to do as part of that acquisition proposal… I worked hard on that. It was something Brian Altounin had set up.
If it had worked out I'd have had an awesome job with a huge salary and the DD moderator staff would have been brought in as well with permanent paid jobs.

But I was really protective of the site and laid out a lot of restrictions on them. After Platinum and Wowio I was going to make sure we retained control and wouldn't screw over our community.
That must be why it fell through. Well I'm happy it did. FUCK NHN!

Christ, dodged a bullet - no, a missile there. Onya. I'm glad we still have our space.

Besides, a secret about Tapas and Webtoon that I keep telling people: they don't care about you. They don't care about indie creators and they never will, because we don't make them money. The bland-ass premium comics and the folks who buy them make them money.

bluecuts34 wrote:
Besides, a secret about Tapas and Webtoon that I keep telling people: they don't care about you. They don't care about indie creators and they never will, because we don't make them money. The bland-ass premium comics and the folks who buy them make them money.

Exactly!
It's even the same with the Smack Jeeves people: the community was sacrificed to make money.
At least when Dylan sold Drunk Duck to Platinum way back in 2006 he stayed on as the chief admin of the site and kept the community going. That's how to do it!

Now that didn't work out in the end but at least he didn't walk away and we came through the other side of it.

bluecuts34 wrote:
Besides, a secret about Tapas and Webtoon that I keep telling people: they don't care about you. They don't care about indie creators and they never will, because we don't make them money. The bland-ass premium comics and the folks who buy them make them money.

This is very true, I'm on Tapas and Webtoons, now I have no issues with Tapas but on Webtoons one of my episodes had been taken down for nudity, no I wouldn't have a problem if I were to be in the wrong BUT at the time of the episode being uploaded in their rules section it had been said “nudity is okay as long as its not meant to be sexually gratifying and there is no sexual content involved.” now if I had been given a heads up BEFORE the episode take down that would have been okay too, but I was not. I did not receive an email about their rules being updated or my episode being taken down. I found out my episode was taken down when I went back to go edit some and I noticed it said “REMOVED!” So obviously I fixed it and I censored the nudity.
NOW.
I proceeded to email them and every time I emailed them I would get a “We're looking into the situation.” so I ended up reuploading the censored episode but now it's completely disorganized and in the wrong place and I can't fix that. I did include at the top of the episode that it belongs somewhere else but given that webtoons never fixed my episode that was removed I had to resort to this and having a totally disorganized folder of chapters and pages :'D I've been told I should just take down the episodes and reupload them but 1. that's tiresome and 2. I would lose a ton of hearts which does help in getting some views.

TL;DR: webtoons took down an episode due to nudity because rules had changed AFTER uploading the episode, they never contacted me about it and any time I contacted them after I had edited the episode to be censored they always did a “We're looking into this.” response. They hate us small people :'D

damehelsing wrote:

bluecuts34 wrote:
Besides, a secret about Tapas and Webtoon that I keep telling people: they don't care about you. They don't care about indie creators and they never will, because we don't make them money. The bland-ass premium comics and the folks who buy them make them money.

This is very true, I'm on Tapas and Webtoons, now I have no issues with Tapas but on Webtoons one of my episodes had been taken down for nudity, no I wouldn't have a problem if I were to be in the wrong BUT at the time of the episode being uploaded in their rules section it had been said “nudity is okay as long as its not meant to be sexually gratifying and there is no sexual content involved.” now if I had been given a heads up BEFORE the episode take down that would have been okay too, but I was not. I did not receive an email about their rules being updated or my episode being taken down. I found out my episode was taken down when I went back to go edit some and I noticed it said “REMOVED!” So obviously I fixed it and I censored the nudity.
NOW.
I proceeded to email them and every time I emailed them I would get a “We're looking into the situation.” so I ended up reuploading the censored episode but now it's completely disorganized and in the wrong place and I can't fix that. I did include at the top of the episode that it belongs somewhere else but given that webtoons never fixed my episode that was removed I had to resort to this and having a totally disorganized folder of chapters and pages :'D I've been told I should just take down the episodes and reupload them but 1. that's tiresome and 2. I would lose a ton of hearts which does help in getting some views.

TL;DR: webtoons took down an episode due to nudity because rules had changed AFTER uploading the episode, they never contacted me about it and any time I contacted them after I had edited the episode to be censored they always did a “We're looking into this.” response. They hate us small people :'D

Webtoons has an 800px limit anyway so I don't personally see how they'd even see something sexually gratifying in such low resolution ;)

Yeah webtoons is trash tier hosting. No comment notifications so I had to flip through each page individually. Bluh. Tapas ain't much better.

Also for creators: your audiences on those sites won't ever spend money on you, it's just another thing in their feed. Other folks I'm friends will have many thousands of subs on tapas and not a single one of them clicked to the kickstarter link for their first volume. Sure those readers might have clocked a twitter link, but the majority of traffic came from their own website and people clicking through there. Food for thought.

Sup all, Smackjeeves was my main site and it felt like a slap to the face. I really liked their old comic management system. its so garbage now and every thumbnail was changed. I tried tinkering with it to fix things but screw it. I just deleted my comic its feels like an end of an era to me.

tRickityHouses wrote:
Sup all, Smackjeeves was my main site and it felt like a slap to the face. I really liked their old comic management system. its so garbage now and every thumbnail was changed. I tried tinkering with it to fix things but screw it. I just deleted my comic its feels like an end of an era to me.

That's always really sad when that sort of thing happens. It's a shame to lose that connection with a place.

It's almost like a death in the family, you have to go through some sort of grieving process, daft as it sounds. This site and ComicFury both look set to stay the course, so I hope you'll be able to get back on track without too much trauma.

I thought that I was the only one who got banned from ComicFury, or at least one of the few. :-) But back to the thread.

I hope that Drunk Duck will be a nice alternative for some of the Smack Jeeves refugees; just as they were for me. It’s really nice here. I know that it will take awhile for them to move all of their images over here, and that they may need to alter them to fit in the DD format.

— Rick Rudge

rickrudge wrote:
I thought that I was the only one who got banned from ComicFury, or at least one of the few. :-) But back to the thread.

I hope that Drunk Duck will be a nice alternative for some of the Smack Jeeves refugees; just as they were for me. It’s really nice here. I know that it will take awhile for them to move all of their images over here, and that they may need to alter them to fit in the DD format.

— Rick Rudge

I'd love to know when you were banned and what for.
Also, what features should we try and add here?

Ironscarf wrote:
And to be fair, the events we are talking about happened a few years back. He might be a model of perfect community relations now for all I know but regardless, I would likewise trust him not to sell out his user base.

Hmmm….. like you, I went to CF when the Duck got ‘paralytic’ a few too many times, and I lost stats, commenters, etc.

I'm hardly the most “P.C.” person in webcomic world, but I've never had any probs., although my “carbon footprint” on the CF forums is pretty light, largely because I see too many juvenile thread titles ….one of the reasons I meandered back to these DD ones…only to find them in a near-mummified state of low activity, compared to the “halcyon” days of some years ago !

I found S.J. a very fiddly site to use and I'd end up with multiple pages open, trying to load pages…probably me, but I gave up, Glad I did now.

Sorry I got a little hot under the collar there.

I really dodged a bullet too with SJ, I was seriously considering a mirror there after my personal site went down (I warn everyone: Avoid EIG hosts and their scam-security “Sitelock”, they will screw ya!) but I dragged my feet, it's this darn Drunk Duck loyalty of mine…
A couple of my favorite comics hosted there and I absolutely loved the comic recommendations on the sidebar, unlike Tapas that sort of randomly grabs what's popular, SJ really cultivated to your tastes by grouping comics people tended to read together. It looks like they really parsed that down to bare bones, rec's only 2 comics now and I think by tags rather than collections.

Gods, I miss the comic rings we used to have here on DD forever ago!

I miss SJ's customized templates people had too, the blaring white is such a headache for reading and the popup ui is soooo sooo bad. It's like someone waving their hand in your face while you're reading.

My biggest critique I ever had with SJ was sometimes I had to block their ads because it redirected my browser!