Suggestions

[DioShiba]

I think there's an immediately apparent and significant difference between the forums being closed and being deleted. With deletion, the entire history is lost, some of which may still be valuable from a research or archival perspective whereas leaving it online but read-only at least prevents that loss so they imply entirely different things unless your only concern is being able to post at which point yet, they're the same. That said, the decision to close was made primarily because almost nobody posts and half of what we do here at this point is just clean up spam bots. A lack of posting isn't going to make a huge difference since activity here has all but ceased.

Except that is not what I am trying to get at, what I am getting at is that regardless of whether or not the the forums are deleted or left in a read only state, they’re still closed and not able to be posted on. That said there's a reason why I put that question in as a rhetorical.

I get why the decision is being made, but the wording in how this came off is where the confusion is because it comes across as a mixed message in that regard and that's what I am trying to point out.

Is it possible that changes made earlier on could have helped keep the forum alive in the long-term? Absolutely. But I'd argue it's also unlikely. With forums as a whole becoming a thing of the past online and an interest in pixel art waning as well, I can't think of anything that would have kept this place up to its old levels of activity indefinitely. This back and forth between us is the most activity we've seen in a while (exaggerating but probably not far from the truth) and I still prefer this method of communication but the vast majority just don't.

If this were true, websites such as Newgrounds and Deviant Art wouldn’t have active users on them either. While it’s true that forums aren’t as widely used in the advent of social media and discord there are still plenty of sites that use forums and where those systems are still active. They’re still kicking around.

As for an interest in pixel art “waning” as you put it, I’m not entirely sure where you are getting that from. There are plenty of people who still make and creat pixel art and in the past two years I have been gone, between the two above mentioned sites, ArtStation, Instagram, and even a few groups on Facebook where some of the people who used to be on here post on every now and then there is still a pretty strong interest for it from what I have seen outside TVGR as a whole.

In fact it does lead me to another point because I've talked with several former users about this in the past.

nothing we've done has managed to bring ours back.

This is where thinking outside the box needs to be considered.

Truthfully, some of those who were from the core group of members from back in the day would say that you guys haven't really done anything to keep the forums active. That's taking it from both sides into consideration.

I'm not accusing anyone on the staff of this, mind you. The way I look at it was that there was a communication breakdown somewhere along the way and things ended up going down south and that's why a lot of people ended up leaving.

Where I think a lot of it stems from was when the priorities changed from TVGR over to DYKG was when things started to get into a transitional point where it felt like that core user base felt like it was being abandoned in favor of other things, I guarantee you that if you actually reached out to some of those people they will likely tell you that the pixel artists who were on here felt shafted because of all the changes that were going on.

Hell, there are plenty of users who feel like social media is shafting them out of having a platform to share their work. And that's where there is a possibility, albeit a long shot to gain back some traction if the cards are played right.

If you have ideas for something that can be done to drive activity back here or some significant reason you can see to keep the forums open even after disconnecting them from the sites, I'm all ears.

Well for starters if there is a way to pull this off, the first thing I would say is that TVGR forums needs to get it's priorities and goals straight because right now, they don't feel existent and this was an issue dating back in the late 2010's that came to surface.

Because frankly if all else it just felt like that those two things were never really established with the community from what I recall and then there was just a ton of chaos around the time the transitional shift happened.

If anything if there is one thing I would directly say up front is that there needs to be a rule against politics or serious discussion because that's an issue that happened every now and then. I can remember at least two threads off the top of my head on this board in the last decade alone that should have been locked way sooner than they did, one of them happened to be a topic called "The Male Gaze" and another where I believe it was in the real world discussion where transgenderism was brought up and a lot of us had a massive disagreement with one or two users who brought up controversial opinions. due to a lack of containment board for it.

Even if there was a containment board, I don't think it would be healthy and I think a stronger stance against it in the same way Tom Fulp decided to close down the General and Politcal boards on Newgrounds last year since it didn't align with the goals of NG due to a lot of the drama that came from those two boards.

I'm not saying that just because they got rid of their general board means that we should, but what I am saying is that we should have a rule against any political discourse and serious discussion from happening.

Lastly off the top of my head I would say that promoting TVGR forums might actually help in some way. IDK if that's possible for Dazz to consider in the last bit of a DYKG video aside from a sponsor, but you know if it helps garter interest then who knows, it's a long shot that could actually work.

There are other ideas I do have, I'm not saying that they're fool proof suggestions but you know, sometimes it really doesn't hurt to have those conversations with what didn't work in the past with some of the members who did leave.

You'll have to forgive the wall of text and mentioning other sites that aren't related to TVGR, but I think in this case it's a bit warranted because we have to start looking for solutions from perspectives that aren't necessarily related to what the staff has been doing here for the past ten years alone now.

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TL;DR Key Points
- There are still plenty of websites that have active forums
- There is still an interest in pixel art when you look outside of TVGR
- Many of the people who were part of the older user base felt isolated when the overall goals that Dazz had shifted and communication became lost between the staff on the site and them happened.
- Clearer goals and priorities for the site need to be better established and followed for everyone.
- A rule against politics and hot take topics should be made since it wouldn't align with those goals.
- Last but not least, more promotion of the forums to the masses and trying to bring in a user base who feels disillusioned by the current state of the internet and online communities on social media.

I won't sugar coat that even with these in suggestions in place, it's going to bring the forums back to life overnight. But it is possible to bring back some of the activity so that we don't have just 9 posts every day, if not a week.