Suggestions

[Petie]

I'm writing a lot of my points by reading the post backwards. But hopefully reading this from bottom to top helped me break this down better because there is a lot to unpack here.

I suppose the question here is how can the forums become useful again in that case. I do think I have an answer for this on a latter point but one of the things that I think that could hypothetically help is where a sense of community can be made if posting submissions on the forums is not a thing that could be helpful given that the switch to a queue based direct system ended up taking that over.

I think where part of this stems where people feel that discord is replacing the forums. I know you said that discord is meant to be a supplement as a means for communication, however looking at some of the things from here and what got moved from the forums to the discord... I think there's reason for people to say that it does feel like a replacement.

Part of the answer may actually end up having more to do with Discord and how that can be better integrated as more of a supplemental thing as opposed to making it feel like a replacement as other users pointed out. More on that in a later point.

I definitely understand why people feel the Discord is replacing the forum but there's not much that can be done about that. The forum has been here the entire time the Discord has existed and if the bulk of users choose to exclusively use the Discord, then activity is going to be focused mostly on the Discord. That said, the Discord isn't crazy active either (not to the extent that the forum was in the past, anyway). I'll touch more on this further down though (with your integration suggestion).

Flash has become obsolete HOWEVER... I would make the argument that people would much rather make sprite videos with a combination of any pixel art program and After Effects, I've actually done this once for one of my pieces. Maybe even blender if someone knows how to composite animated videos in 2D (which, is a thing that I have seen.)

I don't see why people would need to use Adobe Animate unless they are ballsy enough to pull something elaborate with a team of people to do the roughs in that and then make their clean ups in aseprite. That's just me saying.

Far as sprite comics go that is another beast where I think that those may be gone. Unless someone opts to make pixel art comics entirely from scratch and not rely on any sort of pre-made sprites that's another story but I don't often see that. (If anything my recent little thing for Ed Edd n' Eddy's 25th anniversary probably comes close to it)

I was only using Flash as an example. I think sprite comics were the more relevant example anyway and we seem to be on the same page there.

Maybe, maybe not. Even if activity was declining before that I do think it may have contributed to it since the priorities did shift and TVGR felt like less of a focus, primarily those who do make custom work.

That's fair though I'd add that a lot of the more prolific custom artists that used to hang around went on to bigger and better things. There are at least a few who made careers out of it and would have left (rightfully so - not blaming them at all) when those careers called.

Perhaps saying for the site overall didn't help, but I do think where the forums more so in specific need clearer priorities and how that can be gone about where it supplements the goals of the overall site is where the real challenge is.

Because even if the goals for the site regarding the archival of sprites, models, sfx and textures are met, that kind of doesn't help with those who wish to make custom work for their indie projects.Which in that case the forums themselves would need a new priority to help supplement what the main purpose of TVGR has going for it.

Far as doing something unique goes, I do agree with that it would be a challenge. What I am wondering is if there is a way to integrate the forums with the discord server so that when there is a post on the forums it could be monitored by some kind of bot that the server would have.Ultimately you did say that the discord was meant to supplement communication so, if there is a way it can be done so in a way where there is to tie activity between the server and the forums as to play off one another simultaneously. (like say if there is a dedicated discord channel for threads that are posted on the forum to be recognized by a bot and then it's sent to the discord server in a respective channel.

Because I'm going to be honest my biggest gripe there was that whenever something was posted it could easily get lost due to the amount of messages from users certain channels would get.

The idea of integrating the forum into a dedicated Discord channel is interesting but I think won't have the intended effect. If we had a bot of a webhook or something that triggered every time a new thread was posted and also posted it to the Discord, people would just discuss those topics on the Discord (assuming the text was present) or we'd have a channel full of nothing but "there's a new post!" messages (if it wasn't). Either way, I'm not sure it would actually drive traffic to the forum. I'm not completely shooting the idea down though - I feel like I'm not thinking of everything here and there might be a way to make this work.

Even if it is civil, who is to say that the problem might happen again in the long run should the forums pick up activity? It's a hypothetical obviously but even then I would be concerned if those topics do get out of hand when we are trying to revive a forum because prospective users who may be interested as they're browsing the forums as guests may feel discouraged to join if that is the case.

TVGR is apolitical is it not?

I just don't see where it would beneficial to allow for it when it can in turn create more headaches. This is where I disagree that it would be a bad idea to allow for some certain topics such as that may have the potential to offend or cause some drama. That said this is how I see it, either have a containment board, or don't allow it.

The site is apolitical but people are not. Banning those topics outright just isn't the best method in my experience (though it certainly can work). That said, the plan wasn't ever to just let those discussions float around anywhere - there would always be a specific section where they were allowed and nowhere else so that those who won't want to be bothered by "serious" talk can easily ignore it.

Perhaps, but I'm willing to wager if that some of those younger audiences are able to figure out a website like Newgrounds, even if it's just at the bear minimum of typing a post, then that is a start for some people to learn how a BBS or online forum system works. While the real question still stands on how many people are willing to come back to this kind of system, it's likely most of those who feel that social media is either too fast paced or poorly moderated may end up being a pretty significant margin.

Maybe I'm wrong, but honestly with some of the social media groups involving pixel art I have been a part of, some of them either let their groups die off, or it's not as efficiently moderated and there's more cause for the wrong kind of discourse to occur without cause.

I can see there being some willing to try something new but I think getting people who have only ever joined groups via sites like Facebook to make the switch to a non-realtime setup like a forum might be a challenge. It seems like you're on the same page there too though.

Alright I re-read the post where I was having confusion on and I get what you were actually saying now. (This is where I have been getting myself confused so there is that)

In any case that can be disregarded, you'll have to forgive me if I pushed on that a bit and didn't comprehend what was fully said since I was on break from work and my mind was a bit more focused on that aspect.

My responses are in the quote boxes from my previous post for simplicity. As to your last point, it's all good - no forgiveness needed as I only wanted to make sure we were both on the same page.