Guys, I'm pretty new here and it looks like I came in at the wrong time completely. I don't know Platinum or Dylan or a lot of the other players behind the scenes, but I know the comics I see on here and I like what I read and plan to stick around for a long time. One thing I can't understand is exactly why some folks are talking about leaving this place. I understand that the corporatization of things is a little scary, believe me I'm a staunch Libertarian, but what exactly are the things that you don't like about the changes that have been made? Overall, they seem pretty positive and they even seem willing to adjust to things that we don't like quite quickly. I'm not a creator here, just a fan and I'm trying to wrap my brain around the strong reaction everyone seems to be having, as I realize my experience may be a bit different from most people's here.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
To those leaving: Why?
I actually think this upgrade is the best thing that could have ever happened to Drunk Duck. I'm not getting any of the popups like I did before and I used to get a lot of them. I know I'm sticking around for a long time. Definitely a big improvement from when I first originally started using Drunk Duck which was I think about two years ago before the first shut down. Then, I moved back into DD as soon as it came back, but yeah, this is waaaaaay better than what we had before. ^^
I think he just means the lack of functionality of the forums. But it seems to be getting a little bit better every hour or so. I'm sure they have quite a laundry list of tasks in front of them, but I know they're going to have a forum system that eventually exceeds any free forum system…at least as applied to DD.
I have no problems with the new site apart from minor gripes. Even those, however, tend to be improvements over the old site. I definitely like putting more emphasis on community. Integrating the forums into the site design is also a huge step up. It encourages authors and artists to become active community members by not forcing them to register again for forum access.
Hmm…I guess a reason that a person would leave would be the popularity that the Duck is going to get now. It was already hard for a comic to get any recognition, but that was different on Drunk Duck. The community was smaller, it was easier to get comments and critique on your comic, but now that it's more mainstreamed, more people will join. As a result, it'll become less personified, just another faceless large corporation. It sounds exagerrated, but I'm afraid about that. That all the good comics will just get lost amoung the crappy comics that jumped the bandwagon.
But leaving wont help any of that.
I dunno. It might make it more popular, but there seems to be more effort being looked at to try and give better recognition to comics that work hard, make searching more effective so people can find your comic, and more power to customize the look of your part of the site. Bugs are getting fixed. Features are being added, and we don't have to foot the bill.
I'd say thats a pretty good deal.
Hey I just found out about this place from DJ Coffman over at Yirmumma! I have a Comicgenesis page, I'm gonna mirror it over here, this place seems like fun!
Cheers
Barry
http://phinmagic.comicgenesis.com
But to suggest that people ditching DD are just afraid of change is misguided at best, disingenuous BS at worst.We didn't. We suggested that people are ditching DD for the wrong reasons, stemmed from an inaccurate NY Times article, a forum blogger that was woefully uninformed, and a comic that preyed on those fears just for a "laugh".
Would a heads up have been nice? Well, yes. Heck, some Admins didn't even know about it. But due to certain contract negotiations Volte could not say anything, or the whole deal may have fallen through. Look how fast it got out to everywhere in just a few hours after the NY times article.
If DD HADN'T been acquired by Platinum and was still privately owned, who knows what would have happened. I can speculate however, given (repeating) events from the past:
- It would have crashed due to bad hosting problems.
- It would still have annoying pop-unders and noisy flash ads to pay the bills
- Volte would not have had the time to improve ANYTHING.
- People would be complaining louder than they do now.
- After some frustration, he may have even walked away from it. I probably would have.
I can understand why people reacted the way they did, but it's really their loss if they don't give it a chance. Things change, either for the good or bad.
The bottom line for me is that Volte MADE this great, user-friendly place for all of us to play, and it's still here for us to do just that. Some of you may think that you are entitled to something more than you got because you helped it become a success, but tell me how much credit/profits you get from Google and MSN first.
Sure Volte made DD for free under his own time and expense but the the CONTENT that drove hits and made DD an assett worth aquiring was provided for free by creators at their own expense. They thought they were taking part in a community and not creating assets for Volte to turn a profit on or for Platinum to profit off of through ad revenue none of which they themselves will ever see. Rightly or wrongly some feel used and that they were sold out.That the "community" was really just a free content pool to be used as a bargaining chip for others' profits. Others simply resent that the so-called "community" was bargained off without ever informing that community. And others simply don't wish to be part of a larger commercial enterprise.
One can make the argument that the creators were also making a profit to begin with through merchandise sales that Volte certainly never got a commisiom on, of course. But to suggest that people ditching DD are just afraid of change is misguided at best, disingenuous BS at worst.
This post shows nothing but complete niavete as to how economics works. Anyone signing up for any free webhosting community, be it drunk duck, or comicgenesis, or deviant art, or myspace, has to be aware that their content is factoring into the overall profitablity of the parent host. In fact I'm sure that little agreement you didn't read but just clicked the "I agree to terms" box instead said something along those lines. It's ridiculous to expect someone to do the full time job of keeping a site like this running without compensation. So the owner keeps the advertising revenue and he even puts some of that money back into the project, to improve it for the people in that community. If you were really all that concerned with someone else making money off of your product you'd've shelled out the 75$ to buy your own website in the first place. If you weren't aware that the guy running the show wasn't doing it for free for shits and giggles then you aren't very bright. I don't see "Drunk Duck is a non-profit organization" posted anywhere on this site, and I never have. So far the biggest changes I've seen from the buy-out is the site's gotten better, and the initial blind hatred for the "big corporations" (and from what i understand in the print comic world, platinum studios is still very much the little guy, they're like a step up from independant publishers.)
If ANYONE is online offering a webcomic to people to read for free its not because they want to be part of a community. It's because they love doing it.
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