CG Forums Future - How can we help it?

[IVstudios]

Eh... in the old days, people wouldn't spend several days planning and talking about what they could do, they'd just... do it. Chaos ensued. A CG war is only fun if people make it fun and are having fun doing it. Don't overthink or overcomplicate things I say, but then what do I know.

A valid point, but in the old days we had enough people around that you could just start something and odds were a few people would join in. With attendance down I don't think there's anything wrong with at least talking about it beforehand to see if there would be enough interest.

Also, I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm not sure everyone is on the same page so: You guys know the war isn't an actual beef/spam/attack right? It's basically just a jam with another forum. Please don't anyone spam any other forums.

[Derek Dragomir]

Eh... in the old days, people wouldn't spend several days planning and talking about what they could do, they'd just... do it. Chaos ensued. A CG war is only fun if people make it fun and are having fun doing it. Don't overthink or overcomplicate things I say, but then what do I know.

A valid point, but in the old days we had enough people around that you could just start something and odds were a few people would join in. With attendance down I don't think there's anything wrong with at least talking about it beforehand to see if there would be enough interest.

Also, I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm not sure everyone is on the same page so: You guys know the war isn't an actual beef/spam/attack right? It's basically just a jam with another forum. Please don't anyone spam any other forums.

Yea, I understand that. I did mention that we'd do this in a way that we wouldn't be breaking any forum rules from any participating parties.

Alright, well. I'm really interested in doing this war thing, so let's do it for fuch's sake! Regardless of what participation we'll get.

Just one last question. Would anyone like to team up with me as editors for a possible Comic Genesis anthology book? This would entail looking over everyone's entries, making sure they're good for print. And also working on a Kickstarter enrty. For those who aren't familiar with Kickstarter, it's a website where you tell people about your idea and ask them to donate to it. Whoever donates apparently gets points on the website depending on how much they donate. But you can also offer incentives, for example, whoever donates $5 gets a free... idk, card drawn by one of the artists from CG. Whoever donates $10 gets a copy of the Art Book when it comes out. This would require us to keep track of who donates and how much so that we can send them the books/art cards. Open for discussion.

[Terotrous]

I have a good idea for how to start the war if we can figure out who we want to go to war with (and I can be convinced to get off my butt and draw it).

[Laemkral]

I have a good idea for how to start the war if we can figure out who we want to go to war with (and I can be convinced to get off my butt and draw it).

Do it and I'll take my shirt off!

[Mastermind]

Do it and I'll take my shirt off!

the whole idea seems more logical now.

[Terotrous]

All right all right I'm drawing it. Keep your shirt on.

[McDuffies]

I was gonna speak my doubts about this whole war issue but I didn't have time to type a longer post during the weekend. I see that you've already started so I'll say a few things which may sound discouraging, but I think you should know them anyway:

1. Only a small part of people who follow a jam ever participate in them. If you read previous jams it appears that many people participate in them, but that was the time when number of regulars was hundreds. Part of people who are around spend all their time on their own comic; another part would want to participate but don't have time; then there are those who are always on the verge of participating but never actually get around to drawing anything, those who don't have any good idea, those that are afraid to join in, and so on. Like in any voluntary-based broject, you should divide a number of people who profess interest in participating with three or four to get a number of people who do participate in the end.
Jams are hard to start and not too easy to maintain. People can be lazy, no matter how much enthusiasm they show.

2. People on other forums don't do comic jams, or don't do them the way we do. When the thing with Drunk Duck started, most of folks didn't know how they were expected to respond, and only after quite some time did they start playing the way we did.

3. CG vs DD war boosted our activity for as long as the war started, but when it ended, things returned to the state before. Which is not a surprise because when you think about it, what you expect is people from the other forum to migrate to our forum in huge numbers, which probably won't happen.

4. You'll need to have a moderator on standby during the war, you don't want the sudden spam wave to make forum unusable. I for one will be away on vacation in few weeks.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

You pretty much summed up what my feelings are regarding the matter, but wasn't sure how to put them.

I for one will be away on vacation in few weeks.

Good for you, where to?

[Mastermind]

I'm with you, a jam isn't going to help much in the long run.

I still think CG simply needs to get out of the past. Even if they don't want to hire more admins, a friendlier, cooler looking website, helpful help center and updated forum code (or a banhammer for at least two active mods) should keep the place alive.

We should ask Kisai and RedWolf what they think. If they are too busy, maybe we all could at least help with designing the new page, writing descriptions, updating wiki entries, stuff like that.

[Terotrous]

I was gonna speak my doubts about this whole war issue but I didn't have time to type a longer post during the weekend. I see that you've already started so I'll say a few things which may sound discouraging, but I think you should know them anyway:

1. Only a small part of people who follow a jam ever participate in them. If you read previous jams it appears that many people participate in them, but that was the time when number of regulars was hundreds. Part of people who are around spend all their time on their own comic; another part would want to participate but don't have time; then there are those who are always on the verge of participating but never actually get around to drawing anything, those who don't have any good idea, those that are afraid to join in, and so on. Like in any voluntary-based broject, you should divide a number of people who profess interest in participating with three or four to get a number of people who do participate in the end.
Jams are hard to start and not too easy to maintain. People can be lazy, no matter how much enthusiasm they show.

2. People on other forums don't do comic jams, or don't do them the way we do. When the thing with Drunk Duck started, most of folks didn't know how they were expected to respond, and only after quite some time did they start playing the way we did.

3. CG vs DD war boosted our activity for as long as the war started, but when it ended, things returned to the state before. Which is not a surprise because when you think about it, what you expect is people from the other forum to migrate to our forum in huge numbers, which probably won't happen.

4. You'll need to have a moderator on standby during the war, you don't want the sudden spam wave to make forum unusable. I for one will be away on vacation in few weeks.

Those are all good points, but I'm not 100% convinced we really need to have an adversary for the jam. There's comedy potential in us declaring war on someone who doesn't respond or us simply being too indecisive to pick out an opponent.

I'm also structuring the Jam setup pages so there's room for a fair bit of storyline before any kind of war actually starts anyway.

[Mastermind]

That's actually pretty funny. Dressed up like nazis, we argue over a map of the internet and end up fighting ourselves.

[McDuffies]

Those are all good points, but I'm not 100% convinced we really need to have an adversary for the jam. There's comedy potential in us declaring war on someone who doesn't respond or us simply being too indecisive to pick out an opponent.

I'm also structuring the Jam setup pages so there's room for a fair bit of storyline before any kind of war actually starts anyway.

True but then there's no crossover potential of bringing in new regulars which is what Derek hoped for.
I'm not bothered by anyone trying it really, I may even contribute somehow. I just don't think it'll have the desired effect of attracting people or a very long run.

Good for you, where to?

Just a resort near my hometown.

[Mo]

Out of curiosity I recently had a little snoop around Drunk Duck, which as it turns out has quite recently changed its name to "The Duck Webcomics" and dropped the Drunk!
This has lead to a bit of an uproar in their forums, as many members enjoyed the Drunk-ness and some are unhappy about their new design as the whole website has been relaunched.

So, if anyone is interested in "stealing" members away from DD, now may not be such a bad time. Just convince them that we're ALWAYS drunk at CG and you should be successful.

On the other hand, their admins/mods are actually DOING things, their forums seem a little more active and there's far less spam as far as I can tell... so perhaps we should all leave this dump behind and go join them instead. :S

People can be lazy, no matter how much enthusiasm they show.

Yeah, damn those lazy people.



Oh wait.

[McDuffies]

Oh, I run into the "Duck comics" somewhere recently and I was like "what, do these dudes already know that there's Drunk Duck" and "Drunk Ducks are gonna be pissed that these guys are stealing their animal theme" and then I thought "Wait maybe it's Drunk Duck only they changed their name?" but "Why would they change the name? It was cool as it was."

[Cope]

Out of curiosity I recently had a little snoop around Drunk Duck, which as it turns out has quite recently changed its name to "The Duck Webcomics" and dropped the Drunk!

The Duck will always be Drunk in my heart.

[Mo]

We should totally smuggle alcohol into the DD community... it'll be like during the Prohibition.

*dons 1920s outfit*

That could actually be more fun than a war.

[McDuffies]

YEAH!

[Killbert-Robby]

Guys I hate to say this, but maybe one of the larger issues at hand is simply that webcomics arent as popular as they used to be. We can start all the podcasts and marketing campaigns we want, but the fact is this site had its heyday back when webcomics were all the rage and not only did everyone want to read them, everyone wanted to make one. Short of starting another webcomic bubble I just dont think we'll work up the traffic we used to here.

[RKDS]

In all honesty, if you all really wanted to restart this place, it would be quite trivial for me to register a domain, throw together some basic management interfaces, and let you run wild on it. I have half a mind to register ComicGenesis2.com or something because what really eats at me about ComicGenesis as it stands right now is the feeling of abandonment. You still have something of a community despite everything but, if something breaks nobody here can fix it and nobody that can fix it is here. Hard to really reach too high when that cloud is always looming just about your head.

[Victory-prime]

i remember the contests, like, the Halloween contest. where you draw your characters of your webcomic dressed as other webcomic characters. that was cool.