oekaki thumbnails discussion {READ FIRST POST}

[Lucida]

i'mma post my gripe, just cause I've been having trouble getting into the chickensmoothie art community for this exact reason.

the chickensmoothie art software feels like it was made for windows xp, to be very blunt. i've tried using it for god knows how long and I just can't, so I went back to using paint tool and was making a few things to post. then suddenly I see memes about the lock fiasco and realize 'oh shoot, they're quite literally censoring artists doing their best to find a work around.'

not only that, but the oekaki art boards are literally a grave yard. no one posts there, cause guess what? the forums are already garbage to navigate through. just to find a simple trade thread, you have to go through about 3-4 different windows as is. now imagine having to open a thread, look through art, then close that thread to go to the next. the oekaki board is clean already and is one of the most active parts of the site, throwing red locks and covering up art work everywhere is insulting to the dedicated people who still use it.

did you check if anyone cared about the C4C 'spam'? cause i haven't seen too many complaints about it, and guess why? cause it's usually not so spammed there's not normal art still showing.

if you're so angry, just make a sub section of oekaki in general that's meant for 'Character 4 Character' stuff, problem solved.

[shortstop]

Just as in real life, consumer interest drives the market. If you want the art boards to be more popular. you have to make them more popular. Perhaps they do need overhauling; having them be the same as the rest of the text-based forums is annoying for sure. But staff has no obligation to improve them unless they see them being more heavily used.

[jasps]

stole ur lock uvu, yeah closed species off oekaki are not nearly as popular as their on oekaki counterparts. I'm kind of livid CS would delete my message with no rhyme or reason TWICE in a row lmao but it's disappointing that im used to it. My main points have already been said but this choice allienates community members who struggle with oekaki but still want to participate in character4character or closed species adopts (previously a lot of artists worked off oekaki and posted covers, now people are discouraged or banned from making adopts off oekaki even if covers are valid works of art) anyway my questions to mods still stand;

why allow milestone adopts then? isn't that a double standard?

why was keiikoas and pecos images locked? They didn't actually have art under them, it was a complete parody and suggests that mods didn't actually view their images.

Why was my message deleted twice lol, I thought it was simply because i didn't post it on an appropriate thread but apparently not.

[Guest]

There's no reason to ban "character for character" threads, so long as they are following the rules. Many people do use the Oekaki canvas to create their characters for these trades, and that is okay! Egg/gatcha adopts also aren't spam if they are drawn on the Oekaki canvas. If someone wants to use another program, they can use the User-made adopts or Character Designs Sales boards.

The Oekaki board is for making and sharing art in the Oekaki program. If that is what it is being used for, it's okay.

i believe the original question still remains unanswered.

a handful of egg adopts run by several users (popular artists come to mind, but i'm not going to name them as that's beside the point) have had the actual adopts posted and done off-oekaki. despite this none of these threads have never been locked even though, as you stated in this thread, that adopts made off-oekaki arent allowed even with a cover (in this case, it is the egg/gacha capsule)

there have also been instances in the past where char4chars with a simple sketch on the cover + an "adopt below" message have not been locked despite this supposed rule being in place since 2015 (as you've stated in this post). i'm currently busy so i can't link such past examples right now as it requires a bit of digging and i'm busy, but if you could give me two or so hours that would be lovely.

(or someone else on the thread would like to contribute by searching for me; i would be eternally grateful)

i would send this as a help ticket as well, so that this can reach cs staff quicker, but as multiple users are concerned with this issue, i think it would be helpful if this was answered in a public thread and not a private ticket.

don't get me wrong, i really don't think there is anything wrong with these covers being locked; that rule makes perfect sense and i agree with it. what i don't agree is that there is a sudden tightening of this rule without warning (as i am very much certain that cs staff have given the allowance of covers as long as there is a sketch at minimum on the oekaki piece) and mods attempting to brush questions about it under the rug by putting their hands on their hips and petulantly saying that "it's been in place for a while, you're just being silly"

just in case this message gets deleted, i have it saved and i have no qualms against reposting it especially if it was done without explanation.

[Rinovo]

Honestly,,, easiest way to fix this? Give the option to upload offsite art( it would appear exactly like it was done on oekaki.) Have it automatically be labeled as a off-site work on its post if the mods are worried about art theft. It isn’t that hard...

[dreamyEnding]

Yeah the off-oekaki boards are really just not a great place to be.
I mean first and foremost, they cram a lot of different categories into the same place. And yes, I know there's are separate sections for adoptables, species, competitions, and shops. But looking at the front page of the art galleries theres:

An artist identification thread, art program questions, many galleries, a thread for dumping art for hosting, a pricing discussion thread, a secret santa organization thread, buttons, and a base directory.

Like that's a lot! And it's not that active in there! At the very least "Art help/discussion" should really be it's own zone. Plus, there's no fast way to peek at peoples threads, a lot of them don't want you to post so you have to PM them to talk about their art. And even if you do allow posting you have to have a pretty good post structure set up to keep things usable. Either way you're probably going to end up with low interaction which is bad for morale.

Meanwhile oekaki is easy to browse, doesn't rely on the posters knowing how to code posts, has sections, has likes for easy interaction, and most importantly has following so you can keep up with artists easily. It's easy to see why off-oekaki artists would want to try and join in any way that they can.

TBH if they want off-oekaki artists to be happy in the forums, there needs to be a bunch of QOL changes.

Or even, and this an easy one: Make an oekaki subsection that's just for off-oekaki art galleries with on-oekaki covers.
Off-oekaki artists get the visibility of oekaki artists and they're confined to one spot for the mod's sake. Or at the very least, ease the rules about advertising other threads on oekaki so that artists can redirect to their gallery threads?

[ford]

Or even, and this an easy one: Make an oekaki subsection that's just for off-oekaki art galleries with on-oekaki covers.
Off-oekaki artists get the visibility of oekaki artists and they're confined to one spot for the mod's sake.

100% absolutely agree with this. as an offsite artist, this would be PERFECT for me.

[hypnowave]

Hey there,

The Oekaki boards are not for sharing art made in other programs, so covers made to share art done elsewhere are considered spam. This isn't a new rule or an update, and we have been enforcing this rule since at least around the time I became a moderator in 2015 (especially in the adoptable boards).

from what i've seen, it wasn't enforced. i decided to look at my gallery from around 2015 and i found a decent amount of non-milestone cover adopts that weren't locked, which was what led me to believe that as long as a sketch (or hell, even just text) was present, then putting any off-oekaki art pieces in the post was okay. none of the adopts below are milestone adopts.

custom
fully off-oekaki adopt center
custom
event adopt
event adopt
event adopt
runner up
regular adopt
runner up

again, none of these were locked, meaning that the rule wasn't being enforced back then. if staff want to start enforcing their rules, that's fine, but it feels very inconsistent at the moment and you have no leg to stand on by claiming that this rule was in full effect in 2015.

[shortstop]

Honestly,,, easiest way to fix this? Give the option to upload offsite art( it would appear exactly like it was done on oekaki.) Have it automatically be labeled as a off-site work on its post if the mods are worried about art theft. It isn’t that hard...

The off-Oekaki forums could likely be overhauled to do this, but as I said before, change is driven by consumer usage. People would really need to start using those forums to make it worth the time for staff to improve things. Ideally, someone should start a thread in the suggestions forum to start garnering ideas and getting staff attention. Show interest, and you're likely to force some change.

[QueenOfWyrms]

I am curious on one thing; what makes these covers “spam”?

[quote=Google Automatic Dictionary]
Noun: irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the internet to a large number of recipients.
Verb: send the same message indiscriminately to (large numbers of recipients) on the internet.[/quote]

What makes using a cover spam?
If spam is the problem why not set a drawing submission timer-based limit? Like there is on certain trade and discussion forums?