Archive Channels for Art and Creative Writing

Feature requests
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Having had some time to construct a proper argument since yesterday, I went through @PapaporoPaprito 's and my arguments and have reassembled them. I have also kidnapped added @FXMaster 's suggestion for a creative writing archive. I’d like to put forth the following for consideration:

We would like to have an #art-gallery and a #creative writing-library channel on the Fulpstation Discord. Both should serve the sole purpose of archiving and appreciating the #art and #creative writing our community has created.

The current state is as follows: The #art and #creativewriting channels produce some very beautiful works of art of our favorite atmospheric simulator. In fact, the very mascot of our station, Safety Moth, originated there. However, it is years old. The amount of art accumulated in it goes largely unseen by the majority of users, especially the new ones. Some pictures get pinned, to avoid this. However, not every picture can be pinned, as there is a limit to pins. In addition, especially in the #creative-writing channel, there appear segments of intermittent discussion of a text or artwork that can make it difficult to find a specific picture or read a story published in chapters. The latter has been adressed in #creative writing by long slow mode. That regularly causes conflicts with longer stories.

In effect, the current #art and #creativewriting - channels are some of the highlights of our community. They are highly trafficed! And they provide us with something that is rare and precious: Beauty.
However: We ourselves lack restraint, sometimes, leaving gaps of mere conversation between pictures and stories. And the mechanics of discord itself make it difficult to separate and organize these categories.

Why then a discord channel?

Primarily? Traffic. It is fair to assume, although I don’t know the statistics, that more users frequent our discord than our forums. Even the regulars! And while the “paperwork-y” type of organizing the community is well served with a forum (I’m thinking not only grief patrols but also suggestions on the gamemechanics, ideas for PRs etc.), an art-gallery or a creativewriting-library does not require this kind of longform organization. The art is made, the stories written! All they need is a neat, tidy and easily accessible place for all to come and look and read.
And while our current #art-channel provides this to some extent, it is anything but tidy.
Some pros that a new archive channel would also provide: A lot of us conduct conversations and other activities over discord. Linking would be very easy, as it stays on the platform. Discord also contains many beloved reaction emojis! The wide range of possible reactions makes it very easy to convey exactly what I think of a given picture or text.

What would such a channel require?

In my mind, I envision a purely archival channel, one for pictures and one for creative writing. Posting would be forbidden for most roles. Reactions would be free by all, similar to the Booster Channel.
The Artworks and Stories would be posted by a new role, a curator. He would be equal in permission to the regular yellow folk, with the exception of being allowed to post in the archives. His responsibility would be in the beginning to go through the #art and #creative-writing channels, collect all the stuff and archive them.
Crediting the author/artist is a given, in addition, each work could be given some common keywords like “moth”, “colored” or for stories “Horror” “Non-Fiction” or similar. These would make searching the gallery much easier. Possibly this can be split, a curator for the art gallery and a librarian for the creative-writing library

Do we still need #art and #creative writing?

Yes, as a presentation area, a commons of the people to discuss, debate and aid one another on new artworks and stories!
Simply asking how an artist made the linework and discussing different graphics tablets can be all that is needed for an aspiring artist to find the courage to post their works as well! And thus our community grows!
In addition, the curator, once the initial load of archiving is done, will need a place to find new works! There, they can also guage the interest of the community in the given work!

I believe, these two channels would greatly contribute to our community! I hope you find this presentation convincing and look forward to your replies.

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i like this.

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Why is doing this in discord better than doing it in the forum?

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See the arguments under the Point: Why then a discord channel

“Primarily? Traffic. It is fair to assume, although I don’t know the statistics, that more users frequent our discord than our forums. Even the regulars! And while the “paperwork-y” type of organizing the community is well served with a forum (I’m thinking not only grief patrols but also suggestions on the gamemechanics, ideas for PRs etc.), an art-gallery or a creativewriting-library does not require this kind of longform organization. The art is made, the stories written! All they need is a neat, tidy and easily accessible place for all to come and look and read.
And while our current #art-channel provides this to some extent, it is anything but tidy.
Some pros that a new archive channel would also provide: A lot of us conduct conversations and other activities over discord. Linking would be very easy, as it stays on the platform. Discord also contains many beloved reaction emojis! The wide range of possible reactions makes it very easy to convey exactly what I think of a given picture or text.”

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I guess my concern about this is that we already have over 20 channels that verified players without dev access can see. For admins, it’s about 50. The forum provides the ability to post everything that one artist has posted, or you can make a thread for a specific topic (e.g. moth posting) in a way a straight gallery on the discord wouldn’t be able, and you can still like posts on the forum.

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That admins see about 50 channels was not known to me. However, the standard allotment for verified players is well structured enough, that archive-threads wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary.

As far as the forum is concerned as an alternative, I believe the traffic is lesser, I daresay alot lesser. I’m not privy to the statistics, but I’m sure someone in the administration can see. It wouldn’t surprise me if the difference is in orders of magnitude. I am convinced that our artists and writers want to be seen and read, so for them, discord offers much more.

I can’t deny, however, that the forum does allow for more specific threads: Papa could have his thread, Aspev his and so on. This is something the regular artists could weigh in on. However, given that we have few regular artist and many oneshot or twoshot ones, it might turn out to be one Aspev, one Papaporo and a Misc-Thread. At which point the added specificity might become more of a burden than a help. Don’t know exactly, though.
I would also like to bring the argument of favoritism and fair treatment. We are a very open and encouraging server for people of all stripes. A fair gallery would have to refuse a whole thread for one or two artists and a misc for everyone else. Whereas simply having two fair threads on the forum would be basically the same effect as discord channels. The added specificty of the forum would go unused.
And while you can like posts, that is decidedly not as wonderful as our wide array of emojis on discord. Nice, but just not the same.

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Hello! I’ve been asked to weigh in on this. I believe that Archelon has many valid points that I agree with. For instance, I rarely visit these forums unless someone links me here and I don’t often see many people posting things here other than grief reports/appeals (but this is somewhat anecdotal evidence). However, I also agree that having to deal with/moderate yet another channel on the discord would be a significant pain, as it sets a precedent for the addition of even more channels that aren’t particularly related to Fulpstation itself.

Despite this, I would like to restate that a lot of the art that is posted in the #art channel is only seen for a short amount of time before being buried by other comments. Additionally, 21 of the 46 pinned art pieces are made by me, which demonstrates a bit of bias. We clearly have many other talented artists who deserve to have their amazing art saved somewhere more accessible. Of course, I do have a few doubts on where these should be saved, but I felt that it is a bit unfair that I have been given so much preference over others. I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to having an archive thread here on the forums, but I agree with Archelon that the forums receive significantly less traffic than the discord.

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We currently have 22 channels for non staff members which is already like a shit ton I think the forums is a great place to keep art because we can just put the link in the art channel if we want comments on our pieces that way no one gets their work burred and conversation will stay on topic to that one piece in the comments no one likes feeling their art was ignored because someone else posted something “better”

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I don’t see how more art channels would change the problems of the current art channel. any mega art channel will bury the art of less popular people. that won’t change. its extra work for 0 gain. a forum is really the only place where an idea like this could work.

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I refer you to my section “what would such a channel require”. I am confident, you will find your worries allayed: “In my mind, I envision a purely archival channel, one for pictures and one for creative writing. Posting would be forbidden for most roles. Reactions would be free by all, similar to the Booster Channel.”

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For you, too, please look at my proposals under section “What would such a channel require”, especially the idea of a curator.

While I admit, it would be more work for one person (or possibly two, depending), I believe the gain would be tremendous. The inclusion of keywords alone would allow for ease of search. And if noone but the curator gets to post, that makes the problem of comments between art basically non-existent.

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so the only thing people could actually do is look/emote at the art or stories in these channels? would there be additional art/story-discussions channel? how would that change the problems of the current art channel? again, it doesn’t seem like this idea benefits anyone much imo.

the inclusion of keywords is a good idea, though thats something that can be easily done by an artist themselves by saying specific words/tags in their art posts.

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I believe your answer lies in my point “Do we still need #art and #creative writing?”
“Yes, as a presentation area, a commons of the people to discuss, debate and aid one another on new artworks and stories!
Simply asking how an artist made the linework and discussing different graphics tablets can be all that is needed for an aspiring artist to find the courage to post their works as well! And thus our community grows!
In addition, the curator, once the initial load of archiving is done, will need a place to find new works! There, they can also guage the interest of the community in the given work!”

I mean, you and I have the same general opinion! There is too much mere conversation between each art piece or story chapter! But that is exactly why I think such a gallery would be of great use. There would be a single channel where all the artwork is stored whilst at the same time, there would be the normal #art channel, repurposed for presentation and discussion. Really, I think what you want is exactly what I propose! :smile:

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On a more general note, I would like to reemphasize the argument of traffic and exposure. Anything presented on discord will allow the art and the writing to reach so much more eyes than here on the forum. Just recently, we had a visitor from some other station, the one proposing interesting new diseases. He joined our discord, became yellow and thus would be able to see the art channel. But he was unwilling to make a forum account. I am sure that this is something, that even some of our regular players have contemplated, whether it is worth for them to make a forum account.

Would someone with that information be so kind as to tell how much more traffic the discord gets, compared to the forum?

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Also gonna respond here to vouch for making a discord archive instead of a forum achive in, what i believe to be, some summarized reasons.
The current art channel pins are already capped, and old pins have been removed in favour of new or “better” art, which can be very disheartening for fulp artists who cant impress as much but are still very motivated to make art specifically for fulp or ss13 in general.
Most of the pins are currently Aspevs and my own artworks, and while thats all nice and good, it really doesnt show off the diverse art styles that our community has to offer, potentially being very demotivating when their own art gets skipped over due to comments, or just straight up unpinned to make room for “better” art. Which is a crude thing to say. I’d much prefer to see that diversity over the 30~ odd “best” pins.

Those are the reasons why just a simple archive, just a list of artworks (since we dont have an overflow of art) would help promote more artists in the community, instead of just the same few people.

And making that archive on the forum would mean there’d be less exposure since, and ill be blunt about it, the forum simply has way less traffic than the discord. Its essentially a platform for griefpatrols, ban appeals and the odd misc post/thread, and considering a lot of people have shown to not want to make an account for the forum because of this view, i dont expect that vision to change. This can pretty much be seen in every ss13 forum when comparing it to the linked discord servers.

If we want to help foster the fulp art community, then it is simply way more effective and useful to do so on the more trafficked platform, rather than shoving it out of view on the forum or letting posts get overshadowed in the busy art channel.

(As a sidenote, you can create a channel that only allows image posting on a long cooldown, meaning the moderation would be very minimal, if any at all. Which would keep the current art channel as more of an art discussion channel)

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I dunno man, Archelon’s passionate about this and has addressed every point you guys have.
And I gotta reluctantly agree, while this forum is a good way to archive, nobody visits here regularly enough that artists who want to show their works will get recognised.

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I’m still not seeing how this archive wouldn’t bury less popular users. even if its turned into two or three channels, the only art that will be largely discussed will be from a popular person. I also wouldn’t trust a non mod to have discord perms.

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Well, for one, the tag-system I propose would allow for easy search of both artists and themes. The latter, especially, would higlight ALL artists.
In addition, as there would be no comments, they wouldn’t be buried.

As for the discord perms: Returning back to my point: “What would such a channel require”
“The Artworks and Stories would be posted by a new role, a curator. He would be equal in permission to the regular yellow folk, with the exception of being allowed to post in the archives. His responsibility would be in the beginning to go through the #art and #creative-writing channels, collect all the stuff and archive them.”

My proposal would give one (maybe two people) the singular added permission to post in one channel, that is otherwise read only to all normal users. They would not have any added permissions beyond that.

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I don’t think you understand that it’s basically ALL art without the discussion part. Sorta like how creative writing now has a 5 minute timer so people don’t just randomly chat in the middle of it.
It’s supposed to exist so we don’t pin on art anymore, because we only pin aspev, papa, and other people.
The reason why it’s on discord instead of the forums is because EVERYONE would get buried here.

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Okay I think I got a really simple way to sum up Archelon’s argument
He wants Art to have a second channel that has a 40 minute timer so people don’t talk on it. This way future people can browse the discord and see all this cool art from literally every artist on fulp instead of just the select 3, because so many people talk on #art that all the old art gets buried.
Overall I believe not enough people browse the forums and it gives a good look to the discord if we do Archelon’s idea