Who's on this forum?

[Lee Nordling]

I'm curious to know who's coming by to visit these days.

--Lee

[Lee Nordling]

Yep. Probably Tuesday for at least six months.

[guy]

Speaking of "whos on this forum", it seems Darrin and Wiley never are, at least lately. Did they go off together on some romantic cartoonist getaway or something?
Guy~

[Lee Nordling]

I think they visit but don't have much to offer.

The trick with this (and any) site, is getting enough momentum for it to be self-sustaining.

We're not quite to the point where there are a lot of concurrent conversations, and a broad mix of people involved in different areas of interest.

On the other hand, we're the only open comic strip site we have with such a wide range of contributors.

--Lee

[guy]

Yeah, thats true. It seemed when this place was really rolling it was due to the politics forum, but it was always just a bunch of bickering and neverending spin. I miss the activity, but not enough to bring that part of it back. Sometimes I feel kind of foolish posting replies because I'm no longer cartooning at the moment and feel answers could be better contributed by active artists, but when nobody else posts I can't help myself.

Back on track, I was just curious as to where those two have been hiding. I had asked Wiley a question about 2 months ago and never heard back, and the topic is mute now, but I just wondered if all was ok.
Guy~

[Lee Nordling]

Actually, I think we got it back on track immediately after driving a stake through the heart of the political forum.

I worked often to bring up new topics for discussion...but we needed (and need) more people doing that. I realized it wasn't working when folks thought this was MY site; really a sign that it's going to take more than a couple to do the heavy lifting.

--Lee

[Malc]

The problem with the politics forum wasn't the bickering (as I remember it), from my point of view it was the fact that one person kept posting the most simplistic, sophomoric political views, his name was everywhere, starting thread after thread. Yes, Bush is an idiot, the war in Iraq is an illegal, immoral, hideous mess, Cheney is evil, all this was stating the obvious, and anyway, how many threads did we need on those?
That one particular person (good hearted as he was) rendered Toon Talk a disservice, driving potential contributors away.
There was another person many years back on the old Toon Talk board who opened their account by promising that any cartoonist who signed up with them would earn thousands of dollars. They then continued over the next few years picking ridiculous fights and spouting bile at anyone who disagreed with them. They may have provided entertainment for lurkers, but did they really "contribute" or was it more like constant subtraction?

As for topics of discussion? Unfortunately, the most discussed topics are also the most contentious and this isn't a bad thing if a lot of people are involved.

We had a legendary thread a few years back when Scott Kurtz decided he would use his web-based strip as a loss leader, offering it free to newspapers in a bid to sell more swag. It was an ill-conceived venture, of course, as he subsequently found out, because basically no newspaper editor wanted to buy a gamer fan boy strip. Its natural home was the web, and Scott had basically done all he could there (quite successfully) anyway. A huge row ensued with myself, Wiley and Scott trading blows, but more importantly hundreds if not thousands of webbies came across to take part. The fact that it was a good fight was one aspect of it, but with two high profile combatants like Wiley and Scott in the fray, it was more of a talking point.
Scott appears to be ticking along quite happily whilst newspapers continue in an inexorable death spiral, so maybe he's in the right place.
You don't get threads like that very often, but it's important to cultivate the atmosphere where the right participants hang around.
Yes, this sounds like blatant snobbery, but every successful bar and pub owner operates by the same set of criteria.