Sprite Shops

[Alana]

Will sprite shops ever be allowed again? I know why they were banned and I know spam and double posts were getting out of control (I had my own shop invaded by spammers) but couldn't a new rule be made to prevent spamming and double posts? Perhaps harsher punishments for those who spam and/or double post in peoples' shops. Or perhaps a new system like PM shops or something? I'm not the greatest spriter in the world and I never will be, but I had fun doing requests for people.

 

[Kylie-chan]

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but we already have a rule on spam and double posts. It didn't stop many spammers, obviously.

I've never been a sprite mod, so I won't answer your question quotably - I would note, however, that the rules make it pretty clear we're not going to have them for awhile, if ever again. Siggy, Tendo, FG, or Cowrie, or someone who knows, can confirm that.

Believe me, with such small inboxes, you'd all get sick of PM shops. XP Although we can't really stop you for having a request form in your signature, I suppose... -shrug-

 

[Alana]

Please don't treat me like an idiot. I know there's already a rule against it, I was thinking of something stricter. Like if someone spams twice in the sprite section they get banned for a week. It's just an idea. I'd just really hate to see sprite shops banned forever. It'd take all the fun out of spriting here.

 

[Kylie-chan]

I'm certainly not intentionally treating you like an idiot - I'm sorry. o_o; I think our rules now and our punishment methods are adequate, though... there's only so much that can be done. ><;

Mm, never having had a sprite shop, I can't really have an opinion, but I'm satisfied with the rule, personally. -shrugs- Pixel Art was full of nothing but sprite shops.

 

[Alana]

It's all right. I forgot that I usually make an idiot out of myself anyway. :P The rules are good, yes, and I don't see how you could force people to follow them or even read them, so maybe that's a lost battle. :\

I thought that was the point of the Pixal Art section. o_o The T-Card section is full of nothing but shops, but I guess that's a bit different.

 

[Zacceh]

Actually Alana, its not...or I should shut up because i've never been to that section of the site.

 

[Forest Grovyle]

As far as I know, Alana, there are no current plans to bring sprite shops back. We'll definitely post an announcement in Pixel Art if they do return, though it is unlikely because of the cluttering they caused.

--FG

 

[DarkGreg]

I like sprite shops too, I had (An unsuccesful) one myself and I thought it was fun, but some people just keep on spamming and it gets annoying, There are other places that have shops and all that are getting spammed, but not as much as Pixel Art so I did understand when they banned sprite shops

I think there should be harsher punishments for spamming different threads, that's just my opinion ^_^;

 

[Alana]

I can always keep hoping. The people that spammed in my shop were just trying to up their post count so they could hatch an egg. I think that's a stupid reason to mess up someone's shop but that's just me. I guess for right now I'll just have to sprite on different boards.

 

[Yameneko549]

Why not just make a seperate sub-forum for sprite shops and turn off post count? That could take care of two problems at once; making it a sub-forum would keep the "clutter" off the Pixel Art forum, and turning off post count would defeat the main reason the spammers double-post.

Sadly, there's no way to get rid of spammers and trolls. Most of them just want to ruin everyone's fun to fuel their own twisted ego.

 

[GreenStorm]

I agree with Yameneko549 here. Thats what they have on Serebii Forums, they have sub-forum for sprite shops but they turned off the post count. It may not stop spammers, double posters,etc, but it will help a lot!

 

[Alana]

I think that's a good idea too. Nothing anyone does can ever stop all spammers and double posters. If it's not for post count it's usually for attention. That's how I see it anyway. But it would definitely reduce the number of spammers and double-posters.

 

[parallelzero]

I personally would rather see sprite shops gone. When they disappeared, all of those sigs overly cluttered with those pointless pixels disappeared as well, thus reducing the time it took to load a page by like half, since so many people liked to put 5-10 of them in their sigs. >>

 

[Zacceh]

I agree with Axel that load time has cut down but it's also gonna dissappoint alot of people whom's life was made to sprite for help and for fun so I like the sub forum idea however that leads us to the load-time problem. If it's causing load-time to slow down than you should simply create a strict rule about size. Or simply ban any ad mentioning sprite shops and people can go to the shops on their own time. Just a suggestion

 

[Persona]

Sad that sprite shops have been closed and that people couldn't join sprite comics. But there's a good reason for that one, though, that's not what we're talking about here.

Sure, having sprites in your sigs are quite annoying, as it seems to be for the staff, and it can be quite pointless. But people had something to do from creating shops, they enjoyed requesting and the people's shops did things in their spare time. Then again, a lot of people spammed in threads involving sprite shops, thus, it being closed. Also, people could still do things in the Pixel Art forum, they could still showcase sprites. It doesn't matter that they were closed, it didn't mean that creating sprites or anything else involving pixel art were closed.

So, I think it was a good desicion for the staff to close them. Sorry, but I think that's how it should be. There might be day when they'll be opened again, but until then, it doesn't seem like its the best thing to do.

 

[Yameneko549]

Note: Long post ahead.

You're right on a couple of points, but the problem with spam won't go away. They'll just find another forum to spam, and thus something else will be taken away. The cycle will repeat until finally the entire forum is reduced to a place where even posting a welcome message will get you deleted, and then they win.

There are two tpes of spammers, newbies who don't know better, and souless spammers who just want to make trouble. The first tpye eventually learn to not spam, but the second type will never go away. They'll continue spamming until they win.

I'm speaking from experience when I say that taking away the things many people love to do JUST because spammers have decided to take control will, at most, just slightly slow down the problem. They will just keep comming back and attacking until they either get tired or run out of IPs.

On top of that, when you take away something like the sprite shops, where many people had fun and enjoyed the "feature" (best way I can describe it), you also run the risk if making some people mad and turning them away from your forum, which would be a bad thing as well. As you take away the enjoyment, you turn people away. Slowly but surely, the community will die out as people leave to join a forum that has the feature(s) that they enjoy.

You can't win by taking away good things from good people because the losers that are determined to fuel their own evil ego want to run loose. As you give in to their attacks, they slowly win.

My suggestion: Give them less of a reason to be evil. Eventually they'll either get bored of attacking and leave on their own or else they'll run out of ways to spam.

Also, about Axel and Roy's problem with load times, that's what sig rules are for. Edit them as needed to have people use fewer sprites and images.

 

[Alana]

Very well said. ^_^ The only thing I can add is that the only way I know of to eventually make a spammer go away is ignore them. If they don't get a reaction from anybody they'll get bored and move on. It's really the only other option besides banning them as far as I know.

 

[Soul Reaper]

i liked sprite shops and had an almost-successful one, my friends did a lot in it, and it got ruined by spammers... also, people who dont likle to sprite, or cant sprite very well sometimes used the spriters resource as a place to get sprites to use in their hacks. I have also noticed that the number of advanced hacks with new sprites has gone down, too... yeah, it cut down peoples sigs, but there is some kinda rule about sigs which i havent read since mine got deleted, but my sig was smaller than most other peoples and yet it got deleted... if people cracked down on the rules and posible made new rules and no added post count, it would be fun to have em back...

 

[Colonel Mustang]

To bad there arent any sprite shops. why did they ban them anyways?

 

[Klippy]

O_o

You're joking right?

Did you even read the posts above your's?

Because the caused to much SPAM and people put to many in their SIGS and they cluttered the PIXEL ART thread. -_-

*Hangs self*