New reviews are rarely posted. The forum seems abandoned. In fact, it feels like I'm the only one here. Where is everybody?
Am I the only one who feels like abandoning the bad webcomics wiki may have been a mistake? (considering I'm the only one even here, I guess that's a yes)
Also, it's been 2 months. The BWW is not only still up, but even has a new review on it (though the forum there is just as dead as the forum here)
It's been days since anyone posted anything here, and I feel like the last survivor of a zombie outbreak. Where is everybody? I know they're not at the BWW…
I guess it's just more comfortable to just stick at the same place anyway. Still, as of the time I came by, the BWW itself was a bit slow with the reviews. Nonetheless, yes, here is even worse.
Anyway… maybe I just shouldn't have taken this moving so seriously…
You're not alone. I myself am just wrapped up in end-of-the-school-year stuff, but I have plans to sit down and work on a review sometime soon.
But yeah, BWW seems much more lively. I guess people just love bashing webcomics whether or not they truly deserve it (I'm not saying that the BWW is always wrong, it just seems like sometimes a comic doesn't deserve that much bile thrown at it).
Granted, some of the reviews were really unfair, but many of the comics deserved a good, genuine flaming (Ctrl+Alt+Del comes to mind)
There was a section argue over whether reviews were fair or not. Just because the BWW needed a bit of a change doesn't mean that it should be completely abandoned.
Plus, yeah, people do love seeing negative reviews. When reading the Metacritic reviews for Avatar, I glanced over the good reviews and read and re-read the 2 or 3 negative reviews. What fun is reading "this is good because he does this" when you could read "this is shit, the guy who writes it is shit, and his mother is shit"
Also granted, many of the reviews could've been wittier, funnier. Some of the reviews were awful.
I think that the move was a mistake and the forum death is my fault.
There are a lot of serious issues at play here, and probably the most important is that nobody understood what the Bad Webcomics Wiki's point was. John Solomon was never a serious reviewer. He was a satirist, albeit a crude one. For me, he poked fun at the level of pompousness webcomic artists give to themselves.
When I started getting complaints about the quality of reviews on these Wikis, though, I looked back and realized that most were neither funny nor informative. People were reviewing comics they had seen that were mediocre and good and just sort of looking for reasons to bash them unironically and often humorlessly.
I'm not saying anybody here did that, but that it was done.
People liked the Bad Webcomics Wiki when it was funny, and generally liked it the most when it was both funny and mocking a bad webcomic (rather than a boring or mediocre one.) There is no fun in reading a webcomic reviews site that just reviews webcomics.
I thought this idea might work, but it is failing.
The Bad Webcomics Wiki stands to lose a majority of its reviewership as the writers become exhausted picking apart webcomics they don't want to read anyway. This place likely will never have strong reviewership because people would rather enjoy webcomics than analyze and discuss them.
I mean, I'd love a great discussion of comics like Weapon Brown and Achewood, because those are more subtle and nuanced than the typical fare. But a lot of these (especially the worst ones) are just fart jokes spread out over four panels, and besides that it's really very hard to appreciate visual art like a comic strip without actually seeing it.
I've been as wishy-washy as Charlie Brown himself on my handling of these websites, and it's killing them. Both are a total mess.
I think the BWW might have a chance if it's taken as satire rather than serious reviewing, but this Webcomics Authority is losing ground. It's just boring.
What you are saying makes sense, Luigiian. Maybe what should be done is that BWW reviews should be re-written or deleted. Maybe what is really needed is a site cleanup for the BWW.
The BWW just needs a higher writing quality. We should just go back there and start focusing on improving review quality.
And, I haven't reviewed any webcomics, and I am not exhausted from reading bad webcomics. I am a fresh, young soldier for the BWW, ready to write his first webcomic review.
And, if anyone still has doubt about returning to the BWW, then here's my last argument. I showed the BWW to two of my friends, and they both enjoyed it.
Let's bring back the BWW!
Yeah, I think that the BWW just needed some improvement. The problem with the poor-quality reviews probably was that they were written by people who have little to no experience as a writer or artist, so all they could do was bash the comic in question without actually doing much analysis (or humor, for that matter).
The biggest problem with that is that this is a wiki. Any member can post a review without confirmation of other members. I hope that I'm not the only one that sees a problem with that.
You finished reading this sentence.
That is true. I think there should be guidelines regarding the announcement of a new article, so moderators could go and check it out immediately. There could also be a rating system.
I can't talk by myself, since I do not write reviews and I do not have any sort of taste… But, what I feel is that, yes, it is easier to bash a comic than to make a serious review of it. And, therefore, even if we came back to the BWW, but with the whole "better reviews" part, we'd still have a hard time coming up with reviews and also the foruming.
I'm not saying we should fart a review and bash every comic in existence, what I'm kind of saying is, a) we need more themes to talk about rather than just comics and review them. After all, even if there are so many comics out there to read and review, talking about the same theme is kind of tired, too.
And b) We should relax! If we see a good comic we like or a bad comic we hate, even we shouldn't just go around trying to dissect it's every possible trope usage on first sight! Let's talk about it! Let's just say "Heh, that was fun, the way he did that." We don't need to put every word we say in the forum through the pretentionator, trying to sound like only "Haute Arte" and the elegance of the "Bauhaus Movement" can move our funny bone. Though, if the bauhaus art makes you laugh, I'd wonder about your sanity, but oh well
Again, I'm not saying we should just spew simpleton talk stuff at the reviews, but I say, we should really put the efforts, and the dissecting of a comic, in the reviews, not in the forums! I don't know about you, but I'm a sort of comic fan! I want to talk about a comic page without having to think wether the author just referenced Goethe or something!
I don't know why I am spewing this hippy bullshit, probably because I attended a wedding and I'm actually happy for the couple. But that's how I fell right now.
Okay… it's time to take action. I am going to apply for the BWW today. The time has come to regroup.
Once I am a member, I will start a thread in the forum over there about "site cleanup", and that thread will be about re-doing or erasing badly done reviews.
Damn, well…considering that the WA is only half finished in terms of format (Including review template, welcome screen, the lack of a real drive or motivator to review) I can understand. This site has potential but it needs to be completed and user friendly
Boo, I finally get in and the place is dead. Ya'll suck xD Did everyone flee back to the BWW?
Meh. They both died for awhile.
We're rebooting both.