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.
(account deleted)
