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The Duck webcomics community site is finally moving to full community control.
This has been a very long time in coming and has involved a lot of planning and negotiation.
What will this mean? Well, now the community is able to contribute to the betterment of the site and make all the changes we need to: improvements, new features, and most importantly: stability and bug fixes!!
This will not be an immediate process however, we still have a lot of work ahead of us- first things first is organising a new management structure and all the complicated stuff that entails.
The long and the short of it though is that the future of the site is in our hands with no barriers or constraints on development!
Brian Altounian, CEO of WOWIO says: WOWIO is not giving up on this community or this asset, but that we want to put it into the hands of the creators and fans who have been loyal to the community for many years. This is about putting the operations into the hands of the creators.
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Big News for The Duck!
Ozoneocean at 6:00AM, July 23, 2014
10 likes!
©2011 WOWIO, Inc. All Rights Reserved Mastodon
jgib99 at 9:57AM, July 27, 2014
Brilliant!
Ashley.Grenstone at 3:16AM, July 25, 2014
Cool!
Ozoneocean at 7:32PM, July 24, 2014
@resleander - There is no individual page counter at all. That coding was never finished. Licenses won't be an issue I believe, certainly not user artwork, since that's owned by the creators. We'll have to make small changes to usage agreements though. We'll look at the rest when we get the business stuff sorted out. The business stuff mainly concerns setting up a business address for tax filing purposes and legal reasons, registering a business name, having a treasurer etc, because with money coming to us from advertising in order to pay bills, as well as money we raise through other sources so we can afford to pay people to fix the site needs to be accounted for... plus recourse if we get sued- unlikely but it's what you have to prepare for. One of our Drunk Duck alums is handing that - Trantor, since that's his expertise.
Ozoneocean at 7:20PM, July 24, 2014
@Brad- That's definitely not the case. It took a year for me to negotiate this change. This move is about US having the ability to make our work and labour count! If I had not worked to get Wowio to agree to our conditions and the place stayed like it was then it WOULD have been about free labour for Wowio, and the potential for that labour to be wiped away if he site was deleted or changed hands etc. THIS way everything we do for the site counts, I can't stress that enough. The situation you suggest is exactly what all this effort was about preventing.
CornTown at 1:56PM, July 24, 2014
Killer!
VinoMas at 1:49PM, July 24, 2014
Wow, thank you so much for everything you have done for this site all these years. I'm feeling very positive about the future of The Duck. I feel like it's JUST GETTING STARTED!
joeyjarin at 11:19AM, July 24, 2014
Power to the People!!
bravo1102 at 11:14AM, July 24, 2014
I preach patience for this is but one step more on a long journey.
Brad at 10:22AM, July 24, 2014
Sounds like Brian Altounian just wants free labor since he pissed away all of WOWIO's VC funding.
resleander at 7:48AM, July 24, 2014
Fixing things that used to work is what I'm hoping for of course. I have to wonder though, with it not working (say, the pageview counter), did it stop counting or stop displaying the counter? The answer may or may not impact decisions made on how to proceed. @ozoneocean - Thanks for answering, and with such depth! Too bad about the lack of documentation of course, I've tried going through the code myself to find any issues but TBH it's a bit beyond me (as I haven't really programmed the last four years). You mentioned sorting out the business stuff: will be there issues with licences? @el Cid - Definitely would be a priority to me. Having to check manually for PQs each time really dampens community communication. A notification system for the forums wouldn't go amiss either.
meemjar at 11:09PM, July 23, 2014
I would like to see the trophies come back. Plus the charts that showed where you stood in the community (top 10, top 100, top 1,000, etc.).
NekkoXIII at 9:19PM, July 23, 2014
Fantastic news Ozoneocean. I dont know what all I can do to help out but I will keep an eye out.
Ozoneocean at 7:50PM, July 23, 2014
As for changes to code and documentation- documentation is sparse unfortunately, but we've had access to that code and control at that level for a year now and haven't ruined anything yet! We have backups aplenty. When it does come time to change coding there may be issues and bugs to content with, which is why the very first thing I want done is to pay an experienced expert to just do bug fixing. I don't what any new features added or missing stuff restored till we have the place totally operationally sound. but before we get to that we need to sort out the business stuff to allow all of it to happen!
Ozoneocean at 7:43PM, July 23, 2014
@resleander - It's constraints on fixing things PLUS adding any new features, getting cheaper hosting and any other changes we would ever need or want to make. But mainly, without legal and financial systems in place for the community to manage the site, significant volunteer programming additions and work paid for by the community was impossible because any changes on Wowio's part could have wiped all that out or given the site away or closed it down, as was well within their right, but all that work could be wasted or basically owned for free by them or someone else. So that's why this needed to happen.
El Cid at 6:36PM, July 23, 2014
Would be nice to have the PQ notifications back, so people could actually use them to communicate effectively again.
HippieVan at 2:51PM, July 23, 2014
@selecthumor: I imagine stats will be one of the very first things on the list once we get to the point where we can start fixing things!
Jake Richmond at 2:23PM, July 23, 2014
I'm excited!
selecthumor at 11:23AM, July 23, 2014
perhaps we can finally get some little things fixed like the total pageview counter on a comic's stats page :D
resleander at 11:07AM, July 23, 2014
Constraints on development aren't that bad for stability, unless there is instability but constraints on fixing them is causing trouble for.. well, fixing them. (which happened with the big 2013 crash, IIRC). I'm interested to see how things will move forward. Perhaps even hopeful! One colossal note, before handing things over (but I'm fairly certain you guys are already doing or have already taken into consideration), would be to document everything. Everything. What does what and why which function is where. Anyone who ever picked up where someone else left off knows what I'm talking about. A seemingly nonsensical piece of code 'cleaned up' may prove to have disastrous consequences. One might ask: How does the carouselcontainer work? I mean, yeah I can read the sourcecode right now and/or look up the documentation on malsup.com, but I mean how was it DESIGNED to work (and why)? I´m saying this with all the love in the world. Because I love The Duck!
KimLuster at 10:15AM, July 23, 2014
Nice! Now it's in the hands of those who care!