POLL: "Cel Forum"

I think this will be helpful...I mean instead of having to leave feedback to people you want to talk to..you could just post here...

I think the feedback option is plenty. The bulk of the posts are usually just repeated on the other boards. Don't get me wrong I post and read constantly, love forums. But why waste the bandwidth on the same old stuff?

Keep the forums. Especially for the collectors who actually are working hard to create a gallery w/Rubberslug, IMO it offers a chance for them to converse with one another and hopefully offer insightful suggestions. Sure they could go elsewhere to ask, but why ask strangers, when you can ask people in the same community who're working with the same technical issues as you?

I might be a bad example, but I strive to avoid Animanga's forum b/c there are so many personal attacks. IMO it is not moderated well enough, there are far too many attacks and slanderous accusations. I'm not certain if the other forum you are referring to is AnimeChaos', I enjoy that one moreso.

A forum should encourage helpful and hopefully thought provoking discourse, not hostility. The world at large is hostile enough, without people conducting themselves in the same manner with their hobbies as well.

Sure part of the nature of collecting cels is competitiveness; but there is also a lot of bitter rivelry, backstabbing, foulmouthing, and distrust amongst collectors and dealers. And yes, I know I just listed the cons of cel collecting in particular, but arguably it has gotten worse (at least since I started back in '97).

A good example is a recent post pertaining to the use to 'private galleries' on the forum. Some responses reeked of scarcasm, bitterness and truly showed the extreme ugliness of this obession. Additionally, a new forum can offer an alternative to the existing ones. And should certain posts or users become too offensive, warnings followed with suspension of their account and forum priveleges, seems a equitable punishment.

Lastly, I'm for a more positive slant for a forum title, "Useful Resource". Wasted space IMO is so... pessimistic and hardly sounds inviting.

Now this looks like a good argument, I think I'm changing my mind and just putting up a cel forum. It takes me like two seconds to do and makes me look busy. =)

This is what I see when I look around, especially at conventions. Everyone is so tense and waiting to rush the tables at the start (yes, I was mashed up in there near the front of the dealer room line in 2000 and 2001). It's too much demand and too little supply. The demand is growing but the supply is shrinking.

Obviously, I like cels. A lot. I think it's all fun. But at the end of the day, it's all context (like most popular art). On the scale of artistic merit, 99.9% of all cels -- and most if not all of mine -- are rather low-grade art. It's no more "hand-crafted" than cheap pottery from a flea market. It's an insignificant blip in the cultural radar and unlikely that anyone at the Antique Road Show will offer you any respect should you decide to appraise your collection. A perfect cel from the original Gundam, Astroboy, or Speed Racer series might raise an eyebrow at best.

However, it's low-grade art that happens to be in a show you like.

So to make a long story short, yes, Cel Culture should stop for a minute and realize that they are in grave danger of becoming Comic Book or Baseball Card Culture. Cel Culture needs to take itself far less seriously and just have a little more fun.

I can't promise that I'd be any better of a moderator, but at least I can delegate moderator ability (woot! new "admin" flag for users!) to a few longtime supporters of the site and the power to squelch messages/threads.

Thanks to all for sharing your ideas on this one.