The state of the Anime Cel collecting community.

Shemp, we have the exact same saying in my country, and it is so true!
And Ginta; your (dry) comment made me snort my beer :D

Thanks Teggacat, I appreciate that.
Let's just hope my fears will never come true.

I'll leave this thread alone now ;)

Now it's showing the cels I added 3 days ago on the front page instead of the new ones.
edit: never mind, it just needed to update.

As someone who has been around for quite a while I have seen the heyday of both RS & Beta as well as the drop off over the last five years and now I am pleased to see quite a few new people entering into the hobby as well as several old friends (pokes Wendy) start to slowly become active on a limited basis.

Yes real life has affect on this hobby and our community as well. Members have gotten married, started families or just got tied up in real world grind of work, house payments and have less time and money for hobbies.
I got started in this much later that most age wise. Still here and attempting to remain active here as last year offering to be a Mod on Beta when those that had run it for many years decided to step aside.

After months of constant fixes of broken code as well as dealing with hack attemps, Jason did a rewrite of the entire Rubberslug site about 5 years ago and in doing so cut off all other paying work for 3 months of his life. During that time he did succeed in getting RS operational again but a lot was left unfinished. Since then the site has been running for the most part stable. There are problems that crop up involving the image hosting (which I believe Jason said was done thru Amazon) and buffering between the image host site and the RS server. The fact that when made aware Jason has stepped in and done what ever needed to be cleared or reset shows he does still care about the site and those of the community that have chosen to use it.

As with everyone else Jason has real life commitments of running a business, paying the bills, mortgage so while I’m sure he would love to devote the time finish RS real life is in the way right now.

I didn't expect to wake up to so many responses this morning! It's great to see so many passionate people in this community.

I started this thread as a way of understanding how things led to where we are now. As a "noobie" I have no experience in such a niche community, but this topic was not intended to stir up any dust or highlight the shortcomings of this site.

Furthermore, I have no intention of replacing RS. I was merely proposing something to compliment an already existing community. Many of us already bounce between anime-beta/RS and likely a multitude of other boards, so having at least one platform that is constantly being maintained and updated would be a nice addition. A lot of things on RS are truly irreplaceable; therefore, I don't think it will be going anywhere in a hurry.

As for help/funding, no worries there. I plan on working on this project for free and at my own leisure for the moment. It will likely take months before it sees a beta tester, but in the meantime I will do my best to be an active participant in this community and provide any support I can.

I truly thank each and every one of you for voicing your opinion and helping keep the community afloat for what seems to be many years. Finally, I think we all owe a big thank you to Jason, regardless of the lack of updates/maintenance to this site. Without him we wouldn't have a forum to have this discussion on. :)

Yes one thing about this community is that is very passionate and have strong opinions but don't worry these little "dustups" happen mainly due to the shortcomings of the internet.
The written word can easily have a lot "written into it" when read by another. Things can be misread or context lost easily.
Also since "body language" and tone inflection do not come across it can cause misunderstandings.