The state of the Anime Cel collecting community.

I'm confused, CB.

We have volunteered for Beta awards in the past. Hosted them and ran them at least twice, if I'm remembering correctly. The general feeling we got at the time was that folks didn't like the way we were doing things so we stepped back.

If we had the skills to put a RS-type site together, we might try it. We simply don't have the skills. As a result, we built our own site, from scratch, to host our artwork. No other site involved. If the site fails, it's our own fault. We do the work or we don't.

And just FYI, we're still hosting the Beta awards that we ran back in 2009 and 2010 on that site. It doesn't cost us any extra, but make no mistake... the site does cost us.

It's a small, small contribution compared to what RS offers the cel community, but we try to do what we can.

If RS were better maintained we would probably pay to keep a gallery here. It would most likely be cheaper. ^_^

Well Wendy, the first part of my comment was directed at both you and U9. Both of you seem to feel that Jason's site is trustworthy, but are unwilling to put your faith in another, newer Rubberslug.

AL, I did not directly call you out. I am aware that you organized the awards in the past and I thank you for your service. My comment was aimed more at those members who have been around for years and yet can't be bothered to donate to pay to maintain this site nor be called upon for anything else.

In general, to those of you reading this, what have you done for the collector community during your time here? And what have you done to encourage new people to join our group? Have you held a collector panel at a convention? Have you volunteered at a convention? Maybe you've done a presentation at a local school or give out extras to newer anime fans? Excluding your gallery maintence, what have you done for the collector community and/or hobby lately?

If you've done something, then, I applaud you for your efforts. But if you haven't, perhaps it's time to stop hoping for this community to change and instead be the change you want to see.

I dont think expecting a site to be free is a gross sense of entitlement since thats the model 99.9% of sites and apps use.

Also I dont think its reasonable to guilt trip users into paying/ going the extra mile because a couple of individuals want to, if individual people want to thats great if others cant help or simply dont want to help thats fine too.

Im not gonna be preaching on street corners and handing out flyers about cel animation :p

This discussion is definitely taking off! I am glad so many people are voicing their concerns and opinions. It really has helped me, and likely other new collectors, really understand the state of the community at the moment.

I have been toying with the idea of standing up a new site. I have experience in web design and development, and would enjoy the project. However, this would take a lot of time and money initially. I just have to wonder if it will be worth it? Any thoughts?

I think it would be worth it to try Maxsidious, I would volunteer some cash as well it might not be a huge amount, as you can see from my updating I have been a VERY bad girl ^_^;; I can also offer to do site testing basically going through completed pages and making sure everything works this is something that I found immensely time consuming when I had my own site, but my code knowledge is limited to VERY basic HTML.

But I think that we don't want to lose RS but the bugginess of the site in general can be frustrating especially when you are on an updating roll! And it would be immensely depressing to see us lose all the history here as well.

I can understand CB's frustration because she feels that the same people complain but never do anything to change it. I can see the point and I have felt it myself.

In the last year I have given 4 panels on Cel Collecting and am slated to give 1 more this year at Chibi-Pa in Deerfield Beach, FL and I have probably given out a couple hundred dollars in artwork. I feel that this is a good investment on my part because I wanted the sense of community back that we had before RS. We had to work a lot harder to keep in touch because the only hubs were Beta and Animanga (which was in it's death throes when I first started 2002)

I have also been the general cheerleader, Awards runner 3 times now, Open House 2014 Runner (went well), and RS Newbie Feedback Runner (not so well), and I get some people find it intimidating, but there is too much negativity that abounds here. I feel that some chipperness and fun activities are needed to keep us going. But nothing happens if there is no participation, and from more than the core 3 or 4 people that volunteer to run these things.

In fact, I am STILL looking for a volunteer to make the awards for the 2015 Cel Contest, MTG is not available for this contest.

So in closing I said this after the 2015 Sketch Awards that I was not going to do the 2016 Sketch Awards as well as the 2016 Cel Awards, I can do ONE contest a year otherwise I have no time for anything else. I also think we need to split up the Awards duties it is too much for one person to do, because it is very time consuming, and a hella lot of work. So since there are so many people watching this thread, please think about this...

For now and into next year, what are you planning on doing for the Community to make it better? Are you going to complain, or are you going to step up to the plate and try to make it better?