So yeah. I haven't been working on my personal page in a bit. Lack of inspiration and I was working heavily on my Jet Moto Central fansite. Over there it has gotten a bit more content that I'm really happy about. The discord group has its ups and downs, such is life. My buddy Az is going to write up the mod info soon. That will be the biggest thing on there. I can't wait.
So before any other topic. I wanted to talk about myself and my place in Neocities. I am nobody. Last December is when I got active on here. I made a personal page probably several years ago but didn't touch it until last year. Last year I wanted to get that site going but I had problems with HTML and my own knowledge, also to be honest I had no idea what to put in there. So eventually I started the fanpage Jet Moto Central. I became a supporter so I can set up a domain name to boot. Through my webpage building process I was able to learn more, and I started to follow people and get followed. I was able to get a handle whats what here. I be honest I'm not very social, but I'd like to be. (Speaking of I'm curious of any major Discord servers for Neocities, or just cool neocities related ones, or invite me to yours lol, lemme know) I think 2 months ago I made THIS page. My personal page. It's attached to my JMC page so it's supporter as well. My other page I'm not sure what I will do with it. Probably close it. I wanted to see if I can attach it to this profile but support didn't reply, ah well (I don't think this is a problem btw, everything has been stellar here on NC for me.)
NC has been great as a website host. I like the simplicity. It is possible I might move the JMC site one of these days, but thats only because there could be plans in the cards to implement some really complex functions that I don't think NC can support. But I won't move my personal page. Anyways the service is great. I actually really like the social network side of it. I have my criticisms but I think it works. I think there needs to be a mute function and other related functions, like a mute comments on other pages function. Clearly I'm in reference to the problem of following popular pages. I think the browse section needs some more clarity on how it works. I think it would be cool to have custom sorting options. A way to filter out inactive pages. Also I notice that the filter function acts weird. I can't explain it but some pages aren't shown when they probably should be?
I think I would like to see more activity from the Neocities devs. It comes across like its been abandoned sometimes. Doesn't seem like there have been many upgrades. I would love a dropdown menu in the text editor that lets me flip to other pages without having to go back. Probably need to consider using a editor on my pc, but I also work on the site on a pc at work and I can't install any software on it. Be nice if the web editor had more functions is all I'm saying.
Okay so the federiefederi drama llama. As I understand it the project was innocent in itself in that they just want to help smaller neocities webpages by featuring them and creating a directory thats sorted in ascending order. I personally dig it. I will say I think they could go about it a little differently but its fine. I know the first think was that they wanted to mute comments to not spam feeds which is perfectly understandable and I'm extremely glad they looked at solutions for that. That's a Neocities problem more than theirs but yeah. I think the crisis began when they wanted to unfollow people to shoot the page to the top of the browse feed. That such an "exploit" exists is a major flaw on Neocities part. The default browse page has been virtually static since I've been here, save for sadgrl changing to goblin-heart. I don't think they did this for views (tho, yes, it is for views, but not in a negative way), but just because they wanted the project to have more reach. They seem to have been totally transparent about it. I think its the case of a project getting too big to handle. I think that was part the case of Yesterweb, which was something I completely missed out on. I think f+f needed to stay small for it to work out. I don't think Neonaut needed to be on there for example (the neonaut button blowing up was kind of funny though).
I saw a criticism that why not just sort by newest and such on browse. I don't think that does the same as f+f. You get a lot of dead pages that way. But I think f+f is flawed because all it is is a list sorted in descending order. Also I think they added too many random pages. I think being more pick and choosy would been better. Like not that some rando with 100 views can't be on there but they have to find pages that have the combination of few views and followers, moderately built up site, and a decent level of activity.
I think what sucks for f+f is that now they have a lot of bad vibes because of this, and people are fleeing because of it. I think people got spooked because this comes across as if they were in it for attention, I mean respectfully, what is there to get attention for anyways? I don't think they are selling a product or such. (I mean attention was the goal, but to turn that attention into attention for smaller pages). Some people now try to be assholes about it and make it out to be worse than it is. Just don't interact... Ironically even if f+f are in the wrong, which I can get that they messed up, I think this sort of exposes some of the real assholes on NC. I think some people have this vision of what NC is supposed to be and they try to hold everyone to that standard. Basically being extremely idealistic. I think NC is going to be what you make of it. Its fucked up in my opinion that people try to tear apart f+f and accuse them of having a particular idealogy. f+f is not going to ruin Neocities. Just keep going and being you, you will keep it healthy and lively that way. Also the way f+f handled the negative comments could have been better. If someone is being rude to you its not always smart to be rude back, especially in a public setting.
Anyways. The goal was what? To boost smaller pages and help them get further intergrated with the greater Neocities community. I think a flaw in that is that it requires a level of socialization that not everyone is up to. Still have to click on pages and maybe press follow. I try to scroll through the f+f page but I can't figure out where I wanna go. Webrings work by forcing you to visit a page and you get some level of interaction because of it. On f+f while there are thumbnails, I don't get much of what a page is about. On browse I can see tags, name, and a thumbnail. I think featuring requires a lot more information than thumbnail, name, and button.
I won't be removing myself from there. Main reason is that my website JMC needs the reach because part of our mission has always been about reviving interest and building up JM fandom. All in hopes of getting Sony's attention so they could potentially revive the franchise in modern systems. I wouldn't be lying if part of my interest in have my website JMC here on Neocities is for reach. Specifically reaching out to a audience of Y2K/dotcom era enthusiasts, the era in which the games were born in. I'm trying to diversify the community at JMC because to a degree its been a very specific niche of elder millenial gamer that is kinda problematic at times, if you catch my drift.
It almost makes me think I might be able to create a "mini f+F" of my own. With my own standards and methods. But then I kind of realize thats what webrings and fanlistings kind of do already heh. No lie though I have been thinking about a making a fanlisting for PS1 Gaming or just Jet Moto. Lemme know if you think that could work and that there could be an audience for that.
-Osky