Secret Garden

I'm finally selling photo magazines!

Here's a link to the product page

So many of you have been so kind since I've joined waterfall and I never would have had the confidence to do something like this without you guys. I'm just so happy to be putting this out there and doing something with my photos. The support I've gotten from everyone over the years just means the world to me!

Wigglytuff Colour Palette Challenge

So I get why people are still mad about everything that happened a couple days ago but can we NOT send anon hate?? Literally my favorite thing about this place is that I've never felt like I had to worry about turning off anon and I never really see other users getting outright mean at each other.

Let's not sink to the level of just using anon to hide while you say horrible things that you would never say to another person face to face.

my elliptical should be here soon and I am HAPPY to be able to start using it :D

my tumblr if anyone wants:

https://itsrick1560.tumblr.com/

film photography

redbubble | carrd

Borås - 12.01.21

I know there are some people that knit on here and there's a site for people who do knitting/crochet called ravelry that I just joined where you can share patterns and things like that?

I'm gonna be posting my knitting stuff on there and I figured I'd share it in case anyone uses it or is interestd c:

here's my profile but I'm still working on it

I'm thinking about doing a giveway for a copy of my photo magazine? But I'm not sure what website would best to do a random draw from? It's lightweight enough that I could include countries outside of the US too

The Wild Animal Sanctuary
8/20/2018

redbubble | carrd

What stereotype are you?

my result:

edgelord lol

originally written as a deep look into the human psyche, the fandom has pronounced you uwu soft boy and decided you can do no wrong.

I tried to do this but the last optional question won't let me submit? It keeps saying I need to add a value?

I'm not really ready to leave waterfall because I've honestly met some really really great people here. But I also understand that a lot of people are leaving.

If anyone wants to keep up with me I'll leave some of my links for you ♥

tumblr | instagram | twitter

Oddish Colour Palette Challenge

The Forbidden Candy(TM)

Just wanted to do some stylized gemstones to practice texture

Borås - 11.01.21

I really just want to say, now that I’ve had a sleep and my head’s in place.

The thing that stuck out most to me in the conversation last night was that someone’s actual real art was used by someone else as an example of what was “less deserving” of protection, without the artist’s consent. I saw no apology for the wording of the post and I think it was really inappropriate to use someone’s actual work as an example.

Every time this got brought up people acted like it was others being upset by the **vague concept** of some art is better than others; but it wasn’t a concept of it, someone was non-consentually **singled out** as an example of “worse” artist out of two and when they expressed their discomfort and upset they were ignored/glossed over and it was not shown to be addressed.

It’s VERY important to me that the wording of the post wasn’t “the algorithm will have a worse time with this one” and that it was “this one is *less deserving of protection*”. And it was very frustrating that the insulting wording went ignored by people in the server and that I saw no correction or apology about the use of a real user’s work.

Users should **not** be allowed to single out other users and their art, especially not publicly in front of the entire server and I think it’s *absolutely reasonable* that some people want to leave after seeing a user singled out as a “bad example” be left unaddressed. It was an uncomfortable thing to witness it go ignored when, on other art sites like deviantart, singling out another artist’s work as a bad example is often considered a form of harassment by staff.

A lot of heat from yesterday, at least after I came in, was sparked by the insulting comment and it progressed when people ignored the fact the comment had been insulting.

A LOT of people were trying to say “I’m upset that this users art was used as an example of art that the poster considered bad” but people then replied with talk about the algorithm not being able to pick it up, when the algorithm was **not** the issue with the comment; the direct and real insult to the quality of another user’s work was the issue.

If the comment had been “this sort of art is hard for the algorithm to pick up” I would have no issue. But the original comment was actively implying that an artist’s drawing was worse than another artist’s. It is one thing to talk about some art pieces being good or bad, it is *another thing entirely* to single out a user as an example.

THAT is what a lot of people are upset about and it is making me EXTREMELY uncomfortable that it is has not been addressed, especially now that statements are being made about other things. Where is the acknowledgement of the harm that was done to this artist? Not even just acknowledgement by Thell, but acknowledgement by the overall community? I care about all of you. And I care about the artist who was singled out. And I’m very upset that this is what the community decided was okay to do to someone.

I have supported the site with money before. I was a kickstarter backer, an on-off patron, and I have put actual real effort into advertising the website and had multiple people join on my recommendation, even before things such as the invite system were implemented. And now I feel genuinely **embarrassed** and upset that I put my name and money out there for a community that allowed the public calling out and insult of someone who **literally did nothing wrong** with no obvious statement against it or repercussions for the hurt that was caused.

I’m very upset that the community drowned out the fact that a real actual person, a member of the community, was so obviously hurt by their work being used in the server without their consent. It was far from appropriate and it's left an extremely bad taste in my mouth.

I do not want to be part of a community that thinks it is appropriate to treat its members this way.

on frustration with Waterfall development

1. Where does frustration with the site development come from?

Waterfall is a nice functional site with decent people on it, it has some neat features, doesn't lag terribly, and doesn't allow creeps on it. However, it's still underdeveloped, and you can't deny it. There's no fast reblog, the queue is set up for two days forward for no apparent reason, I can't write a text box, a message, or create a page without encountering some bugs. These issues are currently being worked on at a steady pace, and we have all agreed to wait until those are solved because we understand the struggles of one man behind this unexpectedly huge project. Most people I know aren't frustrated with how fast the site is developing. However, there is no set in stone date people can look forward to, and all the existing deadlines keep getting delayed, which create some frustration for some of us.

The frustration arises when people start talking about some new global features, or the overhaul of the old, already existing ones, and the way those discussions are being handled. As I see, people on the staff side experience concerns with the way some of the current systems work in the way that they're not very "beneficial for the site" in terms of newcomers, which is frustrating for staff, too. As someone who doesn't see the site from the inside, I often assume that the most trouble newcomers are having are the same troubles I am having, and a lot of them might disappear after the second update. However, the discussion of possible overhauls of big systems that people are currently allegedly misusing creates the illusion that those overhauls will happen and form a new direction for the site. Even if nothing is being implemented right now, people are starting to worry as if though the changes are already being implemented because they are being talked about.

They're mostly being talked about on discord, where it's easy to take stuff completely out of context since a lot of messages are happening at the same time, and the information is easily missed. This leads people to wrong conclusions from time to time and causes more frustration. Also, discord is not something everyone has, visits regularly, or even is aware of, because of multiple valid reasons, including mental health ones. So, some frustration from my side roots in me seeing staff blog say something like "I've talked to people on discord on it and they say it's fine so we will do it" while me not being aware the discussion even happened or that I could join it. I've only seen it happen once, however, so this is more of an exception, but I thought it still is worth mentioning.

In this part of the post, I've covered my perspective on where the frustration comes from. The second part of the post will be about how it is expressed and handled.

2. How is frustration expressed and handled? Why does it cause more frustration?

So the discussions on discord went nowhere and left everyone frustrated. The user side is upset for not being able to have a proper discussion, and the staff side is upset because they feel like they're getting bullied and threatened by the userbase on top of their already high workload. Why did this happen? Why did the discussion about what was supposed to be technical details turn personal? Well, unfortunately, the discussion was ultimately about the user experience, and the user experience is personal, so people have shared their personal opinions. Also, in a chat, people type fast and think fast, so some stuff was said without thinking and got too personal. Thus the frustrations arose that weren't about technical details, but more about the terminology surrounding them, which derailed the discussion to further frustration of everyone. But on top of that, I feel like there was a bunch of narratives that were pushed through the discussion (not by Thell personally mind you, I don't exactly remember who said that and I am not going to put words in Thell's mouth) which just left everyone upset. Here are said narratives.

1. Judging someone's art quality. Thell has stated repeatedly both in discord and wf that he specifically doesn't want to define what is an art and what isn't, and if there's good art or bad art. But we still ended up having the debate about art quality at least three consecutive times on discord, all the time with the same people. And some people went as far as just saying something along the lines "sorry but yes I am implying your art is shitty" and we all just had to deal with the fact that the conversation is going in this tone. I am aware that the timeouts were handed out for the rude user, but it was done completely behind the scenes, with no acknowledgement of rude behaviour being unacceptable and with no way for me to even tell that there was a timeout going on, which didn't really make the environment feel more welcoming and polite.

2. The greater good of the site. The narrative about "people complaining because they don't understand what's actually good for them and the site" and the suggestions of completely ignoring said complaints "for the greater good" and "because there will always be someone who complains" were encountered multiple times by me. Now, I don't completely disagree with the fact that for every feature there will be people in the world who just aren't satisfied with it. But it also seems kinda weird to me to imply that there's only one certain way for the site to grow, even though the current direction of Waterfall isn't even specified as anything else but "definitely not Tumblr 2.0 also artists". Some sites rely entirely on poorly drawn shitty memes and some sites are for displaying high-quality professional photography. Sites can go in many directions and gain activity in multiple ways. And the weirdest thing to me was in this narrative was the implication that we can sacrifice the needs of existing site users by implementing something that might potentially attract new users. In Russia, we have a saying "a sparrow in the hand is better than a crane in the sky". A crane is a bigger bird, but you don't have it yet, and if you let go of your sparrow to catch a crane, you might lose both.

3. Userbase expressing concerns means they hate Thell. But at the same time, I saw a narrative about Thell being "bullied" into implementing featured, being called names, and "threatened" by people who say they are about to leave the site. Now, I haven't seen all the post, I believe there are people who are being purposefully rude to staff which is honestly uncalled for. However, I've mostly observed people expressing constructive criticism politely, and staff side taking the issue with certain words, which felt... Kinda weird? The words "elitist", etc. were thrown around because people were expressing how they've felt and why they are frustrated, and someone saying "you are using elitist language" doesn't equal someone calling you purposefully being elitist, just like people saying "this is ableist language" aren't calling you ableist, and even if they're calling you out on said behaviour in a civil manner, which I've seen most people do, this isn't an insult, this is an opportunity to learn to be more considerate. And people saying they're going to leave the site because a certain thing has left them frustrated... What else are they supposed to do or say? Leave quietly or stay at the site that bothers them because they don't want to offend staff by expressing their frustration in any way at all? Is that a community we want to build? Is there a way to express constructive criticism which is not considered offensive? I honestly have no idea at this point.

4. Discord is a great discussion platform. It's not. And still, I saw someone suggesting that the voices of people who don't come to discord because of various valid reasons should just be ignored because they "don't care enough". Don't think there was anyone else backing this point, but I've noticed it and I don't think this is a valid point at all.

In this part of the post, I've talked about the discussion that's happened and the sources of frustration that arose during this discussion.

I am not sure about the third part, going on a little break now.

Something else worth mentioning is that as much as I do love waterfall it IS kind of lacking in several ways. Like I joined the site over a year ago because one of my best friends was already on here and then I quickly got involved with the community and now I couldn't imagine leaving because of the people who are already here. However if I was looking for a new blogging platform now, and I found waterfall on my own I don't think I would stay. It's kind of a situation where I put up with some of the problems on the site because I really like a lot of the people that are on here a lot.

But the lack of any kind of a quick-reblog is something that's kind of been slightly annoying the whole time I've been here. And sure there are ways to get around it a bit by opening things in other tabs but when I first joined it was something that "was supposed to be fixed in one of the next updates". And whatever it's not a big deal to me.

But it does kind of feel crappy to have been here this whole time and to have to deal with minor inconveniences to keep using the site and then see language about wanting to cater the site to new users instead of trying to make thing better for the people who have been sticking to the site long-term.

The art thing isn't even the big issue for me because I get it's a system problem. It's just kind of like there's a lack of professionalism because it's just one guy running the whole thing and not a company. And while I DO understand how horrifically hard it probably is to run a company it just seems in bad taste to try to make it the fault of the users when things start going down-hill.

🍎

Every business class I've been to has talked about how focus on keeping long-standing customers satisfied more than focusing on drawing in new customers is oft a more effective business model for any business you intend to keep more than a few years

Black and white stuff is giving me such a headache for the new art theft system

Like I'm not gonna link the indiviudal pieces because it wouldn't be fair to go "this is bad" to someone but

Here's a black and white piece on the FIRST step of the new system

And here's a coloured one

You can already see how many false positives the first one is going to set off just because there's nothing really there for it to work with

Maybe it's time for me to just get stricted with what's allowed in the art post system? A lot of people have been misusing it, I guess. But I don't wanna be that guy who goes "no, that's not art" or whatever. Bah.

@babushka

That's the thing though - if it's an art post, it's going through the algorithm. It's not to say whether it's art or not, it's to find out whether it's been uploaded before - so a lot of black and white sketches are going to get false positived because the system thinks it's stolen art and turned into a reblog of someone else's thing. Or if you're the first one to get that specific hash, other people's stuff is going to be turned into reblogs of that one. That's the problem I'm trying to solve here

I see and i also agree with tags

It just feels strange

I remember back when the site was advertised for all kinds of creators, then it became a site for people who draw (with a promise of inkwell and glacier for other creators) and now it's suggested to be tailored towards professional artists and/or art consumers and those who draw in a style that fits the algorithm

And watching this unfold just kinda makes me confused

I know none of this is intentional gatekeeing and more of just... you figuring out how sites like this work on the go and trying to come up with the same strategy

But I also want to know how specific is waterfall.social going to get in the nearest future and if i am using this site properly at all

Also I did misuse art button once and my mistake haunts me in featured so I'm not saying there isn't a proble.

It feels incredibly wrong to decide what qualifies as "art" though? Like based on the featured posts a lot of different kinds of art gets posted and a lot of different people like all of it. I know it's not exactly trying to be a punishment thing or whatever but it just seems wildly uncomfortable to decide that only some art gets to be in the art section.

I also glanced through the discord and saw you ( @thellere ) say something specifically about "bad art" being at the forefront of the site making the site look bad and I can't help but feel like this is going to turn into non-professional art not being featured because you're worried new people will join and see art that you think is ugly pop up in featured?

2020 December: Henry the Dog

A Christmas gift for my sister and her husband, of their dog Henry.

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Check this out on ko-fi!

Gift art for my friend Yolkartz on insta :)

I have a bad habit of dropping projects that become even slightly challenging and I've gotta say that I'm extremely happy that I'm still incredibly passionate about knitting. It's so much fun and seeing the yarn just turning into a pattern is just incredible to me. I've only done 3 complete projects but I'm working on a blanket right now and I have something lined up for a friend of mine. I'm also planning projects for family when Christmas rolls around again. I really needed something I'm happy to stick with.

Parasect Color Palette Challenge

based off the Gold sprite~