A month in ....

[smjjames]

I thought it was just one image rather than a clip of a much larger image. And true on the fact that art is open to interpretation.

[lingrem]

I don't call it being respectful- I call it groupthink. Any criticism directed towards Thunt, however objective or reasonable (even if most of it isn't) is met with retaliation on these forums. This is not limited to this particular situation or instance. In fact, the aggressive defense of Thunt has been a big problem for him in the past, if you recall.

Mods are not equal in how they apply the rules either; they tend to overlook things that should be modded because they fit in with the groupthink, and they tend to be overly heavy handed against even an implied insult when it's out of the groupthink. There is an example of this on this very page.

I'm a fan of Thunts work, and I try to support him as best as I can. But going out of ones way to reprimand someone who is justifiably upset simply due to ones own personal bias is more or less the definition of "Not Cool." Telling people their feelings are _wrong_ because of this, this, and this is even less cool.

Why can't we just ignore those posts that are complaining, unless they are directly violating the rules? People just want their voice to be heard, they want a chance to throw in their two cents as well as vote with their dollar. Whats so wrong with that? It is not at all comparable to interrupting a viewing. Nobody is telling a bunch of grieving people that their loved one was a jerk, or anything close to it. No. What's going on here is more akin to a typical anime high school student getting lynched by his classmates for daring to offer any criticism regarding the hot teachers curriculum.

Want to know why we might not treat everything and everyone equally?

Because people don't use the report button.

I do not, and cannot, read every single post. I pop into threads and take a look at the recent conversation - if it seems civil then I head back out. If it seems like there's stuff going on, then I go back further. If someone reports something, we check it out and deal with it immediately. If no one reports something, then we might simply miss it until it's a big argument.

My life: my job, my social life, my health... those all come first. It is the same for the other mods.

We've been doing our best to try and keep the conversations civil - and believe what you want, but each time we haven't stepped in quickly enough, it gets messy and mean very fast. And then people complain that we're not doing what we should be doing. If we step in right away when we see the sorts of posts that are likely to instigate those conversations, then we get blamed for over-modding. It's a no-win situation for us, and we've been coming to accept that. We'll step in as early as we can because we'd rather help the people who are normally civil and kind remain that way. People who are bent towards being rude and mean are always going to remain so - and our rate of banning people or even giving out official warnings is INCREDIBLY small. In the history of this forum, we've given out one Controversy-ban, and I think only one temp-ban for the entire forum.

[Knucklekraken]

Lock the threads, ban them all, find their houses and strangle them in the night. The forum,, the world, will be better off sans these malcontents.

Knucklekraken for president.

[Krulle]

Well, dear mods, let me again thank you for the good moderation you're doing.
I thank you all very much, and together with this great community, the reasons why this forum has become my online home are obvious.

Thank you!


This is a strassful situation for us GobComAddicts, so please bear with us.

[lingrem]

Lock the threads, ban them all, find their houses and strangle them in the night. The forum,, the world, will be better off sans these malcontents.

Knucklekraken for president.

Squid and octopus and thus kraken's scare the hell out of me.

Sorry knuckles, no vote from me!

[RedwoodElf]

Lock the threads, ban them all, find their houses and strangle them in the night. The forum,, the world, will be better off sans these malcontents.

Knucklekraken for president.

Squid and octopus and thus kraken's scare the hell out of me.

Sorry knuckles, no vote from me!

Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu...why settle for a lesser evil?

Here's his campaign theme song.

[Occams Meataxe]

I doubt he's lying, I think he simply can't get himself to do it in his own strict time schedule. So if he IS lying, he is doing it to himself, not to us.

Make that "any time schedule" and you'd have a point. No matter what he does, what new labor-saving tool he has, what sort of help or how many times he loosens the schedule he always lets the deadline pass. This is not the way a professional does business. And unless he changes how he does things it will only get worse.

[Sessine]

Want to know why we might not treat everything and everyone equally?

Because people don't use the report button.

Silly question, but, uh... where is this button?

[Brightnotshiny]

Exclamation button next to "Quote"

[Knucklekraken]

I'm not lesser! I resent that.

[Brightnotshiny]

I'm not lesser! I resent that.

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Edit: Sorry. Zoned out for a second. What was all this about Cthulhu?

[Knucklekraken]

Oh, you know. Iai iai, he ftaghn. And stuff.

[Brassbaboon]

I am a long-time Goblins reader. Meaning I've been reading for years. I have only now joined the forum though because I tend not to get into "fan" type situations with my entertainment. It's just something I watch, read or visit on the Internet. That's how I feel about Goblins or any other webcomic I read.

I only visited this forum because I became curious about why there had not been an update for weeks and weeks and wondered if the artist had a baby, or went on vacation or something else.

Having read this webcomic for so long, I am not surprised when it goes on an unannounced hiatus, although this may be the longest I've seen.

I don't even really care about the hiatus, I mostly read Goblins now out of habit, not out of great interest. Like most forms of entertainment Goblins has fallen prey to the most insidious entertainment-killing force in the universe, which is the desire by the creator to start using their creation, at least in part, as a social consciousness platform to promote their own ideas about life or whatever.

Besides, Goblins has always had the urgency of an advancing glacier, so missing it for a while isn't a whole lot different than reading it.

But what led me to decide to actually make an account and comment is the tone of this discussion where anyone who suggests in any way whatsoever that "Thunt" isn't some sort of saint who is blessing us all with his brilliant talents and to whom we should all express praise and thanks, anyone who does so gets slammed and gang-tackled by the forum regulars and the mods.

Let me just give you the perspective of a casual reader, and then you can all gang-tackle me.

Thunt is, as has been expressed, and has been for some time, a horribly unprofessional artist. He promises and promises and then whines publicly about how hard it all is and misses deadline after deadline to the point that it is not only not a surprise when he doesn't deliver, it's actually what I've come to expect.

To point this out does not make me an evil person. It's just reality. It doesn't mean his product doesn't still entertain, nor that he doesn't deserve recognition for what he DOES produce. Sure, you can claim that in spite of all the unprofessional behavior, he's still worth following, but stop defending his repeated and well documented failings.

I hope he finishes the comic. I like closure. But it's no great loss to me or the world if he doesn't. I hope this gets resolved soon. But stop blaming the messengers. This thread and the others which provide reasonable opinions of Thunt's limitations as a professional are not the problem.

The problem is Thunt doesn't do what he says. So if you want to get mad at someone for these sorts of posts, get mad at the person who is causing them.

Thunt.

[smjjames]

Horribly unprofessional? Oh come on, his artwork is professional, beyond professional even.

As for the deadlines stuff, well, maybe time to do away with the clock thing?

[RedwoodElf]

Horribly unprofessional? Oh come on, his artwork is professional, beyond professional even.

As for the deadlines stuff, well, maybe time to do away with the clock thing?

What good are clocks anyway?

[steinrokkan]

Horribly unprofessional? Oh come on, his artwork is professional, beyond professional even.

As for the deadlines stuff, well, maybe time to do away with the clock thing?

His artwork is passable, but hardly anything that would survive even as first semester-level at any serious arts academy.

But that doesn't matter, many people like that kind of stuff. He is unprofessional because he teases people, he promises, he wringes, he manipulates, he avoids and disappoints. He's a prima donna and that makes his behaviour often difficult to bear. There may be legitimate reasons behind his lackings, but if that's the case he should take care to get rid of those before he returns to his "regular" workload.

[Brassbaboon]

My final word on this is as follows:

If Thunt were my employee, he'd long ago been looking for a new job. Sure, maybe he'd be successful and everyone would love him in his new job, but if he worked for me, his actions reflect on my own organization, and I have higher standards for keeping your word, accepting responsibility and interacting with customers/clients.

That's all. I hope he finishes the comic. But this hero-worship is just boggling my frickin' mind.

[smjjames]

Horribly unprofessional? Oh come on, his artwork is professional, beyond professional even.

As for the deadlines stuff, well, maybe time to do away with the clock thing?

His artwork is passable, but hardly anything that would survive even as first semester-level at any serious arts academy.

But that doesn't matter, many people like that kind of stuff. He is unprofessional because he teases people, he promises, he wringes, he manipulates, he avoids and disappoints. He's a prima donna and that makes his behaviour often difficult to bear. There may be legitimate reasons behind his lackings, but if that's the case he should take care to get rid of those before he returns to his "regular" workload.

True, he's no Picasso or Michelangelo, but I completely disagree with your point of view of the teasing and promises since that only happened recently. Yes he could have handled the situation better, but whatever is going on is pretty major.

My final word on this is as follows:

If Thunt were my employee, he'd long ago been looking for a new job. Sure, maybe he'd be successful and everyone would love him in his new job, but if he worked for me, his actions reflect on my own organization, and I have higher standards for keeping your word, accepting responsibility and interacting with customers/clients.

That's all. I hope he finishes the comic. But this hero-worship is just boggling my frickin' mind.

Let me ask you this, if you knew what was going on and the reason why he has suddenly gone incommunicado, would you change your mind?

I still see the point you're making though.

[Brassbaboon]

smjjames, I tend not to come back to something when I say my final word, but since you asked.

This situation is not entirely unique in Thunt's history. No matter what is going on these repeated promises of "blog post tomorrow" and then nothing for weeks, and "I'm almost done but have to go to bed" with no new info for days, over and over again, interspersed with "it's all so hard on me" all the time are not acceptable.

If something happened that was so devastating that Thunt could not meet his promises he should have said: "Folks, I have to take care of some things, I don't know when I'll be back."

That's not what is happening. Week after week after week we get tease after tease after tease.

Yeah, I'm sorta curious about what happened with Thunt. But mostly I'm curious once it is revealed to see how much of it was self-inflicted. My suspicion is that the answer to that question is "quite a lot."

[smjjames]

smjjames, I tend not to come back to something when I say my final word, but since you asked.

This situation is not entirely unique in Thunt's history. No matter what is going on these repeated promises of "blog post tomorrow" and then nothing for weeks, and "I'm almost done but have to go to bed" with no new info for days, over and over again, interspersed with "it's all so hard on me" all the time are not acceptable.

If something happened that was so devastating that Thunt could not meet his promises he should have said: "Folks, I have to take care of some things, I don't know when I'll be back."

That's not what is happening. Week after week after week we get tease after tease after tease.

Yeah, I'm sorta curious about what happened with Thunt. But mostly I'm curious once it is revealed to see how much of it was self-inflicted. My suspicion is that the answer to that question is "quite a lot."

How about outside the last two months because the last month or so is not usual behavior for Thunt?

Yes it could have been handled better, I think we all get that.

[godzilla999666]

While I like reading the goblin comics, it is the last ranked in my browser because of the broken promises/deadline. In my mind, Thunt really just needs to man up, never declare a dealine or promise something in a time frame. The artist at OOTS decided after struggling with schedule, decided quite sometime ago to say updates happen when they happen. I am much happier with that, than being told it will happen tomorrow and it happens three days later. Also the artist for OOTS nearly took his thumb off, but he or others for him keep people posted on what happened. I would much rather have irregular updates than missed deadlines/broken words.

[Wolfie]

[mod="Wolfie"]This is not a warning, more of a heads up and a post to ponder:

Thunt is not the author of OOTS and he does try to keep his deadlines. Before this hiatus, he had been doing fairly well since he switched to the 5 day schedule. He also explained that what he was drawing currently was more intricate and involved and would take more time than the 5 day schedule allowed to get new pages up.

Is he perfect? Nope. He's human like the rest of us. He makes mistakes and tries to make up for them.

He is currently going through something. The best we can do is remain calm, remain respectful, and be nice to one another. The bickering, squabbling, and general mean tone of most of the recent posts, in both this and other Discussion posts, is mind-boggling to me. We like to think that we have a rather nice forum here; full of people who like the comic and want to be around others of the same ilk.

We defend Thunt because we like him, like we would a friend. We are not blind to his faults, though. I understand and share your frustration at the situation, but creating an account simply to vent your vitriol and then getting offended because other forum users don't appreciate having to hash out the same arguments over and over again is rather silly.

If you think Thunt owes you a comic, go ahead and believe that. You'll get it eventually.

WE, the mods, do not appreciate the bashing of us simply because we're trying to do our jobs. Moose already posted in another thread (I believe) that a post should go up soon asking the forum users for their input on moderating practices and the rules. This isn't to say that everything said within that post will go into effect, it only means that we would appreciate the opinion of those we moderate to make sure we are doing the best job we can. We cannot please everyone all the time. We do however tolerate a lot more on this forum than other forums do. This is on purpose, but it walks a very fine line.

In the future, for this thread and others, please listen to the Moderators and my fellow Admins when they say something. If they tell you that you are out of line, then change what they asked you to. Arguing will only result in an Official warning and other possible unpleasantries. We do have fangs behind the nice please's we hand out, and we will start using them. There has been a major influx of new members since the start of this situation and I can bet that not even a third of them have read the rules, so I will reiterate a point for you: We will hold you to the rules whether you've read them or not. By signing up, you agree to abide by the rules posted and have been warned that they may change without notice.

If we tell you that a thread is off-topic and to get back on topic or take it to PM, that does not mean you can do one more post on what you were saying.

We are asking for your continued patience, your continued respect, and for everyone here to remember their manners.

Thank you,

Wolfie[/mod]

One more thing, the Twitter thread will not be locked due to it's nature of being the update thread for when Thunt tweets about something. This doesn't mean that people can continue to post vitriol in there. If it continues I will move those posts to a different thread.

[godzilla999666]

I will have to say thst from a business standpoint, the month long silence/missed deadlines and misuse of soon, it has got people visiting his page more which is good. And the increased traffic are actually creating and posting on the forum which could be considered good for the comic.

[LAYF]

Sadly Tarol has no income from the forum, and a quick web search will tell you that traffic the latest month have been dwindling on the main comic page. (they are not on same address)

so sadly, this is hurting his income.

[Ethereal]

Sadly Tarol has no income from the forum, and a quick web search will tell you that traffic the latest month have been dwindling on the main comic page. (they are not on same address)

so sadly, this is hurting his income.

I don't think that's sad. To get income, you should be doing something to GET that income. At the moment, so far as we can all tell, he is not.