Ready for a history lesson?
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I'll try and be brief, plus I'm probably misremembering some of it!
There was two major events really.
The First Event - The Purge: The website got reported to the hosts and it caused quite a panic - understandably. The report was based on some Loli AI Art that had been posted in the equivalent of this thread. So, they moved all the threads with art out and into P4.
Art was HUGE at the time. People were posting in here daily with bits of AI art - some just silly art to wind each other up, but some more pervy, etc etc. Either way, Art was big. Many users ran Art Comps to dish out coins, that sort of thing.
It was annoying, the big move, but understandable. One of the problems though, is it came with
The Purge which tasked all the mods with going through the threads and deleting any AI art they could find - labour intensive work. This is why, to this day, you're not allowed to post ANY AI art outside of P4. Lewd or not, not allowed. Want to make an AI of a Burger (as a user did a few weeks ago) - can't post it. They've only just loosened the restrictions to allow AI Avatar pictures, but even they were scrapped and forcibly deleted for awhile.
You can still see the ramifications of this - like Slums display picture being made on Paint. Or any thread that has (Cleaned) at the end of it's title.
It was hard and it soured a lot of peoples attitudes. This was when trust was first broken. But, whilst many thought the reaction was excessive, it was, at the very least, understandable.
The Second Event - The Nuking: When all had settled down, P4 was raging with Art, and people were still chatting out here, the next event loomed. One night, without any warning, P4 just got nuked. Completely deleted off the site. This is when trust fell to dust. Even the mods hadn't been warned. Everything was gone without a chance to collect it. Peoples art work, peoples comments. All of Mimes competitions that he was running
daily. Just gone. However, things calmed down a little, and a backup was restored. Not really loosing
that much. But then another Purge had to happen. Poor Slum had just become a mod at that point too, so he was mainly in charge of going through. This time, it was regarding the age/realism of the AI Art. Certain art had to be purged - again.
And, that brings us here really. P4 is kind of dead. BUT. All the Mods, especially Mime and Guz89, have been working really hard to get something going - speaking with the Owners/Admins - and setting up image verification threads, etc. And now, P5 starting, with a lot of fanfare, it's really encouraging some activity and hope. So... The trust is rebuilding, we're getting there, but you can also see why many are still skeptical.
I was very, very, very skeptical for awhile. But this week is the most positive I've felt about this place in awhile.