We're ZFGC, not spriters-resource. Why do we need a portal? We are a forum, not a website. Any portal we have should have 5-10 most recent posts, and the general forum stats. Not "Well, you're here at the portal, do you wanna go to the staff page, the chatroom, the rules page, the forum, or the resources section, or the tutorials section, or the projects section?" http://www.zfgc.com/ should link STRAIGHT to the forum section. And all that crap it links to can be found ON the forum. "Archiving" be damned... half the !@#$% that is submitted is either stolen, subpar, or not even relevant. Games are the only exception, but links to them can be found in their respective topics anyways.
I personally feel the portal is a must-have mainly from the standpoint of finding the resources that are in the graphics/etc boards. With it having never been finished (grrr infini
![Look at me, I'm invisible! :P](http://zfgc.com/forum/Smileys/tplink/tongue.gif)
) with sorting/searching features, it's pretty useless atm. The biggest thing is that if, for example someone tries to start their own fangame, they don't want to search for 300 hours for decent resources. A lot of the resource links in our graphics boards are broken, and TSR provides fairly poor rips (since TSR rips are not meant for game development. They're just not tooled towards that, and are all around poor in general). Topics also have poor search features, and that's a lot of the basis behind the (unfinished <_< grrr infini) portal :s Honestly, I think the portal's a good thing, however it's never been utilized properly, and obviously lacks some major functionality that it was supposed to have (which Windy has officially fixed in the new version of the portal). I personally don't see it as being (or even how it could be) a harmful part of the community at all since anything that provides a means to productivity has to be something productive anyway. I do however think that as long as we lack users who provide the same resources ZFGC used to be rich of, it's not useful either. That's why flameshunning our new users is a pretty horrible thing imo *glares at specific ZFGCers who have done that to new users*. I also think that submissions to the portal should be screened for authenticity, credit, etc. I never envisioned it to be something for someone to upload someone else's work. I also generally don't like the staff page links and such, because they defeat the purpose of that thing anyway. Recent posts, resources, and fan games. Simple.
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In general, we need to grow as a community, not as a just a group of developers OR a social group. We need both. That was what made ZFGC so effective in the beginning. We had resources (plenty of people helping out; ripping, creating new ones, etc), we had developers making the games, and we had the conversationalists playing the games and critiquing the resources. It was a perfect blend. The thing the portal brings to the table is an outlet to share the resources, the developers to use the resources, and the conversationalists to critique them openly. The graphics/other boards as I see it are more meant for things that aren't meant to be made 100% public. WIP graphics/audio/stories/etc, and just general fun artwork. All in all the portal doesn't really hurt the board as much as the board is hurting itself as it is now.
Things are generally settled right now and not much is going on for people. Nobody really cares to do much of anything with the exception of a small group of people. We have a few developers, a few spriters, a few musicians, and a few conversationalists. It's a good kindling flame to have this diverse group the way it is without smothering it out. I think if things become overcomplicated, it just doesn't work anymore, and the flame is put out. It needs to be treated as if it's a new forum; simple, and accommodating. Lately it's been pretty brutal and harsh for some (and from some), and a lot of people who came to join in on what used to be fun for all of the original ZFGC users has been beaten out of them by rudeness or lack of helpfulness. We all have to start somewhere.
Even if someone makes some !@#$% game/graphic/audio/story, we all started there. We've all made some pretty lame !@#$% starting out, and it eventually grew into some pretty amazing product. The conversationalists gave us a point of view we couldn't get normally, and it helped us grow. Just needs to be like that again, instead of "your shits lame and I hate you because you !@#$% suck and you're a noob" all of the time.