[Chrysothemis]

Chiming in to warn people away from Menewsha, new users or old ones looking to return.

The site owner went crazy for AI, and when users started pushing back on the use of it (the breaking point for many being him making a shop NPC image of a beloved dead moderator), he snapped and started obscene rants where he accused people of being ungrateful.

I'd give more information on the matter, but he banned me (and called me a great deal of swears) and then deleted my entire post history. I've since moved back to Subeta, since at least the admin there is more coherent with his stance on AI usage, and I've seen no tell-tale signs of generated artwork there.

Voltra has fallen to a similar fate, according to some of the Mene peeps I've kept in touch with on Discord. I wasn't there for it personally but apparently a lot of well liked users got banned for being anti AI.

[Stabbsworth]

Oh, jesus christ.

I was actually planning to see about applying for Voltra after Pantheon Online went down, as I was previously employed with Pantheon.

I wouldn't be surprised if the site is going to fall into vibe coding, since they were having extensive issues with the previous coder going AWOL.

[Chrysothemis]

Originally Posted by Stabbsworth

Oh, jesus christ.

I was actually planning to see about applying for Voltra after Pantheon Online went down, as I was previously employed with Pantheon.

I wouldn't be surprised if the site is going to fall into vibe coding, since they were having extensive issues with the previous coder going AWOL.

Yeah... I glanced at Volta and didn't see any obvious changes but considering how many people on the Mene discord spoke against the team's choice to erase any and all AI opposition, I have no interest in going back there until a massive change happens.

I know AI is a touchy subject, especially in the realm of computer science and I'm not going to pretend to know enough about coding to make a judgement call, but I'm pretty ironclad on how I feel about generative AI in creative endeavors. If you use it for art or writing, you're an idiot and I'm not going protect some strangers ego just because they don't value art. Insomniac is killing Menewsha because he wants to lie and pretend he cares about artists, but when actual artists popped up and offered to redraw Jelly's portrait and start making new items, he ignored them entirely so he could stroke his own ego using AI images.

As for worries about vibe coding in avatar forums... eugh... Again, I'm barely even a hobbyist with programming, but some of teh features I saw pop up in Menewsha for example were at best useless and at worst completely broken. There's a whole chatroom function on the site that somehow, despite being permabanned, I can still access and message others. That's a huge security flaw, and he's completely disinterested in fixing it.

Anyway that's a lot of drama that I don't want to bog down the thread with. As I mentioned in the previous post, I can vouch for Subeta as probably the Old Web Forum Game Place that's aged the best. Gaia is the same as ever (and all the announcements are cash shop items, little to no events which is a shame)

And I wanna say thank you to the people who mentioned Grimsbrook! It looks really interesting and I hope it does very well <3

[Stabbsworth]

yeah, no, if you can't audit the code made by an AI, then one should not use the AI to code.

even then, it's made of conglomerations of stolen data, projects, artworks...

i might see about applying to grimsbrook when it gets set up properly, but until then, i should probably get to doing some stuff on trisphee. i have some inspiration for avatar borders...

[Espy]

Oh goodness. Terrasus. That was an experience.

[Tohopekaliga]

AI is best avoided for all creative works.

Creative works include programming.


Like. It's possible to write code with AI, but to be sure you're getting what you intend, it's going to take just as long to go through it and understand it as just writing it yourself would.

If you don't care about what it is you're putting out there, then it does not need to exist.

[Stabbsworth]

i was going to say that i don't care about my art, but then i realised that it wouldn't make sense with a self-described compulsion to be making things.

that, and i've always been kind of an attention whore anyways LMAO

but yeah, i don't really trust anything 'coded' by an AI. there's a bunch of games on itch.io now, that use AI. thankfully i think it's required to disclose such stuff.

it also speaks volumes that someone with a specialization would rather use AI to do something they're not specialized in than just... doing it badly and improving. there was a conversation about that, probably on either bluesky or the fediverse or tumblr or some other place, where someone reported hearing that a writer would use AI to generate a book cover, whereas their art professor would use AI to generate a story. [NOTE: EXTENSIVELY PARAPHRASED. I forgot the roles each person had.]

kinda depressing.