pouët.net

🎺 Pouët.net in 2025+ 🎺

category: general [glöplog]
🎺 Pouët.net in 2025+ 🎺

Hi all,

I'm Analogue, the founder of Pouët.net, and I promised you some news and some answers after Gargaj announcement.

I don't want to hijack his Bulletin, so I'm starting a new post to answer some questions asked.

The TLDR;


  • I don't plan to go back maintaining Pouët, I can help for sure, and will always help in emergency times like this, but that's about it. And it would not be scalable if I did. It needs a team.
  • I'm currently gathering interest to make sure there would be a viable team to keep Pouët up, enough people so nobody has too much on its shoulders.
  • Depending on the interest, a team will be built, or not.
  • I hope to have a team that can take over in December, to not be in the way of Gargaj's wishes.
  • The current team of contributors will stay as is. The future team will do whatever they want.


Here are some remarks I'll answer, sometimes using others people answers.

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Btw, if something like a patreon would help Analogue and the mods keep this site going, I'll support it.


Pouet needs people's time, not money.

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just today I've been suggested by multiple people that I should shut Pouët down


"Weird suggestion. They could just not visit the site anymore if they think it is so terrible it needs to be shutdown ¯\_(ツ)_/¯?"

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I hope a replacement can be found. A site like this in the hands of one person...doesn't feel good.


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pouet has historically been a one-man-show analogue->ps->gargaj->next spinning plates guy which is the ACTUAL problem i'd like to address


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We had privately talked about "what will happen to important demoscene platforms if the maintainer dies or leaves the scene", not just about pouet.net, but also for the other platforms there are.


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leaving Analogue as the only administrator" sounds really dangerous to me. There really should be an active demoscener running this place.


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Whoever picks it up will just start a new thread like this in a couple of years if nothing is changed.


All true, it needs a team.

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but I will admit it feels nice when users say "thanks" in response to a fix or explanation. Because it balances out the negativity we're exposed to on such a regular basis, I guess. And also because it's just nice to know at least a few people appreciate our work.


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mod/admin/gloperator hug button


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Score people, if score is negative, posts get smaller to read.


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what about minimum glops earned, referencing, votebans? Certain policies can help to solve the problems at the root, making troublemakers inoffensive, while maintaining a fairly open stance toward genuinely passionate people…


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There should be another user level "obnoxious" or whatever you wanna call it, that would pretty much shadow ban said users. They can post and all, but regular users and the general public don't see these.


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And maybe add a report button or page to bring visibility of bad behaviors to the moderators, which can be from users posting shit or from abusive reports.


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Ban non english? Or moderate them into non-english section?


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Add ability for parties to batch submit prods.


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Temporary bans: Can be used to give people time to cool down (short tempban) or rethink their behavior and become a better person (long tempban). Perhaps with a message they get when they try to log in.


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Partial bans: E.g. ban people from posting on the BBS but they can still comment on prods


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Moderation log: So a distributed team of moderators can keep track of a person's history and raise the temperature if needed


All good ideas that would improve things and prevent the current situation, but up to the future team to build those if they want to.

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I'm sure there are more people who want the site not to be closed or frozen. There is no point in even conducting a survey (especially since it is blasphemous).


The best survey is the effort people are willing to commit in contributing and building a team. The more the people, the less the effort.

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In terms of having a centralized social hub, then yeah, Pouet == scene. But do we need a centralized social hub, when we as a greater community are proving time and time again that we can't sustainably have such a social hub without people burning themselves out with our bullshit?


Pouët exists because some people use it. If nobody uses it, it will die. That’s why Pouët was built. For people not in closed circles to be able to enjoy what other people release, and talk about it. If the use case is no more, nobody will use it, nobody will want to take care of it, and it will die. I don't see the value in trying to decide for everyone if it should be maintained or closed.

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I don't see a future that doesn't involve drastic measures, like removing the BBS and oneliner altogether, increasing the moderation team size to at least 10 (which should be overkill for a site with relatively little traffic but sadly we suck), and not ban less, but more, and more early.


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It's only nowadays that the real achievement and value of Pouet becomes apparent: People are used to speak their minds here.


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I thought it was one of the strenght of pouet: sometimes super interesting threads, sometimes flamewars, sometimes off-topic BS…


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is anyone actually here for anything else than the cool attention-trade mechanism with the thumbs? :)


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To be honest I wouldn't' have bothered much with producing if there was no feedback medium. It's nice to be at the party of course, but even better to see people appreciate or critisize your work in all eternity.


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But the selling point of pouet is the direct (positive _and_ negative) feedback on your productions, no? At least for me.


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Maybe Pouet.net shouldn't have had a forum in the first place? Forums and message boards always turn toxic: Look at IMDb boards, and now MovieChat, essentially it's replacement, has become just as bad, for a long time now. Does Demozoo have such messaging facilities? If it does, maybe the toxicity will head there and turn it rotten, too.


Some people want more moderation, some people want less. It's impossible to please everyone. One of the core principle of Pouët is freedom. There are other platforms that moderate more, or don't allow people to express their opinions. Negative feedback and candid talk is a feature.

There is a code of conduct: https://www.pouet.net/faq.php#faq49 As long as it's lawful, it's fine.

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Then again, I fear that whatever culture issues Pouet has, anything replacing it would have as well.


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someone with the right mix to care enough to admin the codebase, but doesn't care too much that whatever goes on affects too much.


That was always the goal. Pouët isn't opinionated, it's a tool.

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Oneliner: Seriously if this gives headache to admin and moderators just let it go. I doubt there is a single person that would miss it.


I would. Just don't read it.

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yeah, maybe one day we will be able to edit posts as well


Only if versioning is implemented. You should not be able to change a post that someone replied to. Or the conversations will be fucked up. The immutability is an incentive for not posting things you might regret later.

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It’s not just dividing the work, but having a community where one can vent about idiot users, before politely handling their bullshit.


"We need a safeplace for mods to discuss actions to take. And actions should be anonymous."

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It may happen that the guy who hosted Pouet on his server is not interested in all this, and after December 31 he will not do anything at all. Or he will turn off the site. Then we are just shaking the air in vain.


Not true. I'm not active anymore, but I still watch, enjoy, laugh, and get mad at the scene.

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if Analogue decides 25 years was enough, which would be his perogative indeed.


Never going to happen, Pouet is not mine for a long time now. I just make sure it doesn't blow up, or that its core values aren't changed, as long as it's useful for some.

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As i said before, on a long term, we need a wide used solution developed by a huge group (like wordpress, typo3 whatever). Even if that means, that no extra modules specialised on scene related content isn´t available. On a long term, the danger to loose all is to big when it comes to solutions, developed only by a very small amount of people or even developed only by one person even if this pouet how it is, is the best i could imagine.


"About using external tools and solutions: Why when Pouet is open source, and works perfectly fine from a tech stand point for the needs and environment (think sceneId integration for instance, but also the cron jobs that check for dead links and so on). "Re"-building Pouet (or a subset of Pouet) using other tools is no easy task, and for what ? If you want to change/improve something, file an issue or better yet submit a PR."

I would add that nothing prevents anyone to implement an API endpoint in RustGL/64 along with the old PHP. So there is no blocker to slowly migrate to something else if that's really an issue. But the PHP is fine, Gargaj did a great job keeping it simple and maintainable. At some point, you don't care about the language anymore, you just build, and the scene is full of awesome coders anyway, so I don't think that's an issue.

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This site is one of the main reasons why I still keep making demos after all these years.


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In 2000, Analogue started a project called 'Pouet.net', with the ambition of building a collaborative and open database centered on the demoscene productions. The ambition was met, indeed and I'm grateful for this intuition 24 years ago


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I can't imagine the demoscene without pouet. Quite honestly.


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I do it because it's a passion, because I love to see our database improve and see "progress to the youtube singularity: 30.88%" increase every week.


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pouet is an important file and history database aswell as a spreadpoint for news . It would just be sad if it would go offline.


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I'm here for everything concerning the scene, to check out the latest releases and stay updated on parties and whatnots, to get some kind of overview what's happening, even to make some connections. To me, Pouet is pretty much the scene.


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You can cry some tears into your pillows, stay away from this place, only to come back later. You get used to that and become part of an unique culture, and you will notice that an astonishing level of decency is maintained with a minimum of sanctions - mistakes happen, of course.


❤️

I tried to answer the F.A.Q, but feel free to ask me candid questions in here if I missed anything. But do realize I'm not going to build any feature, I want the team to own it. I'm just trying to pass the key from Gargaj to a new team without blowing it up.

🙏
added on the 2024-12-06 22:20:21 by analogue analogue
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added on the 2024-12-06 23:07:30 by p01 p01
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added on the 2024-12-06 23:22:42 by ham ham
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added on the 2024-12-06 23:26:57 by v3nom v3nom
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added on the 2024-12-07 09:02:10 by fra fra
where is the scene heritage orchestra when you need it the most
https://youtu.be/bRhCMC5zZ_0
added on the 2024-12-07 11:19:24 by harism harism
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added on the 2024-12-07 11:54:11 by Blueberry Blueberry
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Pouet.net needs to live forever!!!!!!
added on the 2024-12-08 03:51:58 by AntDude AntDude
Pouet.net is one of the building stones of the scene! Hand it over to a new team please.. thanks!
added on the 2024-12-08 07:22:28 by magic magic
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Pouet.net needs to live forever!!!!!!

Nice.
added on the 2024-12-08 08:57:52 by Gargaj Gargaj
Analogue wants to remain CEO. But he is putting together a new team that has complete freedom. I hope that you find a good team.
added on the 2024-12-08 11:05:39 by G-Fellow G-Fellow
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added on the 2024-12-08 13:42:18 by wullon wullon
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Pouet.net needs to live forever!!!!!!

Nice.


Soso.
added on the 2024-12-08 13:55:58 by すすれ すすれ
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added on the 2024-12-08 16:12:23 by med med
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added on the 2024-12-08 19:25:06 by exocet exocet
Question: How do you communicate internally among pouet admins and moderators?
added on the 2024-12-09 00:20:49 by T$ T$
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Question: How do you communicate internally among pouet admins and moderators?


The team will decide. But you can guess a mix of emails+discord.
added on the 2024-12-09 01:28:04 by analogue analogue
Question:

1. Don’t you think it’s a good idea to have at least two people with admin (ownor) rights, or even more? (besides you, of course)
Having just one admin still leaves us in the same spot we’re in now.

2. Will we know by the end of the year who’s getting the keys to the site? And what’s the overall progress with putting the Pouet team together?
added on the 2024-12-09 07:10:47 by bitl bitl
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1. Don’t you think it’s a good idea to have at least two people with admin (ownor) rights, or even more? (besides you, of course)
Having just one admin still leaves us in the same spot we’re in now.


Yes, that's an interesting point. And this resonates to the other comment which I wanted to address:

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Analogue wants to remain CEO.


That's a blunt way to state it, but I can understand why it feels like this. So let me clarify to answer both points:

I see Pouët more as a european (constitutional) monarchy:

- There is a king or a queen that protects the constitution but does not influence the decision of the government.
- There is an active government that can do everything, included transfer of power (assigning new roles), except destroying the above.

Founder vs Team.

This is the balance I see, based on some feedback I've been getting, and that's really how it works for 20 years now. Especially since it's super hard to find a single "owner" like Gargaj or PS. That would be awesome, but it does not exist, because even when we think it does, it does not last.

So yes, we could have a structure like this, with multiple admins (not owners), but not too many.

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2. Will we know by the end of the year who’s getting the keys to the site? And what’s the overall progress with putting the Pouet team together?


I hope so. The current progress is what's stated in the initial post. I'm still gathering interest.
added on the 2024-12-09 14:53:31 by analogue analogue
Very nicely put together, balanced. thumbs up and fingers crossed analogue!
added on the 2024-12-09 15:55:31 by hollowone hollowone
What about a moderator election by public vote, as other sites do?
added on the 2024-12-10 00:33:49 by friol friol
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What about a moderator election by public vote, as other sites do?


Not for the initial team, not enough time left, and without some implementation, it would be messy.
Up to the potential team to decide if they want to do such in the future.
added on the 2024-12-10 04:10:07 by analogue analogue

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