Lovely Site

[Nodai]

'Ello there. ^^

A few months ago, when they did that hideous 'revamp' of Neo, I ditched it for this really sweet site that I heard about on the lovely Neopound. It's a site where we get to keep our beautiful old style neopets, only it's even better, because there are few people on the site. Having the small community means that we're all good friends with each other. For instance, we can share pets such as draiks with eachother for avatar purposes, without any fear of not getting our pet back. We can even leave pets in the pound for a time, and even though we are not punished for taking someone's pet, none of us will, because we know it will make one of the other users sad. ^.^ About a fourth or so of us are artists, too, meaning that petpages are turning out spiffy. In fact, the site was originally intended for us to be able to have nifty petpages- and to have our dream pets, of course. It makes me so happy to be able to plan out all my characters (currently I have twenty three!). I'm really glad that the maker of the site created it for us to use at our pleasure. When I get home from school each day, I like to take an hour or two to spin the wheels, chat on the boards with the other awesome users, and work on my coding. It relaxes me. Seriously, it makes me happy. The only downsides I've found so far are that the site isn't completed, and I don't always get along with the creator. The creator is a really cool person, though! I'm really grateful to her. It's just that sometimes she gets cranky, and when she is in such a mood she can be a meanie. But otherwise, she listens to us users and works on whatever code we want next. She reads our ideas and suggestions board and implements them! In the development board, I asked for the electric gruslen, the blue gallion, the red gallion, the striped faellie, and the faerie tasu petpet images that I made to be available. She uploaded them to the server, and now I can have exactly what I want for my darling characters. ^__^ Even though the site isn't complete, it makes it better for this reason! We can help complete it! We have our own say in what happens. It's the greatest, most wonderful fansite evar. Even greater than Neopound and Neocolours, which are my two second favorites. XD I only use Neocolours for deciding what color best matches my characters, as I didn't even notice you guys had a community here until today. But Neopound has a very, very sweet community as well.

The reason I'm posting this is because I heard through my site about an unfortunate thread where some really mean conversation was held between some of you guys, and a couple of those from the lovely site I frequent. I just wanted to explain that this site truly is legitimate. And... well.. How else can I tell you that I love it?

The creator of this site was asking for some beta testers, you see. That's all. I really don't understand how it got blown into an argument. ^^;
The site is special. Not something that anyone, not even the creator, should diminish by fighting over.

Uhm. Yeah. That's all I had to say, I think? Right? ^_____________^

Have a wonderful day, lovelies~! <3 <3 <3

PS. Any questions, feel free to message me. =^-^=

[Huggles]

I removed the purple coloring from the body of your post, per the font rules here. Paragraphs are also your friend.

It might help me, and everyone else, understand just what the heck you're talking about if you mentioned the site name. If it was deleted or locked and moved to the oubliette and eventually pruned, no one can find out.

It's the greatest, most wonderful fansite evar. Even greater than Neopound and Neocolours...

You fail at the internet.

[Twofold Black]

I just wanted to explain that this site truly is legitimate.

Can you back this up with some kind of legal information? I dimly recall hearing about the site you're talking about before, and at least on the face of it it sounds just as copyright-infringing and intellectual property-violating now as it did the last time. I don't see a compelling reason for TNT to grant permission for this kind of fansite, and I see many reasons for them not to. They eat only broken dreams and drink only the tears of their players, but they're reasonably sharp businesspeople.

[Zap]

I must have missed the thread about this site, but if it's like you're saying and it's just like the old Neopets, that's got to be infringement somehow, even if the owner isn't making any money off of it. It sounds great, but if it's not kept a secret, I can't imagine it being left to stay up.

I'd like to see it though. I've gone from playing near-daily for five years to hardly ever after the site redesign. If you would, send me a PM with the link?

[yvonne_l_d]

This is definitely illegal, if you're saying what I think you are saying. It sounds like there is another pet site that happens to use draiks and other neopets as their virtual pets. That is illegal.

[dandelions]

I am also very confused as to how on earth you're managing this:

A few months ago, when they did that hideous 'revamp' of Neo, I ditched it for this really sweet site that I heard about on the lovely Neopound.

Which is all well and good, but:

Having the small community means that we're all good friends with each other. For instance, we can share pets such as draiks with eachother for avatar purposes, without any fear of not getting our pet back.

Tell me...how are you transferring pets post-revamp within this community without the use of the Pound, which has been down since the weekend of the revamp?

Anyway, your site's owner threatened to have this site shut down and to hack my Neopets account (a year or so later, I'm still waiting eagerly) so I will dispute your point that she's a wonderful person. She didn't exactly endear herself to me, quite aside from the way she's breaking the law.

[Illuen]

I am also very confused as to how on earth you're managing this:

A few months ago, when they did that hideous 'revamp' of Neo, I ditched it for this really sweet site that I heard about on the lovely Neopound.

Which is all well and good, but:

Having the small community means that we're all good friends with each other. For instance, we can share pets such as draiks with eachother for avatar purposes, without any fear of not getting our pet back.

Tell me...how are you transferring pets post-revamp within this community without the use of the Pound, which has been down since the weekend of the revamp?

IIRC, the site just stole most of TNT's code and made it much easier to get draiks and rare things and such, and I'm suspecting they're still running on the pre-revamp coding, so they still have the old pound.

Man, that thread was fantastcally funny, IIRC.

[dandelions]

They can't take the pound's code - it's all done at the backend, and none of that's visible to an end-user. They can take the HTML front end, but the actual code which moves a pet from account a to account b is impossible to obtain via a normal web browser.

[thelonetiel]

Okay...

WTF?

I´m a Neopound regular (though not a mega poster) so I know what this is all about. I´m just really confused as to why this is being brought up now. The "argument" NC had with Neopound was over a year ago (in late summer of 06) and no big to begin with (obviously, as our admin and major members seem to be clueless).

In summary, Laska is a PHP coder in... I don´t remember, Australia or someplace far from US laws. She wanted PHP practice, got pissed at Neo, so she took their images and the ideas behind the site to recode it for the use of her friends, which are mostly Neopounders. It is a tight group, one I´m not part of nor do I care to be, she gives out 10 or 15 invites every once in a while.

She hasn´t taken any of Neopets coding, just images and ideas. Or maybe she has used some of their raw HTML, I don´t know and I´m fairly sure it amounts to the same thing. But most of it was done BEFORE Neo´s revamp, it just inspired more people to join. But the PHP at least, from what she has said on Neopound, I´m certain it is her own work.

So "stealing" isn´t quite accurate, only for the ideas.

I don´t think I ever saw a concrete answer about the legality of it, only that TNTs terms say you can use their images in fair use, the site is completely non profit, and they have been emailed and alerted (though I haven´t seen Laska mention if they responded), as well as it being based (or rather, the server is located in) Sweden which according to Laska has lax copyright laws.

Rereading the original thread, Nodai, I suggest you read it and then think seriously about if you want to stir up the subject here again.

For the curious, the original thread on Neopound about the subject is here.

[Jessi]

I remember the original argument perfectly well, and it still screams Illegal to me.

The part of all this that bothers me is Nodai saying it's 'even better than Neopound and Neocolours' - as if she's been a regular , when well... she obviously only joined to pimp a website.

Isn't that pretty much the same thing as all the porn and drug spam we get? At least it is to me. I'd rather not deal with members that come to brandish a website that is most likely very illegal at us and leave without a trace.

I also remember, Tiel, that Laska or whatever was never able to prove to us she had contacted TNT - she completely avoided the subject and instead went on to insult our users and tell Jazzy to shove off, more or less.

[Madge]

/echo the things about shady legal territory

But the real reason I posted was to make a point for once? I know, I'm just as worried as you are!

There should be some sort of rule about pimping websites before you reach a certain number of posts to prevent this sort of thing from happening - maybe have a rule that you need X posts in order to post links to websites other than neopets and subeta? I know a forum I lurk on requires users to have 100 posts before posting offsite links - which I think's a bit extreme, but I think it wouldn't be out of the question to require a dozen or so posts?

At least then there'd be justification for the pseudo-spambots' posts getting deleted.

[dandelions]

I believe that may be an automated feature in phpbb3, possibly. Of course, in this case, it's irrelevant because there's no link in the post

[Rakumel]

Hi, um...total outsider here, even though I've lurked at Neocolours for a few years and only just recently got an account. But I remember the thread about this, and I'm not going to bring up all that.

Instead, I have my own question/suggestion. Nodai, have your friends ever considered making their own original pet site, rather than one that's basically a slimmed-down copy of Neopets? There are programmers and artists, correct? Have they not ever come together and brainstormed their own ideas for pet species, worlds, games, pet colors, and such? It would be a little more work, perhaps, but I think it would ultimately be more satisfying and fun to work on something that was their own. Yes, Neopets had some great pets and great ideas, some of which never got used, but I'm pretty sure you all can come up with ideas that are just as good, possibly even better. You never know.

Not trying to talk down to anyone or stir up any trouble. Just putting a suggestion out there. =) Good luck, whatever you all decide.

*goes back into hiding*

[Malishka]

I love that idea Rakumel. I think it would be awesome for people to be able to create something themselves from scratch and have users input in it. These people have skills in art and programming, so all they need is just people to give them ideas!