Den of Angels

I was thinking it might be possible to expand the off-topic section to accommodate resin dolls a bit better. There is no way we could absorb what DoA was into this forum, but we could add sections under off-topic similar to the sections we have for DDs and Smartdolls. 

As far as I know, most doll meets aren't limited to just resins or just vinyls, and I think it would help the community as a whole if people losing DoA had a place to post meets and coordinate meetups at events like the LA Dolpa, Resin Rose, which despite the name, was a vinyl friendly event. If people lose a common meeting place it makes it a lot harder to keep events going. 

This idea would be contingent on two things: 

1) That DoA actually closes. They are trying to save their forum, but it's up in the air. I personally hope they do because the overall community is stronger with such a substantial and well established meeting place for hobbyists in operation.

2) Our own community is willing to do that. I never had an issue posting my vinyls in the Volks threads over there, but I know not everyone of this side felt welcome there, so for some it might be a big ask. I know in the past people have voiced a preference for keeping this forum as a space for vinyls, but times change and it's important to adapt to those changes. I think we shoot ourselves in the foot if we aren't willing to open our doors a bit wider to help the hobby itself. 

Think that'd be a great idea, at the end of the day we all share the same hobby and should help each other out.

The only attendance restrictions at doll meets I've personally been to have been by-manufacturer (i.e. only Volks), and not by material construction of the doll, so I concur that both resin and vinyl are expected at meets. Even when the audience in attendance naturally skews toward one interest or the other, whichever material is in the minority that time is welcomed all the same.

It doesn't hurt to offer our hobbymates the opportunity to have another meeting point in long-post format for anyone displaced from DoA that wants to come over. Discord, an ephemeral short-post format, isn't an adequate replacement for coordinating that kind of thing.

I agree with expanding the site to include resins since there’s a lot of crossover and many people own both, but I’ll be honest—I did not like the vibe at DoA, and I will be disappointed if the vibe here morphs into something like the one there.

As long as off-topic content is kept to its associated subforum(s), I don't think there's any harm in adding more granularity to make stuff easier to find.

While we're at it, could we add more subforums for on-topic dolls too? The site is desperately in need of a Tiny Fox section. And a few more options in the "Other on-topic" section would probably be nice to find Imomo, Dollbot, Yubel, etc. related stuff more quickly too. 😝

 

10 minutes ago, ragnamuffin said:

I agree with expanding the site to include resins since there’s a lot of crossover and many people own both, but I’ll be honest—I did not like the vibe at DoA, and I will be disappointed if the vibe here morphs into something like the one there.

Yes, the outward atmosphere of DoA never made me feel interested/welcome enough to bother signing up. While I'd say we should welcome everyone who wants to enjoy dolls together with us, we should take a little care that our site keeps its laid back vibe as it is.

Edited April 8 by Tierparkzone

27 minutes ago, Tierparkzone said:

The site is desperately in need of a Tiny Fox section.

Yeah, I wanted to point this out too, but didn’t want to derail the topic 😄

I think an expansion in the off topic area wouldn't be a bad thing. It'll be contained and anyone who doesn't wish to see resin dolls can continue to not see them by avoiding that area. But as someone who does have both resin and vinyl it would be nice to have in the event DoA does go down

It'd be nice to have an expanded resin section anyway. (like for those of us who have resin-vinyl hybrids)

I don't know if there'd be a huge influx of new members, if DoA would ultimately shut down, but getting more activity here would be nice, and having an expanded resin section would look a lot more attractive/welcoming.

Would a separate marketplace be opened too? (it'd be flooded if the current one where to allow resin in)

If Den of Angels were to go down, expanding the resin section would be good since there's a lot of resources and information that can be gathered from former DoA users that can be helpful to other resin owners especially with newer methods. It also sucks that another old hobby forum site is potentially going down and social media isn't great for discussing doll topics and we're also a BJD forum so they should be able to have somewhere to discuss dolls that's not sm or Discord or Reddit. 

I don't have an issue with more resin hobbyists coming to Doll Dreaming. My concern is with DoA forum culture and the issues that come with it. I think people are well aware that DoA has gained a reputation over the years. I have used DoA for a few years and while there are definitely good parts to the site, it's very stifling.

Edited April 8 by Amapola

I'm in pretty much the same boat as the rest of these replies, I have no problem incorporating some more resin allowance, but I do want the server to keep the same vibes as it has now. I've always found it significantly more relaxed and welcoming than DoA, and I don't want old drama from other forums to follow the newcomers here...

IF DoA goes down, why not?

... Well, even if it doesn't, expanding might be a good idea, but I'm not deep enough into the hobby to know the possible pros and cons.

9 hours ago, ragnamuffin said:

I agree with expanding the site to include resins since there’s a lot of crossover and many people own both, but I’ll be honest—I did not like the vibe at DoA, and I will be disappointed if the vibe here morphs into something like the one there.

100% This. DoA almost turned me away from the hobby completely. I'm happy to see them find space here... but only if they'll do in Rome as the Romans do and chill out haha. In the best circumstances, it would be really awesome to see the resin/vinyl divide go away and the hobby become more united. 

I agree with everyone, this forum have a less elitist vibe which makes contributions by newbies (such as myself) less daunting. So, I’d be in favour of making a bigger resin section (and adding TinyFox as a section by itself would be indeed a lovely idea), all while trying to nip in the bud any behaviour that makes DoA a less friendly environment.

Edited April 8 by SchneeFlockele
Grammar oopsies

I agree with everyone here. There's a lot of crossover between the resin and vinyl doll communities, and many own both in their collections at some point (myself included!). If nothing else, it would be very kind to offer a safe haven for resin owners to chat, connect, and discuss in the event that DoA goes down, particularly since some were discussing coming here temporarily while trying to get a new forum/social media option off the ground to replace DoA.

I always found DoA to be fairly pleasant, albeit a touch restrictive, but I understand that some of the rules are a bit ridiculous, which has garnered it a reputation with newbies and casual fans. While some level of moderation is required to keep things running smoothly and on-topic, there is such a thing as too much, and I would hope that we would not adopt the same restrictions here.

My major concern would be, if we end up being the catch point for DoA, it is possible that we will need to expand our current moderation team to keep up with the increased resin traffic. It is worth proactively establishing the infrastructure to add and train staff quickly if demand ends up rapidly exceeding our current capabilities.

I don’t agree or support this.

 

I do collect both types of dolls. I actually started with resin. I been part of DoA since I started the hobby, and I was lucky to find good an amazing friends there. But I find the people in DoA to be very elitist and toxic. I’m afraid they will turn this site to a DoA 2.0.

I’m afraid that with the influence of DoA members this place will become very snobbish toward people that collect Angel Philia dolls. I don’t collect them anymore and unfortunately that’s was something I encounter in DoA when I used to collect Angel philia. I like how friendly is dolldreaming about Angel philias and I wouldn’t like that to change.

I rather them and myself find a different space to share resin dolls.

So I vote to keep this forum as it is without the influence of some DoA members ruining what was built for so many years to a response for DoA not being very welcoming to vying dolls with build in skeletons. 

I think a lot of people forget that DOA is an absolutely massive site with a user base that completely dwarfs this one, which includes a number of sub communities that don’t interact with eachother at all (I’m someone who pretty much only ever looks at or posts in the Super Dollfie and Luts threads, for example) so making sweeping generalisations about the community as a whole is neither helpful nor accurate. They aren’t a hive mind anymore than this place is.

I also think that for the most part, people who aren’t at least tolerant of vinyl dolls will want to come here anyway..?

I personally do think that whether it happens or not, the resin subforum could benefit from being expanded a little, to at the very least having a subforum for brand/company discussion and a subforum for members photo threads instead of everything together. In the current setup, a lot of company discussion threads are buried under pages of photo threads.

I've definitely heard people mention the bad attitude some folks might bring with them in the past, but would people with an elitist attitude even want to be on a vinyl forum that only allows resins as off-topic? It seems to me that people with that kind of attitude would turn their noses up and go off and form their own toxic collective. 

We allow smartdolls as on-topic, but the elitist side of that group of fans doesn't bother us here for the very reason that we won't coddle them and forbid critical comments about the business and its creations. I think the answer to this particular concern is to be welcoming to people who don't bring a bad attitude, and to encourage the ones who do to be elsewhere.

I do get that it's a hard sell for people who had bad experiences there. Why be welcoming to people who told you to "take your inferior brand / style and piss off."

I want to be clear that we aren't in a position to absorb DoA's user base under any circumstances, and it's not just about moderation; our forum software hasn't been updated in a while due to some technical limitations.

I'm not in favor of allowing people to bring bad attitudes in with them, and our guidelines do require good behavior from the get go, and that can be expanded to clearly forbid bashing other people's dolls. I'm not suggesting resins become on-topic, nor would we have to advertise expanding the off-topic section. 

One of my main concerns with DoA closing is the resin side drives a lot of events, and losing a place for people to coordinate those events affects us too. Anyone who has been to the LA Dolpa tea party knows that even Volks is very much driven by the resin side of their business, so for that event to keep being successful both sides of the hobby need to show up. Outside of shopping, the only other reason to go is the social aspect of meeting people you only talk to online. There were some wonderful resin owners at the LA Dolpa and Resin Rose; including a woman who uses Dolpa to donate enormous sums of money to Make a Wish and she always seems to be the exact opposite of toxic. 

I've had to go over to DoA to find clothes makers and face-up artists for my vinyls, so we potentially lose that resource too. 

There is also the question of our own existing members losing a place to post their own photos of resins in their collections. I didn't post there often, but it was nice being able to show off mine from time to time.

 

25 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

I do get that it's a hard sell for people who had bad experiences there. Why be welcoming to people who told you to "take your inferior brand / style and piss off."

It’s not just the elitism (although that’s definitely a large part of it), it’s also the talking through/at people instead of actually engaging with what they wrote. I saw a lot of that there and it really bothered me, but it’s not something you can moderate because it’s more of a personality issue (they either don’t care about engaging with other users or they’re so conflict-averse they won’t address things head-on) than a behavioural one.

Tbh I think this site could benefit from some degree of stricter moderation and classification (keeping photo threads and discussion threads in separate subforums, making an NSFW section to house all NSFW threads and making it not visible when not logged in, moderating spam/excessive crossposting of photos and warning users that post in a spam-like manner, etc.), but I realize there are limitations on what can and can’t be done due to both the software and the size of the moderation team.

Maybe we can take this as an opportunity to consider expanding the mod team and seeing if anyone has solutions or suggestions for workarounds to the forum’s limitations? We have a lot of extremely talented programmers and software engineers on this site, including people who used to run forums themselves.

I think there's merit in both sides, however, that being said, I'm very well aware of the negativity of resin BJD owners to Vinyl BJD owners, and it disgusts me to no end. This is, in itself, ironic, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you're a vinyl doll collector or resin doll collector, we're ALL doll collectors no matter what version we choose, but the majority of negativity comes from resin BJD owners; I'm reminded of Asura of Asura's Vampires, who collected both vinyl and resin and enjoyed both, and was treated like garbage at a BJD convention, where she and her DD Yukino were looked down upon and treated poorly due to the fact that the majority collectors there were resin BJD owners. 

I'm sorry, but personally, if Den of Angels closes, then the Resin BJD community should just rebuild their own website or start up another. I'd rather not have a Vinyl BJD and Resin BJD conflict on DollDreaming - Zero Tolerance on Drama. I know that there are collectors who enjoy both versions but the rest, I'd rather not see on here and causing a scene with the Vinyl BJD community. That being said if, and I mean IF, the majority are willing to behave themselves, and they most certainly better if they want to stay on here once joined that's just the rules, period, if they behave themselves then I have no problem with any resin collector joining this server. Though I think it would be wise to have a posting forum for Resin BJD's only. And if they choose to join us, they need to remember the rules on this server and not cause drama to other collectors and hobbyists.

Edited April 9 by ShadowXM1

Im new to the BJD world and I am so curious why there are resin collectors that look down on vinyl collectors ?? Like what is the reasoning behind that,,, they’re all dolls lol makes me a little nervous when Im attending a BJD con soon, I hope bringing Sasara doesn’t cause any issues ;-; 

37 minutes ago, Angelpaws said:

Im new to the BJD world and I am so curious why there are resin collectors that look down on vinyl collectors ?? Like what is the reasoning behind that,,, they’re all dolls lol makes me a little nervous when Im attending a BJD con soon, I hope bringing Sasara doesn’t cause any issues ;-;

I have yet to experience that. I went to Resin Rose with 1 resin and five vinyls, and I had zero issues. 

 

3 hours ago, ragnamuffin said:

It’s not just the elitism (although that’s definitely a large part of it), it’s also the talking through/at people instead of actually engaging with what they wrote.

That communication style can potentially come from Autism, and I get the impression there are a lot of autistic people in the doll community. If it is, and I am just hypothesizing here, that wouldn't be intentional rudeness nor would they really be aware that is how it was coming across. 

 

3 hours ago, ragnamuffin said:

Maybe we can take this as an opportunity to consider expanding the mod team and seeing if anyone has solutions or suggestions for workarounds to the forum’s limitations? We have a lot of extremely talented programmers and software engineers on this site, including people who used to run forums themselves.

We went down this path of discussion once before, and I was open to the idea of adding a mod, but I got outvoted. As far as the forum, we're looking into things, but it's been as time allows.

 

4 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

That communication style can potentially come from Autism, and I get the impression there are a lot of autistic people in the doll community. If it is, and I am just hypothesizing here, that wouldn't be intentional rudeness nor would they really be aware that is how it was coming across.

I’m sure that’s true for some users, but even if they’re not doing it intentionally, it’s still unpleasant to read, and if enough people do it then the vibe of the whole forum will shift.

4 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

We went down this path of discussion once before, and I was open to the idea of adding a mod, but I got outvoted. As far as the forum, we're looking into things, but it's been as time allows.

Idk when that was, but I don’t see why it has to be a one-time thing. If you want to onboard more moderators, you can put out a call for applications and choose one or more people from that pool.

As for the issues with the software, I don’t mean to offend, but I feel like you’ve been a bit vague about what the exact issues are, and if you were more forthcoming about the actual problems and crowdsourced ideas on how to fix them, we might be able to resolve them a lot faster.

Edited April 9 by ragnamuffin
Words

4 hours ago, ragnamuffin said:

Idk when that was, but I don’t see why it has to be a one-time thing. If you want to onboard more moderators, you can put out a call for applications and choose one or more people from that pool.

 

That's not a decision I get to make on my own, and as I mentioned I got outvoted.

 

4 hours ago, ragnamuffin said:

As for the issues with the software, I don’t mean to offend, but I feel like you’ve been a bit vague about what the exact issues are, and if you were more forthcoming about the actual problems and crowdsourced ideas on how to fix them, we might be able to resolve them a lot faster.

I was being deliberately vague because what is wrong wasn't relevant to making the point that I was not suggesting that we absorb DoA and its membership; we couldn't do it even if we wanted to. I was suggesting we make more space for the sort of people who just want to be in the same hobby we are, and don't give a %*!# about resin vs. vinyl. We aren't going to get the snobs here, in their world we're too lowbrow. If we got jerks they'd get banned.

I think it was discussed on the zoom meeting a while back that the forum is dependent on a number of plug-ins and they haven't been updated by their writers. Averis can't update the forum software itself as a result. I can't recall the exact dialog, but if I recall correctly @Tierparkzone looked at programming the plug-ins and it seemed problematic. I could be getting that bit way off though. All I can recall for sure is having the conversation. We don't own the rights to the plug-ins in question, and some may be abandonware at this point. 

20 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

That's not a decision I get to make on my own, and as I mentioned I got outvoted.

Yes, I understand that, what I’m saying is that whenever it was that you were outvoted, perhaps enough time has passed or circumstances have changed that you could re-open this issue for discussion. As others have mentioned, we will likely need more mods if we do get an influx of people from DoA.

27 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

I was being deliberately vague because what is wrong wasn't relevant to making the point that I was not suggesting that we absorb DoA and its membership

I’m not talking just about this thread, I mean in general. We talked about adding TinyFox and other categories to the Doll Directory over a year ago and there was no clear answer on why it couldn’t be done for months until we were told the plugins were outdated. If we discussed this openly with everyone (which plugins, what they do, why they’re needed), you might get the help you need from users here that are familiar with the forum software and backend development. If the plugins are that crucial and are basically abandonware at this point, maybe we need to consider moving the forum to new software?

41 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

That's not a decision I get to make on my own, and as I mentioned I got outvoted.

I agree with @ragnamuffin on this one, I would re-open that issue immediately and re-evaluate. Especially given the frequency and severity of some of the spam/phishing attempts that have been made on here lately. I am completely sympathetic to a volunteer team not having the time and ability to completely moderate that without extra help. I'd also add that it seems not minting new admins is what's causing DoA to collapse.