Zoop

If you absolutely must have art, and you need it within a certain time frame you should consider paying for a commission. Artists that put up request threads are giving their services away without seeking anything in return. They're donating their time - time that could be used for other things - to draw things for other folks. If an artist loses the inspiration to work on requests, that's their own business - they haven't been paid for anything, and nobody has any reason to expect anything from them. Does it suck when a request gets neglected? Sure it does - I've had a request go unfulfilled in a thread or two here, but I can't really complain - the only investment I made was a simple "Hi please draw my OC for me" post. If there's a particular request thread that is truly dead and abandoned beyond any shadow of a doubt that keeps getting bumped, report - we would be more than happy to help set stale threads to rest... but to be completely honest, I don't see the idea having a beneficial impact on much of anything. As far as bots go, if someone wants to make something for us we can explore the idea further, but... our developers already have their hands more than full with a dizziyng number of things.

I love you. <3

Everything makes so much sense now - like why Key dragged Marco into a romance RP on the forum with him. I bless this union.

If you were to make a list of the situations you would most enjoy being in, it is extremely likely that being sprawled out on your back, in the midst of one of the worst storms you've ever witnessed in your life, while sporting one of the nastiest headaches you've ever been subjected to would not make the list. ...unless, of course, you were some manner of masochist, and got a kick out of such things; in which case, I'm not one to judge - but I can say with some small degree of certainty that Keystone wouldn't qualify for that particular category of pony. Quite the opposite, in fact - his opinion on the matter was quite distinctly negative, and was expressed as such in a mumbled string of curses that I dare not repeat, for fear of getting warning points. It wasn't until he heard the faint sounds of another pony approaching that he cut his string of obscenities - inaudible over the raging rain and wind - short, as a voice rang out, calling to him. Keystone's first reaction was an involuntary twitching of his right eye. Was he alright? What about him looked alright? Did this pony - a mare, by the sound of it, probably a few years younger than himself - think that he was sitting out here, beneath the pouring rain, on his back of all things, for his health? For profit? For material gain? Did she think him to be practicing some manner of new age hippy meditation? Did she really think --- Key took a deep breath, holding it for a moment, before releasing it slowly. There was no no need to be annoyed; no need to get worked up, and certainly no reason to get angry at someone who was expressing some degree of concern for his well being. Even if it did seem to him that the answer should be completely and utterly revoltingly and absolutely destructively obv--- Another deep breath. @, "I've been better. I've been drier, too. I would imagine healthier overall as well. I blame the wall, really - that one, over there," Key said, breaking himself out of his pain induced paralyzed stupor and motioning in the general direction of the crack in the wall that had marked his forehead's impact zone, "...it's a good wall, I'll admit... very sturdy, good construction, probably cost quite a bit to put up, but still - it's to blame. It shouldn't have been there, or maybe I shouldn't have been there? I'm not really sure, if anyth-" Key blinked, and shook his head - realizing that the impact had quite possibly left him a bit loopy in the head. He stretched a bit, and rolled over, getting up and sitting down on his hind legs, wobbling a bit as he did so. "... sorry. I had a hard landing... I think it knocked me a bit... well, probably very silly. I'll... be fine, I think, in a moment. Maybe. Probably. Just as long as nothing else happ--" Sadly, before Keystone was able to finish his rambled assessment of his own state of disrepair, he was blindsided from behind by what felt like a freight train barreling into him at high speeds. There was no time for witty commentary, no time for a response, no time even to contemplate the fact that his already battered HP was about to take another hit; there was, quite simply, no time for a reaction of any sort before the unidentified mass struck him from behind, smashing him back into the wall that he had already managed to ram just a few short minutes prior. He landed hard, finding himself on his back once again. It was with the last vestiges of his strength that he managed to lift a shaking hoof to the sky, drawling out, as he faded from consciousness, "I don't get paid enough for this shiii-"

Probably the best snippet from this thread. [4/17/13 8:17:50 PM] Key Gear: Wanna join me and Zoop in some lightweight romance RP trolling? =P [4/17/13 8:17:56 PM] Feld0: umm...

Don't tell Key, but my entire plot here was to lure him into luring me into Roleplaying for the sake of giving me an excuse for dirtying myself in the world of roleplay without making it seem like it was my idea. The fixation on trolling a bad romance RP was just an excuse that would be used to get my foot into the door in a way that would not make me appear too interested.* So really, in this way Key was just playing into my hands the entire time - the degree at which he got involved only solidifies my victory. * I will admit that I wanted to torment him by having my character flirt relentlessly with his.

For a proper Pegasus, flying was a natural act. As long as you weren't pushing yourself beyond your own abilities, you were unlikely to ever have any major issues with it. Or with landing, for that matter. In the moments before Keystone's spectacular and violent 100% vertical face-first landing on the cottage's front-facing wall, he found himself musing over the irony of the fact that had he remained high in the sky, he would have had sufficient time to compensate for the gusts, and avoid being cratered. It was, amusingly enough, the promise of shelter and safety that had lured him into his present situation. First there were stars; by sweet Luna's beautiful night sky, were there stars - and so many of them! They appeared in an explosion of light and color, lasting only a brief moment as his face became acquainted with a hard wall. Then? Then there was pain; first the pain of the collision, then the pain of his body bouncing back off of the wall, onto the floor. While not the worst pain he had ever felt in his life - he didn't feel as though anything was broken, at least - it wasn't exactly a minor thing, either. Now, in the minutes following his skillful landing, as he lay sprawled out, back-down and hooves-up, Keystone noticed with a strange sense of pride what appeared to be a fresh crack at the exact point in the wall that his forehead had struck. Still suffering from the shock of his impact, Key laid, largely immobile save for an occasional pain-induced wince in the rain. There would be plenty of time to get up and save himself from dying from exposure later - for now he was quite content to bask in his own pain whilst glaring balefully at the still storming sky that he had only moments before been forcibly and quite gracelessly evicted from.

Sometimes life hands you a rough hand of cards. This was a fact of life that Keystone was well acquainted and quite knowledgeable about. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, despite all action on your part, reality itself conspires and sees fit to throw some decidedly sour cards at you. And sometimes - sometimes - reality sees fit to simply skip right by the rough hands, right by the sour cards, and present you with something so mindbuggeringly frustrating that you're left wondering which deity you've managed to make hate you. Thus was the situation facing Keystone. As the only pegasus employee of the lock shop he presently called home, Key often found himself in the decidedly unenviable position of being the go-to pony to conduct service calls in areas beset on all sides by difficult to traverse terrain, at the most irritating hours imaginable, and - in this current case - the most irritating weather imaginable. Keystone had no illusions as to his ability as a flier. He wasn't a trickster, nor particularly athletic; he could fly further than most Earth ponies and unicorns could comfortably travel, but that was assuming ideal conditions, which he most decidedly did not find himself in presently: flying over a forest, soaked to the bone by utterly obnoxious amounts of rain, being thrown around by asinine gusts of wind, with more than a few bolts of lightning thrown in here and there for a bit of added spice. It was, if he were to be completely honest with himself, a situation that was quite above his pay grade. It was also a situation, he decided, lightning struck not terribly far in front of him, that he wasn't going to deal with - underpaying job be damned. His original idea was to try and find some sort of cave or crevice to cower in until the worst of the weather was over with, but that idea was set to the immediately as he caught sight of something far more appealing - a lit structure. Signs of civilization, of life. He altered his trajectory toward the strangely isolated structure immediately and without a second thought. He didn't know what to expect from the sort of pony that would live so far out in the middle of nowhere, but if there was even a chance that the owner might be gracious enough to provide a roof for at least a short while, he would take it. And so, with a landing that was quite a bit harder and less controlled than he would have liked, Keystone descended - stopping only when he collided head-first with the wall just adjacent to the structure's front door.

Maintaining a list of every pony that appears in the show is a poor use of time, in my eyes. Limiting it to the mane six covers most bases and doesn't require additional upkeep every time a new pony is introduced. While it may seem a very minor thing to do, these sorts of things add up extremely quickly and can easily bog down staff that would be better served putting their time toward something with greater benefits to the community.

"I'm going to a gathering of extremely distinguished gentlefolk that have come together from all across the nation for the sake of celebrating candy colored equines" Sounds legit to me. Shouldn't get any complaints.

I am so amazingly observant that I managed to miss this! Better late than never, at any rate.

The first thought that ran through my mind when I saw this on the recent blogs listing was "oh hey, I haven't seen them around here in a long time!" Speaking of which, was there anything that caused you to leave for the time you were gone? As for new stuff... well, there are some big things over here. :3

If a question is asked again and again, it really ought to be added to our site FAQ. If people repeatedly make tech support threads about things that are answered in our FAQ, I'm all for adding a topic multimod that allows the tech board staff to lock the thread and post a generic response directing the OP to our FAQ in one click.

This is all your fault. ;~;

And now, with the power of the oop duo fully restored, nothing can ever hope to stand in our way. The chain has been unbroken at last.

Is there really any point to making a full board for them if there's already an unobtrusive index for them? I don't really see the benefit it would afford. I hate to sound like a spoilsport, but I think the test for creating a new board ought be a difficult one to pass. The twilicorn board was added for the sake of fencing off discussions that were starting to annoy the heck out of a lot of people while at the same time giving the forum a decent SEO boost for related searches, the Equestria Girls board added partially for the same reason, and partially because it's going to be a new and potentially significant FiM spin-off, etc. Im not against adding new boards (heck, I proposed one myself), but they have to really be sold hard to me.

@, you make good points - to be completely honest, the blame for the whole global>section perspective ultimately does lay with us. Many of the things we were doing served to reinforce that perspective, all the way to how the user title listing was organized at the bottom of the index - which was made semi-random not only to avoid the perception that section mods are lower than globals, but also to destroy the perception that Poniverse Staff are below moderators in general. As we move forward with some of our plans, we'll have more and more staff members that aren't involved in moderation, but are at the same time just as important to the community as a whole. Likewise, I agree that the color situation was a bit silly. The entire thing looks much cleaner now, and is far less offensive on the eyes... though I regret that my proposal to make admins pink was shot down nearly universally. As for the chart... we are going to be reworking that. Right now it's... not... truly representative of how things work, especially given that some of the people on it aren't really involved in MLP Forums operations at all.