Is it possible for us to get new themes or permanent mascots in the near future? Although we receive themed mascots on some holidays, it would be great if we could have some new permanent options to customize our layouts. However, it seems that those in charge of the website are not interested in this idea.

"not interested in this idea" is not the same as "lacking funds and/or development time"
We're always severly lacking on development time, themes are out of the question
as for mascots, we don't really need any new mascots

More themes would be nice, but it's hardly the priority for e621's (1) developer. It's not really what you're looking for, but there's always the ability to add custom CSS in your user settings or download a custom userstyle like eSix Café.

I assume e621 doesn't really have the budget to commission mascots that often, so I can't imagine there'll be many new ones outside of seasonal mascots. I have no idea if staff still accept user submissions like they did years ago, considering the lack of new ones I assume they don't.

Speaking of mascots though, I do wonder if we can ever get that old armadillo boner mascot back again now it's easier to have mascots independent to e621/e926:

post #109196

faucet said:
have no idea if staff still accept user submissions like they did years ago, considering the lack of new ones I assume they don't.

We can't because of legal issues. Most user submissions will not have the ability, or will not in general give us full rights to the piece. We had issues with a certain mascot recently because we didn't have full rights to the mascot, and we almost lost it. So I'm sure we aren't tempting that again.

donovan_dmc said:
We can't because of legal issues. Most user submissions will not have the ability, or will not in general give us full rights to the piece. We had issues with a certain mascot recently because we didn't have full rights to the mascot, and we almost lost it. So I'm sure we aren't tempting that again.

So basically any that are submitted would have to include a full concession of rights to the character and image to even be considered

tbh I would expect that to be a bare minimum

donovan_dmc said:
"not interested in this idea" is not the same as "lacking funds and/or development time"
We're always severly lacking on development time, themes are out of the question
as for mascots, we don't really need any new mascots

You proved my point about interest by correcting me. It's aesthetic, obviously not necessary. You claim a lack of time and money, but what about InkBunny? How do they do what they do? Every click of their logo yields a wide variety of different takes. Do they have that much more time and money? Is that really all it boils down to? How did they acquire said wealth? How is it easier for them to utilize their time? I can't say I understand why it's such a challenge. It feels like a bit of a waste of a feature, but all-in-all it's not my call. I just thought it would be nice to give this website more of a personal touch. Maybe you can make it make sense.

donovan_dmc said:
We can't because of legal issues. Most user submissions will not have the ability, or will not in general give us full rights to the piece. We had issues with a certain mascot recently because we didn't have full rights to the mascot, and we almost lost it. So I'm sure we aren't tempting that again.

And why do you need full rights? I mean, the existence of full rights implies the existence of partial rights... why aren't partial rights enough? Why do you have to have full rights to someone's art in order for them to give you the okay to utilize a piece of their work as a logo for your art site? I admittedly know nothing of the legality of how this all works. That's why I'm asking so many questions. It's really more blunt curiosity than the vernacular assault it likely feels like.

generalsin_bia said:
And why do you need full rights? I mean, the existence of full rights implies the existence of partial rights... why aren't partial rights enough? Why do you have to have full rights to someone's art in order for them to give you the okay to utilize a piece of their work as a logo for your art site? I admittedly know nothing of the legality of how this all works. That's why I'm asking so many questions. It's really more blunt curiosity than the vernacular assault it likely feels like.

Because not having full rights means we have to pay for the rights to it continually, or sit there and wait until they decide to come knocking for money. Both run the risk of it disappearing at any time because we don't own the rights to it. Whoever gave it to us can just say "I don't want it here anymore". As I said, this just about happened with one of our mascots already, because we didn't have full rights to that mascot.

generalsin_bia said:
You proved my point about interest by correcting me. It's aesthetic, obviously not necessary. You claim a lack of time and money, but what about InkBunny? How do they do what they do? Every click of their logo yields a wide variety of different takes. Do they have that much more time and money? Is that really all it boils down to? How did they acquire said wealth? How is it easier for them to utilize their time? I can't say I understand why it's such a challenge. It feels like a bit of a waste of a feature, but all-in-all it's not my call. I just thought it would be nice to give this website more of a personal touch. Maybe you can make it make sense.

I don't know the internal working of Bad Dragon, our parent company. We seem to not ever have the budget for anything, judging by our lack of a paid developer, when we desperately need one.

donovan_dmc said:
Because not having full rights means we have to pay for the rights to it continually, or sit there and wait until they decide to come knocking for money. Both run the risk of it disappearing at any time because we don't own the rights to it. Whoever gave it to us can just say "I don't want it here anymore". As I said, this just about happened with one of our mascots already, because we didn't have full rights to that mascot.

Is creative commons an option? If done right, a creative commons license cannot be revoked, ever, unless the license terms are broken or the licensor is underage upon applying the license [which hopefully should not be an issue with this website]. Unless that's something you've already considered and ruled against it.

moonlit-comet said:
Is creative commons an option? If done right, a creative commons license cannot be revoked, ever, unless the license terms are broken or the licensor is underage upon applying the license [which hopefully should not be an issue with this website]. Unless that's something you've already considered and ruled against it.

I think that introduces a separate issue, namely "are we prepared for other people to use our mascot for undue gain or malicious purposes, and for us to have no legal option to stop them?"

lafcadio said:
I think that introduces a separate issue, namely "are we prepared for other people to use our mascot for undue gain or malicious purposes, and for us to have no legal option to stop them?"

I think in that case the best possible option - if going the creative commons route - would be to choose CC BY-NC-ND, aka:

This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
BY: credit must be given to the creator.
NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.

I think that would cover all "undue gain" or "malicious purposes", outside of sharing an image and saying bad things about it, which will happen regardless in the modern internet environment.
The issue I'd be most intrigued about is retroactively gaining a creative commons license from the already applied mascots, since you can't license something without the creator's consent.

And if the idea of "we can't make fanart of this character anymore" poses a problem with that specific license, it'd probably be best to just license the image instead of the involved character. Can still use your mascot, but CC doesn't apply to the character itself and the character can be held under different terms.
Unless I'm misunderstanding how legalese works, lol.