It could be fun and useful for artists to have an oekaki feature onsite like Chicken Smoothie or Aywas, I definitely think it would be a huge plus!

http://www.chickensmoothie.com/Forum/viewforum.php?f=29&sid=782d6c6c0ae821485694c2a39f676c58

From what I can find on google, oekaki just means drawing? Is there something more specific that it applies to that wouldn't fit in the Art Discussion forum for some reason?

oh you're probably right! I'll head on over there, thanks!

No problem! I was honestly confused because reading the suggestion I'm like "I have no idea what that means" and I didn't want to be like "hey we have a forum for this" in case it was something more specific haha

Subeta used to have an oekaki feature ages ago but I don't see a need to bring it back.

Subeta had an oekaki very, very early on (like 2005), but I can't remember why it was removed. If I had to guess, it's probably because of the rise of sites like tumblr and deviantart where you can upload your artwork and just link it onsite, instead of actually uploading it here.

I think the OP may be referring to what Wikipedia calls an "Internet Oekaki", and there is a good description of it there.

Subeta did have an oekaki ages ago.

I was never a frequent user of the oekaki, but I really enjoyed looking at the art.

To be honest I'd love it if it came back, but I presume it would be a huge strain of data? It would also probably need some dedicated mods or mini-mods.

But I think it would be great for developing Subeta's art community. :)

Thanks for the link, but that honestly still just sounds like something that can be done inside the existing art discussion forum to me lol. Like you can't upload directly to the site or anything (which I agree would probably be a big server strain) but it's just as fast to upload to imgur or something and post here

Back in the early days, Subeta did have an Oekaki, as well as a gallery and journal feature.

These were all removed for the same reasons: the site decided to focus on being one thing: a pet and HA site. So all these ‘extras’ features, that were never well developed or implemented were removed.

I don’t see the need to bring this back. It would be a strain on the server and the small programmer team. There is also a lot of alternative on the web already.

Goodness, I actually remember the oekaki board here.

It wasn't terribly popular, though.

I love oekakis but do they even work these days? I’m pretty sure there’s no support for Java applets anymore because of security issues.

I just wanted to add, oekakis actually came with their own browser drawing programs, so it wasn’t just uploading to a site lol. That was basically the appeal – back in the 2000s not a lot of wannabe artists had programs like photoshop or sai so oekaki was an alternative for people who didn’t have the resources since all you needed was java.

Oh, that kind of makes sense. I mean, I still feel like the same sort of thing can be done here if you really wanted to, not exactly obviously, but similar. For some reason that wasn't exactly clear to me.

Knowing that though, I'm actually specifically against this because I'm pretty sure Firefox is hit or miss whether it will work with Java, but I don't think Chrome really supports it much if at all anymore. I still stand by it being not a necessary addition to be able to do a similar thing onsite if you really wanted to

Yeah, they were actually pretty big back in the day! On top of providing an art program for people to use it was always mostly about building a community of artists and each oekaki really developed its own identity. imo subeta’s art community is a bit weak, so it would be a nice import in theory.

You’re right lol, oekakis have been pretty obsolete for a while even off subeta. I don’t think any browser has been able to support oekaki applets in their original form in years tbh. Java applets are deprecated these days, so there’s really no support for them anymore and they would have a lot of their own problems even if you could get them to work.