I think what @DeepCrimson is trying to say isn't that it's illegal, but video recording the animation via a camera, in his eyes, crosses over the boundary of actual animation.

Most animation software, whether it's mobile or desktop, will have a form of exportation which can be uploaded to NG. It can either be a HTML5 type file, flash file or a video file such as .MP4.

The point of contention here is that it wasn't the actual animation that was the problem, it was the fact that the animation was subsequently recorded via an external camera.

If the user had just exported his animation to one of the many file formats that NG accepts, then uploaded it that way, there wouldn't be an issue.

Excuse me if I'm getting the wrong end of the stick here, I never actually saw the original blammed submission, I'm just going off the idea that the user video recorded their own animation using a camera. Which, under the guidelines that @DeepCrimson is mentioning, is not allowed.

Edit:

After a quick search, you are correct in that 3DMM does not allow exportation in any regard & people are mainly saying that the animation needs to be recorded in order to be "exported". In this case in all honesty, I'm not too sure what the user would do here. I would always advise that screen recording software would be the best way to export this, instead of using an external camera to record the screen.

I'm under the impression that this is what the user did.

If the user has just recorded his screen using software, instead of an actual camera, then there wouldn't be an issue.

Again, I never saw the original submission, so please correct me if I'm wrong in assuming the user was recording the animation externally.

No they used Bandicam.

Well that changes everything.

They used Bandicam to record their animation on their desktop, correct?

Correct. Watermark and everything

Even the interface of 3DMM and the window it’s on

I can't see the watermark being the problem.

However showing the interface & window? Ehh, that's quite in the grey. There's one thing having a border, but there's another just recording the whole screen just to show your animation.

Then again, the flash series Animator vs Animation is based *solely* on the idea that everything on the screen is a part of the animation. So you know what... I think that like I said before, it would be up to the Users & Moderators discretion, if I'm honest.

I appreciate you correcting me by the way.

I really can't get used to the new new NG's reply system. Apologies if I quoted out of context, but by user, I was referring to the user submitting that MV without any description or comment, not you, Anonymous-Frog. Sorry about that.

The problem is the recording inception. Recording a video isn't a problem, but recording a project within a project causes a lot of confusion, as this is just a recording of the desktop. Doesn't really help with judgment when the title is "shit crap animation" either, even if meant in jest - it could be seen as trolling by many.

This is what I was trying to refer to with the Scratch case - we've had users recording themselves playing a Scratch project (their own) instead of properly submitting the project as a game.

The NG moderation team has the final call on this, so it's best if we just tombstone them when 100% sure it's something done wrong. If you're absolutely sure the user will read the review, you can also leave a review on how they should do it if they resubmit it (if they resubmit that video properly, it has all chances to pass). Alternately, you can DM them if they are reachable. In both cases, they need notifications on. (Enabled by default for pretty much everything.)

Edit: 15-minute edit time limit. Stealth edits and post lock cause a bit of clogging due to replies to fix a previous post so it's just better to wait until we have something new to report or ask more experienced users about.

#819240: It's in spam so no big deal, but the comment and content both are kind of testing boundaries.

feel free to vote 0

Do not submit low quality entries with the intent to give users "free blam points."

Project: http://uploads.ungrounded.net/alternate/1770000/1770935_alternate_158825_r1.zip/

Edit: Scoreboards (for which there is nothing to score on) were also stealth-removed so watch out for a submission swap.

#819241: Stolen from SMG4's official YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijLRYZAbXVY

That was fast. Thanks NG moderation!

Here are a few reports I wouldn't want you all to miss.

This is a live action garbage video:

And here are two ridiculous roblox gameplay videos:

Enjoy!

Literally stolen from PuffballsUnited. It's nothing more than a republish using Scratch, and I highly doubt its original creator had anything to do with it.

Late to the party, heh. Thanks for the portal duty contributions, Commander Guthrie!

#819254: Correct, this one's also a resubmission on top of stolen content.

#819261: Stolen. Now I understand a bit better why I was told not to bother with details when reporting here.

Adult warning.

#819233: Licensed audio, copyrighted.

#811412: Licensed audio; proper credit must be given.

Project swapping, and comment edited by submitter after quite some time.

Replaced from blackscreen to a proper screen with ants and a timer.

Resubmission of blammed content.

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/rip/819181

Not the first time asking but... anything special to do with submissions that are not tagged as spam but have insanely spammy comments/descriptions, or just leave them be? Same situation as the stealth obit edits and review response abuse which is freely encouraged by Tom's current system.

Thanks!

Resubmission of blammed content within the same day. No changes made.

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/rip/819243

Leave em be, but v0te accordingly.

3 submissions that state they used music they do not own in the description. Thought I'd post it here just in case ^^"

I'm still waiting for the reports I filed to be cleared concerning licensing with full details to the audio used and rights, testing Tom's system on this as well to check if people casually bot their way through this one for their precious ranking points (yes, there's a B/P and medal "toplist" as well, Tom really pushed this to extreme ends to have people compete for cleanup in inimaginable ways rather than doing it selflessly). Not even going to get started about the potential disaster users out of nowhere getting frontpaged would cause as the system currently allows user to not only change their votes while affecting the B/P token record, but also inject someone else's userkey to mess with their "B/P rush". The same applies to medals and is in fact a workaround to unlocking them when the session expires as long as you use your own session and not someone else's, otherwise, that's a blatant active session hijack.

As Exedor (wanted to keep him anonymous but since he's helpful, I think he'll appreciate it) politely informed me that I just ended up doing all the work for whistlers by posting full info and they'd just copy and paste it in theirs, that helped me further investigate on how reports are handled by the system once moderators clear said reports.

Basing everything on "points" when our goal is to keep the Portal clean from submissions that would either put the users or NG itself at risk and motivating them to farm said points was a huge mistake - NG Stats or whatever this was called made it clear, and the sad part is it's even promoted as part of the FAQ for new users, effectively turning new users into statwhores as opposed to selfless portal janitors who don't care about those cosmetic points in the slightest. Thought Tom would have learned from it but he has no intention to do anything about it; in fact, anyone could easily frontpage their way through with modern technology. I don't really think Tom would go as far as checking for fully unique device fingerprints at the time of voting or reporting (which is something VPNs or device spoofing cannot bypass, as a spoofed device still is fingerprinted).

Would rather not start a discussion about users "losing their precious protect/blam/whistle points". My only concern here is saving everyone time, including NG moderation. Put the emphasis on this by wiping all of my "game medals".

But that's enough offtopic.

If users genuinely care about a submission's integrity, the project can be examined throughly using the attached ungrounded.net zip file (or for non-packed projects such as video or audio, the corresponding format) for the submission, which remains available even after it is blammed (sent to the obituaries), removed by the NG moderation team (remains in voting history and no longer publicly accessible to users, but moderation can still check on this if needed, as well as if an user has ever had any submission removed) so you can double-check everything when in doubt.

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/rip/819240 - Flagged and left untouched; submission swap and free blam.

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/rip/819196 - Flagged and left untouched; recording of user's desktop (this accidentally caused a fuss about 3DMM and I apologize for the confusion when it was downright obvious; providing a permanent link to the ungrounded.net project will avoid any of this from happening as the only way to have it disappear is to remove the BBS post or the project from the NG servers)

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/rip/819261 - Flagged and left untouched; self-admitted to having been stolen, stolen from bitesizedsinner.deviantart.com as kindly pointed out by @BigVinnieVoe (interesting fact, back when the "review guidelines" submission was made - or rather "review pointwhoring for people who don't know how to get Sup. Commander and a Deity whistle through the API itself if they want it so badly", the system encouraged, and still technically does, users to report reviews pointing this instead of flagging the entries as such). This effectively means if not for the obits - and you can still flag or edit obit reviews anyway, many people use this to abuse the system - the user would likely have been reported for violating the review guidelines while review responses like author/collaborator replies to this one are still up because they are technically unreportable (same for the countless abusive obit edits that most users don't know how to flag). There are many more examples if needed, abuse is all over the place.

As for Portal Cleanup...

#811412 - Adult so thumbnail hidden, would be a violation of the BBS rules. Materia Music Productions requests that they (or Toby Fox, the creator of Deltarune) be credited on the audio used as stated in the report. As stated: falls under "music".

Ignored resubmissions as advised by Exedor and merely flagged them on my end.

Thanks. Again, if I'm crossing boundaries - well, I most certainly am this time, but this had to be said - please let me know.

Things have changed a lot since New Ground Atomix (slightly less than 25 years; 23 years, to be accurate, as Atomix wasn't entirely public in 1996, and not in 1995 either for reasons that would violate another very serious rule).

Thanks, both #819306 and #819285 flagged accordingly with the respective copyrights as they passed judgment.

Nintendo is extremely quick to act when it comes to takedowns so that shouldn't be too much of an issue for the latter.

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/rip/819307 was left untouched as flagging an obit entry would be a violation of the terms of use; as stated by the submitting user themselves, the song Blood belongs to (and is copyrighted to, unless a remake) My Chemical Romance.

Stolen from GameJolt. Contains racist humor (grey area for submissions) but stolen as in not the user's own submission, and published beforehand by someone else unaffiliated should be enough.

As far as I know, frontpaging is by Tom/mod decision only, that's why the frontpage suggestion thread exists. As for B/P, I personally find it really fun and I think it's the only reason the judgment system has persisted for so long. Asking users to curate content and sort through low-quality submissions is something most sites wouldn't even THINK of doing, but Newgrounds does it successfully because it's made fun. As for changed votes affecting a submission's fate, what if someone clicks the score accidentally? What if they change their mind while it's still under judgment? As you can't see when something is about to pass or be blammed (I think, I haven't seen Verge of Death being used in the classic portal recently and I'm not sure if they decided to keep it when they brought it back), this shouldn't matter, right? Besides, in order to make sure changed votes don't affect it, you'd have to make it so changed votes don't actually affect scores, which would negate the whole point of making them changeable (which I support, I hate clicking the wrong score on accident and it's happened more than once). I have no idea what you're talking about with medals and userkeys, so I'd appreciate it if you could explain it in less technical words.

...And? I've been told by a mod before that it's good to report things other people bring to your attention, as long as you make sure they break the rules yourself. Why else are you posting them here? I guess it might be to reach moderators quicker, but as we see this doesn't always happen. The more people flag something, the higher up it is on the mods' priorities list. I've asked around about the whistle system too, and the point of a higher whistle status is that your flags are more trustworthy and will be looked at sooner. Same thing for more flags, the more times a submission is flagged the sooner it'll be looked into. I make my own reports and always check if things break the rules myself when reporting the same thing as someone else

Again, it just adds an extra dimension of gamification. I do it for the points, but I also do it for the community. However, the points are what sometimes make me do it even when I'm not really feeling like it. They give me a quantifier of my usefulness. Just a good way to improve engagement and imo one of NG's big strengths and unique qualities. The system isn't perfect and you could go through giving a 5 to every submission you see and hoping for the best, sure, but in the end, I don't think this happens. NG's active userbase has grown since I joined, and it should follow that this would be a bigger problem, but far more things get blammed (this is partly due to more submissions, of course), and it seems like some things that would probably not have gotten blammed before do now, though maybe I've just imagined that. In any case, it definitely hasn't gotten worse. The only things that still skirt around this consistently are super short porn animations, but that's due to people voting with their dicks. I think these stats simply aren't enough incentive to someone who doesn't actually care. The process of ranking up is fairly slow and the leaderboard is dominated by decade old accounts. To someone looking for quick gratification, this is a huge turn-off. Most people also don't pay much attention to these stats, so people looking for attention are also turned away (contrast this with, say, Reddit karma).

:Put the emphasis on this by wiping all of my "game medals".

Medals are just achievements, Steam has the exact same thing and people also compete there. It's made to add an extra fun challenge to games and doesn't affect anything.

Oh, I didn't know about this. Could you explain how to do it? Is the url the same but with uploads.ungrounded.net instead of newgrounds.com?

I'm not entirely sure what this is referring to? Reviews saying something breaks the rules shouldn't be flaggable? I disagree on this. The right place for that is in the flag box, and writing it in the review section would encourage any rando who doesn't follow this thread to mass flag the submission. Best thing would be to just put the rules in a more visible place so people don't make this mistake. I agree author responses should be flaggable as I've seen some really mean ones. I don't follow the stuff about obit edits though.

Wat? Atomix would violate rules? How? Why is that relevant?

I hhhhope I did good, hehe.

One question I didn't find an answer to in the FAQs and guidelines, should profile pictures such as this one ( https://dregenbern.newgrounds.com/ ) be reported somehow? They don't fall under what users can flag, but it's still a NSFW profile picture anyone could see.

First off, I'd hate to reply with more walls of text, so here's some more Cleanup material.

Gameplay footage of Memowizz (stolen, on top): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqX54RdzebE

Correct, all projects remain on the servers and it is highly recommended to keep the ungrounded URL for inspection when you're confused. Example for blammed #819240: http://uploads.ungrounded.net/alternate/1770000/1770935_alternate_158825_r1.zip/

Also correct. I misphrased this and went a bit technical, apologies. It's entirely possible for a squadron of inexperienced users to push their submission to an awesome score without resorting to hiring Sup. Commanders for this, but also possible for a single user at level 1 with no B/P bonus at all.

The voting system is notoriously rigged and Tom tried to fix it a bit. Currently, it prevents people from reverting their votes, for example during Verge of Death (or wiping history); an unique token is created when the vote is cast and it is tied to the account's IP. There is a huge vulnerability here, of course, but it's not the main focus of this post (NG is so full of holes we'd be debating nonstop).

It used to be even worse back when everything was sorted by score as highlighted in "NG Experts Guide" (don't browse this on how to make NG better, while the submission is made in good faith, it is notoriously rife with pointwhoring tips that are useless and doesn't put enough emphasis on the honest part). No one even needs to actually resort to this as a vote can simply be changed by altering the initial token which isn't properly encrypted. The same applies to experience gains that normally are limited to 10 (x Tom's modifier for special occasions).

Only so that other users can chime in and share their thoughts. I quickly noticed that the only thing they did was click on it and whistle to boost their whistle. What if I told them they could get a Deity whistle instantly if that's all they are after? Would they change their minds?

The same applies to B/P, so it's a bit irritating when you get told "users lose out on blam points". Those are useless in the first place and just gratification for doing a good job if doing it honestly.

Going to hit the 15-minute limit soon and I'm a slow typer so I'll try and keep it short...

That one was just because of Tom's age when it all started, wouldn't want to start something dangeous with a mere reference even if there's nothing wrong with it - better safe than sorry.

Thanks again for your take on this, I really appreciate it!

Edit: Just in time.

As far as I know, yes, you can report it to Exedor or another moderator so they can ping the user to change their avatar (or delete the account for extreme cases).

This is best done via direct messages to avoid potential attrition wars from the other parties (or you can just set your DMs to block all/friends only, the staff will always be able to contact you - this is not recommended though as you might want developers, artists or animators to get in touch if they have questions about something you did) and a need to then report the account for harassment, which takes even more time for moderation to take care of.

As a bonus to the above as this is informative for all users trying to protect the Portal from dangerous, sensible or unauthorized content without going all out on submissions either - you don't really want to report or kill everything people usually submit in good faith, here's the project for #819333: https://uploads.ungrounded.net/alternate/1771000/1771435_alternate_158914.1080p.mp4

Not a music video if it's just one standstill picture. (No animation.)

As usual, if you have objections or comments, feel free to chime in. Thanks!

And it worked. Here's the "MV": https://uploads.ungrounded.net/alternate/1771000/1771468_alternate_158923.1080p.mp4

31 minutos complete footage...

https://31minutosoficial.cl/

Project for reference: https://uploads.ungrounded.net/alternate/1771000/1771563_alternate_158943.360p.mp4

Resubmission, discussed above for using stolen music.