So many interesting responses, I saw them come in throughout the day! I might have been stalking this post all day. ^_~ It is very interesting to hear about everyone's processes and what drives them to update.
Some of my thoughts when authoring this post had to do a lot with motivation, and we have maybe gotten a little more lazy when Rubberslug 2.0 came out we started using it exclusively to watch for other collectors updates, who's new? what's going on?, instead of using our best google-fu to find the best new collector sites. I've got to admit, and I hate to say it, but if you don't post here zerospace I completely miss your updates, I have it bookmarked, I just don't think to check it! ^_^;; AND I MIGHT STALK YOUR GW collection... *coughs* *looks shifty*
It also became harder to find a good free website hoster that wasn't going to spam you with pop-ups that could get super frustrating, and paying for your own site and doing all the work on it is an insane amount of work. I applaud you Zero and bulleta for keeping up with it! I used to run my own from scratch gallery, and once RS got better from it's original run, I pulled it, I still have the framework but getting it all back together with all the new pieces I have bought since 2005/6 is daunting to say the least, and the look is VERY dated LOL.
Also when I spend some time in the black hole, the most recent time period being 2009-2011, it is not just one thing it is usually multiple. It was out of not just lack of funds, but complete lack of motivation. My love for my collection was still there, but it just seemed exhausting to DO anything about it. Let me say that from right before I dove into the black hole, I just finished all that backlog late last year. What dragged me out was friends, someone sent me an e-mail, it was as simple as that we got to talking and I was back in! Like bulleta I wasn't hording I was just not interested in doing anything with the gallery.
My motivation has always been, the drive to share with everyone, as everyone knows dealer scans never really tell the whole story about what you have acquired, this is also true about auction sites as well. Especially when one goes and buys a stack of sketches from Mandarake and YJ, and I find that sifting through these stacks is a reward in itself. The problem I find in updating is not usually scanning I can usually do that pretty easy, it's the finding the time to put together detailed write ups and screenshot-ting and I want to actually go through some of my older writeups and redo them, but finding the motivation for that is exhausting!
So now that I have been spending the last year or so barring the last three months basically cheerleading... (Also it is great to see so many participants in the Open House, a few more peeps are participating than last year, so YAY!) I was hoping we could start a dialogue about what motivates us and maybe see if we can get back that, excitement when someone puts up large and small updates. I know I always look forward to both Sensei and Star-phoenix's updates due to the care and attention to detail they put together in their write ups. But I also look forward to looking at any new pieces, from new and old collectors, whether the uploader put anything in the comment box at all. Because it means the work we are doing here is not in vain and there is still some hope about keeping this community going! It also gives me a list of new anime to watch, if anything, and that is never bad thing!
So after listening to some responses, there seems to be not much we can do here, except to continue to keep our pompoms raised and cheer on the community! *raises pom poms and shakes* Goooooooooooooooooooo BETA!
JD
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