I am writing on behalf of all the English speaking members of http://en.gnomz.com/.  
We have inhabited this website for four years and together published over 33000 comics, but we've yet to be introduced to our hosts. We are seeking contact with this site's owners, developers, webmaster, or anyone else who might be in a position to address some questions and concerns which have accumulated over the years. If anyone who reads this is in a position to direct it toward the right people, you will have earned the gratitude of a few thousand anonymous strangers on the internet.  
 
Gnomz was created with the potential to be one of the greatest websites in the history of the internet, and has, in the past, served as a training ground for many incredibly
talented cartoonists, some of whom have developed large international followings as a result of their time there. Unfortunately, the site was apparently abandoned by Fluctuat.net and the webmaster years ago. As a result of having no one to maintain, repair, and improve the site as needed, Gnomz has been plagued by system errors and bugs, besieged by automated spambots, and languished in the mediocrity which must inevitably arise once progress and evolution become impossible. Most of the site's regular members have given up in disgust over this situation, and the traffic continues to decrease daily. Those of us who remain have improvised ways to work around each new bug and glitch that comes up with the extremely limited resources Fluctuat left us, but it's obvious that the site can't last indefinitely under these circumstances. Most discouraging is the fact that we've never received any official information concerning the future of Gnomz. We only hear contradictory rumors from the French members, and none of these rumors can be definitely substantiated.  
Is it Fluctuat's intent to allow Gnomz to drift aimlessly until the system crashes on it's own, or shut the whole place down and cease profiting from it's existence?  
The most recent (and maybe most reliable) rumors we have heard is that Fluctuat does have plans to resurrect, improve, and maintain Gnomz. If so, that's wonderful, and I'd like to take this moment to remind you that the staff of voluntary administrators and moderators who have been working hard on your behalf for a very long time now (perhaps without your knowledge) are always willing to assist in any way, as are many of the faithful regular users who have dedicated so much of their time and effort into making Gnomz everything it is.  
If you do not intend to put any further effort into this website, the next logical option would be for you to supply those of us who have a vested interest in it with the tools
to do so ourselves. There are both French and English speaking members who would be fully qualified to perform a webmaster's duties given the opportunity. You could still continue to profit from the traffic and advertising on Gnomz while we did all the work for you, and none of us will ever ask for any of the money.  
If, for some inexplicable reason, neither of the above options is amenable to you, then don't you at least owe it to the 77100 registered members to warn them that all their years worth of art, over 124000 comics in total, are going to end up being destroyed?  
 
To give you an idea of how dire the situation has become, I will list a few examples of the problems Gnomz has been going through during it's long period of neglect.  
 
* The Terms of Use section is neither clearly visible nor accurate. Specifically, it references a non-existent user function.  
* A lot of the information in the official help section is out of date, if it ever even was correct to begin with. There is also a lot of essential information not listed, and
parts of it were obviously translated by someone not completely fluent in English.  
* The Home page, which represents Gnomz to newcommers, hasn't been updated since Halloween of 2006. The displayed "Joyeux Halloween" message is inappropriate 364 days of the year.  
* The forums are constantly flooded by advertisements from automated spambots, to the point where it's nearly impossible to use them properly.  
Anonymous forum posts should require some sort of password verification, just like in the Blogz. That would put an end to all the spambot activity without eliminating the freedom to post on the forums without a registered user account. This technology can be downloaded for free and is extremely easy to implement. Gnomz must be the only site left on the internet which doesn't already have this simple security solution in place.  
* We can no longer post links or pictures in the forums. Any forum post containing the letters "http" is automatically eaten by the system now, leaving behind an empty thread
which the moderators can't delete. Not only does this prevent us from being able to use or maintain the forums, but it's decimated years worth of archived posts and has irreparably damaged the community atmosphere which was always so important to the site.  
* Due to a recent glitch, we can no longer edit or delete our comments on people's comics. This also makes it impossible to comment without voting. More importantly, moderators can no longer delete comments even if they violate the Terms of Service or otherwise contain illegal material which could result in a difficult lawsuit against Fluctuat.net.  
* HTML is still enabled in user's profiles. This is an blatant security risk. Some users have ended up with viruses on their computers as a result, and this leaves the door open to hackers. It wouldn't be difficult to implement safer codes for link/picture posting in profiles.  
* We no longer have access to half the information fields on our profiles. Others can only view that portion of a user's profile if the user's name happens to appear somewhere in their private message box.  
* Some people's private message boxes are broken. For example, if you try to message many of the English moderators, you'll get an error message saying that we didn't receive the message when in fact we did. As a result, some people end up sending the same message six or seven times.  
* Some people's accounts don't have functioning Blogz.  
* Functions within the Gnomz Blogz have been steadily disappearing. It has become difficult to post links or pictures there, and video embedding is impossible.  
* The Top 20 list has been broken for years. It never changes regardless of how people vote. This pretty much renders the whole voting system useless. It isn't even a full Top
20 list. There are only 17 comics on it.  
* The Top Blogz list is similarly damaged. Also, the system regularly mixes up the titles of different people's Blogz.  
* The "send comics by email" function has not worked since 2005.
* Some moderator functions, such as the ability to edit forum posts, have never worked.  
* The background preview display in the comic creation area doesn't work. No matter what background is chosen, it always displays the swimming pool.  
* The "Visualize" button in the "Create comic" section has a bug which often causes extra default panels to appear in people's comics. The function for editing comics in general is not at user-friendly.  
* The closing tags for bold print and italics don't always work, particularly when one tries to use them more than once in a comic dialog bubble or forum post.  
* The forum option for sorting threads by new topics or latest replies is not functioning.
* The Search engine is not publicly displayed and does not function adequately.  
* The scroll bar to the "Who's online" section malfunctions intermittently.  
* The personal avatars of some users occasionally disappear or cannot be changed at will.  
* On the "My avatars" page, many of a user's avatars are blocked from view by other fields which appear to have been misplaced.  
* If one is looking at page on Gnomz before logging in, and then logs in, the server directs one to the home page rather than the page one was looking at.  
* The comics creation template and avatar creation template haven't been updated or organized in years, especially on the English side, which lacks many of the options available on the French side. There are plenty of nice new backgrounds and characters sitting around in various Blogz which we'd all like to use, but there's no one to upload them for us.
If the current administrators or moderators were given access to this, we could easily handle this ourselves.  
 
In addition to those crucial issues, everyone who's had experience using the site for the past four years is full of suggestions as to how it could be improved.  
 
* Some sort of voluntary ratings system might make the site more attractive to a broader customer base. There are several ways this could work. One example would be adding a window to the comic creation area where the author chooses from categories such as "all ages," "teens and up," adults only" etc. There could also be a "unrated" option, meaning enter at your own risk. Then, in each user's profile, there could be settings options allowing the user to either see all the published comics, or just those appropriate to his or her age group. That way, everyone still has the complete freedom to publish anything they want, but the site is also available to children or those who are offended by certain types of humor.  
* We should have separate Golden lists for the English and French sides. The current integrated list is barely utilized except by ignorant people who automatically attack whatever they don't understand because they aren't aware that they've crossed into another language region of the site.  
* We have an option for uploading custom characters to use in comics. Why not a similar option for custom backgrounds?  
* It would be easier for readers to find comic content relevant to their interests if we had a field for adding "tags" or keywords to your comics, which could be used in searches.  
* Their should be a limit to the number of emoticons that can be used in forum posts, so as to discourage their use as a spamming tool.  
* It would be nice if it were easier to change text color and font in comics. Most people can't figure it out even if they're given the exact codes. (The information given in the official help section is, once again, inaccurate.)  
* There is not yet any practical method for sending the same private message to multiple people.  
* Perhaps a feature for posting our comics on networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, etc? In addition to making Gnomz more useful to it's members, this
would also amount to a massive amount of free advertising for you.  
* Could we have larger narration boxes in comics? Maybe even the choice of positioning that at the top or bottom of the panel?  
* A "next comic" button for browsing comics chronologically, as oppose to only by author?  
* The forums could use a better Quote feature to make it easy to understand who is replying to whom. Our current system only italicizes words, which does not make quotes clearly evident.  
* We need some additional forum sections accessible only by moderators, administrators, and editorial team members. Trying to "get business done" on Gnomz using only private messages is, at best, a tedious and frustrating process.  
* If you are planning on maintaining and upkeeping the site, should someone appoint a representative to maintain contact between Gnomz and Fluctuate, and/or between the English and French sides? There are several qualified candidates for this position. If nothing else, it would at least spare us all the trouble of trying to rally together the entire Gnomz community, collaborate on a lengthy missive, and track you down half way across the internet.  
 
Thank you for your time.  
We are all eagerly awaiting your response at http://en.gnomz.com/

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