Feel free to rank your opposition to Ian in sluggy in this way:

level 0: Ian can stay.

level 1: he should be forced to compete with guest strips, and let the defenders of the nifty and/or Pete decide what gets published!

level 2: Guest strips, even random ones with no garantee to be better than Ian on average, should replace Ian ASAP.

level 3: No saturday sluggy is better than Ian sluggy. Saturday is better off.

Thread rule: a better than Ian strip from a guest artist will be called a BTI ("better than Ian") without further bashing. "Officially BTI" means a majority of defenders of the nifty (at least two reviews) thinks it's a BTI or Pete said so.

I'm a level 3 Ian opposer since this morning. This is the only thing I'll say about Ian in this thread (I'll hope most of us will simply state their Ian opposition level and then talk about producing alternatives Pete might support someday). I'll be posting about stockpiling BTI guest strips and hoping Ian gets replaced. This may take months as we don't know the terms of his contract with Pete, assuming we succeed in reducing Ian percentage in sluggy at all.

My example of good post for this thread:

"Hi, I'm a level 3 Ian opposer. I have some pictures of kittens doing various things (including some with kittens in "gothic" Flaky-reminder hands) and a bunbun-acting real rabbit and I'd like some editing advice (I'm restricted to the FreeBSD operating system, no Windows) to add speech baloons to them (and vectorize to reduce memory use) to produce a single guest strip and/or fan art strip. I'll allow Pete to use it on any week Ian isn't present".

See? No direct Ian bashing! And my willingness to produce one guest strip is real.

P.S.: if you want to do Ian bashing, do it in another thread (I won't participate much in the bashing itself until some BTI is well underway). The concern of this thread is replacing Ian by something better rather than complaining.

P.P.S.: I'll be assuming you realise Pete will take a day off and/or give us a better sluggy if he does 6 strips a week instead of 7. It's unlikely he will simply let saturday be without a strip.

P.P.P.S.: merely asking for ratings of Ian strips got me thread-locked when I was a level 1 Ian opponent who still believed Ian could improve. This is why I'm in POOP as some mods may consider the subject explosive.

I don't see a huge difference between level 2 and 3. Also, since this forum is restricted to those who are in the member group you'll end up with a limited response. Too bad you can't post this in SRC without a flame war starting. That said, I am in favor of allowing non-canon sluggy guest strips once a week rather than Ian, especially if there was a DotN or Pete-based approval process. So I guess that puts me at level 1. I'm not sure there is a "contract" with Ian, I think he just does it to help Pete out on top of all his other stuff. I seem to recall Pete going on a month-long hiatus shortly after F&R, and using fan-submitted stuff during that time. I can't believe that any sluggite with the talent wouldn't produce SOMEthing if Pete asked, and you could stockpile a years worth of guest strips fairly easily.

I gotta say, I don't mind Ian's stuff.... However, I'd like guest strips from other authors just for the sake of variety.

Well, personally I would prefer a blue screen to what's up on Sluggy on Saturdays, so put me down as a 3. I think a recap of the week would be excellent, or just a standard cheesecake shot of a main character. Filler and guest strips are best suited for emergency use. I think most of us are able to follow 1-day-a-week refresh strips, so losing Saturday should be bearable. In baseball terms it could be considered "addition by subtraction".

I'm gonna have to go with level 3, not because I think that his strips are bad (they're ok) but because it's just not worth it for him. Ian puts a lot of time and effort into makeing the MITDO* strips, but people just don't want them. I'd be fine without them, many of us actively hate the strips, so why should he bother to make them?

Sorry all, but I believe the decision was made that there is to be no more discussion of Ian/MitDoP at all, anywhere on the forums, not just in SRC. Whether any Ian-bashing occurs or is intended or not is irrelevant. This ban is probably temporary, and in the event that this ban is lifted such discussions will be allowed again. -Jade