User:Protocol: Noir/iScribble

iScribble.net is a free Flash-based website where users can draw and chat on public or private boards in real time using a mouse or graphic tablet. The open user-interface allows more advanced artists to teach others style and technique. These drawings can then be published to the gallery and rated by other users. iScribble was founded on January 16, 2006 by the administrator, Tyb who is known for being gay and bans people for no reason.

The Homepage

The iScribble homepage displays the iscribble logo, which changes according to whichever theme is set. Under the logo is a small banner that consists of a small section of one of roughly 70 selected gallery images. A list of users currently online is displayed here, as well as number of total registered users and total number of images in the gallery. Below this list, users can deal with their offline messages by having them E-mailed to them at the address given at sign-up, deleted, or both. At the bottom of the page, users can select which of the fourteen languages in which they want iScribble to be by clicking on the flag of the country that speaks it. Those languages are: English, French, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Russian, Croatian, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino. The translations were made by iScribble users and new languages are added as needed. Those who contributed to the translations are listed on the donation page. Also at the bottom of the page are links to the FAQs, Guidelines, Disclaimer, Contact Us, and Feedback sections.

• FAQs: This section answers some of the frequently asked questions about iScribble.
• guidelines: This section provides the guidelines for conduct.
• disclaimer: This section states that the author is not responsible for content published or linked to, that the author holds the copyrights to all images on the site, and that input of personal data is voluntary.
• contact Us: Through the Contact Us section, users may ask questions directly to Tyb. If the question is covered in the FAQs or guidelines, the query will not be answered.
• feedback: This section shows recent updates, known bugs, lists the administrators and Power Users, selected theme, tournaments, and user feedback.
  • Theme: There are currently twelve themes available: Automatic (event-based), Tournament 2008, New Year 2008, Anniversary, Christmas, Blur, Sushi, Jordan v3 Test, JME, Socks, Soccer, and No Theme.

Signing Up

When providing a username, spaces, special characters, and other languages may not be used. When logging in, users may choose to have a session name that is different from their username.

"Your email-address is solely used for account activation and requested messages such as for password retrieval. We send no newsletter or other periodic notifications"

A timezone is given for the correct display of times in the gallery. Finally, you must agree that you are at least 16 years of age.

Registration Open

As of December 21, 2011 Registration is open.

The Lobby

Upon signing in, the user is taken to the lobby. From here, the user sees the user list and the board tabs. The user list shows how many total users are online, how many friends are online, and has the option to toggle between seeing all the users currently online, and seeing which friends are online. In both of these lists, the users are shown in order of how long they've been signed in, with the topmost user signed in longest, and the bottom user the most recent. The board tabs, in order, are "Favorites", "Public", "Private", and "Create new board." Under the Public tab, public boards with at least one user are listed first, then hybrid boards with at least one user, then empty public boards. In the top right corner of some of the board buttons, is a little green square. This square shows that there is at least one user in the room. From the lobby, users can read and delete their offline messages, but they cannot be sent to their E-mail like on the homepage.

Favorite Boards

In the lobby, there is a button next to each board, allowing users to put it in their Favorites tab. Upon logging in to iScribble, users will be taken to this tab first if any boards have been selected. Favorite boards with the most users are placed at the top, while those with the least are at the bottom.

Public Boards

Public boards appear blue in the lobby. These boards are listed in descending order of users, the top board having the most users, and the bottom board having the least. Empty public boards go below the list of hybrid boards.

"Public boards appear on everyone's lobby list. No invitation is required to use it. Public boards are removed after being idle for 30 minutes."

Private and Hybrid Boards

Private boards appear green in the lobby. Under the Public tab, only Hybrid boards appear. These are listed in the same fashion as, and just below public boards. However, if there are no users in a hybrid board, it disappears from the Public tab.

"A private board is invitation based and only invited people can see it in the lobby. Invite users by typing /invite username. Private boards are removed 3 hours after they are idle and closed."

To make a private board hybrid, a user must type /public. To make it private again, type /unpublic.

Creating Boards

Under the "Create New Board" tab, users can create their own public or private board. A board title must be given, and a board description is optional. Users can choose to make a simple board, the only tools being the picker, area picker, pen, and line tool.

Prohibited Boards

As of the 17th of December 2010 Roleplay boards have been prohibited in Public and Hybrid boards. This has been carried out due to the influx of trouble caused in these boards. They are a prime target for Troll (Internet) and generally accumulate irrelevant reports or abuse of this system. In February of 2014, however, Roleplay boards were allowed once again. Other boards prohibited are Racist, Sexist or otherwise obscene topics. Creators of these boards are usually given a verbal warning whereas repeat offenders are warned or even banned.

The Board, Itself

Boards are the rooms in which users go to draw and chat. The maximum number of users per board is 20, at which point access to the board will be denied. The limit is 21 for users with +w rights, 22 for power users, and 23 for administrators. The majority of boards are created by users and are automatically deleted after 30 minutes of non-use, or 10 minutes of non-use when becoming idle during the first 10 minutes after creation. Aside from these, there are four boards that can not be deleted: The Main Board, the Practice Board (shown), the Intermediate and Advanced Skills board, and the Pen Tool Only board.

• Lobby

The lobby button returns the user to the iScribble lobby.

• Publish

The publish button allows users ranked Regular or higher to publish drawings to the gallery.

• Clear

The clear button allows users to clear the board and set the first layer's color to either white or a selected color. When a user confirms that they want to clear the board, a poll will ask the other users in the room if they want to clear. The outcome is based on majority vote. In the case of a tie, no action is taken.The command for clear is /clear.

• Picker

The color picker will select the color in a single pixel.

• Area picker

The area picker will take the mean color value in a three-pixel radius (six-pixel diameter).The command to change the radius of the Area picker is /Radius #.

• Pen

The pen tool is the main mode of drawing on iScribble. It creates a one-pixel buffer of diminished pixels in order to smooth the line out, as opposed to MS Paint's pencil tool which only draws single-pixel lines. The size of the pen tool can be changed with the tool size selector (below).

• Line tool

The line tool acts in the same fashion as the pen tool, allowing users to make lines.

• Eraser

The eraser tool is square, and will skip if used too rapidly. Because Flash does not support a circular eraser, this problem cannot be fixed.Holding the CTRL button toggles this tool.

• Circles

Circles are an advanced tool that make circles of color at 50% opacity. The circle tool doesn't make circles like the MS Paint tool, however. This circle tool makes multiple circles as big as the selected size, following where you draw.

• Autocircles

Autocircles are an advanced tool that blend nearby colors into circles of the selected size. This tool works very similarly to the area picker.

• Blur

Blur is an advanced tool that, quite obviously, blurs surrounding pixels. The power of the blur effect increases with tool size. However, when blur is used with the smallest pen, a burn effect is created.

• Merge

The merge button allows users to merge layers in different ways. Those being: 3>2, 2>3, 2>1, and 3>2>1. Layer one is immobile and cannot be merged up.

• Color palette

The color palette consists of six preset web colors (#000000 black, #666666 gray, #FFFFFF white, #FF0000 red, #00FF00 green, and #0000FF blue), a field in which you can select color hue and saturation, and another, smaller field in which you can select color from an advanced rainbow gradient.

• Tool size selector

The tool size selector will increase or decrease the size of any selected tool, save the color pickers. The selection does not act on the tools individually, but collectively. There are six sizes (in diameter): 1 pixel, 2 pixels, 3 pixels, 5 pixels, 14 pixels, and 30 pixels.

• Layers

There are three layers on every board, except for Pen Tool Only boards. Each layer is color coded and can be made transparent. Layer one is coded blue, layer two: red, and layer three: green. The PageUP and PageDown keys can be used to change layers.

• Chat

The chat displays each users username, followed by a colon and their message when they submit. (Ex. Username: User message here.) When logged in, your name appears red to you, while other's names appear blue. Users have the option to lock and clear the chat at any time. When users enter or leave the room, a notification displays in the chat box as such: USERNAME has entered the room. / USERNAME has left the room. Upon entering a room, the board description is displayed in bold.

Gallery

The gallery is where all published pictures go. When a picture is viewed, one can see the category, title, participating users, number of views, starting time, ending time, size (in segments), description, rating (up to six stars), and comments. Participating users are listed according to their %contribution in descending order. When a picture is rated 5.25 to 5.74 by at least 5 users, it is given a silver star. Those rated 5.75 to 6.0 by at least 5 users are given a gold star. If a user has at least 1% contribution, they may choose to put the picture in Fun Doodles, in Category Proposal, in their sketchbook, or delete it, provided it's not in someone else's sketchbook, as pictures in the sketchbook can only be deleted by the user who put it there. Each section of the gallery, save for the overview, shows a 4x2 grid of prototypes from that section. Under that is a 4x4 grid of pictures submitted to that section in ascending order of age, the first picture being the newest. Every subsequent page features a 4x4 grid, still ascending in age.

"You may publish your favorite drawings in the gallery. However, the gallery is not meant to be a storage area for all drawings that are made. We will clean out all drawings that we think do not meet a certain standard. Especially drawings that are not moved to a proper category, have no title or description will be removed sooner or later. If a drawing contains material that violates one of the points stated above ... we will warn, restrict or permanently ban you from this website. Please also see the Guidelines for Gallery Artwork. Try to put something special in your drawing and do not over-use effects such as blur."

• Overview

The gallery overview shows a 4x3 grid of several pictures from the Hall of Fame, a 4x2 grid of the latest gallery contributions, and 4 of the latest picture uploads. The latest picture uploads section shows the latest 100 uploaded photos in a 4x25 grid.

• Fun Doodles

Fun doodles are less serious drawings, and will very unlikely be categorized.

• Category Proposal

Pictures in the category proposal usually meet the requirements of a finished drawing. These are very likely to be categorized.

• Collab

Pictures in the collab section are collaborations between two or more users which don't necessarily fit into other categories.

• Stories & Comic

This section deals primarily with games, books, shows, or movies.

• Manga

This section deals with anime and manga, specifically.

• Scene & Nature

This section deals with Scene and Nature.

• Scifi & Fantasy

This section deals with science-fiction and fantasy.

• Artistic

This section deals with ...

• People

This section deals primarily with photo-realistic pictures of real people.

• Animals

This section deals with animals.

• Celebrations

Pictures in this section are for holidays and events, but are primarily a type of birthday cards for other users.

• Love

This section deals with pictures about love.

• Random

This section deals with pictures that don't necessarily belong anywhere else.

• Contest

Pictures in this section are those published for contests and tournaments.

• Mechanical

This section deals primarily with mechs, steampunk, robots, and other mechanical things.

• Mature

Pictures in this section show nudity and adult themes. This section can only be viewed by registered users who have selected to show the Mature Gallery, via their profile.

Publishing

At the time of publishing, users may choose to publish their picture to the Fun Doodles section, to the Category Proposal section, or to the Mature section. Once there, power users will either accept or deny the picture, if they meet the requirements for published drawings. If accepted, the power user will place it into the category in which it belongs. If denied, the picture is deleted. There is a limited space in the aforementioned sections, so new pictures push the old ones out.

"The gallery is not storage area for all drawings that are made. We will clean out all drawings that we think do not meet a certain standard. Especially drawings that are not moved to a proper category, have no title or description will be removed. Depending on the category the requirements for a drawing are different."

User Profiles

Each user profile has the option to display gender and birthday, the ability to set their profile picture, and a field where the user may type any additional information. A list of the user's friends also appears in the profile, but as of now, it's not visible to the public. The profile automatically displays any iScribble awards that have been won, date of registration, rank, total amount of segments in the gallery, number of contributions, a 4x2 grid of pictures to which the user has contributed, and a 4x4 grid of uploaded photos.

• Awards

iScribble awards are given to those who have won or placed in contests or tournaments. There are been several competitions throughout the years, the latest being 2014, and the gold star for donating. A red heart is now seen for any retired moderators on the site.

• User Contributions

The user's contributions can be arranged by rating, by date published, and by segments; all in descending order. Each page only shows the 4x2 grid.

• Uploaded Photos

Users ranked regular and up can upload photos to their profile. The photo must be on their computer, be in jpeg, gif, or png format, and be 2mb or less. These photos are listed in ascending order of age.

• Sketchbook

Users ranked regular and up can save up to eight pictures in their sketchbook, though for every US Dollar donated, the sketchbook is increased by five slots. Sketchbook pictures can only be deleted by the user who's sketchbook the picture is in.

Contests and Tournaments

As of March 2009, there have been two contests; Tournament 2008 and Contest 2009.

• Tournament 2008

Tournament 2008 was divided into twelve categories, all under the topic of "Spring." All regular users could vote once for any entries in the sections: pentool/solo, pentool/tandem, pentool/collab, advancedtools/solo, advancedtools/tandem, and advancedtools/collab. The remaining six sections: manga, people, animals and nature, sci-fi, fantasy, and abstract were voted upon by a panel of selected judges consisting of several regular users, power users, and one admin. Users could only submit one drawing to any one category. Winners received a gold medal in their profile and increased sketchbook space.

• Contest 2009

Competition 2009 only had the topic, "Draw a present for iScribble" for its third birthday. Entrants could only submit one picture to which they contributed. Judging was open to all users ranked Regular and up. First place was awarded the competition 2009 gold medal, an iScribble t-shirt with the top three drawings on it, a bigger sketchbook, and ad-free iScribble. Second place was awarded the gold medal, a bigger sketchbook, and ad-free iScribble. Third place was awarded the gold medal and ad-free iScribble. Fourth through sixth place was awarded the gold medal. Finally, those who placed seventh through thirtieth were awarded the silver medal.

Donations

"iScribble is a free service. However, we have growing network traffic and hardware costs that need to be paid for. iScribble is supported through the generosity of people like you. If you like iScribble, please consider making a donation by clicking the button below. Thank you!"

"It is not a requirement to donate to use our services. However, if you donate USD 5 or more, you will be given the option to have your account made ad-free and/or have a symbol displayed in your profile saying that you have donated. Also, for every dollar you donate we increase your sketchbook by 5 drawings."

Donations to iScribble can be made through PayPal.

Previous Versions

"What is online now is the third revision of iScribble. The first version was based on Flash Player 8, the other two versions on Flash Player 9. I can try to find some screen shots from the old versions. The very first version had no chat, no lobby, and no accounts. Basically all users were thrown into the main board. To switch to a different room, the users had to type in the name of the room. Since there was no list of available rooms, users created hidden or secret rooms. Some users started creating easter egg or surprise rooms. For instance, if you looked into the room called "easteregg" you would see a congratulation message (or something similar to that). The lobby was introduced in version 3 after the main room got too crowded."