Pouet has calmed down a lot since PS started. At least for now, he seems to be succeeding. I had a long chat with one of the oldest members of the scene recently, a guy still very much active. He told me that without question the scene is much smaller now than ten years ago with very few new members entering. The scene, in a very real sense, is dieing.
As a consequence, the need to work at getting new members (some people see the scene as something they want to nurture and grow) is seen as much greater now than before. Add to this the fact that once the best place to see awesome graphics was the scene, but now, its games, means that the scene is no longer a "wow, leet" place that attracts the best. So its getting harder and harder to maintain the scene. The average age of sceners is higher than ever I've been told.
Pouet, IS in a very real sense, a newcomers first experience of the scene. Large pictures of someone holding their arsehole open in the middle of a discussion of "how do I get started?" really don't help. For some newcomers (me included) Pouet is the scene, and glib comments like pouet!=scene && scene!=pouet are really just rhetoric, nothing more. Of course in the age of internet, anyone can easily get into Pouet, into the scene and claim to be a member. Even if they never publish anything but simply sit around judging others or trolling. So Pouet may be a first point of contact, but its not a good one.
So, PS isnt alone. Cleaning up Pouet is part of a larger effort it seems. Notice gloom is intent on improving scene.org. Meanwhile, alien and others are working hard on bitfellas. Then there was the outreach to California recently. Whatever, opinions are on this, I noticed on the outreach blog that they were leaving the web address for scene.org everywhere but not pouet. Pouet seems to be a mild embarrassment in this context. You can't go to Pixar and show them Pouet, well ok you can but its risky - Americans are in general more conservative than Europeans.
So I think in this larger context, I doubt very much that PS had a momentary whim or a second of clarity. I suspect its very much more discussed than we realise and then something tipped the scales. Its an enormous change in policy and could not have been an easy decision.
All this said, dont get me wrong, I'm not personally motivated to clean-up or sell the scene to anyone. For me I have a love-hate relationship with this thing called the scene. As such I have ambivalent feelings about what happens to it. So I'm not judging here or saying anything is good or bad I'm simply commenting...
Taj
