Experiences on the Nekoweb discord server/community?

[Skyweaver]

A few months ago I encountered on another forum how someone was at one point disappointed with nekoweb and its community and pointed to these blog posts as examples:

https://crystal.nekoweb.org/blog/2025-03-28
https://cereza.bearblog.dev/nekoweb-review/

Highlights from crystal's blog include:
- dimden randomly assigning users to be mods
- Very vauge rules

And highlights from cereza's blog:
- A space filled with "irony poisoned" teenagers
- dimden reportedly being highly unprofessional, cynical, and at one point banning someone for questioning nekoweb's security and calling that user a [mental disorder] [R-slur]
- One mod possibly having an anti queer bias

The poster also mentioned how Nekoweb appeared to be moving in a more "corporate" direction with implied introduction of ads in the guestbooks sometime in the future, and they merged all of Nekoweb's projects such as Atabook and widgetstar into Kicya.

However recently on a Discord server I was discussing Nekoweb and someone said they actually had a good time in the nekoweb discord server, completely different to how the blog posts presented it. Crystal's blog did show the immediate changes that went into effect after the initial post, so I'd also be interested to know if there were additional changes beyond that and how effective those changes were. I'd also be interested to know if dimden himself had a change of heart, especially since I would HATE to have my site be hosted by a cynical and uncaring hoster.

[LIQUIDCULT]

I have no stake in the nekoweb/neocities thing beyond a sort of "yall hear sumn?" as a neocities user... it says a lot that the worst thing either of these users can point towards neocities is a thread of tweets from Kyle that exhibit nothing more than a fair enough approach to the AI problem. Like... I think its fair if neocities doesn't outright ban all AI usage as long we have a clearly outlined option to block it as well as any AI crawlers. Consent is key!

I get the sense its genuinely a generational thing, neocities seems to skew older/more millennial than nekoweb from what I've seen, even if a lot of neocitizens are college age/older gen Z. I've found it to be a very positive community.

[oro_junestar]

I've been using Nekoweb for 2 months and I've had a nice experience in the server. Others in the community are very supportive of eachother and usually help me out when I have a question/problem. Those two blog posts are from last year and I haven't experienced any of the issues they've described, either that or I'm just not attentive enough to notice, but it seems like alot has definitely changed in the past year.
I just have one issue: I wish it was more firmly anti-genAI. In my eyes, a perfect community would ban anyone who glorifies AI slop or takes a neutral/'i-dont-care' stance on it, and I wish I could find a server like that. I guess most people wouldn't agree with me, though.

[mir]

I don't like how gossipy both of these articles are. they're all calling lots of actors the very subjective descriptor of "annoying" in these articles that ask to be seen as credible. and they sprinkle these descriptors in so haphazardly that I just have to wonder, what did they mean by this? am I supposed to discredit the other article because they were annoying? was it necessary that you bring up that this person was annoying in the middle of objective discussion, supposedly to sway my perspective or something?

I think that's just what a hard-to-access community forum gets you. if no one can see direct proof of your actions, you get stuff like these hard-to-confirm articles and this thread. this thread is also gossipy, though I'm not saying it's an immoral one that should be removed. my issue with "gossip" stems with from the fact that anecdotes are hard to confirm. you can't totally believe any claim, be it a positive or negative one, because whatever happened happened in a discord server. unless we bring out the screenshots, but honestly? at that point it starts feeling like childish drama at a high school or something @_@

the closed-off nekoweb community—and I mean inherently closed-off by the nature of its platform—sounds like pure chaos considering how many more articles these two link to. if secondary accounts is all that I can refer to, then I suppose these articles are less for randos like me and more for other nekoweb users, and I'm not missing out on anything by not being in the nekoweb server.

I will say though, for being one of the major faces of the old web revival now (many point to nekoweb as a starting point for people who want to get into the indieweb) I've encountered too many sites on it that does more to regress web culture. deliberately removing basic accessibility features from their site through scripting such as disabling the right-click popup dialogue (presumably to avoid people from looking at its source code), their confused stance on web accessibility, and general hostility towards "copying" which I feel related to that is the community's lack of care for archiving the web (a thread reply discusses the last one here). I would send links demonstrating these claims but really simply if a site doesn't want me being on it then I simply tab out and forget.

[candycanearter07]

I have no stake in the nekoweb/neocities thing beyond a sort of "yall hear sumn?" as a neocities user... it says a lot that the worst thing either of these users can point towards neocities is a thread of tweets from Kyle that exhibit nothing more than a fair enough approach to the AI problem. Like... I think its fair if neocities doesn't outright ban all AI usage as long we have a clearly outlined option to block it as well as any AI crawlers. Consent is key!

I get the sense its genuinely a generational thing, neocities seems to skew older/more millennial than nekoweb from what I've seen, even if a lot of neocitizens are college age/older gen Z. I've found it to be a very positive community.

technically neocities had some issues with its screenshot service but i believe thats all fixed up now
https://brennan.day/how-the-mysterious-screenjesus-can-ddos-you/

[ocean]

It's a shame to see people downtalking other indieweb services like in these blogs. I urge you to ignore these people OP.

Firstly, when considering a web host, I'm not really worried about the discord community. You'll never even have to see it unless something goes wrong; and in the case that something does go wrong, I've actually personally gotten help from the Nekoweb discord and it was fine. I would recommend that none of you base your hosting decisions on how the discord channel is moderated.

Secondly, it seems that they are upset with the fact that you can customize the site box on Nekoweb...
That's kind of an odd complaint though, the entire purpose of the website is to be able to customize your own space; of course you can customize the site box!

All that being said, I have been personally disheartened by Nekoweb's move to Kicya and how many of the services are paid now. Atabook, Widgetstar, and Nekoweb all having their own monthly subscription is a little egregious, but hosting doesn't come free; these things have to be funded somehow.

[Watanabe_1994]

I don't use there discord server (or discord in general, haven't used it since I was in highschool) or interact with the community that much besides featuring links to my followers websites.

Since I have changed my email service have been debating on relocating back to neocities because of the egregiously small host size (500MB for free host on nekoweb compared to the 1 GB for neocities)

[nobo]

It's against my religion to gossip so I'll try to avoid that.

I would strongly advise people to avoid that Discord community. Without pointing fingers at anyone or accusing specific people of anything, it's a culture where everyone has to agree about every subject or a mob of the most active users will dogpile you with groupthink. And I'm not talking about big issues. I'm talking about opinions about how your website should be. Every small thing is turned into a battle ground where people have to crusade to be right about literally every piece of minutia you can think of.

Like I said, I'm not going to point to anyone, but there are multiple people who have deleted their sites and started over due to being bullied by some of these users.

I think as a fully grown adult, you can clock it almost immediately that it's a rabble of kids. But if you're a kid yourself, it might at first feel like somewhere that you want to try to fit in. And I would strongly recommend that you don't waste your time.