Hacker News Reader

Comment by seangransee | Hacker News Reader

I created a little experiment a few years ago to see what would happen if anyone in the world could draw pixel by pixel on an infinite, shared canvas.

It has attracted a small community of fans who use it to relax and practice their drawing skills. The community has spawned some breathtaking pieces of collaborative art, including a world map[1], a galaxy[2], and a magic forest[3].

There have been a few donations, but not nearly enough to cover all my costs. I'm fine running it at a loss while I have a job. This summer I plan to take some time off from full-time employment to travel the world, at which point I'll try to monetize this project to cover my travel expenses.

[1] https://everyonedraw.com/1/-2564/-759

[2] https://everyonedraw.com/2/9339/-7770

[3] https://everyonedraw.com/1/40117/-40

View on HN

You can sell loot boxes that contain different colors. Also sell finishing coats by the pixel. Once applied and dried (moderation) the underlying pixels can no longer removed.

Please don't do this.

Sounds like the million dollar web page where you just buy pixels for $1.

This is awesome! I love these sorts of creative community projects. Have you had to deal with trolls at all and how have you managed that?

Oh, absolutely. The initial launch was a disaster because I had no way of dealing with trolls. I've learned a lot since then, and built a bunch of tools that moderators can use to clean up the damage caused by trolls.

Can you share more about what you learned about moderation?

I learned how crucial moderation is for a community site like this. I originally hoped that the "good" users would overpower the trolls and create a self-sustaining community without any deliberate moderation. I was very wrong. I knew there were some people on the internet who like drawing penises and swastikas, but I totally underestimated the volume of these people.

I also learned the importance of bringing on additional help. I naively thought I could do everything myself (and I still like flying solo on the development side), but bringing on a volunteer to help moderate the site and manage the community has been incredibly helpful.

I played around with this for a while, and then realized it polluted my browser history with hundreds of entries. Please don't save a new history state every time the canvas moves. It would be easy enough to get rid of on desktop, but I'm not on desktop; the only way to remove these is to select them all individually and delete.

I built something similar for Android called Pixmap, which is a live collaborative drawing app. It was one of my first side projects! It's still online, only costs me like $25/mo to run, so...

You can also create private rooms etc.

There is also a competitive drawing aspect where you're shown an image and have to redraw it, and a matchmaking system with ranking...

Are these examples just different locations on the same canvas?

Isn't this a copy of Reddit's April fools /r/pixel game?

which is a copy of a copy, what's old is new

r/pixel was like the 7th iteration of this idea on the web.

The oldest one I can remember is million dollar homepage.

How do you deal with graffiti?

Graffiti is part of the fun!

Love it!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com