1. You refused point blank to do the cartoons on a regular basis. Every day was something that was mooted a long time ago and had you being listening to me, you’d know I had gone cold on it. My argument was that the site needed to be based on original content. The cartoons were only ever a part of that. I never took you up on the wacom tablet because, in the end, I’m not an illustrator and I’ve no interest in being one. If I were to take on a new illustrator, what is it - from my perspective - that you were going to be bringing to the table? Besides I still very much believed that your art was integral to the cartoons.

2. Yes you were clear but you also intransigent. There was never any give on your side. I always made it clear that I considered the cartoons as a springboard to bigger things. The fact that you kept sticking to your stockpile idea was just continued proof that weren’t listening to me. Again Frank, I could have quite fairly have pulled the plug on the site but didn’t. Making it sound like you were the one making concessions is horseshit.

3. It was the tone of the bullet point list that annoyed me. I outlined the one simple thing I wanted from the site - considering you were getting everything else - and you responded in a way that suggested you were being gracious in allowing it. I could have just said I want to close the site down, end of story, but I felt that would have been unfair. All that was called for on your part was that same level of dignified respect.

4. That is the response you could have made to my first comment instead of dismissing me like I had no right to query. It’s actually fair enough and would have prompted a very quick climbdown on my part. Rightly so.

5. True but I do have a right to query.

6. Because it was becoming more of an interference than an aid. And I was initially open to returning should a suitable project arise.

7. In the early days you did. As it went on, you stopped listening. By the end, I genuinely felt almost like you were consulting me as an after thought. I can remember at least one occasion where I disagreed with you on something, an SEO issue as it happens, and you went on and did it anyway. It always seemed that if you disagreed with me, it didn’t happen but if I disagreed with you, well what did it matter. As a clear example - The Top Chumps. I directly stated that I didn’t think we should commit to the project yet, if it meant not continuing the political cartoons. You subsequently went and told Cian about the idea and stated it would be as a replacement for the cartoons.

8. I on numerous occasions outlined ideas. You never listened. I was always pretty fucking vocal about wanting to work towards developing a television project and repeatedly spoke of producing mobile content as an intermediary. There wasn’t a plan, as such, I viewed it as an organic process. Maybe I should have outlined it as a bullet point list?

9. There were not several invitations and I refused to meet you because your attitude had rubbed me up the wrong and I felt it better to wait til I’d put some distance between me and the whole affair. That would have at least given us a chance to remain amicable. Any meeting would have been pointless because I had come to the conclusion that you were never going to make any concessions.

10. Does that include respect Frank?

All too often Frank you refused to respond and, in part, that is why we’re here now. I have been nothing but respectful in reference to you and the site. Ask anyone I’ve spoken to on the subject. All that was called for was a respectful response to one comment - not hard considering you had an utterly reasonable response to give.

I may decide to delete this comment thread over the next few days, I am giving advance warning on that now.

1. I never said I would not do the cartoons, I said I would not do them every week, and certainly not every day as you requested until they were bringing in some amount of money. I tried to encourage you to get other illustrators on board to increase the level of original content on the site. I suggested you draw cartoons, as you did in the past, and even offered you a Wacom Tablet of my own to do so - you never took me up on that offer.

2. I was always 100% clear with you from the start about my approach to BifSniff - build up a stockpile of cartoons which could potentially generate revenue in the future with the right contacts. When you left you requested that the cartoons never be used for anything outside of the site. Despite the fact that this was in complete opposition to what i considered an agreement between friends, I accepted.

3. The bullet pointed list you refer to above was a list of the things you outlined in a mail to me, which I was clarifying. Not the other way around.

4. As I said in the post above, and as outlined to you before we took this route, BifSniff operates as a creative outlet and a springboard to launch new projects from. That’s clear enough mission statement for me, for now. Your leaving afforded me the luxury of re-evaluating and, if I liked, taking the site in any direction I chose. There is a difference between where we stood before you left and where I stand now.

5. Getting someone elses opinion on the site does not mean I don’t know what I am doing, or what I want to do with it, it means I am considering options.

6. I don’t understand why, instead of leaving you didn’t use BifSniff to launch any other projects you wanted to do with any other people, but that’s the route you chose.

7. I listened to your opinions on the direction of the site while we worked together on the site, to say I didn’t is simply not true. It is true that we only occasionally agreed with each other.

8. You have several times alluded to a plan you had for BifSniff, but apart from asking me to draw a cartoon every day, you have never outlined this plan to me, in person or in email or on the site.

9. You point blank refused to meet up before leaving the site to discuss anything, despite several invitations from me.

10. As far as I am concerned I owe you nothing, Bif, and you owe me nothing.

I will not be responding to any further comments on this thread.

And I don’t know what it is you disagree with me on. You did, for a fact, shoot down any suggestion that involved continuing the cartoons on a regular basis and you did shoot it down without allowing for any argument to made for it. The last time, just before xmas, we discussed this I, very early on, attempted to put a case for the cartoons and you cut me off bluntly saying you just wouldn’t do them. So, with the only other option seemingly being we shut the site down, I agreed to give your way a shot.

I don’t agree with some of your comments, but I understand where you’re coming from on them at least.

I don’t want to get into it further here myself,
Cheers.

Either ways, it’s water under the bridge but surely you can’t blame me for being a liitle annoyed having walked away from two and half years work on a site I helped create and a pretty good plan I had developed for the future(which is now pretty much sunk) - only to find you musing on what direction to take the site.

And ok, fair enough, it was the deal breaker for you - much in the same way the lack of focus became a deal breaker for me. I understood why but you would be completly misrepresenting the situation if you tried to suggest you ever sat down and heard me out on my ideas of how the site could evolve, what it could achieve for us and why the focus on creating original content was so integral to that.