Search
Placeholder search bar
- Multimedia
- Articles
- The True Story
- Information
- Reviews
- Merchandise
- Production
Balto 2: Wolf Quest
- Information
- Multimedia
- Articles
- Reviews
- Interviews
Balto 3: Wings of Change
- Information
- Multimedia
- Articles
- Reviews
Fans
- Fanart
- Fanfiction
- Images
- Videos
- Music
- Gamebooks
- Projects
- Contests
- Characters
- Ask Questions
Selection Of The Week
Drawing:
Drawing goes here
Image:
Image goes here
Fanfic:
Fanfic goes here
Music:
Music goes here
Video:
Video goes here
Character:
Character goes here
Article:
Article goes here
Question:
Question goes here
Site
- Forums
- Shout Box
- Guestbook
- Contact
- Staff
- Awards
- Links
- FAQ
Poll
Poll goes here
Partners
Partners go here
Welcome to Balto Source!
Characters available, and exciting news!
You can now add characters to your profile! Head over to Upload > Create character to upload a profile picture, ref sheet and bio.
Right now, this section doesn't do much. It's just to showcase your characters. In future, you'll be able to add fanarts and fanfictions with your character, add tags, create relationships, and so on. For now, it's a very basic interface.
And the reason is...
We're adding more sources
Thanks to French admin Nakou, I managed to get in touch with Steet though her. And Steet said that he will point the animationsource.org domain to this new site when it is done. This means that we'll be moving from baltosource.org to the original domain animationsource.org!
This is very exciting because it means we will be able to add more sources, not just Balto.
But this will require some heavy modifications to the code of the website, because I originally intended it to be only Balto Source. I'd rather do it now, because the more Balto-specific code I add, the harder it will be to migrate to a multi-source site later. So I'd rather get it done now, when it's going to be relatively quick and painless.
So, until it is done, my focus will be on setting up for a multi-source site. After that's done, I can expand the Characters section.
Characters!
I've done some under-the-hood work on the website to make it more reliable, make future development easier and reduce errors. Also, thanks to Paxis for improving the mobile design!
New feature: characters!
This is a feature that has been requested multiple times already, and it was present in the original AS. My goal is to create a list of official characters, as well as original characters. You'll then be able to tag them in every fanart and fanfiction they appear in.
Fanfictions are back
Fanfictions are now on Balto Source!
To upload a fanfiction, go to the upload screen, and click Upload Fanfiction.
You can see all fanfictions here.
Right now you can add a title and description, and upload a .docx with the fanfiction. Right now, only .docx is supported, because it's the most widely supported and used format for writing text. If you really would like another format, let me know!
Next steps
Here's what comes next for Balto Source.
Improve AI moderation
Right now, for all user generated content, there is an AI moderator that blocks spam and inappropriate content. It looks like it is a bit too severe and blocks more than it should.
If it's happening to you (submitting something returns an error about the content not being allowed), let me know on Discord what you were trying to upload, and I'll try to set it up to be less intrusive.
Setting up for multi language
Our friends on the French side said they would like to keep their own French community. So the next step, is to set up the database and code of the website to support that.
The goal of this site
The goal of the new Balto Source is to recreate the original community and vibe of the old Animation source.
While Discord is a great tool for communication, it has drawbacks:
- It is ephemeral: anything that gets posted on it technically never gets deleted, but it gets quickly buried under new messages and is never seen again. Discord content is thin: never more than the most recent messages.
- It is not searchable: a fanart posted on Discord can't be found on Google.
- It is not structured: you can't have, for instance, your own gallery.
Balto Source aims to fix all of this:
- Content is here to stay: with multiple threads and sections, it is easy to find what you are looking for and over time, the amount of content can grow over time.
- Content is indexed on Google: this allows new members of the community to join any conversation or find any information.
- Content is structured: you can have your gallery, your profile, your history on this site. Everything you upload will be saved on your profile and will be forever associated with you.
I believe that a community needs a lot more than a Discord server to thrive. It needs a structure to grow, expand and attract new members. Discord is great, but it is a closed community by nature. This new Balto Source is meant to be more like the Wikipedia of the Balto community.