"Free and open might be a slight issue, best license may be OGA-by or CC-by license types. its open but not so open where someone could buy it or receive as exclusive content, only to sell or upload for free elsewhere which would defeat the purpose of the thing..."

Eh, I was already leaning more toward a "contributors give, but everyone benefits" style of things. That's why I mentioned option #2: "The exclusive content becomes available under one of our typical open licenses as funding goals are met." This may mean some people don't bother to contribute because they know the special donated content will become available eventually, but it may also help encourage people who are unable to contribute (or only able to contribute a small amount) to spread the word so that their friends will jump in and fill in the gaps.

"...before we go down the drupal road, have we considered other options? Man power: is OGA more likely to get more volunteers to work on the site if a different development tool is used. there could be 100+ members here that are more fluent in say Java, CSS & HTML etc then there are in Drupal."

It's possible using some other framework may open up more volunteers. It's definitely worth considering. I haven't heard many other suggestions besides HTML+CSS, though. Which is a bit like suggesting programming a game in assembly as an alternative to Unity or Godot. Yes, Drupal/Unity is large and more niche than HTML+CSS/Assembly, but they do a huge amount of the work for you compared to the alternative. I'm not a big fan of Drupal myself, but if there's a more robust content management alternative, it needs to be more ubiquitous than Drupal AND it can't make the migration of Drupal content to a non-drupal platform prohibitively complicated/expensive. The main reason to go from Drupal to new-Drupal is because, as complicated as data migration would be, it's still lightyears simpler than a data migration from Drupal to something-else. The increase in contributions and volunteers needs to do more than offset that additional complexity.

"...I can't stress enough what an awful, awful idea introducing any kind of exclusive, pay-walled, or otherwise paid for art is. It violates the very first principal of OpenGameArt which is that all this art is meant to be free and shared publicly...."

I don't disagree, but OGA creating commissioned art in exchange for contributions was baked into the site from the beginning: https://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-notanartist "From time to time, we commission artists to create free art. If you're interested in donating money to the cause, you can donate to our PayPal account." However, the very next line is "All donations will go directly toward art commissions (as opposed to, say, hosting costs)" So it is true this is a slightly different situation. Never the less, it is still a component of the original (currently outdated) Patreon: Rewards for tiers 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are all about custom exclusive assets in exchange for contributions. As chasersgaming has said, any sort of 'paid for' assets would be separate from OGA and created specifically for the fund raising campaign, not taken from free assets nor put behind a paywall on OGA. This is also why I'm more in favor of option #2: Yes, the assets are being commissioned for contributions, but once done, everyone benefits from more free assets, not just the people who contributed. As bart has said "Please note note that OpenGameArt.org is, and always will be, free for everyone. I do not expect anyone to donate in exchange for using the site, as that would defeat the purpose. This page is here for people who would like to contribute."

"The idea of dust-binning years worth of accumulated art work is insane."

I agree. Here is the reality: OGA is heading for a point where the choices we will face are A] OGA is gone (Yes, just gone. Only Archive.org will remember the site), or B] A new OGA is made and submissions are manually resubmitted to the new OGA.

The whole purpose of this fundraising idea is to change our fate before it reaches that point. Creating a new OGA with no plan for a full migration is (relatively) easy. We don't need funding or (as much) help for that. But that's also the last-ditch worst-case scenario. That is what happens if we can't get the funding to power a full site migration where all asset submissions are preserved.

I'm liking these.

Why not combine them into one submission? A cohesive set of pixel-art monsters. one submission with many items tends to get a lot more attention and favorites than multiple submissions with one item each.

Haha! Ok. Now I understand.

Clarity is key. I found the image using some old school techniques to get a ballpark idea of their origins. You don't need to give up on them cold turkey, but if you feel like tabling the item, we can blow this pop sickle stand and get others to jump on the bandwagon to find you some replacement goods faster than you can say bob's your uncle.

Let me know how the translator does with that. :D

My statement is speculative. I'm not sure it's commercial, but it certainly looks that way. I don't think it's worth your time, but I could be wrong.

Who wrote to you about it?