I'm sure everyone's got their reasons for leaving or sticking with FA, but I'm done with the site. I'm keeping my profile there and will continue to respond to messages, of course, but nothing further will be posted for the foreseeable future. Instead I'll be focusing my Furry efforts here.
Want the laundry list of reasons? Sure, why not. In no particular order:
There's probably more reasons than I can remember right now, but this is enough. Half of this is enough. I prefer to go where the community goes, but if the community's going to a building that's on fire, I'll be in the coffee shop across the street.
I've already bailed. I've got a few pieces I need to put up here that aren't anywhere else at the moment.
I left a few weeks back. I check my inbox and such, but if people want my art they can find me here, InkBunny, and FurryNetwork. What's really stupid is, the last update gave folders (after, and I quote:
FA adds gallery folders, seven and a half years after they were first announced.
) which I think have the best features of any furry art site (Multiple folders like on InkBunny, nestable like on Weasyl). Of course, they still fucked it up and you can't sort folders properly; they just glitch out after you save.
I've had 'issues' with them for years, both involving staff and the site itself, and after that last breach? I'm done. I get just as much activity posting to these three sites. I had hit 700 followers on FA recently. 300-400 were from before I started posting art (including Dragoneer himself!). I got, if I'm lucky, 3 comments on FA when I post something. My journals get almost no comments. I guess I'm lucky in that way, since I can just cut ties. Other artists go "But FA is where I get all my commissions!" well no duh, you don't upload to or take commissions on any other sites.
I was uploading to FA/IB/Wsyl/FN at the same time before I stopped posting to FA. It's not hard. It's not time consuming. Eugh. I don't know where I'm going with this.
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I wouldn't judge FA by its engagement… I've got thousands on my mailing list and yet I typically only get a few replies when I send out an email. It's just the nature of the thing. It's typical for only 15-20% of people following you to even read what you're putting out.
Anyhoo, we all have our reasons for leaving FA. Mine are mostly functional, to be honest.
I'm more active over here than on FA by conscious decision as well. About the only reason I'm still checking in on that side is because there are a couple artist I watch who aren't over here.
"1.This laundry list was written in actual HTML."
Savage, simply savage Ebel. Welcome to the right side of meaningless internet history :)
Heh. Well, it's a big thing for a guy like me who has a REAL blog and likes to cross-post relevant items here. For other sites I have to feed the blog post through an HTML-to-BBCode/Markdown script and pray it survives the process.
Or I can just copy and paste straight into Weasyl and call it a day. Just fucking beautiful here.
Hell yeah, you do you.
Well organized list, too. I didn't realize that music was shunted to the bottom of the front page, or that embedding video would be so vital for people- but it makes sense to want that feature. A lot of people roll their eyes when someone leaves FA, but this brings up some great points.
Yup, even on the FA redesign… music's at the fucking bottom. Always. Weasyl mixes ALL submissions on the front page, starting with the most recent. It's a little thing, but it matters.
And yeah, the video/audio thing is just fucking great here… I can use my existing accounts on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Vimeo, and YouTube to post submissions here… not having to upload the same 300+MB video multiple times. It's brilliant.
Link
Socks the Fox
Favorited your journal (something else you can't do on FA) :3