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So Long, FA by avianinvasion

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:

  1. This laundry list was written in actual HTML.

  2. Obviously, security has a lot to do with it. Last time there was a major breach, I gave FA one last chance. The recent breach wasn't just an "oops", it was a complete fuckup that utilized an exploit even I knew about, and I'm not a programmer.

  3. I can post my concert videos as actual submissions, not as a journal entry. I put as much work into my videos as any illustrator puts into their porn; the video isn't a fucking diary entry, it's a submission.

  4. Videos and music can be posted as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, and BandCamp embeds. This means when people watch/listen on Weasyl, my stats go up on sites that matter to the rest of the world too. (Yes, I have to care about this shit if I'm gonna stay in business.)

  5. After countless suggestions and personal discussions with FA's owner over the years, Music submissions on FA are still shoved down to the bottom of the front page. Beneath poetry. POETRY, for fuck's sake.

  6. This site is open-source.

  7. This site is not owned by a sketchy VR startup with God-knows-what license to use people's submissions. It's owned and run by fans trying to make a great community site (and succeeding).

  8. Last I checked, the staff running this site aren't nearly as prone to unprofessional behavior and drama. But Weasyl is a Furry site… it may only be a matter of time.

  9. Weasyl performs regular maintenance and scheduled outages and comes back, usually, within half an hour.

  10. Weasyl's developers are trying to utilize external API's (like Vimeo, Soundcloud, Google Drive, etc.) to take the hosting load off their own servers. It's a level of innovation that will keep this site fresh and modern without placing a huge onus on what I assume is an all-volunteer staff.

  11. Weasyl actually works, which is more than I can say for Furry Network. I don't care how pretty their commercial was, I still can't upload a single video to that site.

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.

So Long, FA

avianinvasion

Journal Information

Views:
455
Comments:
23
Favorites:
19
Rating:
General

Comments

  • Link

    Favorited your journal (something else you can't do on FA) :3

  • Link

    Welcome over! I'm still torn on whether to truly leave FA..

    • Link

      No need to LEAVE it for most people, just no need to contribute anything to it any more. FA is terrible, and I'm not going to pretend it's otherwise any more.

    • Link

      I still comment there sometimes, but I've taken a "no-favorite" policy. I don't even favorite things that are only posted on FA anymore; I don't want to contribute to the inertia keeping people there. If I can get some of my friends to move here, I just don't see any reason to keep using FA.

      • Link

        Yeah, one thing I'm trying to do is offer artists help in setting up their own damned websites for commissions and posting. It's ridiculous that so many artists still rely solely on FA (or DA, or here, or…) for their BUSINESS.

  • Link

    I've already bailed. I've got a few pieces I need to put up here that aren't anywhere else at the moment.

    • Link

      Yeah… be sure to leave a signpost letting folks know where you'll be. I deleted all of my submissions except for a photo of me in suit and a big Weasyl logo pointing people here.

      • Link

        I did that the day FA came back online after the Derpocalypse. There's a submission right up front, a journal listing my reasons, and the rest of the profile data's been scoured clean enough. I left behind a few small things like Twitter and Steam.

  • Link

    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.
    </ramble>

    • Link

      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.

      • Link

        No, but there's certainly no reason for me to stay there, with practically no interactions.

  • Link

    Hey, I'm with you, but uh...

    As a poet, :( on your "POETRY, for fuck's sake."

    • Link

      Heh… even Henry Rollins had to throw some shit at poets, and he is one. ;)

      • Link

        Music and poetry in this fandom, man, it's not fun xD

  • Link

    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.

    • Link

      At this point I'm strongly encouraging artists to move here, and making it clear I won't be using FA for anything more than responding to comments (I've turned notes off). I'm also offering to help artists set up their own damned websites to take commissions and post works.

  • Link

    "1.This laundry list was written in actual HTML."

    Savage, simply savage Ebel. Welcome to the right side of meaningless internet history :)

    • Link

      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.

  • Link

    thank you for writing this so i didn't have to

    • Link

      You probably still ought to. Hell, at this point I've stopped favoriting things on FA and simply asking the artists where I can find them on Weasyl so I can fave it here.

  • Link

    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.

    • Link

      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.