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Sunsetting Weasyl uploads (for now) by lolzguy
See the title. I doubt I will upload much anymore more on here in the foreseeable future.
There's multiple reasons for this - this site has been incredibly slow and buggy over here in Europe, and I have run into multiple errors and infinitely loading pages whenever I actually do log on solely to post stuff. Besides that, the "user volume" of this site is incredibly low, and activity is sparse at best. I have this feeling posting here is like shouting into a void on a site where very few people are active to begin with. And I don't use this site to follow people to begin with as they are everywhere else anyways! It's a shame because there's few actual gallery sites anymore, FA is clunky and hasn't got a good UI, Twitter isn't a good replacement for a well-sorted, accessible gallery and hasn't got a good UI, etc.
For all of the faults of other sites I am active on, it feels worthwhile and constructive to maintain these at least. Weasyl, in turn, has become more and more an afterthought. So, until there is a considerable change in site performance and so forth, I will probably not keep this gallery up-to-date at all times.
If things change, you will see that by me just... putting up new stuff again!
On the other hand, I still offer you the following locations to follow me on:
FA (just finished works): https://www.furaffinity.net/user/lolzguy
Twitter (WIPs + finished works + occasionally sharing art and stuff I like): https://twitter.com/lolzguy_art
Telegram Channel ("Mailing list" for WIPs and finished works): https://t.me/lolzguy_art
See you around!
Journal Information
- Views:
- 180
- Comments:
- 8
- Favorites:
- 1
- Rating:
- General
Comments
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Yeah, it's been kinda broken for months, I don't blame you. But I'm never going back to fa...
Wish you had been able to upload more stuff! Thanks for playing
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I can understand why FA isn't much of a better choice in return, considering that site also isn't the wonderland of good web UX. That's why I also offer Twitter and Telegram for my stuff in turn.
Hope to see you around regardless!
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Site performance is something I haven't run into much trouble. Both FA and Weaz break and then come back, and Twitter is terrible for gallery engagement even if it is good for getting eyeballs.
The trouble is, if Content Creators stop posting, Content Consumers will stop coming. It's a circle, where everyone is responsible for engagement. A lot of the complaints that come from Consumers are "there's no one posting here" and then Creators also say "there's no one here" when they don't get favorites or traffic. This comes down to habit, I just posted on someone else's journal about that a little more in-depth.
You take care of your livelihood, post wherever you like, but there are plenty of people out there.
I do see how Weaz could encourage more engagement as a company goal, yet if people don't post words, don't comment, and don't upload the same way that they do on other sites, there won't be the same kind of feedback, reception, and engagement as on other sites.One of the ways I do things is post on a gallery site, link it to Twitter with a request to like/comment on the gallery, as well as letting people know the HQ uncompressed version is there. Or I even crop a thumbnail for the twitter, so they have to click to see the whole thing on the gallery site. It's all in the curation control.
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Here's what I posted on another person's journal who's been feeling similar kinds of ways:
I think that engagement looks differently than how people expect. I don't see Weasyl dying at all.
A lot of people don't look at the Views counter for their images, that show a lot more of the traffic. I do agree that it is slower than other sites, yet the content tends to be more profound and communication more direct.
Commenting is what people look at for engagement, but twitter and tumblr and instagram have conditioned people to look at things as if it were in a feed, scrolling, looking, and Maybe liking. Favorites aren't likes, and as a word, it seems to encourage less casual interaction. Giving a comment for many websites is so much more intensive than clicking a heart button, but here on Weasyl it is the equivalent opposite, it seems, where leaving a comment shows interest and is closer to a Like than clicking the favorite button. And then the views get buried in there, but those are really the same thing as a Like, since people Scroll through their submissions (like a feed), then click (Like) on the ones they really want to view (that they enjoyed just by looking at the thumbnail.)
People's content brains are confused by multiple flow-charts of engagement, and content creators are stuck trying to learn new arrangements to show their work to audiences online.
People's content brains are less confused by things that are familiar and habitual, like all those sites people have been on for years, and content creators are stuck trying to keep their audiences.
There are multiple circles going on here, in multiple directions. I think that it comes down to people having a hard time building new habits. Setting scheduling timers to Go Check and Comment and Engage helps facilitate a whole environment of activity. Scheduling seems artificial, but it's really how the wants of the brain translate to the actions of the body.
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Long reply ahead cause I have some thoughts pertaining to this.
In general, I totally agree with the points raised here - as stated in the journal, I am not particular a big fan of FA and especially not of Twitter, which really lacks any ways to organize your art posts and has a severe lack of algorithmic influences that make posting art a bit of a gamble. I am old-school in that regard and totally prefer a simple gallery site! That's why I keep a well-sorted and "tidy" FA gallery as my main way to post to back things up should someone want a documentation of my pieces, and I've also linked to FA before for higher-resolution pieces and extended descriptions.
However, the metrics don't lie and tell me very few people "click through", making me believe that Twitter and FA are very much separated audiences with different preferences to how content is consumed. Pertaining to this, I certainly don't disagree as well that content consumption on Twitter is more "vapid", as you say yourself by describing how timeline-based sites and like system influence how online content is absorbed by an audience.Going back to Weasyl, in terms of actual engagement, I got very few comments on here Weasyl and little active interactions, even just in terms of counting pure favs. While I try to not pay attention too much to numbers, it's just a staggering difference if compared to FA or Twitter, especially considering how long new posts can stay on the frontpage here because not many people are actually uploading. It's a vicious circle obviously that leads people to leave this site behind, paired with the technical issues I've encountered that made me make the aforementioned decision described in the jounal.
I've always considered this site to be more like a FA backup anyways. Many people here also follow me elsewhere already, and a sizable chunk of followers never have interacted again with my work after following me, presumably because they went to Weasyl for a while and left again, especially when you can follow people in other community spaces already where everyone is far more active. This makes Weasyl feel incredibly redundant at the end of the day to many people who could, potentially, form an audience to people who would post their work on here. Why follow someone on here if they have a very active Twitter, or a well-curated profile on a gallery site of your choice?
Funnily, this comment got stuck in a loading loop, and I thankfully still had it on my clipping board to try again.
I hope to see you elsewhere for now and maybe if there's going to be a good way to easily curate multiple sites at some point in the future without much of a hassle or if this site has some resurgence in terms of activity, my stuff will return to your submission inbox on here!
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itspomf
Been pretty awful here on the other side of the pond as well.