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Reconsidering outlets by Snowskau
TL;DR: I am considering 'moving' to Itaku and would like to know if you prefer Pillofort or Cohost for unrelated blogging. Links at bottom.
For the past couple of years I have been posting to several art outlets concurrently--Weasyl, piczel, pillowfort, formerly twitter (formerly tumblr), but now also cohost and itaku. Tagging all of my uploads to a responsible degree 4+ times over is becoming a real chore as well as just being redundant, so, I'm thinking I should reduce the amount of websites I'm utilising.
Unfortunately for Weasyl, the sheer amount of features itaku sports has rendered it almost wholly inferior. The tagging and filtering system for example is just significantly more robust, both since it requires people to use tags, and since it has a whole wiki and live suggestions/aliasing when posting. It doesn't have a journal system per se, but the character limit on posts is lenient enough that it shouldn't matter and I can pin a post to similar effect. I'm not gonna list all the features--I strongly recommend you check out the website yourself.
I'm considering moving my main service to Itaku. It combines all the features of a traditional gallery with the simple "networking" of a social media site, thus becoming better than either alternative.
Since Itaku doesn't allow non-art-related uploads or 'shitposting', though, I'll still be using a blog website for misc. purposes. I'm considering Cohost for this. Bluesky is just twitter but again which means it'll almost definitely be every bit as awful with it's 300 letter limit, effectively complete lack of content tagging, and overall horrible UX. Cohost seems more like a tumblr replacement, and unfortunately for Pillowfort, may have more success gaining users. Although, I still know very little about the site, so, it may come down just to which gets more traffic. Cohost does seem to have the better tagging system, again, since it has live tag suggestions when typing. Another important factor is that Pillowfort seems to compress and dimension-limit uploads, whereas pictures retain dimensions on Cohost. I haven't checked the actual quality compression, though.
I'm curious to know which of these 2 people here would prefer, because I really want to choose just one of these.
I also think I'm just going to stop using piczel's gallery feature. About the only use I had for it was group uploads, since Weasyl only allows single images at a time, but Itaku supplants both. The gallery feature seems to get very little activity compared to, say, Picarto, but I'm thoroughly invested in the site for streaming, so, I'll still be using it to livestream my drawing sessions while answering live questions. It has no journal or text-only post features so I sort of have to notify people through here, lol.
Lastly, I could mention my trello page. I really only use it to display current drawing statuses, even though it suggest business information. Commission information/applications are once again made redundant by Itaku and Weasyl. https://trello.com/b/SmqDla02/project-load
Links to my pages:
https://itaku.ee/profile/snowskau
https://cohost.org/Snowskau
https://www.pillowfort.social/Snowskau
https://piczel.tv/watch/Snowskau
Journal Information
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Comments
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Considering I've been using tags for a decade I don't see how trolls fit into this. I don't think I've even been trolled since rickrolling was a thing. The tags are there so people can curate their browsing experience; they're a net good. They're not like hashtags on twitter. Do people just grief eachother on IB?
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The more refined the tag system, the easier it is to train AI generation bots on, unfortunately.
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The one tip I can give is to try out PostyBirb so you can write once crosspost to multiple sites. https://www.postybirb.com/download.html
I use it for Weasyl, FA, Twitter, Mastodon. Though ymmv, it seems buggy for FurryNetwork and Bluesky (In the sense you need to re-login to those sites often for it to work for some reason).-
I always deeply mistrust third-party apps that handle login credentials, but I guess this is not that far from having firefox store my login cookies in the end. I'll probably be trying it out, then.
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As someone who posts Way Too Much on Way Too Many sites, postybirb has been a godsend. Im in the discord too, and I highly recommend it!
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Also CoHost is really nice, i like it. I wish postybirb would pick it up already lol
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+1 to PostyBirb being a good solution for cross-posting to a lot of places at once. You drop an image in once, tag it once, and can upload to a bunch of places at once. Among the sites you're considering, I think Cohost is the only one that doesn't have support in PostyBirb.
As for that security consideration: PostyBirb currently doesn't even support saving your credentials to some central server. Like you said, it's just like having cookies in your browser.
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I don't know much about either Pillowfort or Cohost. I know one friend has a cohost and seem to like it fairly well while one or two have Pillowforts but seems like their interest has declined in it. I suspect that's true of most social media sites if they lose their luster without gaining enormous popularity.
Personally, I like that Fediverse thing for general micro-blogging so far. A Mastodon instance I'm on called red.fox.yt has a 2500 character limit so it suits my overly-verbose posting style well XD I think I'm about done social media sites run outside the fandom, tbh.
I've not heard of Itaku before, but it sounds interesting. Looks like they're at least supported heavily by the fandom. Might be the better mix of casual and formal in the end. I might have to look into an account...
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I have no personal attachment to Weasyl, though it LOOKS nice at least. PostyBirb can relieve pretty much all that pain of posting/tagging multiple times over.
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Personally, only place I've ever used tags to search is e621; I may have used them once or twice on SoFurry because reading requires time and effort compared to visual arts. Never cared too much about curating anything, that's how you miss things that may be outside of a tag, but I'd still find interesting. I like weasyl, but it definitely feels like a dead site that will never be updated again.
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Have you considered posting directly to e621? It seems like a lot of artists are starting to do that. I can't compare Itaku's tagging system to e6's since I haven't used Itaku, but of all the furry-centric sites the *booru based ones seem to do it really well, and there's already a huge community there (plus, a lot of your art is already uploaded and tagged by said community).
For non-art blogging, there's also Mastodon. Plenty of people have moved there, specifically meow.social and yiff.life. They do have character limits but it's much higher than Twitter and BlueSky. And you can do spoiler/content warning, attachments, etc like you'd normally expect.
PS: I really wanted Weasyl to be the FA-killer, but obviously that didn't pan out!
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I have been uploading to e6, but it's only an image repository.
I tried getting into mastodon but have had no luck finding the right server. And I still can't get my head around the account system and following people across servers.-
Fair enough about e6, I hadn't realized you were already doing that -- At least you're able to be more lax with the initial tagging and let the community do the lift for you.
Yes, fragmentation and too much choice is a bit of a problem with getting started on Mastodon, and because of how there's no recommended feed or algorithm suggestions, discovering new content is not quite as intuitive as it would be on Twitter/etc. If you're interested in it, I'd be happy to help guide you through getting set up and finding people.
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If you want to give Mastodon another try, check out https://furryfediverse.org/ and see if any of those servers look right for you. Or just click the big "join a recommended instance" button near the top of the page and you'll be good to go.
The account system, loosely speaking, works like e-mail. You just send messages or follow people by including their username and server, such as @ShimmeringSpectrum@macrofurs.social being my writing account. So if you joined any of the servers listed on the Furry Fediverse website, you could interact with anyone on any of those servers and a whole lot more.
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the reason i like websites like weasyl is because i get notifications of uploads. i don't know if itaku has that feature, cuz i don't have an account there. i don't really intend to make one, but i might if that's where you choose to go because i really do like your art quite a lot and would like to continue seeing it.
i honestly couldn't care less about whatever features a site has, as long as the site makes it easy for me to see the things being posted by the people i'm following. which is why i despise twitter when it comes to art, lol.cohost is pretty good as a site, and active, but it's basically tumblr 2 and not ideal to me (for the purposes of keeping up with artists).
bluesky is literally just twitter, so. no. lmao.i saw that you've already commented on using postybirb, but i'll reiterate that it's a useful tool. it's also been improved a lot over the past couple years, making it more convenient to use. it helps a lot with alleviating manual uploading.
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itaku has a followed posts inbox in case you miss them in your feed view. It's a very feature-rich site, and since it seems to have many more features for doing commissions, I might actually move my business there. It really is like a full replacement for both FA and twitter at the same time.
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I've never heard of Cohost before, and while I do have a Pillowfort I don't ever go on it often. Itaku seems to be on the rise, so that is good to go for. Bluesky is very much up in the air, since users are dependent on getting a code just to join. If you wanna shitpost, might just be the place to do it.
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Do you mean bsky is a prospect, or struggling because of the invite system?
I can see it taking off, but honestly I just don't wan to encourage people to main (nu-)twitter again by giving them another watch, lol.
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Better that then the current twitter right now. As bsky is developing a solid furry base, might be good to at least get that established.
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Admittedly I only maintain a Weezy account for your art, but I have accounts on all those other ones. It's no loss for me.
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As others have said: postybirb
Let us know what you do so we can keep following you ;3-
I’ve tried posty birb, but for some reason it glitches out and fails to post to like half of the sites, even if I’m logged in them.
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I’d vote for Cohost. After Pillowfort started with so many obvious security bugs that it shut down for three months, signing up doesn’t really feel comfortable…
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Have lost touch with so many artists as a result of the decentralization of the fandom...
It'll be sad to loose yet another. Already have accounts on 4 different sites, tough to keep track of everyone. I have no interest in adding a bunch more sites to my list. The social media migration was bad enough.
Used to be one fandom, now divided into camps and groups, and niches. Too old, too tired to be digging through that crap.
In any case, luck, peace, and long life to you wherever you decide to settle down.
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I really like this site but it just depressing it didn't took off. Mainly, I'm here to see your stuff. Itaku just gives me weird vibes but it does looks very efficient. I can see the benefits. Bluesky seems to be the next "thing" but I agree it's just Twitter 2.0 and will be the same shitshow down the line, not worth it.
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I still love the look of Weasyl and pretty much only post here as a backup gallery using PostyBirb - I just get 0 interaction here other than the occasional fav after posting for 5+ years now xD
I joined Itaku recently too after the FA stuff that happened and have been really really enjoying it! I'm absolutely gonna throw you a follow there too ofc :) -
Personally, I wouldn't mind following you on other sites, barring Inkbunny (as the site is a hub for UAA/CP), and Furry Network (site only caters to "popular" creators). In all honest, if you want to post elsewhere or mitigate the amount of work you have to do as a result of cross-posting, I'd say go to wherever you feel the most comfortable and offers you the greater amount of benefits from a site, host, and UI end. I wish this site would get more traffic, staffing, and coding support to really bring it up to speed.
Your work is always great to see here on Weasyl though! I mainly came over here as a result of your work. If you do decide to consolidate onto one or two platforms, I'll look forward to following you on them later!
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Do what you feel like doing man. I already follow you on other platforms, and enjoy your work enough to observe it elsewhere.
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I don't have either of those I only have Twitter bluesky and fa :/
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Itaku is ok and better than bluesky is some ways. I still prefer Weasyl, inkbunny. This whole recent tag trend won't last for all that long and lets be honest if you tag too specifically it is too easy for trolls to find you. Even on inkbunny pools have different names to the actual topics.