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In Case People Wonder Why I Don't Use This Site by Lurdanjo
Before I begin, I mean absolutely no ill feelings against the creators and admins/mods of this site. I admire what they put together, and for what it does, it does extremely well. I know that they do not mean to present the problems that I will be bringing up in this journal, but unfortunately they're such significant problems that I simply do not feel that I or people like me are welcome here.
So why don't I use this site? It's extremely simple. The "collections" system and the philosophy behind it.
As I stated before in the FurAffinity Forums while that site has been down, the reason I cannot use this site is because I feel it is EXTREMELY anti-conceptualizer, and ONLY pro-artist. The very idea that commissioners such as myself are discouraged from uploading anything on our own is appalling. I can understand the desire to share a single image on a server, but the "collections" system is completely backwards. Let me elaborate.
If I want to have a picture of anything with my character even remotely associated in my gallery, first I have to poke the original artist and get them to agree to share the image for my collections. Then I have to wait for them to accept. So far only one single artist has agreed to this, and several others have said that I'm "bothering them", so this system is already broken before even giving it a chance!
After all of that, I have absolutely no control over the keywords, the description, or who might see it. I cannot see who favorites it, and I have very limited interaction with them in comments. And to add insult to injury, the only way anyone will see this is if they go to my profile page and then click a separate "collections" tab, because there is no way for them to even be visible just on the profile page itself.
This completely discourages me from what it is I do in the fandom: I am a designer, world builder, and conceptualizer. I create worlds and characters, and I desire artists to be able to draw them out for me. Of course they deserve every right and recognition for the very hard work they put into the image, but they usually are not interested in putting in a large description or proper keywords because the art itself took so much work that adding that much extra attention is very difficult for them at that point. And yet there's nothing I can do about it.
On every other site, I can upload the image for myself and add a short story, put in special keywords, and have the rights I feel I should have as the person who created the actual idea/scenario and characters in the image. I know that the copyright favors the artist, but aren't I allowed some recognition for the person who came up with everything? When I commission artists, I work very hard and close with them to make sure they realize my vision. On this site, I am essentially told that I don't really count for any of that. Also, what happens if the artist decides to delete the image? Then I have nothing to show for it, and no way to recover what was lost. I've actually had artists suddenly leave shortly after posting a commission, never to receive a full version from them before disappearing off the Internet, and the "collections" system makes it even easier to abuse this.
I was told that this would be fixed a year ago, but here I am and it's still not fixed. I know that Weasyl is still in beta and still figuring things out, but until they overhaul or remove the "collections" system entirely, I do not feel welcome here, and so I feel no reason to frequent the site whatsoever.
Here's how I would fix it: make "collections" be visible on the profile page, and give the person who has the image in the collection the ability to put in their own description and keywords. This would still allow the main image to be in the artist's gallery primarily, and all favorites and comments would be shared, but also accessible for both artist and conceptualizer. Then if the artist deletes the picture, it is automatically placed in the commissioner's gallery with all favorites intact. Would this be viable to implement.
Sorry if it seems like an angry rant, but it's been a worrisome fact on my chest for a very long time, and I didn't just want to hold it in. Again, I do have respect for what people are trying to do here, but I simply do not feel like folks such as myself are welcome here, only visual artists.
Journal Information
- Views:
- 363
- Comments:
- 12
- Favorites:
- 1
- Rating:
- General
Comments
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That's a big step in the right direction, but I still feel unwelcome here until they actually make a statement about the "collections" system, because I feel it's a huge part of the site philosophy that shows that they are pro-artist, not so much for the people who actually come up with the ideas behind the art.
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The idea was that it may help make the site more organized and it definitely wasn't to make commissioners to feel unwelcome. I think it's a pretty good system, but I will pass your journal on to the developers. Remember, this is still a beta site, a lot of things are still up for change! Don't get discouraged yet.
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I fully intend on using this site eventually, I was just explaining why I don't yet feel comfortable here.
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Huh. Yeah...is this really a problem? Use it if you want, or don't. They don't care which.
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The point I was trying to make is that they want us to try the collections system, and it's completely broken and anti-conceptualizer. I wouldn't mind so much if it actually worked, or they made the changes to it that I and a LOT of users have asked for. Even if they say it's optional (and that is a good thing), the point remains that they wanted me to use it, and I declare it to be a complete failure that needs a total rewrite. In the meantime I still feel that I'm unwelcome here.
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you can show your collections as your 'main' thing on your profile. see my profile. it's been around for a while now. https://www.weasyl.com/control/editprofile
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I did notice that, thank you! I'm glad I was wrong on at least that one accord. But I'd still like to get an official stance on why there are collections and not feel that I'm going against the philosophy or the wishes of the site by uploading. That's the main point from the journal is just that I feel unwelcome, not just that collections are messed up and that it's okay to not use them. The fact that collections still exist in their broken state makes me very sad, it is essentially telling me that I really -should- be using that, even though I don't have to, but it's not what the admins are happy about.
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Hi there! We certainly don't want to leave any of our users feeling unwelcome, and as it has hopefully been said, we encourage you to upload your commissions into whichever gallery you feel is most suitable to you.
Back when Weasyl was first getting started, one of the problems we wanted to solve was the duplication of content in separate containers, not only because it requires more data storage, but because the attention given to a certain artwork (views, favorites, comments, various notifications) are very often divided--not only for the artist, but for the commissioner as well. Collections were devised as a way to help combat this issue.
Ideally, having a piece in one's Collections gallery would have been almost indistinguishable from having it in the Submissions gallery, but the feature unfortunately remained unfinished by the time the site first went live. It was also obvious early on that a submission could not be collected if it hadn't yet been uploaded to the site by the original artist in the first place. With these problems in mind, we agreed that Collections should be a totally voluntary feature.
Despite the setbacks, there are currently over 7,300 collected submissions in our users' galleries, so simply dropping the feature is also not an ideal solution. We therefore continue to support Collections, and we hope that some of our users find is suitable enough to try out so that they may offer advice on how to improve it further. We assure you, though, that its use is not mandatory and that recipients of gift art, trades, and commissions who don't wish to use Collections are encouraged to upload such works to their regular Submissions gallery as long as they have permission from the original artist.
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I like this answer! Very concise and explains all of my concerns, too. :)
With that being said, I will start to use the site soon! Of course I encourage you guys to work so that we can have the best of both worlds example I gave, or something close to it. Of course I agree that artists deserve as much recognition as possible, so maybe if it would be possible to share a favorites pool and the same files on the server, but have their own descriptions and comments, that would be ideal. :3
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Now that Weasyl has since come out of Beta and is now "complete", a lot of things have been perfected. Nothing is stopping you now from posting the arts yourself. And what's also nice is how you can see a preview of your messages as you type them, including how it shows the results of html coding you add. In any case, I'm hoping to convince my inner circle of friends to join me here, once I'm fully settled in. :)
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oneandonly
I feel the need to point out that Weasyl has stated many times that collections are optional. You are free to upload pieces you've commissioned as long as you have permission from the artist.
So upload them as much as you want!