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State of afFAirs (and a small request to Weasyl coders) by Rusco Istar

Instead of just cross-posting and copy-pasting the journals I made in FA and IB I'd like to address something special with the Weasyl crowd, something more relevant. It's something that came down to me while reading a couple of journals.

But first, before losing myself in a long rant, I'd like to go onto my complaint with the Weasyl code, and I do hope if anyone reads this they have the maturity to take this as an opinion:

The style of browsing that Weasyl is trying to impose sure shows a stronger side with search and tag, and I'm not impressed given who the coders and owners are. It could be an awesome feature if you could watch tags, right? But when you start to follow an artist and you want to see their latest submissions... all this starts to behave more like a chore when you need to try to figure out the thumbnail, hover over it to see the title and the artist and if you think it may be a pleasing click you do so without knowing if you will be treated or if the piece doesn't stands to your previous expectation (or worse because you'll be in dire need of brain bleach!). So this is not idly browsing at all; it is a vital function.

Also, I don't claim to be an art connoisseur but in the 10 years I've been in the fandom I've learned a thing or two about composition. Art is a complex thing where a piece can have multiple parts where the audience can and will focus. This kind of small and square thumbnails destroy this by losing detail or pinning a single focus by the artist discretion (like an eye, only the faces, a group of penises, a couple of toned abs, paws, you name it but it is only one point of focus). Given a submission, an amazing minor detail will be featured in the thumbnail while in the piece it is drowned in a sea full of disappointing crap and maybe something that will need brain bleach and thus not earning a favorite or even a comment, and conversely a fuzzy thumbnail that only if clicked would rather reveal a vast piece rich in detail by an artist that you just discovered... or the same plain and disappointing blob without details but just larger, thus not earning fav or comment, or the worst case scenario where the artist can't properly sell the piece to the audience-to-be and it is simply overlooked because the thumbnail isn't representative and not attractive. Without this vital information the viewer is now effectively idly browsing, something I'm sure more than one have played with and found it leading to nowhere so they instead turned to the more powerful search and tag system.

I know this means a higher traffic for your server and higher costs, I'm a Software Engineer IRL so I'm fully conscious of what I'm asking here, but this is really affecting your user base and I honestly would like to see ANY FurAffinity alternative to flourish~ :3

TL;DR: Fix the thumbnails, PLEASE!

P.D.: A WYSIWYG text editor would be awesome as well! Not everyone out there is a redditor... :<

Now, onto the main body of this rant:

Kupok wrote:
It took a MORAL OUTRAGE of a single person to effect a mass exodus off Fur Affinity. Since the announcement of a certain creeper going staff, More have left Fur Affinity then the amount that left over the Cub thing.

Moral Outrage huh? Has nothing to do with this famous artist's coding ability (While there is evidence it is abysmal, no one talks about it.) Nono. He's a bad guy.

On another journal:

KinkyRomance wrote:
With journal notifications on FA being spammed with "Leaving FA" journals, I wonder:

WHY Weasyl?!

It's barely complete, thumbnails there are tiny, it displays no more than 20 favs per page, information about submissions is hidden behind hovers, there're zero discovery features etc. It's just painful to use!

Why doesn't anyone even think about InkBunny? Is there some promotion of Weasyl or is InkBunny's reputation ruined forever by the previous exodus from FA?

In case anyone missed the drama, here's a brief story:
X years ago Zaush (Adam Wan) rapes someone.
That someone considers contacting the police about it.
Dragoneer contacts rape victim and convinces said victim to not file a police report or press charges.
The internet gets a hold of this information and goes «WHAT THE FUCK»

~ Fast forward X years ~

Dragoneer hires Zaush as a developer, responsible for recoding the entire site and refreshing the UI.
Zaush runs around wagging his dick about how he's a «professional developer» despite knowing fuckall about anything, as proved by his platform decision (Node.js) and tweets.
Dragoneer did this despite the fact that he already approved a team of 3 real professionals (with credentials to prove such) to work on the site months ago.
Said professionals promptly told dragoneer to fuck off and deleted the work they'd done so far, because they couldn't stand Zaush's smug «I'm better than you» attitude.
All of this of course happens on the Furaffinity Forums (and to some extent Tumblr) for the world to see.

~ Fast forward a week or two ~

Dragoneer proudly announces Zaush as being a new member of the FA admin and dev team and posts a mockup of the new site design.
Considering how the Zaush rape thing is public knowledge, a lot of people comment saying things along the lines of «You hired a rapist as an admin? What the fuck.».
All the people who commented about the rape swiftly has their comments deleted and gets an account suspension, most likely courtesy of the newly admined Zaush.
Said people gets pissed off and leaves. Their friends also gets pissed off and leaves. People who find out about this gets pissed and leaves.
Suddenly «I'm leaving FA» journals are everywhere.

~ You are here ~

Thanks to both journals I'm realizing why some of this wave of people is mostly going toward Weasyl instead to Inkbunny. It is really sad to see how these tools are so easily handled by emotion instead of reason. IB has a clear superiority in design and the best chances to not become the next FA due to terrible administration (I mean, we are all humans... pretending to be animals... but some have more asshole potential than others, and the IB admins lack that excess of "quality" as far as I've seen). I'm not saying that this reason applies for everybody but this might be the setup for the tendency, since once a core group of people move toward a direction everybody moves that direction as well (The Mainstream Effect).

The same moral outrage that drives this people to get out of FA drives them away from IB because of the founders' cub stigma... If they'd know about the long standing trolling and childish behavior of Weasyl's admins, hah~ But I guess even if they'd do, a troll is more tolerable than rapist and a "child molester". (Even when in said child molesting ring, human CP art is banned and any cub content can be quickly blocked by keywords. The excuse is bogus and again more about morals and emotion than reason).

Really, some people feel so justified and righteous, on the moral high ground, but in denial because if they'd admit it their self-granted authority will be challenged for being a bigot. And being a bigot is something morally scandalous nowadays.

And the people who won't move out of FA is on worse grounds! Why do they use it if it is so horrible?

Paraphrasing, "Cause I make money here with how many idiots are in this place" is the most often heard excuse I see.

I don't mean to say that trying to live as an artist is equal to being a scumbag, because it can be one honest if not full of hardships way to pay the bills and live by in this consumerist society that disregards the fine arts so easily. But if you look the tendency of people who are not leaving FA it is mostly people that "don't care if X was raped by Y as long as Y fixes the site where I make easy money because it is the most popular one and I can't be bothered to put my eggs on many baskets because I'm too busy being a genius", either voicing this opinion or not.

These artists are often popufurs who treat their fan base more like cash cows than the people who brought them to where they currently are. I'm sure that when the FA bubble finally bursts (if it does), that is when the critical number of users is reached and it starts to impact their greedy pockets, they will move to the exactly nearest most popular site while giving a huge backlash because how they dare to rob time out of them to migrate galleries and learn a new UI when they'd rather be painting a $100 piece. Doesn't takes a brilliant economist to see that this side works under the model of least effort and the reason why FA is still the platform of choice, despite being horrible in coding and in management.


IMPORTANT ADDENDUM:

http://fa-exodus-database.tumblr.com/
This is a blog that is devoted to featuring and spotlighting artists who wish to leave FurAffinity (or have already done so) but either cannot due to requiring commissions to stay afloat financially or, for those who HAVE left, will be dealing with financial issues as a result.
If you would like to be featured, please visit the submit page for more information about what is necessary!

http://projects.weasyl.com/soft/
Just plug in your FA account name and your Weasyl account name and it'll let you know who's on Weasyl from your +watch lists!

http://fa2ib.welcomefur.com/
This Script will automatically copy the submissions you want from your current Fur Affinity gallery to your current Inkbunny Account, keeping as much possible data from the original (title, description, tags, # of favs and views, original posting date).

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waxpost-weasyl-crossposte/boddplgmdhddfmchbifhpdpekfdaenjc
For ease of moving your galleries to Weasyl. This gives you a little icon in your address bar when viewing submissions in your FA gallery and, by hitting it, it'll open up the Weasly submission page with almost everything filled in and ready to submit! You can also use it to crosspost from other art sites to Weasyl.

https://bitbucket.org/Kitashi/art-gallery-manager/wiki/Home
Upload submissions in batch to: Fur Affinity, Weasyl, and InkBunny.

State of afFAirs (and a small request to Weasyl coders)

Rusco Istar

Journal Information

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Comments

  • Link

    In the case of inkbunny's staff, keep in mind that Greenreaper is pretty transphobic. - https://forums.vivisector.org/index.php?topic=715.0

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      He's not transphobic. He's pedantic as fuck.

      Still, never seen them take a wrong site administration turn. At most this was him being disrespectful to an easily offended group, not only for being a grammar nazi but for being holier than thou; imposing his ethics. That's pretty much pedantry.

  • Link

    IB explicitly disallows anyone under 18. Weasyl allows 13 and older. That's one big difference. So to give one example of many? https://www.weasyl.com/~greevixor - can't sign up there.

    But as for your specific concerns, may I suggest checking out https://redmine.weasyl.com/ and creating an account? It is our (new!) public bugtracker. We appreciate any and all feedback you have.

    • Link

      Oh, this is mostly excellent. I'll register asap :3

  • Link

    At least the thumbnails aren't square now. ;-)

    • Link

      I AM SUPER DOWN FOR THIS SITE!

      Seriously, fuck FA.

      Thank god I finally could remember my password.