To be blunt, people insisting on using this site because FA is "bad" has become such an intense bother as of late and made me want to avoid this place like the plague. Many people I now want nothing to do with reside here... However this fandom has also been so heavily fragmented in the last two years between Tumblr, Twitter, and folks trying to make alternatives to FA, it's become impossible to keep track of art and artists anymore. People have become so spread out and dispersed I've had to outright stop following or even caring about many artists completely as it was just too much bother.
I tried to keep myself to one singular site that everyone used. It kept my online pressence low and thus the issues I've had with offline life privacy under control. Everything and everyone was in one spot so I could enjoy everything, while keeping a subdued pressence, without throwing myself into the fray. I'm an extreme introvert so it worked well. But this has also lead to me becomming a hermit in plain sight. An ultimate wallflower. Now that the community has shattered into a million pieces this has really become obvious for me. I was never part of any community so I've never really had much of any personal pressence or social life within the fandom. I put forth the image that there's not really any person behind the account, just a cold aloof machine that vends arts. I don't really want to be seen as a faceless NPC, I kind of want to be part of the community for once. (Picking the worst time to decide this.) Being the wallflower is just starting to piss me off honestly...
I'm trying to fix this now. I'm trying to force my socially awkward, cripplingly shy self to find some ways to be more social. Joining in on or doing streams have been one attempt. I've got a Twitter and Tumblr I still have idea how to use properly. Now I'm trying to spread out to Weasyl as well. I have a lot of problems with aspects of this site. It lacks a lot of the vital features of FA and is a lot less minimalistic and a bit UI bloated... But with the fandom diluting and dissapating like a nebula I think I really need to branch out now if I'm going to be able to be sociable at all!
So That's my excuse for starting to use Weasyl.
So here is where you can find me!
I have a FA of the same name
I have a Tumblr where I primarily post only my fantasy and WoW art.
And I have a Twitter account.
I also talk on Skype and YIM, send me a note if you ever want to look me up there.
Hey, welcome to Weasyl. :) I know what you mean, for most of my time around furries I've always been a wallflower and stayed in my own little corner. While the FA drama really had no effect on me as a musician/writer, it sparked a new opportunity for me to start trying to integrate myself into the community again. I really, really enjoy being here, and recently got picked up onto the staff so I can help make the user experience even better. Good things are happening here, it's exciting. It's going to take some time to reach the level of long-established websites like FA and DA, but we'll get there.
this might help find so people
http://projects.weasyl.com/soft/
Honestly the first time I've heard someone say FA has features Weasyl is missing. What's lacking, if you don't mind me asking?
Chances are I may not have found some things yet as the site isn't the most intuitive, but:
Also typing stuff in comments is a pain as the preview looks way more like a typing space than the typing space does. Just putting together this comment is a headache of mis-clicks...
After a bit of research I've found two things that might help:
I feel you on the others though. (Clicking in the preview space, not being able to hide comments, no stats page). Though I'm not sure what you mean by non-user-defined tags. Staff/viewers going through and adding tags to all artwork? Or just a preset pool of tags to choose from?
By non-user defined tags I mean how FA forces you to clearly define the genders, content, and large fetishes present in the work your submitting through pre-programmed categories that are site-wide and uniform.
User-made tagging is always a mess. People could label something as any number of synonyms (female, woman, girl, femme) or related terms (breasts, boobs, tits) and trying to include them all in the apparent content filter feature I found is nigh impossible. Also, if someone just decides to not tag something the filter won't even matter.
I'd heavily prefer everyone used a system similar to Y!Gallery, where everything is broken down into a structure of hard-coded, mandatory filter terms. It just makes browsing much more pleasant, simple, and helps eliminate human error.
Link
Soba
It's good to see you here, though I hear you loud and clear on the problem of people dispersing to various sites. :-/
Regardless, welcome aboard!