Profile and submissions coming very soon! Thank you admins who were patient and sweet with me during my uncertainty, you guys rock and definitely deserve more fans and users! <3

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.