Please don't do that, as it's really frustrating, and also give more "work" to people who will at the end, just give up on checking both FA and Tumblr. Plus, Tumblr have a really crappy picture quality too, from what I've seen.

Instead, you should use growing up site, such as soffury, who allow HD quality pictures for instance: http://www.sofurry.com/index.php/

Personally, I kinda lose my interest in a artist, if that person feels the need to make you register somewhere else.
This is nothing personal against you, but I just dislike having accounts all over the place.
(So pretty much what Drakkor said, ut then again, I really dislike SF's interface.)

That said, being a admin I see a lot of work being done behind the scenes.
I know it's just another promise, but trust me, the tech staff's working on the new UI. Imo, it looks promising.

Why not stop putting it behind closed doors? Let the community see the work that's being done. To be honest a UI change is not that difficult and shouldn't be taking as long as it seems to be taking. Yeah, FA's current table layout is nearly impossible and cumbersome to work with in terms of CSS, but swapping out the element types and reworking the CSS and Javascript shouldn't be *that* tedious of a task to warrant multiple years of developing. I completely understand why artists are complaining, and why they would want to leave for a website that offers more in the way of listening to community feedback and maintaining an updated layout.

Also, I feel the need to agree. SoFurry's layout is ugly, and to boot Inkbunny looks like a jumbled mess. FA has the best structure, we just need some bells and whistles (and maybe a few back-end changes so we can have high res pictures and text-based literature instead of file-based literature).

Just my thoughts. :)

Sadly, it's not "just" a rewrite of the interface.
FA's old codebase is, simply put, horribly written, it all has to be redone.
That, and the fact that we're all volunteers here, makes it a slow process. Now, I believe Dragoneer's recently tweeted some links regarding the upcoming changes, but I'm not sure...

That would make more sense D: It's amazing it's still up and running considering the back end coding is that bad. I see DA with all sorts of database errors, but FA always seems solid other than it being slow. :B

How am I "making" you do anything?

We. +watch you, because we're interested in your art.
Now you're adding a ugly mark, something that doesn't fit the image, to a submission. I know I want to see the image as it's supposed to be, then.
You're not physically forcing us, no. But you're leaving us no choice, either. If we went to see your art in it's original form, we'd have to join tumblr.

"See me on Tumblr or lose my uncensored work"

Some people will call ii "making them". Some will call it "blackmail" or "extortion". A lot of people will be butt-hurt over it and about half your active watchers will most likely stop watching you. Whether this makes any difference to you or not is entirely your call.

Move to tumbler with the current plan and everybody stands to lose something. You lose fans, fans lose your uncensored work unless they set up yet another following location. Sometimes this loss can be a good thing, or a moot point.

You might want to reconsider the reasons for doing it if Kayla is your inspiration. She's made it very clear in a few places that she's not really all about furry or the fandom. She's not doing it to make things better for furries or for herself or her fans. She's doing it for the luls.

Cynical me:
There are thousands of other artists who will fill peoples' needs for art here. There are hundred of people on my watched-list that have not posted in years. In no way does this mean that there is a lack of stuff for me to look at and enjoy. Furry is big enough that it's no longer about individuals. Lose one, and five others will replace them.

Less-cynical me:
It will hurt a good number of your fans. Others won't care. Others will cheer you on. Despite the "lose one get five" policy of art, each individual still brings their own unique view to the table and their own unique creations. Each loss still hurts the whole.

All in all though, it's wholly up to you.

I'll put my vote in as follows:
If you censor your work here, and post only on Tumbler, I will not follow you there. I have 60 hours a week of work already and no time to go traipsing about the internet to every artists' personal specialty location. I enjoy seeing the creativity, but I'm not anybody's "fan". I recognize that they are people, with feelings, but in the big picture, there's not much to be done about it all.

Your choice is your choice. Do what you feel you must, and the consequences, both good and bad, will result from it.. It all depends on your goals and intent.

Stay well.

You're quite well spoken. I appreciate that. You're making quite a few assumptions too, some of which I can see, some not so much.

Calling what I'm doing blackmail or extortion implies that I'm denying them something that belongs to them. It's a sickening misinterpretation.

To assume that I think I'm going to make anyone happy about is a gross overstatement.

Kayla's reasoning is hers and mine is mine. If I wasn't clear enough in mine, have a look here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3158106/

I'm aware that I'm not Blotch/Zaush/Nekogami/etc. I never claimed that I would make waves and the implication that I'm going to make waves would be foolish of me to think.

If I'm not finding what I want here then my choices are to suck it up, or leave. I prefer compromise. Perhaps you have a better compromise?

I wasn't asking anyone to do anything. I'm stating what I'm doing. Some have asked that I let them know what I'm doing; here it is.

Thank you for the recognition. You stated that you welcome input, so I'm providing input. I apologize that my observations come across as so much more trouble for you.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not personally calling it those things. I said that people will call it that. Sadly, there aren't very many good words to describe "You must do X or you lose Y" that are not so dramatic. :( Please do understand that you are very clearly stating that you have decided that nobody on FA directly will receive uncensored adult or mature artwork made by you unless they go to Tumblr or find another way to acquire it. It's natural for people to dislike losing something they had, because that is a negative.

I do call it various costs.
A cost to you to create the censored version of a given piece.
A cost to the watchers to go or not go to another site should they wish to continue to follow your art.
A cost to the quality of the art as the new site presents it.
A cost in how many people will continue to follow your art.

Like you pointed out, you said you were posting to tell people what you were doing. You are partially trying to stand up and be heard by FA admins. A lot of the observations coming back from your watchers are just trying to stand up and be heard by you. I admit that I haven't read all of the responses, but many of the ones I did see are not trying to chastise you or cause problems. They are simply statements of fact and impression and feeling, like yours. Not everybody is trying to jump on you and call you evil. ;)

Realize, I really had two choices myself, for example. I could have stayed silent, clicked the unwatch button, and left it at that. I would have been amongst the (insert number here) watchers who bailed with no word to you other than "Bye!" via unwatch. Instead, I decided to speak up. Maybe it will have as little effect as you believe your mini-protest will have on FA admins. Maybe it will have less effect, or more effect. Who knows? Honestly, if I could stroke your back and say it's all right, snap my fingers and make FA the place you want it to be, or in some way convince you against your decided course of action, then (insert number again) of watchers and art lovers (fappers?) would be a lot happier.

But all in all, it's more about you being happy. The only reason to make other people happy is for oneself to be happy, whether directly or indirectly. Get a warm fuzzy feeling when somebody says you do awesome work? Wonderful! Make a customer happy, thus you get a promotion, thus you make more money and can get things that make you happy? Just as wonderful! Sadly, I also know that sometimes there's no happy to be had, so all you can do is be less-unhappy. If the state of FA is making you unhappy and you want to take this action to be less-unhappy, then so be it.

I will not continue to try to convince you one way or another. I'll miss your uncensored work. Honestly, censoring any part of art, even 10%, is a shame. By the same logic, why post the adult stuff at all? Let's just censor Mona Lisa's eyes and mouth. ;) (I do know that a possible idea is to show people, "Hey, look, I do porns! Come see the whole thing on Tumblr!" If the cost it creates is worth the gain to you, then great.)

Regardless, I wouldn't provide input at all if I didn't respect you as a person and feel you might take it into account. So the only thing really is that I hope that this undertaking was well-thought-out and not a snap decision that could end up only causing pain and drama in the long run. I halfway got the feeling that you wouldn't have solicited feedback had you been fully sure of your choice, but I could be wrong. :)

Anyway, end result (tl;dr version):
I hope you're at least making -yourself- happier with this decision, or at least less-unhappy. Stay well.

"I kinda loose interest in a artist, if...", probably isn't the most apropriate thing to say if you're administering this site. I have nothing against you personally either, and I can only hope that the candor in which I've written this journal reflects that. I wish I could believe your statement that "the tech staff is working on the new UI..." but the fact of the matter is that we've heard the unending repetition of this statement for years now, and I don't see how your restating it is any different than before.

The interest is a personal thing, bluntly put, I don't have to like or dislike art on "cases" I'm working on. In a way, a lack of interest even makes me more impartial.

Now, why should you believe me?
All I can say is, I've actually seen work being done. I don't know how much I can say, if only I could just show you.

Fair enough. I'm not going to get my hopes up. But it would be awesome.

^^^^^ this please... I have over 150 hundred artists I watch here and love all their art... making me jump through hoops for porn really doesn't help... I don't care about porny pics really... and yeah tumblr does seem to wonk up picture quality.

How am I "making" you jump through hoops? Especially if you don't care about the porn? If that's the case, then nothing really changes for you.

You're making a lot of assumptions for "people." As for making it more "work" for others, is it better that I take on said work?

Eh, I can't say either way. It all comes down to: I just don't understand what tumblr actually IS.

What is reblogging?
The same way YouTube embeds make it easy for a video to become a viral hit, the "reblog" button on all Tumblr posts allows a meme to spread rapidly across thousands of blogs with just a click.

There's a piece of tumblr. You can puke a little now. I know I will.

It's basically a automated blog site.

It's also annoying for those of us who like to save things as it strips filenames from images.

*sighs*

I guess its a matter of how much time a site can save with a modern interface and so on.
When you think you can spend your time better this way go on. There are a lot benefits out there I dont use.
From my point of view I like it to have as less sites as possible to look at artists. Its more time saving for me to only search on a few sites for artists and their art.
Maybe I'll try tumblr if you can force me enough with your censored way ;)

Well, I'm not forcing you to do anything, nor do I want to force you to do anything you don't want to. I -totally- get where you and many others are coming from when it comes to simplification of the number of sites, but really, it's diversification that makes the art community great. I could go into great detail about why, but I'll leave it at having many options is better than being stuck with one.

I understand. Have fun :)

unfortunate, but also true, especially in the sense that tech is getting smaller and more on the go. FA isn't really keeping up in any regard to that.

I don't think it really should have to. It's a image site, after all. It's not meant to be mobile. It's meant to be a place to look at (furry) art, and you can't view a 1280x1280 picture on a 300x400 screen very well.

You do bring up a good point. I was thinking of the internet growing, while access grows smaller. Theres multiple angles at work here. There is no easy answer.

The iPhone 4's resolution is currently 640x960, up from it's original 320x480 in 2007. The Samsung Galaxy tablet's resolution is 1280x800. If screen resolution is your argument, consider that we're not far off of true HD in mobile devices. If you want to argue that mobile browsing isn't something worth considering, you need to do a little more research on current browsing trends and trend predictions.

...You make a good point. Hmmm. I honestly hadn't considered larger screens. No one in my house has anything with a screen larger than 300x400 (which, judging by your statements, is 2007-level technology, so it is only 5 years outdated).

However, should everything adapt to that? What if a site's makers just aren't interested in it?

Does it really hurt a site, at this point in history, if they don't have a mobile variant? How many people are mobile-obligates who would not even touch a PC or Laptop? I can't imagine it's a site-sinking number of people.

Personally I HATE the idea of the internet adapting to mobile devices, but based on the numbers, that's the way more and more people take in the internet. Remember, we're furries; we spend most of our time on the net on a stationary machine. Most other people browse the net (Facebook, twitter, tumblr, reddit, and every news website out there) on their phone now, and all of these sites have already conformed to mobile architecture.

I didn't come to FA for the fancy interface. I came to FA for the artists that add content to the site.

+1 on that

I'm not asking for fancy. I'm asking for modern.

Despite what others have stated, some of which I do not see any problems with, I think having separate accounts is a great idea. You can showcase things without worry of having something you do not want showing up, plus if something happens to one site you do still have the other going. Tumblr seems a great way to spread your art around, as someone above pointed out, by getting reblogged and exposed much more and quicker than word-of-mouth- or having to dig through someone's favorites. In the end though it's up to you. Personally, I don't find it a problem to use the bookmark feature of my web browser to keep track of multiple art sites for artists.

To be perfectly honest I'm going to side with Tumblr on this.
Mostly for your point on app based internet. FA has already made one change specifically to mobile internet users, and that was the "Are you sure you want to log out?" prompt that pops up when you hit the logout under your name, top right corner. Too many people were touching that, instead of going to their profile page, IIRC. However I cannot see FA going even further in the mobile-internet-friendly way.

I adore Tumblr. I raged at it when I first started using it, but once you're used to it's interface, I find it a far better place for sharing things - video, pictures, website links, etc - than say, Twitter, that shrinks all your URLs and forces you to very briefly describe the link, or not at all. Tumblr allows you to write all you like, pretty much, while also making embedded picture and video in the same post. It's hard to just use it as a sharing application, rather than a full blogger/reblogger.

So that's my opinion. I say, it's entirely up to you. Those that adore your art enough likely won't care if they have to go to Tumblr as well to see your juicy stuff. Arguably, it's kinda like the niche that Nabyn fills - it's only for clean SFW artwork, not porn, so it's useful for portfolio stuff. Clean stuff. Tumblr, though? Anything goes, IIRC.

I resisted Twitter when it first came out. I neglected to realize that I was basing my resistance off of the tween demographic using it. Now it's the first place I hear about burgeoning political movements and science discoveries.

I really hope you don't. You are just making a bigger pain in the ass for people who like your work to see it. Kinda like putting DRM software into your product.

Suppose I haven't decided yet, but I'm personally contemplating unfollowing all the artists who just post censored art. That's not a threat either. That's how I feel about it. I already have to follow artists on over 5 sites, now artists want me to follow their tumblr, their facebook, their livejournal, their deviantart, their sofurry, their FA, their inkbunny, their furocity, their own personalized .com and join a mailing list too boot just to see their art? No thanks.

The ONE nice thing about FA, regardless of if it ever upadates the UI or not, is there was ONE place to go to see art from multiple artists without having to make hundreds of bookmarks you lose track of to keep up with. But now artists are spreading artwork around to different sites to get "attention" there, seriously.....

personally as an art appreciator, it makes me grate my teeth and consider ignoring an artist when most of the stuff they post is censored. I refuse to watch new artists who display censored art, but I'm getting the notion to go back and unwatch those I already follow when they put up censored piece after censored piece.

I live a pretty busy life, I don't have time to chase the art down. Pick a gallery and put it there. I like FA for viewing art. Alot of artists are HERE and the art flows through my new submissions as I watch them. Moving elsewhere? Good luck!

I'd really hate to lose your art also. You will do whatever you do though. May whatever you choose bring you happiness.

Seconded.

thirded

Whoa... You're seriously equating my choice to cover up crotches on furries with copy protection? Wow...

If your choice is to unfollow artists for posting censored art, then that's great! You're making a statement. You're actually doing something! I'm not about to disagree with you that the internet is chalk full of BS, and while I wish that my decision could be boiled down to such simplicity, I don't assume that anything I do personally will have any direct influence on the increasing monstrosity of choice we have. Yes, perhaps I could take your approach, and simply choose to use tumblr and close my FA account, but I like FA and the people that follow me. So do you. I want more out of it. I don't expect innovation, just a modernized experience. It is expected of me, however, that I take on the task of providing you with artwork. Do I not get a say? Or is this a "the customer is always right" sort of thing?

To think that artists are "attention" seekers, isn't an overstatement. We share our craft with you, and over time it's become an expectation. Some are attention seekers, but when some of us stop, we're made to feel like we've taken something that belongs to you away. If we should be made to feel thankful for the attention, should you not feel thankful for the opportunity?

You definitely missed my point on DRM correlation. Ubisoft is a good example, they bog down the software they sell to paying customers, those using it illegally merely strip out or bypass the DRM, so the only ones SUFFERING from DRM are the LEGIT PAYING customers. Recently they took their DRM servers offline, meaning NO LEGIT customer could play their games, while illegal versions worked FINE during the server migration. WAY TO PISS ON THE CUSTOMER! This would be something people wanting to succeed would avoid.

You do art and you want people to SEE that art, so you are similarly, forcing people who want to SEE the art, not the bullshit censoring to jump through hoops to see it....

I would hope you wouldn't close out your FA, right now FA is the central hub for furry art. Well at least non-cub/non-3D/non-diaperfur from what I can tell. By closing your FA you essentially would severely diminish, if not outright kill your existing fanbase with that move.

Why not just upload the uncensored art to BOTH like most artists do, so those of use who enjoy looking can, and not have to creat accounts everywhere or bookmark More and MORE sites just to see?

I know there's art I've never seen by artists I love because they do EXCLUSIVE art that only gets uploaded to the tumblr or only gets loaded on IB or SF or FA etc, and because I refuse to try and follow all these freaking sites with all their freaking accounts, I miss out. Though every now and then I catch stuff on the dump sites. I like them for that purpose, They actually put lots of high grade art in a single area for viewing. Makes MUCH Less of a hassle on people like me who just want to appreciate the art and don't really give two shits about some fancy function for commenting.

But again, I know you'll do what you think is best. I just hope it's truly the right decision for you, and that whatever you choose to actually do, brings you happiness!

You bring up a fascinating question: Is FA a website for artists, or is it for the watchers? I would consider the idealist response of "both" moot.

I'm going to post a journal about this question! :D

Personally I think sticking to one site, regardless of whether it is cutting-edge or not, is the best way to do it.

Not just for your followers, but for you. Believe me. It gets stressful keeping more than one site updated.

Besides, on an art site, the content is the pictures, not the tabs and tweets and interface and tumblrs and diggs and reddits and snipings. As long as an art site can attract artists, it doesn't need to be supermodern.

Also, censoring your adult works here? On the site guaranteed to not ban adult works (because it was made for them)?

That's just wrong. I'm sorry. You are going at this wrong. Tumblr is good for more social photo sharing, but it's a social site, not an art site. It won't offer you any guarantees on anything, may ban adult work, and may implement content-control policies similar to Facebook's.

FA is actually pretty conservative these days, and it's very easy to get banned. Hell, when something is acceptable on Deviantart, but not on FA, that says something :P

There is no type of submission that ges you banned from FA (With the exception of those typical gore/porn troll accounts)
Most AUP violations will simply result in a removal and a warning.
If the user decides to ignore that warning, though, that's his own fault, and he'll have to deal with the consequences.

Seriously, if one just abides by the AUP, it's pretty darn hard to get banned here.

Now, you're calling us conservative, here? Ok, we don't allow real life porn, and we don't allow cub porn. That's pretty much it.
The first has legal reasons, and the second (afaik) financial, but then again, there's sites specifically suited to both categories.

If you think I'm censoring my work here because I don't want to get banned, you've missed the point completely.

There is a general (I won't say large) movement away from FA. Everyone has their own reasons. If you can't be bothered to understand mine, that's your prerogative. I don't understand why you would concern yourself with commenting on a journal like this unless I wasn't clear enough?

Nono, I didn't say that. I said the opposite. FA is the place where adult work wouldn't get you banned.

Tumblr may change it's policy on adult work in the future.

FA won't. FA was founded for adult furry work.

From what I've read, and through the power of lobby groups and soccer moms, I'm sure one day that tumblr will suffer some Christian fate. For now, it'll do.

If the situation were so simple in my case, I would simply close my account here and post strictly to tumblr. In your opinion, that would be better?

One thing to think about, you stop supporting the site, the admins will be even less motivated to upgrade.

"Why should we? They all use something else to do that?"

The more I think about it, the less I care about FA being modernized. I suppose I care in that I like the people here and I want to keep posting, but that I want modern features. Like I mentioned, I've tried submitting suggestions directly and indirectly to FA admin. I don't think my suggestions were frivolous, some sort of RSS feature, a button/indication that notifies watchers when I'm streaming, maybe embedding streaming somehow, things like that. I've seen reasonable suggestions on the forums that just seem to be swept under the rug along with promises of an updated UI. What am I left with? I don't want to close my account entirely. I like most of my watchers. So my choices are to keep sucking it up, or move. This is the best compromise I've seen implemented.

*shrugs* Do what you wish. I don't actively use any sites but FA, DA, and Facebook, though I do archive at the VCL. I have no intention of playing "chase" to track down artists on other sites, nor do I have any desire to operate half a dozen accounts on as many websites to do so. I'll continue to watch you here, because I like your art, but I'm not going anywhere else for it, either.

Fair enough. :)

For the record, I DO understand the reason for your choice. DA updates its UI every year and Facebook every six months, lol.

I have hopes for FA.. I'd like to see it reach its max potential. But I'm also happy to stay with it how it is while it sorts out all its code mess. I'd rather have it usable and stable but old-fashioned instead of forcibly updated every month while it frantically attempts to "modernize" but ending up full of glitches from hastily thrown-together code. I mean.. that's how it got into the mess it's in in the first place.

I'm not asking for one end of the extreme or the other. I think waiting years for UI updates beyond the Nuke button and the band-aid solution of a log out pop-up is a little too long to wait. Maybe that's just me?

If it were a bigger site with a steady income and a large staff, I'd say you were right.

Yes, DA keeps updating it's UI.

Every time adding more and more cruft and making it more and more annoying to use.


'Modern' does not mean 'better', compare webforums, chan boards and usenet for discussion: The oldest of the three is by far the best while the newest is a piece of garbage.

I've been on the oldest, VCL since 1998, and I've always wished that it had a way you could keep track of the artists you like... it got to a point where I kept a list in my binder of artists I liked so I could check their pages for updates by hand. It's so massive and unorganized, it's difficult to use. I only keep it as an archive for older stuff.

I joined DA when it was only a few years old, in 2003. I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. FINALLY an art site that let you monitor SPECIFIC artists, AND leave them in-site commentary! Over the years, it's changed a lot, and for the most part, I like a lot of the changes. My biggest disagreement with it is the fact that their ads keep giving me viruses. I had to get Mozilla so I could use adblock when I browse and protect myself. It seems like a deliberate gimmick to force you into an ad-free subscription. :/

Then in 2006 I joined FA, which to me has always been better than DA because it allows pornographic material, and the lack of ads and snooty elitists has always appealed to me the most. DA feels like work, FA feels like home.

I did not say that newer was automatically worse, only that it didn't automatically mean better.

Yes, art sites have gotten a lot better since the days of the Avatar ftp archive[1]. Not every change made has been for the better, (I'd be happy if I could just turn some of those 'features' on DA off).


[1] VCL, even in it's pre-web incarnation, isn't the oldest. Think of having to download a text file listing the new images posted that week, deciding which ones you want, then _typing_ get commands for each of them.

I assumed you meant "oldest" to mean the oldest of the three I listed.

I thought the context of that was clear.

'Modern' does not mean 'better', compare webforums, chan boards and usenet for discussion: The oldest of the three is by far the best while the newest is a piece of garbage.

The latter sentence is referring to what was introduced in the former. This would be true even without the colon that is specifically indicating this. That we both happened to use three examples was entirely coincidental.

complaints over interface or not (and really, I feel what you're saying)

...then I seriously DO NOT see the logic of self-censoring and posting all the porn on another site

1) if you want to use FA as your 'proffesional nice art folio site' then... its FA, it has porn on it. Lots of it.

2) you'll annoy your fanbase. on FA you can favorite, you can comment, and you discuss. On tumblr... you can't. Sure, you can reblog, but that's like posting the same thing all over just to add a comment. and its hell to make sense of long reblog-conversations.

tumblr is a micro-blogging site, not a site suited for art commentary and that kind of feedback. for that you want FA or dA or other similar sites

My logic is complicated and flawed. I go into a bit more detail on the logic of it over here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3158106/

As for annoying my fanbase, given my situation and feelings (assuming those count), would closing my FA account and moving entirely to tumblr be the better solution? If not, the other option is to suck it up then, yes?

So basically "I'm going to do what I want, if you don't like it then you can piss off."

Right?

I don't mean this harshly, I'm just trying to get a feel for whether you really wanted our opinions or just wanted to find out who would dissent.

I don't recall saying anything of the sort in my post here. I recall explaining what I plan to do and why. Should I not be able to choose? That seems to be the general "opinion" of the replies here.

I have enough accounts and places i've registered at

Me too.

Tumblr's great!
It wouldn't make a very good sole venue for an artist's work, since it's not a gallery and doesn't really work that way... but i've found it to be a nice way to sort of tie everything together. I can upload something to DA or to FA and then put it on tumblr with a link to the source, or i can just put it on tumblr exclusively if it's something i don't feel is worthy of being included in my galleries. (Or if it's too explicit... tumblr has very little restriction)

Anyway, i see a lot of people expressing their wariness in comments here... and i say do what you want to do. Whatever makes you comfortable, it's all that matters.

I dunno, I've browsed a few pages and the way they handle images is pretty slick. and yeah, I get the weariness. I'm tired of too much choice too. I suppose I could just close my FA and strictly do tumblr, but I don't want to abandon my followers. Sticky situation.

I would say, do what you have to do.
Those that like your art for what it is will probably come with you, those who like the porn only because it is porn or nude will probably not

So if FA finally updates everything would you go back to posting uncensored stuff here?

Absolutely.

I wouldn't say everything. Just if it got better.

Inversely you sold me on Tumblr XD

I went and started up a spot, if nothing else just to secure my name there in the event of a mass exodus.

Hah! As if I'm some revolutionary. I'mma follow you back!

While it's always a good idea to have a backup account somewhere in a sense, I think the censoring does put a crimp in the fanbase in a sense. I know that you're doing it to try to spur the admins here to modernize the interface, but the overall feeling to most of doing this comes across as,"If you want to see the full picture, follow me over to Tumblr and forget FA!" I know it's not the real reason nor the real meaning, it's just that's the bad taste it leaves people with.

For me personally, I have almost too many accounts to keep up with as is. Two blogs and three accounts here, on SoFurry, and Inkbunny. I'd rather not have to open yet another account in order to keep up with everyone and everything. Especially since I know next to nothing about Tumblr's interface, layout or AUP and I can't find any information on their AUP anywhere and I've been the place apart looking for it. I'm looking for that because I don't want to be pulled over to another site like DA.
My gripe there is with DA, you can't post anything you didn't do yourself so for the artistically-inept like myself there's no place there for me to exhibit commissions I've had done. That coupled with their rather shady admins and AUP, not to mention completely horrid and highly confusing user interface is why my DA account is essentially a dead account. I'd rather not end up on a similarly-operated site where it leaves me out in the cold for everything but browsing. I'm not saying that Tumblr is that way, but I don't know that nor can I seem to find any information regarding that towards one way or the other.

I will also admit that a part of me would want to start a "counter protest" of sorts to the apparently growing number of artists taking this route. Only allowing postings of any of commissions I've had done to be posted on Tumblr only if censored but posted uncensored here. There again it's just the feelings inspired by something that unintentionally feels like a smack in the face to fans and viewers.

This isn't what I will or won't do, just my rambling two-cents on things.

Because I have limited time right now:

What is a modern interface?

FA, as far as I can tell, is perfectly functional. Only when the -next big thing- comes along will it matter. I, for one, am only ever annoyed by the "modernization" or appitization of websites.

Not to defend FA's coding (which is the bit underneath) but the interface itself is solid as far as I can tell and gets me to the arts/pronz/jurnalz/commentz when I want them.

Can you say how you'd want it modernized?

Yes, FA's functional. A typewriter is also functional.

The sorts of things I'm looking for is a better way to let my watchers know when I'm streaming, an oekaki system (maybe?), embeddable streaming, some sort of RSS feature, twitter compatibility, maybe a little simple app that lets watchers know when / what you're doing/done, a better solution for mobile viewers. Social media connectivity in general and perhaps a store, or at least direct links to one, and more layout customization, including direct linkage to these new features.

You do want quite a bit, what can I say.

I don't think I know any system or site that does ALL of that (though there are plenty that offer a lot).

I will mention one SMALL thing about layout customization, though. I generally hate it. I find that if a UI is given enough thought that it generally ends up being quite functional whether one knows it or note. I hate to disagree with you on only one feature but I have to.

The rest of the features have, I think, limited functionality and are perhaps feature overload for a single site? Also; what social media site, besides perhaps Twitter, do you WANT linked with this site? Facebook perhaps? All those take quite a bit of licensing etc. I suspect that integrating collective drawing rooms would also be a bit of a tax.

We know the coders aren't great, big deal, but this is essentially a volounteer coded and run site and I don't think that without a massive change in management and compensation structure we're going to see many/most of those features show up.

I suppose for now watchers could follow you on twatter if they want to know when you're livestreaming? I guess? I can see those status updates being even more tedious to remove than the ones I already see. I'm also curious as to what you'd want for a "Better solution for mobile users" anyways? I can't really see using this site for anything more than the occassional picture from a mobile phone and using ANY art-site for more would really be better with a table and I can't speak to that experience.