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Fundraiser Follow-Up
11 years ago
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Journal Start
During the recent DDOS, we put out a call for donations to help bolster and improve the community. The purpose behind this was three-fold: A) to raise money to help directly improve the site and response (afford better DDOS protection), B) improve infrastructure (improve FA’s storage servers) and C) help pay existing debts the site has incurred over time. We are currently in talks with our host to improve and expand our DDOS protection and are looking into increasing storage space.
The site was able to raise $18,932 ($17,104.23 after fees and some charge backs). We want to personally thank everyone who was able to contribute (you will be receiving follow-up updates to your contributions within the next 72 hours). While our GoFundMe may have been closed early we still have the contact and contribution information for all members.
10% of the total funds raised ($1,710) will also be donated to SoFurry. Toumal stated over Twitter that he may not be able to accept the money, in which we case we will donate 50% of the $1,710 to the NJSPCA with the other half going to St. Jude’s.
With the remaining we plan on re-investing back into the site. We do not want to rush into decisions, and will keep the community abreast of our plans to best utilize the funds. We know you put a lot of faith and trust in us and we will return that with full transparency.
We will create a sub-site on FA that lists the funds raised, how much is left, what it went to and copies of receipts. We know transparency is valuable to the community and aim to deliver that to you in full.
We will also be scheduling a time to discuss our ideas and plans with the community to keep people informed once we have discussed it with the site staff and tech team. We will announce the date once we have a solid plan in place.
Note: We also have reports of a few people have connection and submission issues post DDOS. We are looking into the issues and will make another post once we have more information and a solution in place.
UPDATE 1: We spoke to Toumal who stated he will be able to accept the money. We will inform you once we've donated it to SoFurry. =3
The site was able to raise $18,932 ($17,104.23 after fees and some charge backs). We want to personally thank everyone who was able to contribute (you will be receiving follow-up updates to your contributions within the next 72 hours). While our GoFundMe may have been closed early we still have the contact and contribution information for all members.
10% of the total funds raised ($1,710) will also be donated to SoFurry. Toumal stated over Twitter that he may not be able to accept the money, in which we case we will donate 50% of the $1,710 to the NJSPCA with the other half going to St. Jude’s.
With the remaining we plan on re-investing back into the site. We do not want to rush into decisions, and will keep the community abreast of our plans to best utilize the funds. We know you put a lot of faith and trust in us and we will return that with full transparency.
We will create a sub-site on FA that lists the funds raised, how much is left, what it went to and copies of receipts. We know transparency is valuable to the community and aim to deliver that to you in full.
We will also be scheduling a time to discuss our ideas and plans with the community to keep people informed once we have discussed it with the site staff and tech team. We will announce the date once we have a solid plan in place.
Note: We also have reports of a few people have connection and submission issues post DDOS. We are looking into the issues and will make another post once we have more information and a solution in place.
UPDATE 1: We spoke to Toumal who stated he will be able to accept the money. We will inform you once we've donated it to SoFurry. =3
1 cup shredded carrot
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 cup sugar
Salt and pepper
n a large bowl, combine cabbage and carrots. In a smaller bowl, make dressing by combining mayonnaise, vinegar, celery seed, sugar, salt and pepper. Toss dressing into cabbage mixture and let chill. Serve in a family style bowl.
Aaand it's about time too.
Luckily it doesn't need to be anything more then a small changing how you work.
Mine would/will be
1) Get a small flip notebook and or that i hand write my commissioner name and email in, maybe small notes. Invaluable if you need to get a hold of them. Also don't be afraid to set up a business email somewhere that you customer can contact you.
2) save a few reference photo on my flash drive. Erase them after I am done.
3) have a back up site, like so furry or inkbunny or other free site.
4) info them if something happens to main site you will be keeping in touch over at backup till main is restore.
Is getting hold of people worth 5 min of time, you bet you:) Once you make it a habit it not that big of a deal.
I know it Hard for artist to think of it as a business but if your 100 percent freelance you got to think on how you will keep going Despite problems.
Disaster happens whether your a multi million dollor business or a small independent, The ones that survive are the ones that have a plan.
In the end who controls your business? what you do, or what happens to something you use?
Also, the cost of running a simple website is so low, serious artists should have a site for their 'business'. With things like WordPress (both site AND service), you really do not need to know web coding to make a decent site (however, knowing basics will give a MAJOR advantage).
Message me if you want help. Everyone should have online independance no matter how much they use hubs like FA, even if simply as a backup.
And FA, I'm proud of the increase in communication y'all have been showing the community. You are taking the flack like champs and I respect the hell out of that! Keep up the good work, we love this site!!!
I like you.
But apparently it didn't make it that far.
Was that stated when donations were being accepted or...
You said it was $10,000 in unpaid taxes... That's over 50% of the money raised :V
If you were paying off part of a debt I think the people who are donating have a right to know at the time of donation not after. Plus $10,000 in debt?
Why is there so much debt?? What have people been paying all this money for the last time you guys asked for money to upgrade servers and such?
doesn't FA receive monthly donations? I just can't fathom why you have a $10,000 debt and are only paying part of it?
Usually I try not to get upset or question authority especially since I appreciate the work you guys do and the free site, but I think you guys need
to be a little more -transparent- and give us all some answers as to where the money people are paying you is going. =/
sure it could be a coincidence,but either way this looks very very very bad for the sites management.
That combine with previous incidents that i have researched regarding this place,makes me and others(even though they are to scared to speak out for whatever reason,yet another problem that seems to be the norm around here as people shouldn't be scared to voice an oppinen) incredibly untrusting
say what you want but it looks very very very bad on the managements part.
pretty fishy your site was conveniently down the entire time the other ones where intermittently down.
i think you staged it.
Also, for what it's worth, the moon landing? Totally real.
I've been waiting a couple of months for a functioning password reset for a group i was given ownership of. i've submitted 2 tickets now :(
It had to be done.
Donated money, I guess changed their mind or were no longer happy, then went through their CC company to hit me with a chargeback, no reason given or known.
It should never have been charged back unless the actual donator started the process for it.
Like for example, HSUS's CEOs are millionaires and most of their donations go to line their pockets rather than to their charity. While that might piss off donators, they couldn't then forcefully take back the money regardless of how irate they get.
But thats just my opinion on things, XD idk. Not trying to get into a fight or anything XD
ohmy a gaybutt hi there 8D
History of FA
SP
Oh, wait......
What do you think this is, 1984?? Where you can tell everyone you're upping the speed while it slows down???? People notice this shit--otherwise there wouldn't be 52873873273 threads about it on the forums.
I'll stop being a cynic about site improvement when it ACTUALLY IMPROVES.
"A commissions tab now? One that most artists don't even use? "
The commission tab was actually something put on the site years ago. It was locked down for awhile because it became a site exploit, and they brought it back but a lot of artists don't even realize it. I use it for my prices, it's way more convenient.
How about a block feature that actually blocks people from seeing your page and therefore prevents them from seeing where else they can find you????? While Dragoneer is banning people for making "call-out journals"about stalkers and suspending anyone who criticizes the appointment of a *certain* member of the staff to the coding team, people are getting harassed, and abusers are block-evading. When will that be fixed????
This site's user base has a lot of problems they'd rather see fixed and a lot of upgrades they'd like to see in place of re-opening the commissions tab.
FA should absolutely improve this site feature and bring it closer to the original vision. Given the absurd amount of money some artists bring in on this site it really should be a "help FA help artists" situation where funding could be raised for a professional developer to step in. That would be the ideal solution. However, most artists have no need of the commission info section so it's not much of a priority. *shrug*
Would only add to the drama. Besides its not too much of a trouble to block the person in all sites.
Making call-out journals is possibly the most annoying, selfish act you can do. It can permanently damage the harasser's fandom life even after several years. And believe me, harassers will regret their harassment eventually. Too bad that thanks to call-out journals they may have lost everyone's trust.
Hate is destroying the entire fandom from the inside.
Are you kidding or
Callouter's flawless logic. They are people too. They have the right to be judged by their actual actions, not what someone says about them.
Also, dragoneer is not doing this stuff alone, he has moderators as well. He doesn't have the time to check every ban by himself. But I do agree that he should really do a moderator renewal, some mods aren't doing their jobs here to the fullest. In addition, Neer doesn't keep this site up because he has to. He keeps it up because he wants to. You are in no way obliged to stay in this site. Some people seriously earn thousands of dollars a month all thanks to the publicity furaffinity has brought to them. Using FA, or ANY SITE for that matter is not a right, it's a privilege. As a moderator of a rather small site, I know how hard it is to please everyone at once even when there are roughly 40 different visitors a month.
This site exists because Dragoneer is a nice guy. Hell, THE ENTIRE INTERNET exists because there are nice guys like him out there. Now stop complaining all the time and think about what would happen to people of FA if Dragoneer really wouldn't care about the users.
oh my god you HAVE to be joking
no one can really be THAT ignorant
right
right
Stalkers don't deserve sympathy, they reap what they sow.
Life and the internet is a social game with no rules, and you just have to learn to play it.
I think it should be like facebook- when you block someone you become invisible to them and they become invisible to you. I think that would cut down a lot on the way people block others to be dramatic. Immature furries block people ALL THE TIME not because they want to not have contact, but because they want to be able to stalk that person's page and maybe even have some friends harass the person, but they don't want their victim to be able to respond on their page.
Make it so when you block someone they cease to exist as far as you can see from your account. Problem solved.
Do you volunteer your time as a site admin or programmer to help improve things?
I'm just curious, you understand.
and a majority of the site staff also make some sort of revenue on this site as well, just because the site is free to have an account on, does not make it wrong to be upset about loss of business on it.
I get that you heavily rely on your clients on FA, and it doesn't do you any good when it's down, hence is why you need to take a bit of personal accountability and a bit of investment to keep that money flow going, especially when you realize that a free site isn't heading in a direction that you (seemingly) passionately want it to go. Marketing is a bitch, I get it, but that's what most of the world has to go through and work around. I'm confident that you know what you need to do, since you appear to have a good head between your shoulders.
Lastly, I did not say you were being irrational, instead I meant to imply that you were somewhere in between. By saying that the site is kind of useless is what I was addressing on requesting for you to try and maintain being rational. If you felt like you were (which I do agree mostly), then you were. I did not intend to insult, if you felt that way.
But you know what? People don't HAVE to pay for a site to be able to criticize it. Free site =/= beyond reproach. People should ABSOLUTELY be able to point out when things aren't fucking working, or when site staff pulls shit like putting a known animal abuser on the team.
Keep your fucking patronizing bullshit to yourself.
It's just that your opinions are wrong.
Spew bullshit if you like. Nobody's going to stop you, least of all me. Just try to make sure that you're on the morally correct side before you start ejecting.
THEY PROMISE TO SHOW TRANSPARENCY
YET HERE YOU ARE STILL BITCHING
HOOOOOOOLY FUCK
And not it's revealed that, all along, the funds are being mis-managed.
BUT YOU GOT TRANSPARENCY THAT MEANS YOU SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO BIIIIITCH ROSA! GOD DAMN YOU'RE ONE SANDY-SNATCHED DAME!
Oh gee. I wonder why. With their very first act of transparency we're told that FA has sunk itself $10,000 into tax hell despite user bail-outs. Oh, and the rest of the money is either going to go on hardware upgrades we don't need, DDOS protection that's an oxymoron, or off to other sites and won't even benefit FA itself.
Please, though - go right ahead and tell me I'm being unreasonable. Tell me that 'neer, Fender, Sciggles, and all the rest of them are a competent bunch of ladies and gentlemen, and are easily capable of finding their own arses with both hands, a map and a compass.
And when you're done with that, please explain to my husband why you've got such a boner for me. I think he'd be interested.
I'm sexually attracted to your HUSBAND.
Until then feel free to use the peep-hole.
That's what he was referring to. So yeah, that's a somebody.
Also, who are you to say that someone's opinions is "wrong"? Just because you don't agree with them, that doesn't mean they're wrong. Maybe to your standard, it's "wrong", but You don't need to be attacking people for your own benefit. At least try to be rational when providing a thoughtful argument.
Sitting around and screaming about the grass being red and the sun being blue - that's subjective. You may have your opinion, but it's personal and may or may not be correct. Subjectively, a person with a sight defect may see certain colours improperly. An objective opinion is one held by the vast majority to be a fact - grass is objectively green, the sun is objectively yellow, and is known to be so for the major majority of people, regardless of individual subjective opinion.
So, yes - an opinion can be wrong, when held to a general standard. Hence - your opinion is fucking wrong. Objectively wrong. Do not pass 'go', do not collect $200, straight to WRONG.
"Trans people are sick fucks who deserve to be eradicated in the most violent way possible" is a wrong opinion.
You can absolutely have a wrong opinion, and while "people who don't pay for a site shouldn't ever be allowed to complain about its problems" isn't as extreme or fucking disgusting as the opinions I listed above, it is still wrong.
People should absolutely be able to point out things they think are wrong with the site. Sure, I guess "this site looks ugly as fuck" is a bit petty and can be subjective, but things like "the site is running so slow that it hardly functions" and "thumbnails don't show up" is ESSENTIAL for site staff to know, and it happening repeatedly is indicative of a serious problem that could potentially be detrimental to the site being able to hold itself together. Feedback from the userbase, whether it's positive or not, is essential to the site functioning. Without it, FA would collapse in on itself-- which is almost what the site's doing right now.
FA is getting so bad and so frustrating that people are leaving en masse, repeatedly. A site with no userbase IS functionally useless-- but FA is getting to that point while a good chunk of its userbase is STILL HERE, which is not only kind of awful for both site staff and regular users, it's also kind of sad. FA used to be the glue that held the furry fandom/ community together, and now it's falling apart. It's a sad sight to see.
People talking about FA's problems don't WANT to see it crash and burn. They WANT to see FA fix itself and get better, to return to its former glory. That's not happening, and it is frustrating.
Your quotes, while a bit extreme, they do shed light to the error of my opinion. However, my argument lies on the basis that it was his/her opinion and felt that it shouldn't be chastised for being wrong, when I was raised to believe only what is fact and what is fiction to be wrong. But thinking objectively, by current societal standards, your first two quoted opinions are wrong; however, it is their basic human right to believe that they are right, and they are right amongst their peers with similar thinking (as sickening as it is to think about). That was the basis of my arguement, and to his defense when I saw that s/he was being pitted against multiple people with differing opinions. I just felt that it was insulting to use the word "wrong" instead of using a more neutral word (ie. differing opinion, or I defer.) when I felt he was just being rational and curious to your opinion.
I agree, feedback is definitely important here. And by possibly telling you something you already know, there's more merit to constructive feedback then there is in destructive feedback. Sure, it may be internally processed by the admin by the possible initial shock value, but the users who decides to take the negative route to voice their emotion could feel ignored due to not having feedback in return to their possibly impulsive output. I understand the frustration somewhat, be it that I'm just a watcher and art for a hobby as opposed to making a business out of it, and I can't possibly relate.
In other words, you've won me over with your opinion. but I still feel that my added opinion still applies here.
In the end, opinions don't matter unless you agree with them or you enjoy arguing. People will always think other people are wrong, and both kingdoms and furry art sites rise and fall eventually. FA will eventually shut down, whether they get their act together now or not. People are flawed (furries especially), and while there are those who will gladly pay to help, you shouldn't concern yourself with whether or not it's wise. Let them make their own mistakes, and realize that the staff is run by people who think they know what they're doing. They're the captains of the ship, and if you think the boat's going to sink, then don't stand around bitching at the captains and the people on their side; put on a life jacket and prepare to jump ship.
Back up your art work and go join one of the many alternatives. This cokmunity and site is shit, and if you take yourself seriously as an artist, then realize that you don't need this place.
Also don't let the boat metaphor throw you off; you can be on here and elsewhere at the same time. If FA goes under, the users will flood to other sites. Pick one (or more) and set up shop again.
Put all your effort into saving the place, by all means. Just don't think it'll be around forever and then lose everything when it shuts down unexpectedly.
If you have an employer, you have stability and benefits. That's a reliable income. That is not at all the same thing as what I said. Surely you can tell the difference between the two.
They can ALSO choose to give you as few hours as possible, even if you are employed full time. I've worked a place that literally gave me 1 day of work for several weeks. Is this illegal? no. They can do whatever the hell they want, in fact most employers can be abusive as hell to their workers, it's not any better trust me! In fact I'd venture to say sometimes it's even worse!
Not only that, most jobs out there do NOT have benefits like you say, at all. It is absolutely not more stable, and absolutely not any less risky to have a job under an employer. You have got to be the most ignorant person I've come across in a while on this subject.
I am literally done talking to your condescending ass.
While FA is an LLC and should probably meet some industry standard to keep the investors happy...I'm not an investor so I have no say.
Do you somehow have the right and the power to tell us what we can or cannot say about a service?
I'm just curious, you understand.
'neer, y'didn't do jack, and you know it. You went out and got the shiniest toys you could lay your hands on after getting plenty of money from people who were too stupid to know better than to question the configs you purchased because it had a lot of fancy numbers. Just like last time - which, by the way, brings me to a point: what exactly are you doing with those two redundant servers the community shelled over $10,000 for a few years back? Shouldn't they, you know, still be fairly useful? Either way - I've not experienced any 'improvement' in connecting to FA since the last set of upgrades, and I can guarantee it's not my end that's at fault. This site is fucking falling apart, and rather than continuing to throw hardware at a software issue, why don't we focus on recruiting competent staff to re-code the site? And not... oh, I don't know, egotistical jackasses with a fairly disreputable history and a poor skillset, to put it politely?
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm glad you lot are being transparent with your expenditures at long last. This has been a long time coming, even if it took me making a huge issue about it to you (and, might I add, being deflected by your lovely partner rather than having my questions directly answered - you might want to have a word with Sciggles about how to deal with people as opposed to blocking them at the first comment). I'm honestly really happy that you guys are starting to, with some great effort, extract your heads from your rectal cavities and start to act with the manner we'd expect from web admins.
With that said: this is the first step. Transparency means absolutely nothing if you're going to keep shelling out community funds on useless hardware. Make it count, listen to your user-base, and don't fuck this up.
"Oh shit, guys, we're $10,000 in the red, fuck, bail us out now plz"
Fucking wonderful.
Wonder if that could have helped with this personal debt they are in.
'neer does ART?
I'd say 'Neer should apologize—on a separate journal, probably on his personal FA account—about not being upfront about the debts…but even I know that ain't gonna happen.
It's fine though, it seems people are perfectly content supporting such a shitty site that should have been updated a decade ago. Much less with the fucking teasers they released like what, 6 years ago?
+ all the 1's to this comment right here
TURBO SUPER MEGA HYPER ULTRA-MODE WAT.
When FA is down, FA is not a very useful source of news about why FA is down. We all understand that, right?
As it happens, the paying members of the community have been conned and tricked into shelling out the site without realising where their money is actually being spent. I'd call that fairly underhanded, wouldn't you?
I honestly don't care about this issue, personally. My source of porn is still here, I didn't donate money either way, and a DDOS attack seemingly meant to disrupt the website and the furry community at large instead ended up raising well over ten thousand dollars and ensuring the website's continued operation for the foreseeable future
All good to me.
Regardless: I'm not referring to the fact that the site got DDOS'ed. Not at all - in fact, I'd expect ancillary channels to be made available in case of site disruption. That's logical - however. If you're honestly telling me that FA's site staff are in the clear regarding such a large amount of debt accruing without notifying the community? Nah. Get right out. There's absolutely no excuse for $10,000 of tax debt to be accrued silently and in the background - that's a systemic issue that's been occurring for months, if not longer, and there's absolutely no justification for the site staff to have kept it silent.
As it happens, that $10,000 might have been better spent on upgrading the site's base software, or paying future bills - not on being sunk into taxes after the site finances were mis-managed, and certainly not on throwing hardware at a software issue. People are sinking money into the site, expecting an improvement of service that never happens - Dragoneer is more than happy to claim donations, buy more powerful server racks, and keep running the same poorly-designed, easily-exploited code, rather than do any actual work to improve the site. Project Phoenix has been dead in the water since its inception, and hiring Zaush to work on it was the single biggest mistake that project will ever suffer.
Sitting back and saying 'I don't give a shit as long as I get my porn' is how issues like this happen to begin with. If you took a more active interest in how FA is administrated, and started to make complaints when your custom is taken for granted - or even abused as a given - you might find service improving. As it stands, you're part of the reason why FA has sat being the laughing stock of the furry art community - people like you just sit back and let it happen. Until you're willing to hold the site staff to account for their incompetence, you're going to keep seeing FA suffer downtimes - and worse, you're going to keep seeing your fellow furs keep bailing the site out. That's not only wasteful, it's selfish on your part.
Shame on you.
Why are they obligated to tell the community anything regarding their finances? You're not a shareholder. This isn't a for-profit corporation, it's a community website for hosting art. A free service, in fact. Just because you sign up for, say, twitter, doesn't mean you're entitled to their quarterly reports. As soon as they realized they were going to have enough money to pay off the debts instead of just paying for DDOS protection, they notified the community.
What good is $10,000 dollars worth of software if the website goes under because of debt anyway?
Nobody's sinking money into the site expecting an extensive software upgrade upgrade. They donated (not invested) money to help furaffinity gain DDOS protection and to bring the site back up, which happened. We're now on cloudflare and the DDOS ended. They earned more than they expected so they gave some to sofurry to help them recover as well, paid off debts, and had some left over to sink into hardware.
People freely gave money to help the site out and that's exactly what happened. We're back up and running for the foreseeable future. I don't know by what twisted logic buying more powerful servers isn't an upgrade to the site.
Why don't I give a shit? Because my service is fine. I can browse art, I can commission artists, I can engage in the community through comments and favorites, I can watch artists I like, and the site runs absolutely -fine- for me. Pages load as fast as I can click on them and there's hardly any downtime barring freak incidents like the DDOS attack, which we're now protected against, so I'll be seeing even less downtimes which, besides scheduled maintenance, have been exceedingly rare already.
The only people who should be ashamed are the ones blowing up minor issues into giant dramatic whinge-fests because they have nothing better to do. Rather than feed this fire further I'm just going to leave you to go all furry justice warrior to your heart's content while I enjoy the website.
If you give me $100 to spend on food when I'm hungry, I'd assume you'd feel obligated to know that I spent the money on food and not on artwork or intoxicants - this is why the community had such a fit over Allan, after finding out that donations given to said fur were found to have been squandered.
The community pays for the upkeep of this site - without donations, FA sinks. It's as simple as that - therefore, think of the donating members as shareholders - THEY at least have the right to know that their gesture of goodwill is being taken seriously and not squandered on other things. Such as keeping the site afloat despite a growing debt.
As soon as they realized they were going to have enough money to pay off the debts instead of just paying for DDOS protection, they notified the community.
The issue is that these debts occurred at all - don't you find it in the least bit concerning that such a magnitude of debts has been accrued under the noses of those who trust their donations to be spent wisely?
Nobody's sinking money into the site expecting an extensive software upgrade upgrade.
Unfortunately, software upgrades is what the site needs, but you seem blissfully ignorant of the fact, so we won't go into detail here.
They donated (not invested)
A donation is an investment when you have a vested interest in this site's continued operation. A donation is something you give to a cause without expecting a return - an investment is when you spend money with a net gain at the end of it. And, since most people that donate to FA use FA, you can consider them investors.
They earned more than they expected so they gave some to sofurry to help them recover as well, paid off debts, and had some left over to sink into hardware.
If people want to donate to SF, then I'm under the impression they would do so rather than being told 'oh, this money you gave to help FA? Yeah, a cut's going to another site'. Regardless: the site needs software upgrades, as I mentioned earlier. FA has at least four servers - paid for by donations - sitting unused or redundant. If money were better invested into a better coding infrastructure rather than hardware, we'd see a lot less issues (remember the time FA's HDDs literally filled up to capacity?).
Why don't I give a shit? Because my service is fine. I can browse art, I can commission artists, I can engage in the community through comments and favorites, I can watch artists I like, and the site runs absolutely -fine- for me.
Me, me, me. Don't you ever stop to have a care for the wider picture than just 'oh, it works for me, so who gives a shit?'?. Maybe you haven't realised, but your continued enjoyment of this site depends on the goodwill of others keeping it afloat - perhaps it's time you took a better interest in how well their money is being spent, before all that goodwill runs out and FA's forced to close down.
barring freak incidents like the DDOS attack
And the servers constantly shitting themselves, and the shitty code being exploited, and the staff being fucking incompetent and not keeping an eye on how full the server's HDDs are... I could go on.
HA because they proved their point while yours was invalid.
You got it down.
these stupid brain-dead IdoitFurs are the cancer that is destroying the furry community,they are the reason everyone belives that all furs are perverts incapable of critcal thought. these people should be run the fuck out of the fandom plain and simple.
Either way: let idiots be idiots. Eventually they'll leave of their own accord.
So you keep that €3.73 separate from your own revenue, until tax man says it ok to keep at the end of the fiscal year.
which means neer did absolutely shit on bookkeeping and is looking for money to fix his personal mistakes, or the american tax system is just retarded, which i hear allot too
Every time admin positions have come up I've offered, never heard anything back, so yeah I'm now very untrustworthy of the system.
So neer, Tell us, why did Kitashi the best thing to come from fA admin get banned? The only open transparent hard working coder with actual knowledge, gone.
If I could fave comments I would.
Heck, it's even slower than before... And I'm using a steady 100Mb/s connection all the time.
Now that's just silly. . now I have to wonder why did you think of that? o.o
Most of the people say that since they see me everywhere though. . somehow lol
Naaa, don't blame yourself ; 3;
1. Out of curiosity, what is the expense of FA's internet service provider? I've always wondered what it would be for a larger site like this. Do business plans for large sites charge by bandwidth or flatly like home/residential providers?
2. I googled a bit about cloudflare to see what the buzz is about it for so many sites that now use it, and so I'm wondering is FA communicating securely with cloudflare? Apparently even though a connection can be secure between the user and cloudflare, it's possible that cloudflare could be communicating unencrypted with the end server, so that's something you might want to confirm (unless you already have).
Thanks
There usualy is a bandwidth cap on how much traffic your server uploads to clients, and this is usually around 4-30 TB, this being a website with images, it can get heavy, and the cap can be upped in most hosts for a fixed price of about 10-50 per data block, if you dont up the cap, then most hosts will charge per GB, which can cost about 1,50-5 per GB
2. cloudflare encrypts the whole processes back and forth, cloudflare > origin server usses a keyless SSL process explained here http://arstechnica.com/information-.....thout-the-key/ Banks and other institutions that need heavy encrypted traffic use it, so it good enough for FA.
Is FA using encryption yes, but only if you use HTTPS, and im willing to bet its a self signed certificate so they key could be just stolen from the servers
On cloudflare, I was talking about this moreso:
http://webmasters.stackexchange.com.....s-flexible-ssl
If FA is using their flexible SSL option, the connection from cloudflare's proxy to FA would be insecure even if you could still access FA.net via https. I would assume they wouldn't have it setup this way since before the DDoS and switching to cloudflare, FA fully supported HTTP secure, so they already have their own certificate. I just wanted to bring it up in case it was overlooked.
FA is a huge site compared to mine, and probably goes through multiple hundreds of TB a month in bandwidth, and (hopefully) is on a gig drop, so their rack is more than likely around or a little less than $1k a month.
For SSL and CloudFlare, the connection from client => CF is SSL by default now, but like you said CF => Server is unencrypted, unless you set up a local SLL cert and tell CF to accept it, since you don't need an official one, they all work the same. That would make the entire connection 100% SSL secured.
I also agree with most other people in this thread that FA needs to go through a major recoding, every time I come here I get reminded of Geocities- and Neopets-era design
Sites been ridiculously slow for me too.
And just how large are these debts? If it wasn't stated or hinted at at the very least, that funds would be going towards purpose C, that's just...wow. Transparency is valuable, yet if that was purposefully left out and never placed on the GFM page....
I remember checking the reddit link a few times but not a ton. Regardless, it should have been stated on the gofundme page.
Which would mean, that the debt has been actively ignored and allowed to build.
Just like the trouble tickets..
I tried emailing dragoneer[at]furaffnity.net about a very minor rule clarification issue, and it's been bouncing back.
Also, you may want to check your DNS settings. Chances are you are using your ISP's DNS configuration and they're being dicks to Netflix by bottlenecking the Level3 or Cogent peering points. If your FA traffic is going over those peers then it will be slowed. My ISP, Verizon FiOS, will do that to FA. They'll also do it to Twitch. The degradation in performance is criminal especially when I can hop on a VPN and get full speed. Check your ISP for shenanigans.
Lastly, my ISP doesn't throttle. Especially obvious it's not the case because I can download an entire 2 1/2 hour movie on Netflix in under 2 minutes, but FA can't post a text reply in 5....
How's Phoenix coming along, again?
while this website, offered by maybe 100s of coders, designers, in some cases even for free, to fix this heap of sticks and mud
Donate and support them to ensure they are functional on the most basic levels. And don't let them sit on their laurels when the code needs updating or the software needs patching.
Art, stories, animations and movies, and music all attract people- create content (or comission it) and spread the world. If you porn it, they will come.
it repeatedly dies then rises again from the ashes
GREAT JOB
can you guess which one
Bravo
Thanks.
When can i fuck up and profit really really well?
I hope this server upgrade works out well for the users. If I could have the userbase of FA and the functionality of Weasyl I'd give you a blowjob even if you did raise money under extremely uncomfortable circumstances.
Uploaded file to be recached: http://d.facdn.net/art/alyxx/141309.....che=1413929275
But the cached updated file never replaces the original: http://d.facdn.net/art/alyxx/141309.....alyxx_done.jpg
Days of waiting and clearing browser files doesn't help. This is definitely a server issue, 3 other artists I know of confirm.
Sometimes thumbnails appear totally blank or just come up with the "Image not found" icon, although the image is clickable and shows up with an image (they aren't Flash; I point that out only because I know FA can't generate thumbnails from Flash files). I was able to re-create the problem with literally no effort in Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Midori. I don't have any logs from my browser, but am able to get them if they are of any use and if you need them.
Also, I'd like to point out another (possibly more serious) bug- an IMG tag pointing to the Fur Affinity logout page will sign a user out upon navigating to a page containing an IMG tag pointing to Fur Affinity's logout page. I don't know what causes it, but from what I've heard from others who know about this bug, it doesn't have a "key" like Journals and Notes do (I won't go any further explaining it here; considering you develop for FA so I think you know what I'm talking about. XP).
This is the image: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/14800730/
It should be this quality, but smaller: http://white-mantis.deviantart.com/.....sion-489355858
Hidden comment is mine, forgot to add a link.
Weasyl was made by people who were sick of the F.A. admins and their handling of the issues here and it shows in their web design. Mainly the guidelines that this site follows for good navigation and tossed them in the trash.
Inkbunny can raise its own donations. We don't really need a hand-out from a larger site.
Guess what? Sofurry had the same content AND people.
There's no difference. 83
Not quite parsing this one, bro. Mind rejiggering the word config there?
Unfortunately we've created a world of people who feel they are entitled to everything, at no cost to themselves in time, money, or effort. Pretty sad, really. Isn't this supposed to be a cooperative community?
And, yes, I agree that any use for paying back debts should have been clearly stated, and the proportion of those back debts relative to other anticipated expenditures. So don't jump me about that! If you decline that use, you can always do a chargeback as discussed above, and create more distractions for the site admins.
Just walk on higher ground and know you're not whining. Feel superior in that
I'd just like to see a little more cooperation and empathy on a site like this. I've been in the admins' position. It sucks when a site is attacked, and there's little you can do about it but try to do better in the future. I'm sure many people have gripes about the site, but diverting the admins with those gripes right now seems counter-productive.
I am just thankful to have the site back!
Oh yeah I agree x_x people go for the throat here; but it's kinda just a fact of being online I suppose. The problems with the site has been though we've been promised this and that, and never seen it. so I can see some validity in the annoyance.
Right? I was going crazy without FA...now I have a legitimate reason to procrastinate on work
I look forward to joining these many other, better sites in the future!
I don't think everyone here really hates Dragoneer, but would like to see more of the transparency he said he was going to show us in reports/updates, and actually following through on promises.
I've been here for eight. You wanna know why a lot of us have gripes? Go look up an archived version of FA from eight years ago.
…I’ll wait.
…
…
…see any differences? Yeah I didn't think so—and that’s the point.
FA hasn’t changed in any major way since I joined this site over eight years ago. Dragoneer keeps writing checks to the community that his ass just can’t cash, and most of the long-term users have become cynical about his promises as a result.
I'm empathetic—more than it may seem from the comments I’ve made on this journal. I can understand what ’Neer is going through and how everyone can make mistakes and all that jazz. But my well of empathy is not bottomless; at some point, I no longer have fucks to give, and that point for FA/’Neer happened long before any of this current BS happened.
People have been trying for years—some of them doing this even before I joined the site—to yank Dragoneer’s head out of his ass and force him to confront the fact that he’s doing an incompetent job of running FA in multiple capacities. Nothing has yet to work.
So yeah, forgive some of us for being cynical about another batch of promises from Dragoneer.
Some of us just happen to remember the original Project Phoenix.
People who complain like this sure as hell aren't changing dragoneers mind or helping, Just acting to be a thorn in his side. I bet none of these people would have the balls (or the disrespect) to say this cruel stuff to his face, I've met him multiple times he's a really nice guy who has personally helped me with problems on and offline.
And running a site with thousands of Users isn't free. Of course they're gonna have to pay for some shit, And hey if you don't like funding a site that you can use for free and don't even have to donate to yet makes you money, friends, art, ect. Leave. Please because I'm tired of everyone's bitching and moaning, it's not gonna change anything and it never has.
And I know you aren't really being that bad. But cmon when are we gonna drop project pheonix, For real...
Something cannot improve if nothing is criticized. If everyone up and left like people keep suggesting (stop suggesting this, not everyone hates FA, some people want the site to keep working), then there would be no FA. The users make the site, the site is run off of ad revenue and donations that other people have injected into it.
Stop saying things like "you can't complain if you use it for free". MOST sites are free. People bitch about FB, tumblr, and tons of other sites and they are JUST AS FREE. Stop it.
If people posted sensible complaints with out telling the owner of the site to take his head out of his ass, that would be great.
So let me put this in layman's terms than I'm done.
If you want to complain, consider clearly and maturely sending your message to the person who lets you use this site for free.
I know how this works. You need feedback. Not opinions.
I don't appreciate being talked down to, especially by someone who has absolutely no idea why anyone has a problem and talks like they barely have a handle on the situation.
I am reading the complaints, and if you read them yourself you'd see most don't contribute.
And yes your reading in between the lines and saying.
"I'm offended"
For no good reason.
I know what these people are talking about I'm aware of whats happening,
But I hope you realize that all YOU are doing right now is starting a fight.
Please realize that I want the site to improve to. So I'll say it one more time.
I wish people would be more considerate when commenting to dragoneer instead of treating him like some kind of anti-christ, he's a person too, Just like you are.
And If you still think I'm in the wrong for literally saying "Hey chill guys he's just someone having trouble doing his job cut him some slack, and leave more respectful feedback"
I'm done talking to a brick wall.
If you weren't picking a fight you would have worded your first comment differently than
"you don't know what your talking about, shut up"
But now the way you went about it, being rude to me because I was being rude to someone else, caused a whole new problem that didn't need to happen.
Hate just breeds more hate. I can tell.
"Nothing you've said has input any help whatsoever.
Something cannot improve if nothing is criticized. If everyone up and left like people keep suggesting (stop suggesting this, not everyone hates FA, some people want the site to keep working), then there would be no FA. The users make the site, the site is run off of ad revenue and donations that other people have injected into it.
Stop saying things like "you can't complain if you use it for free". MOST sites are free. People bitch about FB, tumblr, and tons of other sites and they are JUST AS FREE. Stop it."
Where did I attack you? Did I call you a name that I am unaware of? Did I say something about your character, or condescend to you like you were a child?
I appreciate your apology, but I don't like the fact that you're trying to make it seem like I have done something to hurt your feelings when I did no such thing.
Dragoneer doesn't code for the site, sooo...what work exactly? People aren't even directly talking down to him (except a handful of users), they are upset with everything as a whole because absolutely NOTHING is improving or getting fixed, nothing ever changes even though they keep asking for more and more donations (usually in the $20,000 range and that's on top of all the ad revenue and money made from the con) to fund these big changes that don't ever happen.
But for the most part your right, It wasn't an attack.
But it wasn't necessary either, because my message was taken a different way by you.
At that time I was standing on the point that.
Why not be a descent human being and try to show compassion.
But, I mean to be honest if you hadn't said that first sentence my reaction would have be totally different.
I would have to say it was Condescending in such a way to say, YOU weren't helping because I don't think you were.
You may not like being told you're wrong because you just don't have the experience or awareness of site history held by those complaining, but imagine that you have been involved with something for nearly a decade, then someone who joined less than a year ago starts telling you they know better than you do. That would be why some of the responses you got were just as offended as you were when you felt you were under attack. The difference is their offense was more justified because you were being dismissive of their greater experience and awareness, while they were being dismissive of your >lack< of experience.
People bitch about FA because they see what it easily SHOULD be and COULD be and WOULD be if not for one man's complete incompetence in managing it. Sites have come and gone, built from scratch, with >nothing< to start with. FA gets $18,000 in a few DAYS (this is like, the third time they've gotten over 10 grand in a donation drive) yet it's still on the same code base it started with. The ONLY reason things are not better than they are is that Dragoneer lacks the capacity to do what needs to be done AND he lacks the ability to find people who CAN do it and then let them do it for him.
So yes, when people see this place get tens of thousands of dollars - AGAIN - knowing it will just be flushed into hardware (or back taxes this time, apparently), they have every fucking right to be angry and negative. The site never changes because nothing FORCES it to change - there will always be more new people like yourself shushing and drowning out those of us who have been here since the beginning who know better, so there will always be enough people ignorant of what this stuff means to keep throwing money at them and keep this place afloat.
stop fucking being a brain-dead idoitfur
don't want furs saying your a jackass?
stop acting like a jackass
want people to value your thoughts
stop acting like a jackass incapable of critical thinking
you want to stop being looked at as a worthless waste of space?
stop being a worthless waste of space
you see a pattern here idiot?
I think you need to take your own advice see that this situation had been dealt with and be on your marry way.
Let's see. What about the big Furocity merger that ended with nothing major happening? What about the multiple promises of new UIs that always get tossed out when ’Neer comes up with a new UI design he likes better? What about the promise of monthly ‘town halls’ that never once happened? What about every promise Dragoneer has made about performance improvements that rarely result in any non-negligible improvement?
I don’t feel I’m entitled to FA. That said, I am entitled to criticize the site and how it’s run, seeing as how I’ve been on the site for longer than a minute and I’ve seen a ton of Dragoneer’s empty promises.
I like FA. I want to see it get better. But either shutting up with my criticism or simply leaving without saying why isn't going to make it happen—especially since I'm just one jackoff who the site can ‘live without’, so to speak.
So don’t tell me to ‘please leave’ because I’m criticizing FA. You’re not entitled to tell me that.
(Least of all me.)
But at some point, he has to be able to follow through on promises he has made to the userbase at large.
He has promised better backend improvements, new UIs, and other major features for years. But he’s never once delivered. This site looks the same now as it did in 2006—and probably further back than that. Every time he goes for new hardware, plenty of people who know about that shit tell him that he’s buying shit hardware, but he never listens. People who have offered their time and skills to work on/improve the site end up pushed away either by Dragoneer, Yak, or someone working under them.
You’re losing faith in the community, and that’s sad, but you might want to understand that the community lost faith in Dragoneer looooooooooong before this happened.
And you’re not going to change that by asking people to ‘leave thoughtful feedback’.
I mean I kind of understand your frustraition more now that I've cooled down a bit.
And it is stupid but if he doesn't respond to anything...
Besides, are we not allowed to vent our frustration? Especially since Dragoneer’s watching and we can say all this to his face. I’m not going around talking shit behind his back; I’m right here, where everyone (and ’Neer) can see me say he’s done a shit job of running FA for years.
Now, whether he takes the criticism to heart is another matter—but he can’t avoid it forever. And so long as FA is around, we’re going to keep telling ’Neer to do a better job.
Maybe not because he can, but damn sure because he should.
And I get it now. Thanks for bearing with the annoying first response I made.
Fucking exactly. I don't know if I could have said it better. Been here just as long and I'm sick of seeing post after post about good tidings that never arrive. The idea that Neer does this for free is bologna as there have been several fundraisers, followed by posts like this: http://i.imgur.com/bmx7AaQ.png
I'm a reasonable person. I want Neer to be able to make a living doing what he does, because make no mistake, its a service to the community. But you know its bad when you WISH FA would die to force the community to migrate somewhere better. I really hope he gets this right or by the time the next fundraiser comes around I will go nuclear.
Because "plan" is totally the word you want to use here. Then again, if it was "we will be" instead it's not like we'd believe it anyway.
Am I actually seeing this here? When did you idiots take leave of your fucking senses?!
Hardware is not the fucking issue here. You guys have servers fucking lying around rotting and doing fuck-all, for christ's sake. What you idiots NEED to be doing is INJECTING THAT FINANCE INTO PAYING SOMEBODY TO CODE THE SITE BETTER.
Jesus Christ, the amount of pantshittery I'm seeing here is unbelievable - I know I tend to erupt every news journal into a shit-flinging pissfest, but this is beyond the pale.
the code for project phenoix hasn't been updated in 8 million years
Fixed.
You're welcome for me keeping your tufty little pawsies so immaculate.
HEROES RISE AGAIN
OBLITERATING EVER- wait, wrong song.
But, the fact remains that you guys don't deserve the praise you expect. You embezzle and mis-manage the funds you receive from the people who support you, you lie to those who trust you, and you conceal the truth from those that expect nothing but honesty - and this is before considering that you constantly renege on the promises you offer to the community you purportedly represent and support. And considering further the fact that dissenting opinions are rarely taken into account or even regarded... you can begin to imagine why your once-loyal fanbase is beginning to become disillusioned with the staff that runs this place.
I do not want to be unpleasant to you. But the simple fact remains that you give me little opportunity to do anything else.
Consider that, before complaining about how you're treated. Abuse my trust, and I will offer a similar treatment.
Nobody's accusing you personally of embezzlement. Regardless of your own chequered history within the fandom (which I'll politely gloss over), the very fact that you have to stand here and tell me that you have to watch over one of your compatriots and ensure he stays to the line, doesn't fill me with confidence in Dragoneer's ability to manage the site. Much less do I find the fact that Sean managed to accrue $10,000 of debt before finally making a statement - and even then only after raising the money to clear it - very inspiring, to say the absolute least. And this is before we begin such fun-filled discussions like the iPhone Sandwich Caper, or why he feels the need to constantly throw hardware at software issues (and therefore waste further donations on needless purchases), or why he decided to pull an extremely unpopular stunt by hiring Zaush to work on Phoenix...
Frankly: regardless of how much work you put into the site, the fact that the guys at the helm don't have a clue is self-evident, and the idea that you're having to stand here and tell me they need to be guarded against future fuck-ups does not inspire confidence in me. These are the people the furry community pay to keep FA running - and you have to tell me that they need to be kept under vigil in order to maintain honesty and transparency?
Please. Sean may own this site, Sean may run this site, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that he has a single clue about either. And I'm doing my best to remain polite and well-mannered with that opinion.
And from my understanding, Fur Affinity has never scammed anyone. Have there been some broken promises by the company? Yes, mostly involving UI. But our staff are working towards solutions - it's not an easy feat.
The very fact that hardware seems to be constantly thrown at software issues strikes me as poor management in the short run - and in the long run, it strikes me as a con, given that Sean - as head admin of this site - should know full well that constantly upgrading the hardware this site runs on rather than dealing with the underlying issues causing these problems is neither cost-effective, nor fair on the users that have to constantly foot the bill. The very fact that, after so many promises of a better FA and a new UI, all the money the patrons have tendered towards hardware only, strikes me as a massive, if perhaps unintentional, scam. Your patrons are not receiving value for money, and as somebody that has been brought up to live frugally and to make the most of every penny, this greatly offends me.
Your patrons give their money freely in the understanding that it won't be squandered - what they have to show for it are servers that are constantly replaced before their time, poorly-selected hardware that requires constant replacement, and sweet, refreshing nothingness in terms of tangible improvements to the site. Again - I find the fact that so much money has been shovelled into this enterprise for such little gains to be incredibly offensive.
Re-coding the site might not be an easy feat, but plenty of assistance has been freely offered in the past and turned down. The fact that Phoenix has sat in development hell for so long tells me that, not only does Sean not have the capability to hire competent staff members to work on the project, but that the grandiose designs we're constantly offered up will never materialise. Do this community a favour and bring together a competent team that will work together without arrogance alienating one another, and ensure that the work gets done in a timely manner. Dithering about provides nothing.
Either way, being mad doesn't justify treating our staff or those who donated poorly
Just the staff, actually. If you'd care to check, I have nothing against donators - it's the donators I'm in defence of, given that it's taken so long for you, the staff, to return some much-needed transparency upon your expenditures. If I'm angry, it's because they have been treated poorly, and quite rightly it should be you, the staff, that are brought to heel for this. I defend your paying patrons against poor treatment by you, the staff - please don't mistake my anger for abuse.
I would enjoy discussing this with you more - if you need me, please. You know where to find me.
AW SHIT MAN IT'S RAININ' GET DA TARP WE GOT PROMISED 'S A SAFETY NET IN '09.
OH WAIT NO DAT'S JUST A NEWSPAPUH.
SHIT DAWG.
They're doing that.
PEOPLE OF COLOUR AND ETHNICITY.
It's not like they didn't have people at one point that had been helping or there are those that have volunteered...
oh wait
" While our GoFundMe may have been closed early"
It's like an ouroboros ring of fecal matter.
Sure, Im skeptical, but im not going to sit here and parrot the same trite complaints that come up whenever something happens to FA. There is absolutely no point.
Aside from that, I really hope that we can see some profound improvements in the next months. 18k is a lot to work with and it will be very disappointing in nothing notable comes from it. Best wishes to staff, they have a lot on their plate lol.
Curious though, why did the Gofundme page get taken down? Was there any reason for it?
The fundme thing was made minus before the DDos.
There were alot of comments on it about dragonneer and him needing the money to pay his mortgage *funny*
and more along that line, so yup.
Maybe they criticize because they want FA to succeed and get better?
Maybe they actually want to support the site but are tired of fake promises?
Maybe try seeing things from other people's point of view?
I totally agree with you. The "if you don't like it leave" like always bugs me as there's a million and one reasons why leaving would be hard for a lot of people. On top of the fact it screams "if you use a service you can't have any complaints about it"
Nevermind that's how shit is SUPPOSED to get fixed or be brought to attention. Nevermind they have to say this same shit over and over again because it never gets fixed. Nevermind that people are fed up and are reacting the way anyone would react when presented with the same bullshit over and over again.
I personally like the site, and it would be hard for me to leave and for exactly those reasons I dont cut down staff every time something like this happens. I have no problem with complaining, but people are just outright being assholes and thats just not ok. I understand being upset, but spinning up a shitstorm everytime the site has problems, not so much.
Im willing to admit the "if you dont like it leave" logic can be screwy, but not leaving to "better" alternatives is sort of what has caused this imbalance and is why people cant get work anywhere else. I mean Weasyl, as promising as it seemed, is a ghost town when FA is running properly.
Merry go round. Artists won't leave cuz customers, customers won't leave cuz artists.
I also can't fault the shit storm. There have been people stuck here for years seeing this happen over and over again. Seeing stuff implemented that doesn't need to be, stuff that has been asked by the masses over and over again get ignored or they get the same ol "we're working on it" line, fundraisers get money raised and then six months down the line everyone's asking "but what happened to that thing that we bought for you that was supposed to do this". This is happening over and over and over and there's only so many times you can keep doing the same old thing and getting people being slightly upset before people are like "SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK." I believe a good majority of those people who are angry are these types. These people who have stayed her faithfully. Who have put their love and time into their own sections of this site who want the site to be better for everyone, these people who constantly keep getting kicked and then being told over and over again to leave or to be quiet about their gripes because "the admins are fixing it, be patient" or "the admins have enough on their plates" or "if you don't like it leave". It's not hard to see why people are very very vocal and very hostile about what they're upset about.
I think it's just best to let people complain in whatever way they see fit and just leave it at that. They may have their reasons and it may not be they're just going for the throats and being entitled brats, not that you called them any, just saying in general.
I understand why people are vocal, I just dont get vile. No, I havent been here since the days of old, but Im pissed at the site. Am I going to lose my shit though? Nah, not really. I have little patience for wishy washy crap. I just think the shitstorms dont do much good and if anything they bring people farther away from the target as far as getting things done go because lets face it, shit makes great fertilizer for the seeds of misinformation. I totally get why people are upset, I really do because this shit is FUBAR, I just cant stand the bs in general.
I cant do anything about the way people choose to behave. I just really dont agree with it most of the time and that goes for both side of the "FA saga".
I guess I have more of a problem with people flat out acting like people can't say ANYTHING bad about the site or even vent, even if it's on the side of hooooly shit hostile, than I do with people choosing to get angry at it. Like people have a reason to be at least a little upset and saying nothing on so many things just leads to more nonsense.
Though, do I feel that because of those reasons people should not speak up? No way. I just think that things can be done differently. People have a right to be mad, its just a fine line to walk, a misinformed knee-jerk reaction can travel quickly with all of these social outlets at our disposal and soon enough then we have a situation where nobody knows which ways up anymore and knowing the truth is nigh impossible.
FA drama is tiresome like watching a bad anime lol. Conflicts go on forever without a decent resolution and its so convoluted that people dont even know how to feel but keep watching anyways.
But then again, I curse like a sailor, voice my opinions very loud and proud, and am not afraid to be blunt or harsh when it comes to something I'm passionate about. At the very least they've spoken up, even if nothing is ever done about it. At the very least they showed how much it meant to them. And if nothing ever gets done, then it'll come to a head and that'll be the point where everyone starts to shift away from the site. There's only so much people can take before all the barking and hostility turns into 'fuck it.'
But the drama and such doesn't bother me so much. Hell I find it entertaining and I've met some pretty awesome people just from the journals the admins and other people post on site drama. Plus, I don't know if I could call it drama if people are complaining about legitimate stuff, regardless of how hostile they are in saying it.
Theres a difference between being constructively critical and just making crappy comments that dont help anyone. Because im sorry but comments like "Wonder how long till the site shits itself again." and things along that line dont help anyone. Dont get me wrong, its not an illegitimate concern, but stating it is pretty pointless.
I get that nobodies perfect and people have different concerns, but people being inappropriate every time this site has a problem is hardly helpful. If people really want to see FA succeed and like being here, then the least they can do is state their concerns maturely and effectively.
I think most people are just tired of trying to offer constructive comments when they are never ever taken into consideration. Stuff gets ignored and the site never changes and continues down the exact same path.
I can definitely dig that, I think there are just other ways of handling things. You can be pissy and constructive at the same time. Im just not a fan of the pissy comments with no substance whatsoever. They just sort of breed a bad environment and make a good setting for the seeds of misinformation.
Every time this happens...
Every...
Time...
if u want to make money of furry art this is the best place to work , and if you want to look at furry art this is where people upload it
Here's the problem with that: none of the other places to go have the userbase of FA. A fair number of artists rely on FA to make money via their art. (You can argue about relying on a single fixed point later.) Their moving things to another site would likely mean a dip in their income while their customers transition from one site to another.
FA is, for better or worse, the furry artdump site. No other competitor can make inroads on FA because it's the entrenched site with the biggest userbase that has become "comfortable" for people. Things will stay that way unless(/until) FA dies.
Perhaps I shouldnt have stated it so simply.
I more so mean that weve dug out own hole here and If people actually moved to "greener pastures" and stuck to their guns when they got sick of FA, then things could actually change. I dont have much hope for that changing without the death of FA of course, but its not impossible. I just dont think that people should get irrational when this kind of thing happens because its our fault as a collective that its so imbalanced.
Yes, I'm that old. XD
Irrelevant comment is irrelevant. *rolls away*
Very disappointing, yes. Imagine for a moment, the extent of your disappointment if exactly that happens. The site gets this much money, and still nothing changes. They say it goes to new hardware that's better and faster and shiny, but you can't notice any discernible difference in any way.
Now imagine the site goes down again, and they get this kind of money again, and the exact same nothing happens. Wouldn't your disappointment be compounded?
Well that's where the negativity comes from. The people who are the angriest and the most negative are often the ones who know this is one more of too many downtimes to count, and the third time they have gotten over 10 grand from a 'oh shit, we're down, we need money to fix things' and there is NO significant change whatsoever. The same problems, the same mistakes, the same issues. Yeah, you see the same complaints; because those points are always still there, never addressed, never fixed.
It's not as simple as 'go somewhere else.' People use FA for the same reason they use PayPal: despite superior alternatives, the alternatives are only as good as how many other people are using them as well, and no alternative is used by as many people as this one. People don't leave, or they leave and come back, because too many other people, friends and followers, are still here and THEY can't/won't leave for the same reasons.
to summarize: Being upset is justifiable, everyone has every right to be, but being downright vile isnt. I understand why people are pissed, but being volatile in rude is not going to solve anything. Staff only addresses concerns to placate people, statements are never backed up. When people get loud enough, they give us a cookie to get us to shut up. I understand that people are pretty much stuck with FA at this point, but clinging to FA is what caused this problem in the first place and I feel that the community could actually make a change if effort was made. I appreciate the Paypal/FA comparison, its accurate in sentiment, but FA doesnt have the same corporate power paypal does. Paypal is supported by the majority of internet stores because they grease everyone's palms to make sure they dont accept competitors, there is big money there making change impossible. Change could be achieved here by people actually leaving. Thats all it would take. Sure thats simplifying the hell out of it, but if people are truly dissatisfied, then they really should make an effort to break away from the site. Its not impossible, I have seen many artists successfully do it. People are just complacent. Would it be easy? No. Are people actually willing to do what it takes as a community to make things better for ourselves? No, thats why were here. Stuck in an abusive relationship with a website.
I think everybody that has responded to me has really underestimated the amount of disappointment I have in staffs behavior just because "I havent been here for all of it". No, I know crap when I see it, and Im beyond upset about it, and im going to be even more displeased when this whole fundraiser amount s to nothing.
Almost every time a new site has popped up, there has been a fairly massive exodus. But shit always happens. Whether something about the new site explodes, or people just miss the friends/audience that didn't follow them to the new site and they drift back here. Each time people have packed up and left, started fresh, only to have to resurface here again for whatever reasons, they're that much less likely to bother again. Weasyl's only the most recent example, and the enthusiasm for that one is significantly less than previous alternatives.
FA's reached a point where the gravity of the sheer mass of the userbase is hard to get away from. People DO try. But there are reasons why people use these sites in the first place, and FA doesn't need to be actively obstructing competition to reduce the viability of alternatives. Half the reason to bother posting to a site is the exposure, and not everyone can afford to accept reduced exposure even if it means being on a better site. I left, the new site was growing, and over time they made a series of decisions that validated their detractors and gave a large portion of my already reduced audience reason to come back here. So I eventually had to come back as well, because this is where my watchers are.
The frustration of FA's failings is part of the venom they get, but the most venomous detractors are people who most likely HAVE tried the "if you don't like it, go somewhere else" route, and found themselves back here anyway because alternatives just aren't as viable. The analogy to being stuck in an abusive relationship is very apt.
It's not about people being unwilling to do what it takes as a community to make things better. There is no end to the willing part of it, the community just isn't >able.< This site is overflowing with talented and competent people with the skillsets FA needs to improve. But those people always have, and always will, be seen as threats by Neer. Because he is the problem. And anyone with any remote competency will eventually have to point that out to him if they want to fix things, and he does not handle criticism well. If he goes to do something he's already done before, and it was a horrible mess, and he should have learned not to do that, and a person simply tries to remind him of how past experiences would indicate his current planned actions are probably a bad idea - he shuts down and fusses about 'rubbing his nose in past mistakes.' You can't expect someone to act differently when attempts to help them learn from mistakes are only ever interpreted by him as nothing more than berating him and shaming him for those mistakes. The most effective factor in actually motivating behavior from Neer has always been, unfortunately, just massive public bitching.
I don't think he's a bad person. It's just that the evidence of reality and established FA history has incontrovertibly established that he is NOT fit for the role he has assigned himself. He likes to tell himself it's just the inherent difficulties of running a site like this, but none of the others have had half the problems FA has had, nor half the difficulty in addressing them. He's not capable of doing this job, but he will never step down and find someone who is. And as long as FA keeps hobbling along, it WILL keep people tied to it because the people on this site are important to each other, both friendships and business relationships. Most of us angry bitching people don't want FA to die. We just want it to improve. But the more is seen, the more apparent that improvement and progress cannot and will not happen with Neer at the helm, and the only person who can remove him from that seat for the betterment of EVERYTHING about this site, is himself. Neer does not have the ability to make FA better, but Neer's the only person with the ability to LET FA get better, and all he'd have to do is just get out of the way of the people throwing themselves at the site wanting to fix it. When it's a choice between seeing this community grow and thrive and prosper, or just being the guy running it no matter what, his priority is undeniably clear.
I want your children in my ovaries for this.
Ten minutes, back of the bike sheds, you and me. Let's make sweet intellectual child-batter.
Why are you giving the bikes free porn?
Joking aside, this comment does sum up how I felt about the above comment, you know minus the children part.
the animal needs to be put down so to speak.
neer is not getting any better he never will get better,he will always be an egotistical narcissistic incompatent.You use the anologey of a bad relatinship im working in a communty support enviroment do you know what we tell people who are in a abusive relintinship we tell them to get out of it,as quickly as possible as soon as possible becuse it WILL eventuly kill them.
it seems every-fur on FA has abused women(or men but stupid society won't acknowledge that its a thing) syndrome,its not healthy you people KNOW its not healthy stop going back to it you deserve better.
Hello voice of reason, sadly you will be ignored by the administration in this thread because you're making too much sense and they cannot be bothered to deal with such a long term valid concerns.
The only people currently on the staff page who isn't a new face to me are FoxAmoore (who by all accounts does a good job), and Surgat, who was brought on as an admin despite being the person behind the WTF_FA Livejournal, a group that existed simply to find objectionable submissions on FA, ridicule them, and of course was a significant cause of on-site trolling because when a group of trolls make a page to share stuff to shit on, of course a portion of them are going to follow it back to the source to shit on whoever made it. So yeah, of all the people to come and go on staff over the years, one of the longest-standing staffmembers is the kind of person who'd invest time making a place for people to come together as a community based on the ideal of laughing at other peoples' interests. It speaks volumes of Neer's ability to gauge appropriate candidates for these positions.
Come on, neer got offered $40k from a group of furs wanting to buy and improve fA, run it openly and with a board of people at the top (which they would include neer) and he refused, he refuses to trust anyone with anything.
I hope he either gets his shit together and fix's this place or that it burns to the ground and everyone moves to a more suitable site where we arent milked to buy shiny toys (which seems to be his solution to everything)
Have you ever read the Encyclopedia Dramatica webpage about fA? It barely trolls or exadurates, thats when you know you're doing a very poor job.
I'd like some kind of source for more details on that $40k claim, if you could. I have seen the ED on FA before, and while they do have more facts accurate than I'd expect of them, they do still also have a lot of things wrong as well. ED is never the best source of information because you can't ever know where the hyperbole and sarcasm ends, and where the actual data begins.
Congrats, Dragoneer, all that hardware's paying off.
2. if the hardware was ordered the same day he got the money it would still take at least a week to get it, install it, and test it before allowing it to go live. Only those who never have run a website at all put untested hardware on a live server.
3. if you have ever been to any other web site that has gone through as massive a ddos as this site just did, there are always minor errors for a little while afterwards.
4. Site slowness and other loading issues concerning a site of this minimal amount of scripting, compared to sofurry and weasyl can be attributed more to you and your connection than the site itself. ESPECIALLY after a ddos. It's more likely that a portion of the attacking computers from the ddos resides on your local isp's network block than the site specifically being slow for you. If you do not understand this please look up the concepts of DDOS and Bot-nets and if you want anyone to complain to, complain to your neighbors who might or might not of had their computers taken over by botnet malware.
Irrelevant. The fact is that Dragoneer's thrown hardware at the site numerous times before, and yet we're still here having this discussion.
2. if the hardware was ordered the same day he got the money it would still take at least a week to get it, install it, and test it before allowing it to go live. Only those who never have run a website at all put untested hardware on a live server.
And even if the site got moved to new hardware an hour from now, the fact remains that the new hardware config is still running the same shitty bloated code first structured over eight years ago. Hardware isn't the solution.
3. if you have ever been to any other web site that has gone through as massive a ddos as this site just did, there are always minor errors for a little while afterwards.
Minor errors we can all live with. Major, glaring errors that have been known issues for months, if not longer, are less excusable.
4. Site slowness and other loading issues concerning a site of this minimal amount of scripting, compared to sofurry and weasyl can be attributed more to you and your connection than the site itself. ESPECIALLY after a ddos. It's more likely that a portion of the attacking computers from the ddos resides on your local isp's network block than the site specifically being slow for you. If you do not understand this please look up the concepts of DDOS and Bot-nets and if you want anyone to complain to, complain to your neighbors who might or might not of had their computers taken over by botnet malware.
Or, in less verbose terms: "I just went onto Google and read about DDOS attacks so I can pull shit out of my sphincter and blindly defend FA some more".
I mean I'm not going to gripe too much about it, especially since I have no idea how you guys even came to that decision. But it just kinda seems.... eh. I don't think you stated in the GoFundMe campaign that you were going to donate a portion of the funds, either, although I could be wrong, I don't remember. The first I saw of it was in a journal.
But regardless of that, it's already too late and I don't see too many people here sharing my same opinion so... whatever, I guess. I hope we actually start seeing some changes. I'd enjoy being able to change the mistake that is my username sometime in the near future.
I'm reading through the comments though, and apparently they have 10k in tax debt? I don't know where that number is coming from but uh. So only roughly 6k-7k is gonna go toward actually fixing anything about the site (if it even happens). Now that I know that I'm kind of annoyed that they're donating anything to anywhere, what with how tight it now is. I'm pretty sure you can't pay a team of competent coders with that (not that I know how long it takes to code a website or how many people would be needed or anything, I don't know shit), and the coding is where most of the issues with this website lie.
IDK, personally, I'm glad all of my income doesn't come from FA anymore, but I feel really bad for the artists who do still get the majority of their work here, because I don't think anything is really going to come of this fundraiser. It sounds like they're just going to throw more hardware at the problems, which won't solve anything, and eventually this site is just kind of going to burn.
Because we all know it isn't going to end up being the real deal.
If it weren't for the fact that there's so many people financially effected by the whole FA going down and being shitty thing, I'd honestly think this entire situation is kind of hilarious. Like how can anybody actually be this bad at this, seriously.
Geez their definition of "transparency" is bizarre. They scatter important things here and there where not everybody will see and then in the spot with the most traffic they don't mention these things at all. Like, come on. x.x
this entire thing is a jooooke
2. Reddit has a terrible community and i had no idea they posted on it
5. You don't get 10k taxes out of the blue and the gofundme money should be put into a better coding team since it seems like only one person is working on the project phenoix
Dragoneer shouldn't be the one coding the site, he's the site owner. He should be hiring competent coders to handle what he can't. (Also, he doesn't code for the site, Yak is the main coder.)
A DDoS would be not be stoppable just because of more money and more hardware, that is not how a DDoS works.
Nobody mentioned any conspiracies.
It's fucking stupid and whoever hasn't squashed that bug yet needs to be crucified to a Bad Dragon toy, but. That SHOULD help you.
Let me know if the solution works.
You should totally run the site.
Y'know, among other things that could use a good sprucin' up around here. :p
Maybe you could make it pink! No, no, make it blue! No make it pink! Blue!
Primalweyland-Affinity is sounding better and better by the minute. Sign me up!
I've also had the same thing happen on deviantART, even more often than on FA! It eventually fixes itself too, though.
I dunno.
Good luck overall.
Bingo
SF is also dreadfully slow and has a lot of it's own issues, sometimes rivaling FA's lag.
Neer's ear has always been more inclined to listen to trolls, griefers, and general haters. He's an SA Goon at heart, and that mindset will always be the first one he relates to. People genuinely wanting to help and be constructive and just try to get him to see what he consistently gets wrong; even people he considered friends; always get disregarded or dismissed while the shit-stirrers get his attention. It's kindof a factor in why some people end up just being shit-stirrers to a lesser extent themselves, cuz if you've seen how he handles these things, you've seen that get through to him more than just helpful suggesting.
Omg that doesn't even make sense! dA has MILLIONS of users and people pay to use their premium services, and people who can't offer commissions to get them. I mean seriously, what the hell is going on in his head.
So again…you were being sarcastic…right?
SHIET!
im relieved you actually didnt get the full 25k for your house
Managing a website without profit, so technically it should have minimal to no taxes.
Has piled up dept of 10K$
It makes no sense....something is really suspicious here...
Makes me wonder if its for toys, personal taxes or for FA:U con taxes. If so, was using the words "website taxes" as a way to use the money for sonething else? I know we adults arent stupid, but exploiting the desperation and generosity of others for personal gain is immoral and even illegal, even if it's only a small %.
And yet im no lawyer, so i wont jump into conclusions. I just want current website bugs to be fixes, TTs to be answered and have a way to fav journals oh..and relayable admins in a comptent team with organised system would be good to bring order to the latest mess in submission, bugs and drama in the website. Plox
I don't understand. lol
lol idk just wanted to comment.
Just gotta roll with what I got. But that's just me.
There are some people who will bash Furaffinity but still come on here and use it. It's free to use but people
still gotta complain lol
And people can't just up and leave it, something that's been said again and again for a bunch of reasons. It's just not an effective method unless everyone leaves with it. I've seen people who do nothing but post stuff decide to leave, but it's harder for those who take commissions, or have the majority of traffic here.
I'll bash the shit out of stuff but still use it. Just because i have something shitty to say doesn't mean I hate it forever and want to be done with it for good. I want furaffinity to be better. I want to stay. This site was the start of my furry life, where my friends are, where I met awesome people and had amazing memories. No one wants to leave, but at the same hand, you can love something but not always have the best of things to say. I love my brothers, but i think they're fuuuucking morons.
Users won't leave FA because the artists won't leave.
Artists won't leave because their users, fanbase and source of income won't leave.
Just supposed to settle for better DDOS protection? So the new UI is after this, or after more servers or some more hard drives are needed to fix performance issues before that?
Feels like you're really late to the game that NOW is a good time to address the basics like site security. Blatantly obvious you haven't been investing $$$ back into the site, as proof on DDOS taking down FA the way it did, as well as who is hosting your servers and how long it took coordinating with them to get FA back online. Not exactly lightening fast turn around there.
Though if I'm wrong I'm sure it won't be long until someone corrects me given the track record for the comment chains on FA's updates :u
just smh.
And only 10%? Yawn. Way to look helpful...
I get people's criticism, I'm not narc-ing on your ability to make an ass of yourself throwing your hands in the air and letting an indifferent computer screen have a real piece of your mind, but ffs, if you can't use the defense that this is your only website where you have your art when there's so many others out there. I'd argue places like Tumblr and Instagram actually have a better way of spreading your artwork around, and if people are honestly that annoyed with this site, then establishing accounts on other sites is probably a pretty good first step.
And I echo the previous "Critiques, not complains" message on here. Yes, this site isn't run the best, I know of quite a few run way worse, but what you get, and how much you pay for it, it's not the worst thing in the world.
Then again, the "strong opinions" on this page are gold, and I'd hate to see those people leave.
As for the general-UI and such, I personally really like the "less clicks, the better"-ideology where everything can be found "in plain sights" instead of the need of searching every sub-folder of folder and so on.
This not to say I wouldn't like "file-folder-trees" like the more simple HTML-websites have; they just don't seems to work that well in "visual-social-interfaces" in my experiences especially when "all"-view either don't work at all or there isn't "page-number"-buttons (yeah FA hasn't those yet either, but at least adding "page-number" to URL works consistently).
People just want basic folders, to organize personal work, commissions, art by other artists, and scraps.
Why is it not good enough that they ARE donating? Now they're being bashed for not being able to share the wealth all over? what?
This money won't do jack shit. Again.
Especially not with this horrible site coding.
But no, please, add a fourtieth hard drive, which won't do a damn thing, but it looks like it does!!1
In another, eh, I'd say five years, we'll still be in the exact same place we are now. Nothing new, the same paranoid jackass coding the site, the same owner that still won't actually show any initiative.
But hey, it's free, right?
Pretentiousness is the enemy of humility, my good bird.
Also, COOKIE! OM NOM NOM
Hard work. As in, actual expended effort. As in, actually getting up off your sphincter and doing something. As in, providing actual, tangible results for labour.
Patience. As in, not simply hiding comments you don't like, sticking your fingers in your ears, and thinking everything will be alright as long as FA gets its next money shot?
Are those what you meant? Please tell me you were being sarcastic.
A team can be no better than the guy in charge. There's no doubt that people have been on staff who never should have been, but there have also been people who did put in a lot of time and effort and patience (which staffers belong in which group depends on who you ask, of course). No amount of will and competence and good ideas can come to anything if they're blocked and denied by the guy at the wheel. Try not to throw every individual who's tried to fix this place under the bus just because nobody's been able to get around Dragoneer's Absolute Defense against Sense.
I would honestly like to become a staff member for FA, and use my voice to try and get things improved around here. Failing that, I suppose that cataloguing Dragoneer's failings and letting them pile up until it becomes too large to ignore will suffice.
I actually considered myself too much of a hot-head to be an admin. Still not sure why he insisted I become one. All I'd ever wanted to do was help with the wording of their terms and rules, because they have always been significantly less than ideal. First time Dragoneer told me that I'd have to be a full admin if I wanted to help with that, I turned him down. I kept trying to insist on just letting me help with the wordses cuz I be gud at them, yo. The second time he told me I could have a go at the terms if I took on a full admin position, I thought fuck it, I'll just try to do my best and make the terms my main focus.
The re-write of the terms was months in the process, with me doing my damndest to drag participation and feedback out of Neer and other admins, trying to get him to clarify exactly what he did and did not want so I could write that into something both understandable and enforceable (the biggest obstacle was his inability to grasp that 'overly-simple' means broadly interpretable, and most of their enforcement issues came from rules being too vague), and trying to get other admins to weigh in and offer suggestions. Then when it had finally gotten to a point where almost everyone was agreed it was ready, Dragoneer, without a word, no heads-up, no mention of what he was doing, just went and posted new terms live to the site that he'd just pulled out of his ass. He'd never mentioned he was working on them himself, he'd never let us know the time and energy I was putting into this shit was for nothing, he didn't even post it to the admin board so another set of eyes could at least proofread it for the fuckload of plain old typos and grammar/spelling errors that he had all over it. Just took a huge steaming shit on all the work I'd done, all the effort in getting others involved in it, just threw it out the window to do his own thing all by his special little self.
That's really all everything will ever come down to. Dragoneer thinks he can do every job that needs doing. But he can't. When shit goes wrong, it's everyone's fault but his own. Even when he owns up to his mistakes, and gets a thousand ass-pats of "well at least he's admitting he messed up and he's apologizing for it" from all the newbies that weren't around for the previous five times he apologized for the exact same damn fuckup, he refuses to hear anyone warning him that he's repeating a previous fuckup until after he's done it and the site goes BOOOO!
There is no fixing FA because there is no fixing Dragoneer.
That's not promising.
You know...
One better than FA, DA, and all the others combined?
I mean...
A lot of them boast that it's so easy and that they would benefit from having them on the team.
And complain when they are rejected (and often within good reason).
P.S to the predictable arguments, just because you volunteer doesn't mean you're reliable.
What FA has going for it is community. That's all it has with how broken it currently is. Neer is doing his best to fix that situation, but let's not pretend that attempts haven't successfully been made.
Easy, boy. Easy. No need for hostility. I'm just calmly pointing out facts.
It's one thing to be a hateful whore, it's another entirely to lash out at people who are being reasonable with you. Calm your paws, child, lest you get a schooling in how to truly come off as an insulting prick.
If you need it explaining to you: no. I was calling myself a whore. Now, if you're done throwing tantrums, I have more civil discussions to be having elsewhere.
Respect for you for keeping your ground on the same swearing level
the norm works. so why change it?
Both SoFurry and Inkbunny allow it, and that puts of a LOT of people from joining either site.
I'm not arguing that cub porn is OK - personally, I don't like it - but, I'm making a point in the case of any objectionable material. It could be vore or scat, for the sake of argument; the fact remains that you can block that stuff from showing up.
People are just fucking stupid.
I don't think people who are into hard vore are gonna cut anyone up and eat them, and I don't think people into eroguro are going to cut open anyone's stomachs or cut off anyone's limbs, I don't think people who are into inflation are gonna stick a helium tube up anyone's ass, and if people like to shit on stuff, well, then, to each their own. And if people look at so-called "real life vore", it's either gonna be nature documentaries of animals eating animals or videos of consenting adults swallowing stuff. And while that might seem kind of weird to a lot of people, there's not really any harm in it. Animals are going to hunt and kill animals in the wild, and consenting adults can do whatever they want.
Fetishes like hard vore and scat are "controversial" because they squick people out. But cub porn could pose a genuine threat to kids, and I think that's why people get so much more up in arms about it than other kinds of weird porn you see on FA.
You might ask why I'm repeating myself, but, well, apparently you didn't read it.
May the fall from your highchair be a gentle one.
"There are plenty that share their displeasure for the other sites around, wishing there was one more change to make it THE perfect website-"
I'm going to stop you right here - No one is wanting FA to be a perfect website.
They want it to be a website that has the updates and functionality that the staff have dangled above our heads for YEARS.
They want FA to be a website where we are offered 'transparency' and still aren't getting the full details. They want FA to be a website where, you know, the staff actually do their job. Regardless of them offering a 'free' service.
"the people with the ability (or so they claim) to create these things, waste their time moping around about it instead of looking to band together and make one of their own."
Mmm, yes it must be really nice to live in a world where you can just make anything you want to happen, happen, in the snap of a finger. Here in reality, we realize that things like hosting a website are costly, and while some of these people can code circles around the FA staff and its team working on this new 'project' (that we were supposed to be getting at the beginning of the year - and then again at the first of October, lol) they simply do not have the resources to do so.
And even if they did, the very fact that there are other websites out there that offer the same service that FA offers, only better, that aren't doing as well as FA is doing should prove a point.
Even if they had the money and the patience for their website to get the traffic that they desire, it's no guarantee that it will be something that lasts long.
Believe me I will be happy the day that FA actually DOES flop over, unforutanetly that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.
You're regurgitating the same flawed argument from everyone else who has promptly shoved their heads into FA's rectum, honestly. And you're slipping in that argument very much so. Sorry hun, I don't know what you're talking about with my fall.
"Okay but I'm not talking about the ones that are side discussions. I'm talking about the ones that replied directly to you that you completely dismiss. "
Literally, someone comments "I'm going to need cheese for all this wine" and then I got another comment about "SoFurry is good". That isn't a conversation, it's an opinion that someone is already pleased with another site out there. Again, unrelated to my subject if they aren't seeking to create their own service or respond to the general subject at hand, let alone expand on their opinion. I'm not sure why you'd think I have a superiority complex when I've only literally received 2 messages in my inbox. The rest of the messages are to those adding to the discussion.
My reason for even making this comment is to those in the comments groaning over how they weren't picked to be on staff. Coders, TT volunteers and so on. So many different categories, imagine if they all got together to make something of their own. Like how a small group of people struggled to put out a video game for X amount of years, but still succeeded (especially with the variety of sponsor sites coming out these days).
I'm going to stop you right here - No one is wanting FA to be a perfect website.
They want it to be a website that has the updates and functionality that the staff have dangled above our heads for YEARS.
They want FA to be a website where we are offered 'transparency' and still aren't getting the full details. They want FA to be a website where, you know, the staff actually do their job. Regardless of them offering a 'free' service.
That's a wonderful opinion. I'm sorry, I didn't realize implying these people wanted an awesome site was too much. Perfect- an exaggeration, yes, because there's no such thing, but I didn't think it would make things seem so over the top for you.
But I wonder why people don't band together to try and make their own site since FA has yet to put out. Why not stomp them into the dirt with a new, functional site that everyone can love? Why not come together and show the community that the staff will do as they have promised and already come complete with the features and visuals that FA has yet to put out in Project Pheonix?
See where this is going now?
"Mmm, yes it must be really nice to live in a world where you can just make anything you want to happen, happen, in the snap of a finger."And I Quote myself:
"the people with the ability (or so they claim) to create these things, waste their time moping around about it instead of looking to band together and make one of their own."
"the very fact that there are other websites out there that offer the same service that FA offers, only better, that aren't doing as well as FA is doing should prove a point. "
Again, an isolated opinion. YOUR opinion. I don't see how it's BETTER if it's barely scraping by.
Clearly a good number of people don't think these sites are better, for plenty of reasons, otherwise FA would have burned down by now. Frig, for most people it's just about god damn folders. XD Unfortunately that doesn't make a website. It's just a convenience or a mistake for some. I've seen people with a million folders for everything so it goes both ways...
When I first tried to sign up for those other furry sites I looked through their AUP's. All of them FURRY ONLY. Nekos? Gone. Anyone with a character that shifts between forms? Better not post it here. Furry X Human relationships? Also gone. No adoptables or YCHs? YES Adoptables and YCH's? There goes a good amount of traffic right there. Notice these slight differences can make or break a site? Fuck YCH / Adoptable Ads. Might even just be that people are too lazy or don't want to lose their Fav's/Reupload everything.
Ink Bunny? Obviously, controversy to Cub Porn. Not interested in seeing pages of it, lots of people aren't going to sign up and Ink Bunny is 100% cub porn when I see the front page after logging in.
Deviantart - clusterfuck of fanart and terrible staff (my own personal experience).
Hentai Foundry? Anyone? What? What is that?
If someone is willing to pay someone else thousands of dollars to make a $5 salad, there's a furry community waiting to help sponsor the construction of a site. It's a matter of advertising and even if there's a chance that it 'doesn't succeed' it's probably due to poor advertising and timing. It's the risk people take in the business world, physical product or otherwise. They could offer Premium Memberships similar to DA's- Not necessary AT ALL but it gives you a few extra perks and supports the site.
Do I give a shite if FA fails? Nope. Do I expect it to progress in a positive way? Absolutely not, at least in regards to the staff/Project Pheonix. But then again, I'm an artist working part time at minimum wage. I don't spend hours of my day on this site browsing or chatting with people. I post and get back to business. I have no need for folders and even if I had a large series I'd just link the pages in the description. They have to click somewhere to advance to the next page anyway, right?
Peace.
18,932 at corporate rate of 34% presuming you make less than 335K = $6,436.88
So back taxes bill of -$10,000.00 + -$6,436.88 = -$16,436.88.
SO.. You get $2,495.12 to keep... hurray!
NOW about where that tax bill came from!
Lets see 10,000 in taxes worked backwards means around $30,000 in income from FA you DIDN'T pay taxes on.
I throw this out not to say you shouldn't fundraise, you can't make money on the site, or aren't allowed to responsibly reward youself,
But you jeopardize this community not being honest about what's going on.
Doing such things, if the IRS decides to sieze the servers and any toys you've bought with that extra $10,000 you didn't hold onto. You're out some money, but we all lose FA forever.
Just keep this in mind going forward.
(Also, I read Dragoneer said he wasn't planning on paying the whole debt right now.. which is weird for me but it's their decision to choose what to do with their money, right?)
I'm not sure of how much it costs, or how much FA makes, but the numbers put on the table aren't looking so good.
Where did that debt come from and why weren't the users informed?
What happened with the money raised before this? What will happen with the expensive hardware that was bought and should still be useful?
Are we really going to see the staff being transparent?
I can only begin to see FA does have a lot of issues and, from what I've read, the issues (that could have been VERY EASILY solved) have been here forever and aren't being solved despite people being promised they will be solved.
Um... What's going on?
Using the sources in this post, I will attempt to demonstrate where the money from the fundraiser is going. This post is supposed to be based on facts and educated speculations. My opinion is not interjected in this post and is not meant to lean towards any one particular party.
So let's see. According to FA's fundraiser followup, they received $17,104.23 after their fees and charge backs.
10% has already been stated as going to SoFurry, so that's $17,104 * .10 = $1,704
Source http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6206864
15% goes towards taxes. I'm ASSUMING that FA as a company makes less then $50,000 a year. If they make more then 50k, but less then 75k, they enter another tax bracket. Because they received this donation of 17k, they COULD potentially go over the 50k mark, so that 17k could be taxed harder. The formula for the 50k-75k mark is $7500 + 25% of the amount over 50k. If they made 54k, it would be 7500 + (.25 * 4000) = 8500.
$17,104 * .15 = 2565 IF total income is less then 50k
It would be very abstract if I tried to calculate the numbers for the over 50k bracket. Lets just say that, if its over 50k, you can tack on another $5,000 dollars.
Source: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1120.pdf page 17, bottom left hand corner
Next, according to Dragoneer, there is currently a $10,000 tax bill that's been lingering. It's self explanatory. So that's -10k right there.
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/furry/comme....._page_created/
So, using math, we have $17,104 - $1704 - $2565 - $10000 = $2835 remaining if income is less then 50k
If income is ABOVE 50k, we have $17,104 - $1704 - $7500 - $10000 = -$2100 remaining, so 2100 in the hole.
This post was put together with the knowledge and sources at hand. With the 3 sources that I've sited, I do believe my numbers are correct, however if someone is able to correct me on them, please feel free to do so.
Now let's go make love.
Nobody wants to leave because FA has so many users
In order to see my new submission I have to make a new tab and open up my profile to finally see if it uploaded to my account or not.
Afterwards I tried to look up the Paypal-link that was available via Twitter, but was soon deleted / hidden after the GoFundMe close the donation page.
The donation-page FA used to have also has been closed long time ago...
So I'm here left here (literally) sitting with surplus 25 USA$ reserved just for you, FurAffinity: How do we proceed?
I usually never post on these things but this site and the staff have been nothing but awesome and very helpful.
I would love to eventually see one feature, blocking a user based on keywords.
I joined this website in November of 2008, that's almost six years ago.
That's six years of;
Empty Promises
Site Exploits (Including the infamous exploit/hacking most of us know about that absolutely violated specific users privacy and safety. Something that some of us STILL feel the effects of to this day. Not that I didn't deserve it, point is it happened. On top of that, nothing was adequately done to stop it from happening OR getting worse.)
Repeated staff misconduct
I'm sick of the empty promises that keep being made and stringing people along that much more. I'm sick of you taking advantage of the generous (Though I say gullible) members of this website, and the furry community. Again promising them something that probably won't ever come to fruition, and if it does not as advertised.
Btw you still owe me an FA:U pass.
By the way... when is the new layout coming?
I personally didn't see the GoFundMe, but by what everyone else is saying, you definitely should have mentioned on that page that money donated was going to be directed towards the back taxes. If you are looking to be more "transparent" with the community, that would've been a great start instead of waiting until you already have the funds to inform us about where the money is going. (I shouldn't be saying anything since I didn't donate, but for those who are frustrated after donating because it wasn't spelled out is why I am)
Also, having updates about the site through Reddit and Twitter aren't completely the best methods when some of us don't use either and have never thought it necessary to obtain vital update information. If that's a way to insure we're up-to-date on things when the site goes down, I believe it's something you should make sure everyone knows. (I never would have thought to look at either for information and apparently I am not the only one)
And I know this has been said a hundred times already, but getting a new set of folks to code the site would be beneficial. Seriously going and screening potential candidates who may or may not be better than the lot you have already is worth more than holding onto who you have now. And accepting volunteers when you need help with the amount of tickets really needs to be done. (though I'm not sure how much of this is worth saying as it's been ignored in the past every other time)
A great future starts with big changes, and they should seriously be starting now. This site may irritate me sometimes, and some of the people here are absolute twats... I still don't see myself leaving. I've been content with my stay, and I'm able to make money to take care of myself and my pets through this site.
If y'all are honestly trying to become more open to what you are doing and your intentions, kudos. You're not quite getting the hang of it, but if it's really your intentions, I'm pretty sure we can deal with it for the most part. I know a lot of folks are at, near, or past their patience levels... But here's to popcorn for the bitching and hope for the future.
That being said, they should have waited until after the DDoS was over and damages were assessed to start asking for money. The first anyone heard of the GoFundMe was a Twitter post by Neer saying, "Fuck it, I'm taking donations to move FA to the cloud." Which wasn't what it was for at all. That's incredibly dishonest. He clarified on Reddit, yes, but only after several thousand dollars had been raised.
I completely agree on that. I feel like possibly stating that they may need to take donations in the near future would have been acceptable, but definitely waiting until it was over to collect anything.
"Y'know what? The hell with it. I'm taking donations to move FA into the cloud. I'll even donate a portion to SoFurry: http://www.gofundme.com/ftrtc8 "
This is the first anyone ever heard of the fundraiser. Debt was not mentioned. This tweet alone raised $10,000 in 3 hours BEFORE Neer brought up debt on Reddit. Hypothetically, if I give you $10,000 for a down payment on a house to cure you of homelessness, then find out you spent $8,000 of it on plastic surgery, what you did would be wrong. Being in a position of power does not absolve you from wrongdoings.
That is utterly devoid of any ethical standard or rational argument. Considering the funds were made in less than a day, that entire avenue of argument is erroneous anyway.
Tho I still find it kind of odd and suspicious that the 10k of debt FA has been sitting on for...God knows how long, was seemingly never brought up or mentioned until the GoFundMe showed up. :B
IT YOU!!
No problem! c8
Keep doing what you're doing guys and ignore all the whining.
FA is working faster than ever for me personally since it came back, couldn't be happier.
You. Head out of the sand. Now.
"Uh, where did this $10,000 worth of debt come from?"
"We're going to be completely transparent STARTING FROM RIGHT NOW!"
..and
didn't you already have ddos protection??????? and if you didn't why are you only NOW getting it?
jfc
As for tickets, I'm an admin on Furiffic. It's a a small site, so TT's aren't that bad bad, but there are
hundreds of users on FA and probably hundreds of TT's to sift through. Not to mention
the Baracade they probably get from "Thief Mobs" after people announce a thief over a journal.
I don't know admin policy on FA, but it should only be the Original Artists' word that they trust
in the case of false accusations or misunderstandings.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6111557/
Here is one of Dragoneer's journals where they have been working
on a new layout for the site. There are more journals, but this is
the most recent one I think?
Try tens of thousands. Even then, they would be able to handle the tickets if they would stop firing staff who actually try to fix the site.
I'm glad i gave my $20. Now all of you just carry on with what your doing and be grateful that the site is going and carry on drawingz yer artz and such!
Go and make new friends on FA and that's all folks! Nothing else to see here.
Remind me to laugh at you next time I run into you at AC.
I want to support ALL our furry community websites....without FA and many others, the furry community wouldn't be what it is today. You might not be here right now, maybe me too. FA has brought the world's furries together.
And, frankly, first in the race doesn't mean you were the best performer.
An underground world populated by sad, sexually-addicted, withdrawn, self-absorbed, dog-humping foot-lickers who have perverted every inch of anything animal-related and trying to pass off hyper-inflated long-dicked cannibalistic hermaphrodite self-shitting babies as harmless innocent fun?
Cuz since that IS the case, I think the furry community could really do without Furaffinity.
But not every fur is not like that. I'm not like that and there are many furs like me who found their friends over the years and FA is the best place to find furs they met at cons and etc....
dont worry about them
there just not happy with what they got that was handed to them for free
if you want to donate fine, donate
dont let people like this get you down, there normally never happy about anything....
Does this during DDOS attack.
Problem could have been avoided by removing support for IE6 and Poodle.
Debt issue was not brought up in the donation page.
Smells like cake...
If that is the case... then this site is utterly hopeless....
How much are Zaush and Sciggles donating to the cause?
Will Fox Amoore be donating anything from his latest album sales?
I don't remember seeing their names anywhere.
HAH
AH
AH
A
A
A
A
A
I am curious what your definition of "Doesnt cost much"(sic) actually is.
B.1 If you had taken time to read the document you linked: Blackholes -drop- traffic to an address, effectively making it dissappear from the network,
which is what most ISPs are doing to protect their network, hence anyone getting a DDoS directly to the IP they serve traffic from will 'dissapear' from the Internet.
B.2 Blackholes are only effective at the edges of a network, a network acts like a funnel,
and will choke down as traffic gets closer to the destination.
Etc. Etc..
Basically: RTFM
Sincerely,
A Network and Systems Engineer.
Fact is, I don't appreciate being taken for a fool and this site's repeated failure to deliver on promised improvements has done exactly that. Shit needs to be sorted. You have people who want to help, you have funding. There is literally no valid reason the site should be sitting here stagnating like it has been for years now.
To avoid being a hypocrite and since it's the only message I can send, I'm just not using this site to host my art anymore. It's not much, but it's all the bargaining power I have. I can only hope others will actually follow this example.
I'll be watching though, and I'll be happy to bring myself back here once you've delivered on these supposed fixes that should have been done years ago.
The blind leading the blind.
They got a new house
follow the numbers
14 20 88
1+4= 5
2+0= 2
8+8= 16
5+2%16=7
7... 7-4=3....
How many corners is there on a triangle? 3.
Rob.Lurks is illuminati.
That's really unprofessional.
But I'm not sure.
cause the one we had right now is sooo outdated and obselete
But important things first: I hope the security upgrades will be enough to keep another DDOS attack from happening, and I'm glad a portion of the funds is going towards SoFurry ^^
>Take time to think about what you should buy with the money.
Did you even think about what you wanted or needed money for before you asked for donations?
Buy some fucking DDoS protection.
-leaves-
I mean furrs get hammered as it is.
Dildo fund lol
Wake up, folks. To my knowledge the FA staff don't make a living off keeping this site running - even though comparable sites in terms of traffic and userbase are run by teams that do, indeed, all make livings off running it. You all want a perfect site yet expect the world of a relatively small time of people who aren't really being paid to make this their everyday task. Furry sites are going to have to find better ways to reliably generate income because, frankly, we're getting too big for this "everything is free for everyone forever wheee!" mentality of furry. It just isn't going to be sustainable in the long-run.
Neer wont let anyone near the website, he was offered 40k by a group of furs who would want to run the site as a board and have neer on it. Nope - (He paid 2k for the website originally, he makes no money from it, infact he loses money so he says)
I personally wont pay because nothing has changed, no real attempts at changing this place have been made.
fA is still running because naieve people are sending donations. Why was it never mentioned on the goFundMe that it was to pay off the 10k tax bill fA has? Why was this never mentioned before?
Hundreds of people are willing to help fA, I strongly suggest you read whats been said especially Wolfblades comments, he was a admin, he knows the shit that goes on front end and back end.
Once a year neer parades around with the mobile klax gimic to get people to fork over money, and they fall for it.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/8813b8e7.....fhi2o1_500.gif
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTJDkwPs0o&hd=1
The time is coming for this Fandom, which exists as no other fandom does, to settle a choice and make a decision as to it's future. The pressures of the world and the progression of our culture will soon demand of us as a people to decide together how we are to define ourselves to the world, and whether we will stand up to that world, or let it control us, and reap our culture for the market that its worth. The only choice we don't have is to continue along as we are in the hopes that the world at large will not take enough of a notice of us to meddle in our affairs.
The reaction this site has taken, and its people unsettlingly complacent with is that we are to pay ourselves for an attack against our wellbeing from an already cash strapped pocket book.
We are a strong people. We have carved out a space in this world against strong insistence from it that we don't, and against all onslought pressed on in the practicing if our art form and the living of our ideals. Fur Affinity itself was a product of the discrimination against Anthro art and sexuality by Artspots and was our biggest success ever. Yet every time it, and by extension we are attacked our reaction is to pay for it ourselves and turn on eachother. Time and time again this is our choice, whether it be an attack by /b/ the incessent invasion of our privacy of the media, or an all out deliberate attack on our infrastructure and economy, to hide away, turn on eachother, and pay for it ourselves. In all the talk from FA and its communities I have yet to hear once of tracking down and apprehending the perpetrators of this attack, as it seems to be a topic all forgotten.
The greatest possible result of this recent attack, beyond financian contributions, the resolving of debts, the upgrading of hardware, and recoding of software would be the shirking and casting off if our societal reluctance to get brutally defensive and retaliatory in the name of defending what has become The Furry Fandom
I think you need to re-read your furry history. ArtSpots was a clean furry art gallery, but I don't think it was against "anthro art and sexuality" (even if some of the staff might have wanted a little less sex in the fandom). Maybe you meant y!Gallery?
It's hard to track down the directors of a DDoS. Anyone or nobody can claim to be responsible.
Pretty much. I'm from the UK and I suspect - sooner rather than later meddling in our affairs will happen one way or another. I'm honestly thinking that furry artwork in the UK in the next 10 years stands a chance of becoming illegal. It's going that way now the direction things are going is well to understate -- grim - to say the least.
SP
We stand the chance to make our Fandom something more, and we are the only Fandom out there who can. Our decision is thus: Declare ourselves proud and powerful, or sell out to the highest bidder. This Fandom can attain the wealth that these companies offer without having to sell to them for a single penny. We must choose who runs our Fandom. Us, or some company somewhere with not a Furry among it's ranks.
I do wonder if anyone will even protest about anything these days -- a lot of people out there don't seem to want to protest about really important things. Almost as if the attitude out there is "If it dosen't afftect me, I'm alright jack so I won't bother" style of attitude. And it will get worse so long as people continue not to think/protest/learn but instead decide to value and watch 30 second videos of farting cats on youtube or "buying stuff" (which is a rubbish proxy for happiness) above all else. It is almost as if people out there just don't want to not only learn/think/protest it is that they can't even be bothered to actually try to even begin to.
Me personally, I think the furry fandom/community really has a chance to move forward and become something much larger. What that will be -- I don't know; I'm not intelligent enough to know that - only the future will tell. I just hope we all take the correct path and don't beome begulled by advertisers and money.
SP
The majority of people have always been that way. They don't do anything unless it directly effects them. But any scenario worth protesting for in this Fandom would be one that directly effects everybody. Could you imagine what would happen if this Fandom had its yiff taken from it? It would be a direct assaukt on our economy and our way of life. Especially ifarrests were actually made of it.
People protested Vietnam because they saw their high school friends taken away and killed on nightly TV. No oneprotested Iraq because only 5000 Americans died and there was no draft.
You don't have to worry a our Furries not protesting. You have to worry about Furries selling themselves away to companies for a pittance.
We are the last bastion of unadulterated community industry. We own the means of our production outright and the gap between producer and consumer is nil. We are a Fandom of an idea, not a product, and that lends itself to possibilities of not only self determination but perpetual continuationt. Furry Eternal. So long as we keep producing we continue existing, and there is no company that can cancel us.
As for what the future holds? I believe that the structure and make up of this Fandom lends itself to only one feasible organizational end. The transition from Fandom to culture, and the creation of a borderless representative democracy. And don't get me wrong, I'm not anti business. I'm Pro Furry Business.
I can go into greater detail of this vision if you like.
*nods .... btw, best to go to messages though someone might not like this turning into a private conversation 'n' stuff on here.
SP
Nobody owns the legal rights to the words "furry fandom". There is no "selling out" here, as you described it, because no furries here would actually be making the money. Actually if every artist on FA _DID_ 'sell out', as you call it, and gained real money from something like that, it would be a huge victory for everyone here. And yes it would cheapen the culture, though what you describe does that anyway. Except without any profit.
You're arguing yourself into some glaring inconsistencies here...
It's the Internet; it's a furry website. It's something you go on when you get back home from a long and tiring day at work. You just want to wind down and relax by consuming all the furry content that interests you. How might you feel if you're just trying to relax, and someone is telling you that they don't like your art, regardless of how strong or accurate their views are?
At least, that is what I would prefer to be the explanation.
I give you a big fluffy fox hug! =3
Newsflash everyone: MOST SITES ARE FREE. That doesn't mean they are free from being criticized.
Where's my donations?
No receipts included. No refunds.
Dragoneer, I know you have an ego high enough that I could commit suicide simply by jumping off of it, but haven't you learned by now that throwing fucking servers at this site doesn't do jackshit? Considering that you're not just going to use the money to pay your own government debts.
And why do you people keep giving money to this guy? You have NEVER seen anything come of it!
According to Neer's Twitter, that's the plan.
and before that....
aaand before that
That said, however...
I hope Neer notices how many times I've linked to that particular tweet. I pretty much want everyone to see it, for two important reasons:
First, if it's true, it's good news and something FA needs (provided he hires the right people).
Second, if everyone knows what the plan actually is, then if this plan does end up falling apart (I doubt it will, but I know what's possible), everyone will know that too! In short, Neer's reputation (however much or little of it remains) is on the line. He's got 16 grand and a promise to fulfill. Let's wish him luck!
Only for so long can a stadium commentator promise that the game or show is going to begin, until people start getting really angry and start leaving en-masse. In FA's case, by now, a large chunk of the audience has already left...
Neer should appoint a bookkeeper, or treasurer, or accountant or something. Someone whose job is solely to keep track of the money donated to FA and how it's spent; and, probably most importantly, publish regular reports detailing exactly where the money comes from and where it goes. (Basically, give FA an "open-source checkbook".)
(This will also give people an opportunity to see exactly how much the hosting for FA is costing Neer "out of pocket". I assume this is the primary reason for his debt in the first place.)
That's exactly the kind of transparency everyone's clamoring for, right? And putting someone else in charge of that will allow Neer to spend more time doing actual admin duties and overseeing the improvements that he's been promising for years.
The hard part, of course, will be finding someone that both he, and the FA userbase, can trust to handle that much money honestly and intelligently. (And trust is hard. Both Neer and the userbase have been burned in the past. This is why it's been so hard to find coders and moderators to fix FA.)
And its not hard to find staff for this site because literally 100s of people, including professionals and owners of web development companies in the fandom have offered to redo the entire site on a professional level many, many times some even for free, eventually some of them had enough and made their own site, which is Weasyl as one of the latest examples.
Can you show me a source for that information?
"neer just flatout put that money, ... mostly straight into his own pockets,"
The same pockets he pays for FA out of. That's the real problem here: FA should be grown-up enough to have its own pockets by now!
He's been spewing that same bullshit since I don't know when. If it really was a plan, then he would have LONG SINCE acted on it. As it stands, this is the same fucking shit he spews out every couple of months. He's been promising a UI update since like, 2005 or before and it's almost ten fucking years later
Fuck Dragoneer. If this site was in anyone else's hands, shit like this would've long since been done. As it stands, the only way we'll get an update is after someone pries it from his (and probably Sciggle's) dead clammy fingers.
Caaaaareful there. That's sounding an awful lot like an actual death threat. The administration does not like those.
As for Neer's mistakes, I have enough patience to give him one more chance. One. He's just been given a heck of a lot of money (more money than I've made in my lifetime, in fact), and he's made lots of promises in return. He better keep them this time. (And not just because the alternative is to be accused of defrauding the fandom out of seventeen grand. That would be a real class-action lawsuit just waiting to happen!)
Would you like to wait and see where the money goes this time? After all is said and done, I may end up agreeing with you!
Good luck with your optimism! I would love to give this site the praise and love that it deserves, but as it stands, this honey has been burned too many times. Everyone knows that Dragoneer's ego goes beyond all reason, to the point that he'd rather watch his ship sink instead of allow a helping hand. The only way he'd let someone even have an iota of control is if he were gone first.
Its aggravating ._. I'd use TT system but i have around 6 tickets since June that arent being answered still.
Admins, help plox.
You sit and preach about all of these "Fantastic updates" to your infrastructure and security, design and functionality. But the site stays the same. nothing ever changes save the occasional 'DDOS that bypasses the established "protection plan" you have against attacks of that magnitude' that literally forces you to do something. I won't lie, this site has been stagnant for just about as long as I've been a part of it, and I cannot say its been the best experience overall. But, I plan on staying solely because of the large user-base.
Things that need improvement:.... just about everything, especially the now laughable size constraints.
People be bitching about bitching. But the true pain comes for the financial part.
$10,000 of the $18,000 is going towards clearing tax debts Dragoneer should have been smart enough to not get into in the first place - we're still not exactly sure what these debts are for, or how they were accrued, even despite the 'transparency' promises.
$1,700 of the $18,000 is going towards another site entirely, so wipe that off as a loss.
This leaves us with $6,000, if you want to round it off to an easily-workable figure. Most of this money is either being spent on acquiring DDOS protection services that should, by rights, be a standard by now. We'll call that $2,000 just to work with a nice, round figure - so, we have $4,000 going towards hardware upgrades the site doesn't actually need, since we had a major upgrade with two new servers less than two years ago (bear in mind that FA tends to get a server upgrade every two years or so, with old hardware rarely being recycled).
As for software issues: in essence, the site is still running on the same code that was laid down closing on ten years ago. We've been promised a major UI overhaul for almost eight years, but which has never materialised. Any bugs or issues are rarely addressed until they become massively glaring issues, or until after there's been a security breach within the site. FA tends to have a major (read: at least a few days) of overtime every four to six months or so, either due to staff incompetence or from the aforementioned security breaches. The staff modus operandi is generally to stick a patch on an issue rather than deal with it, and even the major UI upgrade is simply that - the base code is more than likely to remain at the foundation of FA even if it ever gets rolled out.
You're new here, so I'll offer you a polite suggestion: pack your bags, go to another site. Weasyl, InkBunny - either site is more deserving of your patronage. FA is a sinking ship surviving on nothing more than the seemingly infinite pockets of the fur fandom.
That's why I didn't donate.
Yet it takes your 'staff' many months to close, or even BOTHER to port once on a ticket about art theft/etc.?
[Eng]Pleased, that we are able to raise the resource after the attack! You are the best resource! Be strong FA ! I Love FA! More cute pic, adult, mature, and other! FA the best! With love from Russia.(not to be confused with the "Soviet Union"" ^_^
I don't understand why so many people are attacking FA... Sure FA has its problems (ALL SITES DO, PEOPLE!) but it shouldn't warrant hatred for donating to the site... It's a big site and many people use it. I use multiple...
Still... I will never understand the psychology of some.
Good on you guys for helping keep the site you do enjoy alive. If others don't enjoy it, oh well, I don't enjoy Something Awful but I'm not going on a campaign to get it shut down o.o
*cheers?*
Why dont you guys offer some monthly paid account services?
As much as I hate DA they really have a few things going right.
If you do this please keep in mind it needs to stay affordable. Offer a discount for buying more then one month at a time. by % the more you buy the larger the discount. You could even offer that if you buy a year at a time you get a free ad for 30 days. There are a lot of ways to make a sub sell.
I would not mind paying a little bit to have folders in my gallery, a randomized front page feature, updated 'scraps' with folders, limited private upload space to show WIPS to customers (temp files) , polls, ect.
My point is that there are a lot of ways to help pay for improvements. Asking for donations seems.. wrong almost.
I would be happy to pay a little bit for this site to ACTUALLY improve and grow. And many others would also be happy to pay a little bit for it as well.
As it stands this is the most populated fur site but it runs like shit. Things have got to change and not just be talked about over and over.
/hides
Literally this entire post
I want to give this a diploma for having the best ideas for monthly subs on FA
But yeah in a sense a sub would be an up sell to paying nothing at all ><
I would suggest hiring people to work on the site that have better credentials than "they are popular/they are furriez" AKA good coders, UI designers, etc. I just want people who know what they're doing D,:
Also I dunno how I feel about if some of my donation money just gets donated to sofurry or charity (I donate to those separately, dude!). I don't use sofurry. I think all the funds should solely go towards the goals that were explicitly stated.
More porn, I guess.
Within the next few days......
>Site goes down again at least twice
>Site slows to almost a grinding halt
>Thumbnails stop working, AGAIN
Nice
I too had noticed it being worse at the users online being over 13,000, which is understandable. Its at about 11.5k at my post.)
But opening comments and placing my own certainly seems quicker today than yesterday. Whatever was done helped, I believe. Thank you. :)
*leaves a cookie*
Hopefully uploads soon won't have the errors some are experiencing. I've held off for that reason.
(I wasn't sure where to post about site performance issues, but figured you'd like to know when it seems better, even for just one user.) :)
Right, so the very fact that FA exists at all means people can't criticise the sheer ineptitude and frankly criminal behaviour of the staff that run it? That's like saying 'oh, sure, we have corrupt cops - but don't bitch, be thankful we have law enforcement at all!'
As far as loading speed of pages, hate to burst your bubble but the speed is mainly due to what your using to access the pages and how well it is able to load them.
Only partially true. FA is running the same code that was laid down when it was founded back in 2005 - that code is incredibly poorly optimised and, as people are finding, susceptible to slowdowns, errors and, on occasion, attacks. The fact that we're still using nested tables should tell you an awful lot.
Regardless: no, hardware isn't the issue here. Get educated.
If the site hardware is up to date, from whence cometh the slowdowns? Obviously not through an issue with user hardware, if we assume that the vast majority of users are connecting with a broadband connection and a computer built sometime this decade - so, by process of elimination:
- it's not a server issue
- it's not an Internet issue
- it's not a user issue
What do we have left? Ding! The site code. Which, as I mentioned before, is about nine fucking years out of date, poorly optimised, and riddled with bugs - despite this, you idiots seem happy to palm FA's issues off on its users, not its administrators.
Gee fucking gee.
Wow. You must really like getting shafted.
The site IS bad
They wont fix it.
Ill shut up when they fix it
I point out the problems along with other coders and they still wont fix it.
Dragoneer is bad with money, FA is a patched to hell old balloon waiting to pop from careless pricks.
and the gullalbe ones (you) don't care that the panicked ones just dished out 18k to a man that owes
10,000.00$ in back taxes for the very place you say is "being fixed."
THEY KNOW WHAT THEY HAVE TO FUCKEN DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Haha that's a good one, they knew what they had to do since 2008 and we are still waiting.
How about you put the hash pipe down long enough to open your eyes and see.
You seem to ether be a troll or a stoner, so let me put it in a way YOU can understand~
Dragoneer bad karma he puffs but no pass
Money route of all evil
Site is to tired, no work right, harshing mellow
You want us to be silent? You just want your cunt boy porn?
Cool, leave the discussions to the ones that care about the outcome of this site.
You know nothing about what really goes on here on this site. Oh if you are going to try
that bull you did with the person you replied to, make it amusing with facts. I already think you are a
waste of time.
I if it wasn't for paying people like me, you would not even be here to make lame comments. Is this not you?
site bad
they need fix
shut up let them fix
stupid comment no help them fix
That's not telling someone to be silent? Sorry, I must have you mixed with another douche bag. Whats sad is that we have met, and I know you.
But to think you were this much of a toolbag when you are behind a screen. This isn't about just the DDOS, or did YOU not read what I've said?
Review my comments, here, let me translate it for the reading impaired.
Do the same, you missed some points, like, all of them. The words in bold, I fixed for you, how do you expect me to read garbled
garbage from a third rate tool? You do entertain me though, thanks for the laughs. Ill see you later.
the code its always the same and the beta never release which is a bit of a problem.
That yak guy never fix furaffinitys security holes.
If I got down on my knees and gave you a blowjob, and you started bitching about me giving you teeth, am I then allowed to say HEY! IT'S FREE! STOP BITCHING!
Of course not, the very second you started feeling that you weren't get the service you'd expect, you'd start pissing and whining like a cheap whore in a motel room. Likewise: regardless of your opinion, FA is not free - it subsists entirely upon the goodwill and the donations of us, the users. Without the users giving money to the site to keep it running, it grinds to a halt pretty damned quickly. Therefore, I'd expect that perhaps a little criticism for the site constantly going down, or being riddled with bugs, or the staff being idiots, might not be such a far-fetched thing to see.
So, the next time you start pissing and whining about FA being above reproach simply because it's freely-accessible, you might want to consider who and what actually keeps this site running, and then consider how well it's performing. I guarantee that within half an hour you'd start getting pretty pissed off at the way the site's run/
Simple - every time I see a donation drive, I see that money squandered. I see obvious flaws in the site remain unfixed, I see useless hardware thrown at what should be simple software fixes, and I see promises constantly left unfulfilled. I see a staff roster that is, for the most part, almost criminally incompetent, and that's only accounting for the staff that weren't brought in through favouritism or nepotism.
Frankly: donating to FA has a net return of absolutely zero. I see absolutely no meaningful improvements made to the site with the money given to the staff to keep this site afloat - and yet somehow, confusingly, you seem to think that the site costs nothing to run, and therefore is absolutely beyond reproach. How and why you let the staff get away with squandering your investments is beyond me, but I have a strong inkling that it has something to do with the constant influx of pornography keeping you sated.
If you want to remain blinkered then by all means - close your eyes and continue to ignore the issues. I won't stop you, if ignorance truly is bliss -- but don't deny other users their voice.
Perhaps you haven't considered the fact that I'm complaining because I want things to improve? Contrary to what you might think, I believe FA can become better than it is right now. However, no change has ever come about by people sitting on their hands and accepting the shit that's fed to them - change has come by people standing up and saying 'this isn't right'. And, frankly, I don't think it's right for you - yes, you - to be throwing your money at FA for little to no return on your investment.
Maybe you're happy with the way things are being run. Maybe you're happy with Dragoneer taking your money and wasting it - hey, if you like that, far be it for me to intervene, right? Keep squandering your money on a lost cause, I'll happily shut up if you're happy to keep doing so. In the meantime, try to understand that it's your money I'm trying to protect. I'm not standing around being a massive cunt just because it gets me off (but, that as well).
1 Whiny cynic who is pretty much preaching to the choir. (ME)
1 Fanboy who believes anyone should stfu because "its free"
and 1 fanatic who is convinced the site is run by the most incompetent people.
...Yeah everyone would be so thrilled at seeing yet another comment chain resulting in all parties pretending like they "won".
I'll be hiding my comments and start over below. hopefully with less drama...sheesh...
We'd have all the promised features in place, we wouldn't have so many issues with the site's most basic functionality, and I wouldn't be sitting here having to discuss with a staff member how and why it's extremely worrying that the main staff can't trust the site owner.
I think the proof speaks for itself. Don't you? But please, continue to think of me as an idiot, I'm pretty sure I'm capable of returning the favour.
Doesn't matter how accurate you are you just wouldn't let it die down...Even when the guy is clearly just doing it to please himself you kept on hammering on it which only fed his god-damn ego as you were proving his sentiment.
You did exactly what he wanted. When he mentioned that "surely all donated" he was hoping either of us would say we didn't purely so he could pull his "you didn't donate, but have big words" card! That is how he "wins", Get the opposition to go all overly aggresive and then shrug it off in an attempt to come over as the bigger person! Which he has by having gone "screw this" so no matter what the troll "WON".
To me according to my personal definition you both acted a bit like trolls (Paskis mostly, you a little). He acted extremely childish clearly only feeding his own ego and you kept shoving your view like how jehova's witnesses shove their religion. No matter how true you perceive your argument you should respect others. If you feel that im an idiot for thinking you are an idiot, well then great as i AM an idiot for having any critical thought and for disagreeing with argumentation that has been built by Informal Fallacies. i am probably the biggest moron in this thread for even bothering with this thread....I should just redact every comment i left on this journal as clearly this isn't the place to try and just tell one's oppinion without drawing attention
You are entitled to your own view...we all are entitled. just because you perceive yours as fact does not mean that is fact to other nor does it give you any right to try and force the opinion on others (just look at how religious wars started). The only thing that is apparently unanimously considered a fact is that IM AN IDIOT. Now if you have any decency just let this go and if feeling generous please just hide all the comments on this little wreck of an "discussion" and let this Paskis have his imaginary victory. i know i will and just leave this thread to be what it is... a mess
Maybe the blame is indeed this crappy crappy site that kept lying causing this drama-bomb, Maybe the blame is with me for being and idiot or you for feeding the troll or even the troll himself... i don't care anymore and just want to end it with this final comment before saying "screw this thread and screw this site...I got more important stuff to do"!
Sorry for misbranding you as a troll. Clearly you know what you are talking about...i was just mad cause you fed the moron that instigated this wreck of a bunch of comments :<
You win metaphor of the year award.
Fur Affinity is back.
Some improvements may be in order.
At this point its about picking up the pieces and rebuilding, and improving.
FRANKLY PEOPLE NEED TO DISLODGE THAT WOODEN BEAM THEY HAVE STUCK UP THEIR ASS AND LOOK TO THE POSITIVE.we've been hearing that for years. furaffinity goes down, it comes back up, and improvements are never made. people are frustrated because they've made donations before, been promised improvements countless times, and been disappointed every time. nothing is "stuck up their ass" except empty promises and half-truths.
the website really pisses me off.
No matter which side is correct nobody can argue that that is a pretty awesome thing :)
This makes me appritiate the development we have had over the last decade, towards intuitive, user friendly web pages, where web standards have greatly improved so much, it blurs the lines between desktop and web based applications.
I don't care that you toy with misty expressions like "cloud" in order to appear modern. You have a true museum status, and will continue to serve as an important reminders for todays new users on exactly what we old-timers delt with.
Thank you, FA!
When the twitter advertised the gofundme a gigantic red flag went up. To start collecting donations during something like a DDOS isn't a good thing.
It is making use of the current situation as the lack of site and possibility of it not returning to garner attention and funds. If the DDOS didn't happen a donation drive would probably fail. I know its meant well, but its still a kinda iffy and questionable thing to do. I considered donating for the sake of futue improvement, but then remembered how FA's management is poor...just horribly poor. we are still waiting for this Phoenix project and every predescessor that was announced before it and i'm guessing i will have to wait forever while new plans get announced...
I hate how FA's the biggest. sure people can claim "Well you don't have to be a member", but just try to get even remotely the kind of coverage or attention on another site.
FA is big, it has a massive community, but it really needs to get the magamement in order cause right now its going nowhere like it has for the past 5 years...
I don't hate FA itself, its still the place to go Commission/get commissioned. I Just think that it would really be great if they would finally listen to suggestions and try to give this outdated site the overhaul it desperately needs. Actually doing what is promised rather then just say.
Please don't reply unless you can be respectfull. Had enough of petty insults by trolls
> Anybody who provides a dissenting opinion is a troll
Right. Of course. Are we really in an age now where any opposing argument is branded down as purposeful mockery? Can a discussion seriously not take place without people going OMG U DISAGREE WITH ME UR A TRAWL?
Honestly, I think you're right. I agree with you wholeheartedly. But don't mark me down as a 'troll' simply because I happen to have an opposing value.
If you disagree with someone, you're a troll.
If you don't like the same thing they do, you're a troll! You're also a "whiteknighting faggot".
If you give someone anything that isn't asskissing (such as constructive criticism), you're a troll as well. And a "hater".
Now being a sycophantic yes-man, that's A-OK! Gotta keep those lips chapped.
I am new to this place, only been here a fraction of the time others were here.
In the short time I've been here, almost everyone I've seen is being torn to pieces over not just the way the site was handled in the past, the fact that most of these are negative posts, the positive ones are short single words like "Yes!" or "Good!"
I don't really think anyone here should play god of the furries and everything that follows suit, but why hasn't anyone taken charge and just fixed it?
I think the most popular person here is someone with not the "most triumphant transparency!" but the one with the right idea or best suited solution. By "right" i mean one that allows honest progress as compared to shady responses and lack of updating over the course of the site's existence.
I've been through many, many sites that hate people speaking up, but never one quite like this.
You know where I've seen this before...?
Politics...
Heck, people are even using the word transparency like it's an everyday success.
Why are we mimicking democracy to the point that I can quote something the guys in charge say and feel like the governors or even president says when they failed?
I want to see some kind of sign that this place is improving, we all do, but this isn't the way to get there, and it seems like most people know that by now, but can't do much about it, it's saddening.
I'm not asking for anything that cannot be done, I don't feel very comfortable here anymore, it's a little bit discouraging...
I may not know the answer, but i want to see this place prove it's worth, again, we ALL do.
"The Wheel of Fate is Turning! REBEL 1..."
Figured as much. Good job wasting your money kiddies! This round of donations are likely deposit/closing fees for the house they just purchased! See you next Read-Only!
You can instantly spot every single newbie to the fandom by how little they know just how much this site has "improved" over the years via the literal thousands of dollars donated.
read: NONE
time to update a few things if you ask me, especially now that you have some dough to do it
Instead of a sub- site- why not a new page? You'd have to buy the domain name, Web-hosting, etc ...
It would save time and effort.
Though... I totally get their purpose
Congrats, and good luck with the next goal.
People will donate all the money and the admins will be like "LOL GOT A DILDO INSTEAD PLZ MORE"
....so you put almost 2k into more furry porn instead of donating it to a worthy cause.
Okay.
Welcome to the fandom.
There's persuasive arguments on ONE side, and no arguments on the other.
But that's none of my business. *Sip*
And then the people that don't seem to even know anything and say: Neer's spending donation money on personal debt.... or taxes or whatever.
I'm no Rocket Surgeon but I am pretty sure that any expenses of running this site that aren't covered by donations/ads/income already become "Neer's personal debt"
I'm happy so much was raised and it's nice that SF is receiving some as well, I hope that the upgrades go smoothly and help whenever another attack starts. :)
I miss my followers sometimes, but I don't miss this site. Good luck folks. Call me if new management ever comes along and actually fixes things.
What's the deal with that? You guys were also hinting at some kind of "proper" fundraiser in the near future. Something to do with that maybe?
But what do I know? I'm just a Croc.
I sorta missed the line of when they will be given out...
I want that tooooo.
You're absolutely right.
"If you stay on FA, you agree with what the admin team is doing"
No. When it comes to a service, ethics and beliefs can be separable as long as the service provides what the consumer wants or needs. At the end of the day that's what they are there for, and for an furry artist looking to make money through their talent there is no better option.
im not falling for the turn off my servers and ddos other people to take the heat off me scam again you do this every year.
It's not letting me reupload pictures into submissions. Many of my comics are a little over 1280 (like 1500 or so because so many panels) and it's not allowing them to be reuploaded to proper size. Even sizing them down to 1280 doesn't fix the submission I put down. Is there any word on when this will be fixed? It's really ruining many submissions of mine and I don't want to spam reupload things to try and fix it.
I too would wish to know when this issue will be fixed.
it's kind of a BIG DEAL that needs to be addressed
Soooo, about that sub-site.
Where is it?
Nowhere?
Thought so.
They kind of screwed themselves over by not letting anymore business on board... If they even had any.
I have noticed that the site often has SSL certificate failures post DDoS.
And even when the main (or https://www.furaffinity.net/msg/others/) page loads, images don't because they still trigger cert errors.
And we are not talking cert errors where you are told that some date on a cert or something is wrong -- it triggers outright denial when you can't even look the cert up.
and hopefully you guys will be able to fix the submission issue ASAP! It's annoying 8I
The people on FA are more cynical and judgemental than is necessary; don't give them reason to be. :)
However, since FA has a history, it seems, of scamming people for their money and not providing the services that they paid for, everyone who is cautious and skeptical has absolutely every right to be and (quite frankly) they should be. I'm honestly surprised that no one has mentioned the possibility of taking legal action against FA because I'm 100% sure that if FA doesn't provide what's been put on the table, the fundraiser could easily be considered fraudulent. I'm also very surprised it's not already being considered shady enough to inspire interest in legality because the huge debt was not mentioned when the fundraiser was started.
With all of the problems FA seems to have, it's sort of strange how its managed to even keep getting donations. :/
I'm also really curious as to why people are saying rapists and animal abusers are admins? Like, whaaaat?
I dunno! I haven't been here long, but I was definitely able to dig up a lot of (what I guess is) dirt on FA and apparently Dragoneer in particular. My final opinion is basically, "I'm going to sit here and see how long it takes FA to deliver the goods."
Just be patient and see what happens. FA could surprise you or FA could easily let you down OR just do exactly what you're expecting. Keep your eyes and ears open and lurk about. If you have to, screen cap shit you find important (*cough*THISJOURNAL*cough*) so you don't lose any info. If you've donated, then definitely keep a file of everything that's going on so your money isn't wasted.
Final thought: I definitely think the percent should have gone to the animal rescue instead of SoFurry.
There has been no resolve to this issue FA has been having from being DDOS attacked.
It has left many people skeptical again and...well...frankly they have the right to be...with some staffs history...
I didn't know that was an issue.
Didn't seem to have been mentioned before.
First, many people comment that money was given (and presumably was spent) in past years on hardware. But they seem to keep missing a core concept regarding hardware, in that it fails or is slowly rendered outdated. Six years ago, four years, two years... even if large amounts of money were spent on better servers and storage racks, many of those hard drives and servers have likely gone down and been replaced. And even if they haven't, the huge amount of traffic can certainly tax older hardware and start slowing the process down.
Second, much of the talk about "the cloud" is very vague. Probably because people are using a marketing term as though it actually means something in the real world. It's been well understood since it's inception as "offsite server storage space", but now that everyone just talks about "clouds" we can sell it to a company who sells it to another company who leases it from someone else who then leases it from a Google rack in Sweden. Where they strip-mine all the storage for meta-data. HOWEVER, the point is that this requires a monthly cost. As does the DDoS, antivirus, etc, protection, as well as the 24/7 monitoring package, and the backup RAID package... and so on. It's not cheap. And you have to KEEP paying it, or there's no FA. Which does NOT have small storage needs. (Which is why I prefer the idea of owning your own servers, but I'm old-fashioned... and it would probably cost FA $200,000 to buy THAT sort of hardware in the first place.)
Third, somebody mentioned here that FA is an LLC, which may or may not be true but I'm not going to take the time to look it up right now. I'm not THAT invested in this whole argument. I did see where Dragoneer mentioned that the accountant for FA cost them about $2100 this year, which indicates a not-inconsiderable total cost to make sure that the entire site continues to function.
Fourth, I will say nothing whatsoever about personality differences, arguments about Dragoneer, FA staff, etc. I don't know enough about these things to comment on them, and my only purpose here was laid out in the first four paragraphs anyway.
The point is that FA obviously has annual costs. They obviously also have monthly costs, in addition to unexpected costs. And yes, they need to buy hardware because any hardware they have right now is getting older and is guaranteed to break down, little piece by little bit. That's simply a factor of TIME and nothing else. And if you've ever paid an accountant $2100 to handle those costs, then you know that these costs make $17,000 pale in comparison. In fact, if $17K was the ONLY money you had to use, I doubt that FA would stay online for even one month.
So... to all the people who have been saying "We haven't seen ANYTHING for our past donations", yes you have. FA is still online and is still functioning. On the subject of "transparency", I suppose it might be good if the Staff could post their expenses and incomes... but this may already have been done and I'm not aware of it. Or the accountant may have told them not to. My point being that it's simply a Fact that FA has to spend a lot of money to stay online. This is a continuous process, and something like a 3-day DDoS could easily cost enough money to put them behind. The "GoFundMe" thing makes perfect sense, in that perspective.
Also, I've seen many people complain (often at the same time) that "trouble tickets" are not answered soon enough and that site updates have not been put up on the site. I don't know, but I have to wonder... are the same people who want to put updates on the site also the people who spend all of their time trying to answer messages for 20,000 'tickets' that people have complained about? I don't know... which is why I'm asking.
As for updates to the site, I don't really see any problem with the way it is - but I don't post anything here or sell things from here. Many of you know much more about that than I. Also, many others seem to know much more about it, so my only comment should be that I won't comment on that at all. Though I will say that I look at galleries and posts every month or so, and for that limited usage I haven't had any problems.
You might notice that I intentionally haven't referenced any previous arguments here, and I don't intend to start or continue any either. The main purpose of posting what I have to say here is to point out that when people forget (or perhaps are not informed of?) the costs of keeping the site going, they probably forget that there is HUGE investment of peoples' time and FA's money that goes into keeping the site online in the first place. If everything worked beautifully and nobody here had any complaints, there would STILL be a huge investment of time and money dedicated to keeping the site online. This is a simple fact for any website this large, especially one that services this much graphic-file traffic, and ESPECIALLY one that has so many people who are emotionally involved in it, whether positive or negative. (Especially when they all post a kabillion messages over every little issue.)
Just don't forget this when you want to post that $17K is a large amount of money, or that people "should have" recoded something this massive in a certain time frame (in their evenings, after work). Because that sort of attitude might be a little bit unrealistic, given what it takes to keep going when everything ISN'T going to Hell and trying to drag you down with it. When it does... things like posting updates for better colors or message thread management can often fall by the wayside in the efforts to simply KEEP going.
Or maybe I'm just wrong, and all FA staff are evil and fraudulent people. What do I know?
Although... if you have some way that FA could make billions in profit, then I'm sure everyone would like to hear what those ideas are. :D
Actually then again, the second of those isn't too surprising thanks to the artist watcher cycle, which is literally all that keeps this website going.
You can argue that "maybe more people could do it" all you want, but you're still trying to compare Wal-mart to a roadside vegetable stand selling a few carrots. If FA was worth a few billion, THEN maybe your comparison would make sense... but it isn't, so it doesn't.
Year after year it comes down to the same thing: People who try to help are ignored or blown off while FA wallows in its own shit.
People want to code: Denied.
People want to help with TTs: Denied.
People just want to HELP: Denied.
What a great decision, FA.
Let's donate to a website instead of cancer treatment.
That's the way to go.
I've seen multiple comments with the same thoughts as mine, so obviously I'm not the only one with a problem here.
If you would rather defend the people donating to a website (that, might I add, will not stay up forever) instead of a worldwide disease that kills many of us a year, then fine by me.
I won't argue with you, because we have two separate opinions.
And it would be a waste of my time and yours, to try and convince you otherwise.
However, the related cause (support of furry art websites suffering from a DDoS) matches the likely intention of donors better than an unrelated organization, such as one involved in cancer research or relief aid. Perhaps more importantly, it opens FA up to fewer legal issues.
I personally don't feel that performing medical research is inherently more worthy than community website hosting - after all, I volunteer for the latter. But I know many feel differently, and I suspect they would have been offended if FA had said "Donate to us! 10% goes to the Red Cross!"
In fact, there are laws in various jurisdictions to ensure that the organizations concerned have agreed to the use of their name and that the entrusted funds go to the intended beneficiaries. Viewed in a certain light, FA could be seen as a unsolicited professional fundraiser which took 90% of the funds raised. That's not a good situation to be in.
Raising money for a website that didn't even confirm they could accept it sounds way too shady for me.
But that makes a lot more sense now, thank you for explaining.
I was just ultimately confused and I guess you're right.
Although, I still think donating to a children's cancer hospital is a lot more worthy.
St. Jude's isn't just medical research, it's cancer treatment. It helps little kids so they can live to see later years.
I think they deserve $1,000 because of all the effort they put into helping thousands of children.
But I see your point.
Thank you for taking the time to explain though, seriously.
What happened to sfw.furaffinity.net ?
I've been using it all the time since I found out about it... It stopped working once FA got that attack and didn't recover together with regulR FA.
I also have several TTs that STILL haven't been answered from months ago.
THANK YOU for being an amazing site. I am glad to be apart of this community. You have done a great job overall, and managing the DDOS attack. It is very courteous of you to donate to So Furry too!
Thank you!
-A Fellow Fur
Don't use the nuke submissions button. use the select all and remove all selected buttons to get rid of submissions, this will also get rid of the ghost submission.