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My feelings on the current state of FA
3 years ago
Hello everyone,
I know it was from a couple weeks ago, but I feel like sharing my thoughts on the sitewide announcement of some new changes that was made earlier this month (involving search engine changes, and the 2022 road map) as I hardly post anything to my FA account anyways and maybe it might be an interesting read for some of you.
Let me preface this post by saying that all of the changes that have already been made, and will be made in the hopefully near future are positive, and I know that making a functional site is a lot harder than some people realise, especially with a small team. My viewpoint comes from someone who doesn't use FA that often, and mostly uses it as another platform to post my artwork, so bear that in mind.
With that out of the way, let's talk briefly talk about the positives, starting with the search engine changes. The default search settings changes are good, and while keywords were mentioned in the announcement, I'm not sure if any changes have actually been made to it. The FA+ search boost won't affect me, so I won't comment on that, but I'm thankful that it's only a small 5%+ boost at absolute most. And the last change that has been implemented for now is a slightly larger avatar upload file size limit. I'd argue it's negligible at best because 75KB / 150KB are still tiny images, even for a profile picture, and I don't understand why they would do this over increasing the file size limit for actual artwork.
These changes will hopefully make it easier for smaller artists such as myself to get discovered here, but at the same time I'm disappointed that none of my pet peeves surrounding FA have been addressed, or any announcement of them being addressed in the future. These pet peeves of mine are why I barely use this site and regularly neglect uploading my latest stuff to here, because almost every time I log in to post a new art piece, I just leave here completely annoyed.
There was no mention of an increase file size for art or improving the tagging/keyword system itself, which are my two biggest gripes with FA by far as an artist. I also find it ridiculous how it's taken until 2022 for the feature of being able to block/blacklist certain tags to even be announced, let alone implemented so you can avoid content that you don't like to see. You only have the option of turning NSFW content on or off. The furry fandom has many people in it, with many different tastes and interests. Some of us might be into things that others may find disturbing, and while I don't use FA to browse for art, this is one of the reasons why. Other sites such as Derpibooru and e621 have had this relatively basic functionality for nearly a decade now.
As for the file size limit, if I had to state the number one reason why I don't use FA more often as an artist, this would be it (although FA being a bad platform for small artists to get discovered is a very close second). The file size limit for artwork is 10MB or 1.6 megapixels which means that for almost every single art piece that I've put out there, I've had to downscale it just so I can post it here. I'm aware that Twitter will compress images too, but Twitter isn't a dedicated art site and that would be a bad comparison to make. Getting back to the point, why is it that for a dedicated art website in 2022, I can't even upload a 1080p image (1920x1080 is 2.1MP), even if it's below the hard capped file size limit? Some of my artist friends who are also on here have told me that you can bypass the 10MB cap by uploading an image, and then editing the submission after it's been uploaded, but at least for me I've never been able to get that to work. Maybe it's because the full resolution is still too big even for the "hidden" file size limit, or maybe it's been patched out. But why have the file size limit be at 10MB if it's supposedly so easy to bypass? Why not increase it to whatever the hidden file size limit is? I want everyone who follows my work to be able to enjoy my art in the highest quality possible regardless of what platform they're viewing it on, but I can't even do that here. Again, I understand and appreciate that there's a small team behind FA, but it pisses me off that I have to make an additional tiny version of my art just to be able to upload it here.
Next, the keyword tagging system. I would appreciate it if there was some sort of tag suggestion based on what you've written or are about to write to help artists apply any sort of relevant tags to their posts. This is something that I find really helpful on Derpibooru, plus anyone is able to edit the tags so they can add any other relevant tags that they felt the original poster missed. It can be hard to add tags if you aren't sure of what's out there or what's being used/searched for. It may not be a good idea to let anyone edit the tags of any post without a team of moderators to look out for any tag abusers but I don't think tag suggestions would be too much to ask for.
To keep things somewhat positive and balanced, I'm genuinely looking forward to the trending pages and "up and coming" pages. It has been extremely frustrating here on FA as a small artist, as it has always felt like it has favoured artists who are already well known seeing how the only ways people could come across your work here is if they randomly stumble across it while looking for something (outside of clicking a link to it elsewhere, word of mouth, or directly typing in your profile URL). I only have around 200 followers here (with extremely small growth), but elsewhere I have many more followers. Around 600 on Derpibooru and 1.3K on Twitter which are my main platforms. Hopefully this will mean that I will be able to grow here too, but we will have to wait and see as to what will happen.
UI improvements are also very welcome, but the UI is honestly the smallest of FA's problems in my opinion. It's still something that frustrates me, but it's usable. Something is better than nothing and on the whole I'm glad that something is finally being done about some of the problems with FA, but I wish that they would prioritise the bigger problems. For the time being, I still probably won't use FA much but I will keep an eye on what's going on every now and then, and maybe posting artwork if I remember to do so.
Thank you for reading! Feel free to share any thoughts you have in the comments, and I will read them :)
I know it was from a couple weeks ago, but I feel like sharing my thoughts on the sitewide announcement of some new changes that was made earlier this month (involving search engine changes, and the 2022 road map) as I hardly post anything to my FA account anyways and maybe it might be an interesting read for some of you.
Let me preface this post by saying that all of the changes that have already been made, and will be made in the hopefully near future are positive, and I know that making a functional site is a lot harder than some people realise, especially with a small team. My viewpoint comes from someone who doesn't use FA that often, and mostly uses it as another platform to post my artwork, so bear that in mind.
With that out of the way, let's talk briefly talk about the positives, starting with the search engine changes. The default search settings changes are good, and while keywords were mentioned in the announcement, I'm not sure if any changes have actually been made to it. The FA+ search boost won't affect me, so I won't comment on that, but I'm thankful that it's only a small 5%+ boost at absolute most. And the last change that has been implemented for now is a slightly larger avatar upload file size limit. I'd argue it's negligible at best because 75KB / 150KB are still tiny images, even for a profile picture, and I don't understand why they would do this over increasing the file size limit for actual artwork.
These changes will hopefully make it easier for smaller artists such as myself to get discovered here, but at the same time I'm disappointed that none of my pet peeves surrounding FA have been addressed, or any announcement of them being addressed in the future. These pet peeves of mine are why I barely use this site and regularly neglect uploading my latest stuff to here, because almost every time I log in to post a new art piece, I just leave here completely annoyed.
There was no mention of an increase file size for art or improving the tagging/keyword system itself, which are my two biggest gripes with FA by far as an artist. I also find it ridiculous how it's taken until 2022 for the feature of being able to block/blacklist certain tags to even be announced, let alone implemented so you can avoid content that you don't like to see. You only have the option of turning NSFW content on or off. The furry fandom has many people in it, with many different tastes and interests. Some of us might be into things that others may find disturbing, and while I don't use FA to browse for art, this is one of the reasons why. Other sites such as Derpibooru and e621 have had this relatively basic functionality for nearly a decade now.
As for the file size limit, if I had to state the number one reason why I don't use FA more often as an artist, this would be it (although FA being a bad platform for small artists to get discovered is a very close second). The file size limit for artwork is 10MB or 1.6 megapixels which means that for almost every single art piece that I've put out there, I've had to downscale it just so I can post it here. I'm aware that Twitter will compress images too, but Twitter isn't a dedicated art site and that would be a bad comparison to make. Getting back to the point, why is it that for a dedicated art website in 2022, I can't even upload a 1080p image (1920x1080 is 2.1MP), even if it's below the hard capped file size limit? Some of my artist friends who are also on here have told me that you can bypass the 10MB cap by uploading an image, and then editing the submission after it's been uploaded, but at least for me I've never been able to get that to work. Maybe it's because the full resolution is still too big even for the "hidden" file size limit, or maybe it's been patched out. But why have the file size limit be at 10MB if it's supposedly so easy to bypass? Why not increase it to whatever the hidden file size limit is? I want everyone who follows my work to be able to enjoy my art in the highest quality possible regardless of what platform they're viewing it on, but I can't even do that here. Again, I understand and appreciate that there's a small team behind FA, but it pisses me off that I have to make an additional tiny version of my art just to be able to upload it here.
Next, the keyword tagging system. I would appreciate it if there was some sort of tag suggestion based on what you've written or are about to write to help artists apply any sort of relevant tags to their posts. This is something that I find really helpful on Derpibooru, plus anyone is able to edit the tags so they can add any other relevant tags that they felt the original poster missed. It can be hard to add tags if you aren't sure of what's out there or what's being used/searched for. It may not be a good idea to let anyone edit the tags of any post without a team of moderators to look out for any tag abusers but I don't think tag suggestions would be too much to ask for.
To keep things somewhat positive and balanced, I'm genuinely looking forward to the trending pages and "up and coming" pages. It has been extremely frustrating here on FA as a small artist, as it has always felt like it has favoured artists who are already well known seeing how the only ways people could come across your work here is if they randomly stumble across it while looking for something (outside of clicking a link to it elsewhere, word of mouth, or directly typing in your profile URL). I only have around 200 followers here (with extremely small growth), but elsewhere I have many more followers. Around 600 on Derpibooru and 1.3K on Twitter which are my main platforms. Hopefully this will mean that I will be able to grow here too, but we will have to wait and see as to what will happen.
UI improvements are also very welcome, but the UI is honestly the smallest of FA's problems in my opinion. It's still something that frustrates me, but it's usable. Something is better than nothing and on the whole I'm glad that something is finally being done about some of the problems with FA, but I wish that they would prioritise the bigger problems. For the time being, I still probably won't use FA much but I will keep an eye on what's going on every now and then, and maybe posting artwork if I remember to do so.
Thank you for reading! Feel free to share any thoughts you have in the comments, and I will read them :)
