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June 30th, 2025- Browse, Search, and Keywords Update
3 months ago
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Journal Start
Hey there fuzzies!
We want to let you all know the progress with the “roll back/update” mentioned in the previous announcement. The way we described today’s update in our last communication was considered misleading by some community members and, in turn, caused confusion, which was never our intention and we apologize for this. Some of the changes in our original update were a one-way trip, making it impossible to revert to the previous state the site was in. With this in mind, we heard everyone loud and clear about what we could do to move forward in a better direction. We’d like to thank everyone who gave us clear and constructive feedback, as it was invaluable to understanding what we could do to improve Fur Affinity for everyone!
This new update is the first step in a long transition towards a proper, fully-functioning keyword tagging system and as such is not the final form of this project. As such, we’ve designed this update to work similarly to how Fur Affinity has operated in the past while continuing progress in further development of our keywords system.
Opening the Browse page will display an updated interface, closer to the previous system:
It mostly appears the same, only now you will see that when making a Gender selection you will be automatically redirected to the Search page with filters already in place.
Based on your feedback, the Search page has been reworked, and now includes additional filters that were missing and previously only available on Browse (Category, Species, and Gender):
You will now be able to easily filter for which gender selection you prefer to see.
When selecting more than one option, only submissions containing all of the selected genders will be displayed by default. Alternatively, If you want to perform a standard full-text search for everything that uses any of the keywords (even alone) you can click the “Any of the words” option under the “Match Criteria” section of the search options. As a heads up, the keyword selector will only work in Extended Mode. You can change how the search functions by using additional options, such as “-” to exclude a term (example: “female !non_binary” to search for submissions with the term “female” and exclude “non_binary), or “|” to change the search to look for any of the terms next to it (example: “female | non_binary” to display submissions that have either “female” or “non_binary”).
For more information on options and operators to use for search, please refer to the Help Page.
In addition, we now require all submissions to have at least 3 keywords when submitting and editing previous works. We mentioned we were going to introduce this requirement at a later date when Tag Blocking was launched, and we feel like this is a great opportunity to take a step forward to encourage the change towards a proper tagging system. You will see this help text when submitting new works now:
For submissions that have keywords that don’t match the new requirements, worry not! We will be keeping your keywords in-place on your submissions; however, they will not be able to be searched for in our search system and if you edit an older submission you will be prompted to update keywords. They will only be displayed in the submission sidebar. When adding or editing new keywords, there will be a message that pops up informing you if some of your keywords are invalid.
If you have any problems, bugs, glitches ect. We would ask you to please put all the information you can get in a Trouble Ticket, instead of writing it in the comments. This way our Tech team can keep better track of the issue. You can submit a Ticket by clicking here or going to the “Support” section on the menu bar, and selecting “Report a problem”.
General Changes:
⚙️ Re-introduced the gender selection options to the browse, submission finalize/edit page and the search page.
⚙️ Except for the browse page, genders will now be rendered as a series of checkboxes instead of a dropdown, clicking which would directly modify either the keywords area, or the search query box directly on the page.
⚙️ Adjusted layout, position and spacing of elements at all resolutions and display mode transitions.
⚙️ Added the comment anchor icon (that can be copied to link to the comment directly) to submission and journal comments on mobile view.
⚙️Hiding a comment on a submission or a journal will scroll the page back to its general position on load.
Search Page Changes:
⚙️ Adding Category, Art Type and Species dropdown filters.
⚙️ Adding page and per page options.
⚙️ Search query box will now expand to accommodate larger search queries. Newlines can be added to it for convenience by pressing CTRL + ENTER while typing.
⚙️ Extra "Search" buttons added for convenience at the bottom of the filters lists in the sidebar and on mobile.
⚙️ Adjusted the display of error messages.
⚙️ The Search form HTTP action has been changed from POST to GET, so now all filter options and the search query would be transmitted via URL - which can be copied, shared or bookmarked.
⚙️ Added "Advanced Search Help" section to the "Options" area on mobile view.
⚙️ Restricting pagination to the maximum amount of results the search backend is configured to return (5000), so it doesn't trigger an error trying to go past it.
Submission Edit & Submission Finalize Page Changes:
⚙️ Description and keywords fields will now automatically expand to fit their contents.
⚙️ Finalize submission page, the thumbnail preview will now be visible on small/mobile screens as well.
⚙️ Submission edit page, added the thumbnail preview.
Browse Page Changes:
⚙️ Added the gender dropdown back with our new tagging framework in mind.
⚙️ If a gender filter from it is selected, the Browse page will redirect to the Search page while transmitting all of the other selected filter options.
FA+ Users-Only Changes:
⚙️ Extra “results per page” dropdown options that are available only for FA+ will have a different background to make them stand out.
Keywords Related Changes:
Entering/updating submission keywords is now done in accordance with new parsing rules:
* Only a-z,0-9,_ (underscore) are allowed.
* Keyword must be minimum 3 characters long (subset of 2 characters are supported)
* There must be at least 3 keywords provided.
The "Note" section under keywords input fields on submission finalize and edit pages updated to reflect this.
Existing keywords that are invalid according to new rules:
* Will be converted to new format ("/" and "-" replaced with "_") when editing a submission, and saved when the edit page is submitted. User will be warned/prompted when this happens.
* Displayed as they are on the submission view page, but visually "disabled" and unable to be interacted with.
Again we would like to remind you all that this is not a completely finished product. Much of the updates coming into FA from the start of the year are building the groundwork for final solutions, as we are working with an ancient infrastructure with limitations that restrict who is able to work on it in its current state. There are plans in motion for a recode as mentioned in our previous Town Hall announcement, but that takes time. In the meanwhile we hope to be making quality of life stop-gap solutions to the current site. We’ve been making great progress in these areas, such as our initiatives with Tag Blocking as well as Display Names. We made a mistake in how we handled this update, and we are actively working to resolve how this happened to prevent it from occurring again by moving forward with more communication, and proper testing.
We feel it is important to note that we have enjoyed having comments on journals open to communicate with our community members and get feedback from others when we are both doing things right as well as wrong. We unfortunately had to lock the comments on the previous two journals as much of the conversation seemed to be turning into unhealthy arguments against our trans/non-binary/gender fluid community members, as well as being gynophobic and we will not tolerate this behavior.
Fur Affinity is woman and LGBTQIA+ owned and operated. We’re very proud of the community of inclusivity we’ve fostered, and implore(and to some degree expect) everyone to help us preserve those values.
Lastly, we wanted to update you all on where we are with this year's Roadmap. There is currently a lot in “Code Review” that we hope will start coming out swiftly over the next couple months. We have side projects we are also working on that we hope you will all enjoy.
Main ticket items
⭐ Tag Blocking Part 1- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (FA+ Launch)- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (Everyone Launch) - Completed ✅
⭐ Technical Debt Fixes- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Large Bugfixes Round 1- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Implementing Cloudflare Turnstile (Tool to verify users and block bots) - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ IPv6 Support - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ User Block Improvements - In Development ✏️
⭐ 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) - In Development ✏️
⭐ Audio Player Updates - Researching 📖
⭐ Writing Upgrades - Researching 📖
⭐ Fixing Thumbnails - Researching 📖
⭐ Dev Friendly Initiative - Not Started 🍃
Side Projects
✏️ Site page “Banner Museum”: Featuring all previously used site banners with links to artists (for modern AND classic banners)
✏️ Site page “I Was Here”: A memorial page for all users who are no longer with us.
✏️ Site page “Wall of Awesome”: A way to track and shout out people who donate to the site! This will be an “opt-in” page for donors and not required if you prefer to remain anonymous!
✏️ Moved ads to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
✏️ Added a Mature rating to ads, making a total of three ratings: General, Mature and Adult.
Thanks to everyone for being patient with us while we sort through this and helping us make FA a better place for our community as a whole! Please keep comments within our Code of Conduct rules and a reminder to be excellent to each other! ❤️
We want to let you all know the progress with the “roll back/update” mentioned in the previous announcement. The way we described today’s update in our last communication was considered misleading by some community members and, in turn, caused confusion, which was never our intention and we apologize for this. Some of the changes in our original update were a one-way trip, making it impossible to revert to the previous state the site was in. With this in mind, we heard everyone loud and clear about what we could do to move forward in a better direction. We’d like to thank everyone who gave us clear and constructive feedback, as it was invaluable to understanding what we could do to improve Fur Affinity for everyone!
This new update is the first step in a long transition towards a proper, fully-functioning keyword tagging system and as such is not the final form of this project. As such, we’ve designed this update to work similarly to how Fur Affinity has operated in the past while continuing progress in further development of our keywords system.
Browse Page Update
Opening the Browse page will display an updated interface, closer to the previous system:
It mostly appears the same, only now you will see that when making a Gender selection you will be automatically redirected to the Search page with filters already in place.
Search Page Update
Based on your feedback, the Search page has been reworked, and now includes additional filters that were missing and previously only available on Browse (Category, Species, and Gender):
You will now be able to easily filter for which gender selection you prefer to see.
When selecting more than one option, only submissions containing all of the selected genders will be displayed by default. Alternatively, If you want to perform a standard full-text search for everything that uses any of the keywords (even alone) you can click the “Any of the words” option under the “Match Criteria” section of the search options. As a heads up, the keyword selector will only work in Extended Mode. You can change how the search functions by using additional options, such as “-” to exclude a term (example: “female !non_binary” to search for submissions with the term “female” and exclude “non_binary), or “|” to change the search to look for any of the terms next to it (example: “female | non_binary” to display submissions that have either “female” or “non_binary”).
For more information on options and operators to use for search, please refer to the Help Page.
Keyword Update
In addition, we now require all submissions to have at least 3 keywords when submitting and editing previous works. We mentioned we were going to introduce this requirement at a later date when Tag Blocking was launched, and we feel like this is a great opportunity to take a step forward to encourage the change towards a proper tagging system. You will see this help text when submitting new works now:
For submissions that have keywords that don’t match the new requirements, worry not! We will be keeping your keywords in-place on your submissions; however, they will not be able to be searched for in our search system and if you edit an older submission you will be prompted to update keywords. They will only be displayed in the submission sidebar. When adding or editing new keywords, there will be a message that pops up informing you if some of your keywords are invalid.
If you have any problems, bugs, glitches ect. We would ask you to please put all the information you can get in a Trouble Ticket, instead of writing it in the comments. This way our Tech team can keep better track of the issue. You can submit a Ticket by clicking here or going to the “Support” section on the menu bar, and selecting “Report a problem”.
🖥️ Tech Changelog 🖥️
General Changes:
⚙️ Re-introduced the gender selection options to the browse, submission finalize/edit page and the search page.
⚙️ Except for the browse page, genders will now be rendered as a series of checkboxes instead of a dropdown, clicking which would directly modify either the keywords area, or the search query box directly on the page.
⚙️ Adjusted layout, position and spacing of elements at all resolutions and display mode transitions.
⚙️ Added the comment anchor icon (that can be copied to link to the comment directly) to submission and journal comments on mobile view.
⚙️Hiding a comment on a submission or a journal will scroll the page back to its general position on load.
Search Page Changes:
⚙️ Adding Category, Art Type and Species dropdown filters.
⚙️ Adding page and per page options.
⚙️ Search query box will now expand to accommodate larger search queries. Newlines can be added to it for convenience by pressing CTRL + ENTER while typing.
⚙️ Extra "Search" buttons added for convenience at the bottom of the filters lists in the sidebar and on mobile.
⚙️ Adjusted the display of error messages.
⚙️ The Search form HTTP action has been changed from POST to GET, so now all filter options and the search query would be transmitted via URL - which can be copied, shared or bookmarked.
⚙️ Added "Advanced Search Help" section to the "Options" area on mobile view.
⚙️ Restricting pagination to the maximum amount of results the search backend is configured to return (5000), so it doesn't trigger an error trying to go past it.
Submission Edit & Submission Finalize Page Changes:
⚙️ Description and keywords fields will now automatically expand to fit their contents.
⚙️ Finalize submission page, the thumbnail preview will now be visible on small/mobile screens as well.
⚙️ Submission edit page, added the thumbnail preview.
Browse Page Changes:
⚙️ Added the gender dropdown back with our new tagging framework in mind.
⚙️ If a gender filter from it is selected, the Browse page will redirect to the Search page while transmitting all of the other selected filter options.
FA+ Users-Only Changes:
⚙️ Extra “results per page” dropdown options that are available only for FA+ will have a different background to make them stand out.
Keywords Related Changes:
Entering/updating submission keywords is now done in accordance with new parsing rules:
* Only a-z,0-9,_ (underscore) are allowed.
* Keyword must be minimum 3 characters long (subset of 2 characters are supported)
* There must be at least 3 keywords provided.
The "Note" section under keywords input fields on submission finalize and edit pages updated to reflect this.
Existing keywords that are invalid according to new rules:
* Will be converted to new format ("/" and "-" replaced with "_") when editing a submission, and saved when the edit page is submitted. User will be warned/prompted when this happens.
* Displayed as they are on the submission view page, but visually "disabled" and unable to be interacted with.
Again we would like to remind you all that this is not a completely finished product. Much of the updates coming into FA from the start of the year are building the groundwork for final solutions, as we are working with an ancient infrastructure with limitations that restrict who is able to work on it in its current state. There are plans in motion for a recode as mentioned in our previous Town Hall announcement, but that takes time. In the meanwhile we hope to be making quality of life stop-gap solutions to the current site. We’ve been making great progress in these areas, such as our initiatives with Tag Blocking as well as Display Names. We made a mistake in how we handled this update, and we are actively working to resolve how this happened to prevent it from occurring again by moving forward with more communication, and proper testing.
We feel it is important to note that we have enjoyed having comments on journals open to communicate with our community members and get feedback from others when we are both doing things right as well as wrong. We unfortunately had to lock the comments on the previous two journals as much of the conversation seemed to be turning into unhealthy arguments against our trans/non-binary/gender fluid community members, as well as being gynophobic and we will not tolerate this behavior.
Fur Affinity is woman and LGBTQIA+ owned and operated. We’re very proud of the community of inclusivity we’ve fostered, and implore(and to some degree expect) everyone to help us preserve those values.
Lastly, we wanted to update you all on where we are with this year's Roadmap. There is currently a lot in “Code Review” that we hope will start coming out swiftly over the next couple months. We have side projects we are also working on that we hope you will all enjoy.
🗺️Roadmap for 2025!🗺️
Main ticket items
⭐ Tag Blocking Part 1- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (FA+ Launch)- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (Everyone Launch) - Completed ✅
⭐ Technical Debt Fixes- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Large Bugfixes Round 1- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Implementing Cloudflare Turnstile (Tool to verify users and block bots) - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ IPv6 Support - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ User Block Improvements - In Development ✏️
⭐ 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) - In Development ✏️
⭐ Audio Player Updates - Researching 📖
⭐ Writing Upgrades - Researching 📖
⭐ Fixing Thumbnails - Researching 📖
⭐ Dev Friendly Initiative - Not Started 🍃
Side Projects
✏️ Site page “Banner Museum”: Featuring all previously used site banners with links to artists (for modern AND classic banners)
✏️ Site page “I Was Here”: A memorial page for all users who are no longer with us.
✏️ Site page “Wall of Awesome”: A way to track and shout out people who donate to the site! This will be an “opt-in” page for donors and not required if you prefer to remain anonymous!
✏️ Moved ads to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
✏️ Added a Mature rating to ads, making a total of three ratings: General, Mature and Adult.
Thanks to everyone for being patient with us while we sort through this and helping us make FA a better place for our community as a whole! Please keep comments within our Code of Conduct rules and a reminder to be excellent to each other! ❤️
o3o
Thank you for all you do :3
I wouldn't ever want to damage search on users no longer with us <3 I appreciate the concern there and sorry if we worried you!
I am aware of and agree the potential for abuse in such a system is a concern that needs to be addressed, but there are proven ways to do so. For instance, if I were in charge of community tagging, I would prohibit tags from being applied that are on the poster's block list unless OP applied the tags themselves.
It likely would also be beneficial to give posters the ability to have a "disallowed tags" list (a default list for their whole account with a per-post ability to make additions) that would not count as a block list for the artist, but would still disallow those tags from being applied by the community.
We'd also need alias and implications systems. Or at least alias systems to ensure that the same thing isn't being tagged with different terms.
I feel like way too many furries use e621 as a "gold standard" for tagging when there are similar yet better organized sites out there.
Community Tagging is one of the potential long-term solutions the team is looking at.
Obviously, we're still ways out, and a lot of things have to be figured out before we get there, including features you're mentioning in your reply.
Same goes for keywords listing.
I obviously can't provide an ETA, but I can absolutely confirm what you're mentioning is on the table of options. :3
I do have to say, however, I don't know if the "don't allow uploader's blocklist tags on their submission" is on the list of features; I'll forward to Tech to add to their brainstorming info. :3
Thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts! Much appreciated!!
That's why it's one of the potential solutions - we're still ways out, there's a few contenders, and the team is very aware of issues that some folks have with E621's way of handling things. Something they desperately want to avoid.
But it really, really is premature to make any statement beyond "it's a possibility" at this time. We've got ways to go before this becomes a thing, and we're learning more about how to handle things for Fur Affinity specifically with every step towards a full-on tagging system that will answer our Community's needs.
If it means cherry-picking features from other platforms while making our own twist on it, so be it. But we're not even close to having a specific target in mind as it's very much in "early brainstorming" session, still.
I hope this sets your mind a bit more at ease. <3
Most are happy with the removal of the H-slur from the dropdown, but concerns have been brought up that the term that replaces it, "dualsex," isn't available, and more concerns are being brought up with the fact it was instead replaced by "intersex" as it spreads a misconception that intersex is when one has both parts (which isn't true). Is it possible that "dualsex" will be added soon?
If you want me to make a ticket regarding it I can!
If I read the announcement correctly, apparently older works with less than three tags are no longer searchable. What if the person is no longer around to add the tags?
Also, I did read that removal of hyphens is borking some things.
Overall a very good and much needed update, and I applaud you all for the update. But I do wish to see these three concerns addressed!
The issues with hyphens are being discussed. At this time, they're searchable, but I believe they bring up both parts of the word as individual terms. If you search both parts surrounded by quotes and a space instead of the hyphen, it will search for both terms, in that order, with no others in-between. And this searches not just tags, but also the Title and Description. So it should help narrow results better. Other search modifiers can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/help/#search
Why not just sort it by physical sex and leave the gender identity to the keywords?
Not to erase gender identity, but rather when it comes to a visual medium, it's easier to tell physical characteristics (especially for an artist uploading a commission; where they might not know the user's identity or if the character/sona is different in identity...etc).
I dunno.
Just thoughts.
Not saying you're wrong just saying trying to sort by gender just seems like a much more convoluted route in general to what is likely meant to be a visual tag anyhow. Something that can't always be seen visually. Especially for people like me, who are nonbinary.
Plus it lets people input their exact identities into keywords and removes the entire, "well I don't want to use this term" issue. Which is something I see a lot, not even just on this site but in any art platform that doesn't have evey single option available.
Iirc we can search by keywords too so you'd still be able to get the thing you're searching for if you wanted. Perhaps even more refined since you'd only pull up art under that exact thing you prefer instead of a collective grouping you're forced to "settle" with.
But I could just be yapping nonsense over here. Being my greysexual nonbinary ass, I don't always have the best concept emotionally of the what's and why's behind these things. It just seems like the most logical step for most parties.
I can't help but wonder what the FA staff's opinions are on this...
A genital only drop-down might lead to people searching for penis and seeing a gynomorph, or look up vagina and see a gynomorph.
I personally tried and blacklisted every single synonym of gynomorph, including the offensive ones, but of course some people just won't tag it at all, and at that point you might just have to send in a trouble ticket and hope the tags are added
> Female
> Andromorph (for females with penis)
> Gynomorph (for males with vaginas)
> Intersex/Dualsex [*yes, both with a slash to prevent the yelling] (for characters with both or multiple sets to some degree)
And then keywords for gender. Just feels so much easier? And it might even remove that gynomorph issue you had? Perhaps?
Again just tossing concepts at a wall that no one might look at lol
Dunno if it'll ever happen with current code limitations but here's hoping. TwT
Why is intersex (a sexual condition) under gender? Shouldn't it be bi-gender?
Feel free to explain to me why I am wrong, I can take it.
I wish I could give timelines on these but it's difficult with what we're working with...it has been brought up though many times that this is a goal staff shares.
OK. Will do.
Joking aside, I like the new update. I am sure there will be some things to be ironed out over time, somethings that might not work out as intended, some things you and the team might have missed.
But overall, it sounds like you're on a good track with it.
"Blocklist size exceeds limit. New entry was not added.
Blocklist can be manually edited on the Profile Info page.
[Click here to continue...]"
Message
Not to mention, it functionally achieves nothing. Creating a new account instantly bypasses this.
The truth is the block feature is a double edged sword considering people can block you and cut off your ability to defend yourself when they try and defame you. I've had it where I was rightly blocked by someone but they they started a mini hate campaign that lead to me having to delete an account on a site due to the sheer volume of death threats I got from strangers who saw the misinformation. Because I couldn't respond to the original post because I was blocked the miss-info spread unchallenged. So blocking has to be balanced with both sides safety in mind.
I think the overall best solution is to let us have more variety and tools in the blocking feature. Some people you don't want commenting, while others you want to be barred from seeing your account entirely. And even then some you want to block permanently others for say 6 weeks. More options, more control. But I feel that such features are to great and wide in scope to ask for, and have received equal malicious death threat like comments when I made such suggestions on other sites. Which while excessive I understand.
For everyone we block that deserved it, how many were we wrong to block? I actually tested this a few years ago by trying to justify keeping everyone on my block list here on FA...and I removed 90% of the people I blocked. So we can make mistakes, and error in judgement. Until we have a way to address the mistakes in judgement we make when blocking it'll always be a difficult topic to navigate.
And I all realize anyone can just make throw away accounts, doesn't mean being on my page should be made easy for them.
That's not to say that the current methods are well thought out, rather, they're the complete minimum. But in the end it'll always be a compromise between security and privacy.
VPNs make IP bans useless, HWID bans aren't possible on a browser, meaning people will always be able to make new accounts relatively easily. So until they decide to ruin privacy and start doing phone or identity verifications, this is what we get.
Ergo, to me the simplest solution is anything that deescalates conflict and contact. The current way of blocking without informing is probably the most ideal.
And that's coming from someone who's blocked well over 50 accounts from the same stalker and made a ton of support tickets that really did fuck all. No blame to the moderators though, this is just how it works.
But yes, FA could definitely make the block work better, possibly even giving users the choice how much they want to block. Being defeatist about it won't help people already struggling though.
Just a small suggestion.
Eh, it'd also be kinda depressing if they added in a feature that shows a number/list of people who put you on their blocklist, but we'll see then.
Let's not open up that can of worms for right now.
Wait, what you do to get clipped? I don't mean to pry, of course, I'm just curious.
So kudos and +10,000 internet points to you!
I’ve had to completely move accounts to "get away" from people I’ve blocked bc they still show on my page having watched me.
It’s just better peace of mind knowing they can’t get near me. If they make a sock-puppet account to stalk, that says more about them than it does about me. It’s not my job to babysit someone else’s feelings bc they got mad I blocked them and they no longer have access to me. I’m living my best life on MY terms. I don’t owe anyone squat.
Hopefully chat behaves this time
all ye had to do was hit the UNDO button
All due respect to the team, but for a change as big as removing a keyword section they could’ve at least been prepared to restore from a backup or something.
Might be better saved for the rewrite
One of my most used and favorite words I tag everything with is not a tag on e6 and gets auto-converted to another, more boring word.
Let me have my fun tags, dang it!
three boobs > three_breasts
3tits > three_breasts
three tits > three_breasts
man > male
guy > male
racoon > raccoon
raccon > raccoon
procyonidae > raccoon
procyonid > raccoon
procyon > raccoon
pee > urine
piss > urine
masterbate > masturbate
A) you're getting use to the process
B) you are getting eyeballs on your work as those who use search can now see keyworded submissions.
C) with respect to the tag-blocking iniative; using them will help folks hide the works they do not wish to see.
I know that some artists added a lot of tags in order to increase the number of views. The obstacle for them was the lack of any generally accepted tags and the inability to see the popularity of tags.
But obviously, there are those who are not interested in chasing popularity by playing with hashtag search optimization. They just want their gallery. And forcing them to add tags, something tells me that the quality of the tags will be poor, since tags not needed by this artist.
If you spot a submission that has blatantly erroneous keywords that are abusing the system, this is in breach of our Upload Policy on Keywords.
You can Send a Trouble Ticket under the "Keywords" category so we can look at it, and take action if necessary.
Thank you!
I can absolutely assure you that it is part of our purview and we look at every single ticket that comes in, and take actions according to Fur Affinity's site policies. :3
But uh, if you wanna keep your keywords vague, maybe just make em like "art", "furry", "picture" or something?
I'm too cool for keywords. u_u
Do you not want people to find your work?
I don't do this personally that much at all, but I know people who have done this before, especially after the fact by removing existing ones.
I could see something like the ability to add tags for strictly filtering purposes with zero discoverability being a thing, but that depends on FA, not me.
So I would hope that the people who don't want to use tags would share why not, so that they may be accommodated in some way. For the benefit of all.
Keep up the great work.
Which I will not be using to describe myself, regardless of other peoples' pressures to conform on terminology and what I personally call myself and my non-human anthro-animal characters online and have permission from others to call them.
This was simmering back down after its last flare-up and reversal several years ago, and winds up being a roundabout way of re-litigating past choices. But I'm not here to soapbox on it..merely note this was an omission I find personally disappointing.
I think it's also important to remember the term's history and WHY it is still considered a slur by a sizable portion of the community. Yes it is a medical term, but one used more like a disfigurement or flaw to be 'fixed' (often through very invasive surgeries on newborns) and force that person into either male or female. Sadly because of such a dark history I think the term will be a point of friction for some time longer and I worry folks forget these terms exist and have a lot of meaning OUTSIDE of porn and 'they're just fictional characters!' because for a looooooong time they were used on people as recently as 10 years ago from personal experience and that's probably being generous. I understand wanting to reclaim the word, but other terms were invented for a reason and we shouldn't forget that, we shouldn't forget the trauma that came from that history and some folks will need more time or may never choose to reclaim it at all. None of this has anything to do with FA's personal convictions I don't think.
TLDR: You can still use the term as a tag, the new system isn't meant to 'compel' anyone into 'conforming' to a specific term for anything. Herm just has a super dark, depressing and dehumanizing history a lot of folks will either need more time to process at best, at worst they may shun the word entirely because of the hurt and trauma. Reclaiming terms is a good and noble venture, but we should never forget the history, why they hurt, why some consider them slurs, etc. we owe it to our fellow LGBTQ+ community members. Suffering aint a competition after all, we've been hurt enough we might as well look on the bright side and see this feature as a way to make it easier for folks looking to reclaim the word to find each other and allow those that would rather stay away from it to block it entirely.
"Hermaphrodite" has been co-opted as a slur and a pejorative to abuse and other trans people in the past, and is stigmatized in the trans community (which is true)
"Hermaphrodite" is a scientifically-classified word for dual-gender in the animal kingdom, having roots and benign use that goes back centuries (also true).
The situation is complex, and less adroit speakers talk past each other without empathy and self-insertion for either side. When one listens to just one side, one makes a decision tipped to favor that side and results in a specific change. The other side's forced to accepting a new hurdle to represent themselves, without being sought for conversation or input. It's particularly bad when there was no harm with simply bypassing it before this change. This issue has history, which a number of us do recall with the site. The FA volunteer staff are good people who're just trying to make the site better. But input from one side without considering the wishes and feelings of others it may affect, sends negative impressions to those thus affected: "You now need to do more than these but you're still tolerated for the moment."
Concerning the term though, I'm afraid your leaning towards considering it exclusively and primarily as a slur or medical term, and a means to harm, is factually incomplete. "Hermaphrodite", originating as a classification for animals in the animal kingdom, has been used as representation for a minority of the Fandom's characters and representative fursonas for decades (I should know, I'm an oldfang enough). Custom species celebrated for generations, like Bernard Doove's/Goldfur's Chakats and various chakat-kin spinoffs, are such. Characters who're dual-gendered and described as herm for decades. Systems ranging from the Furcode & pronouns like shi/hir, to even the very websites we use today like FA--until now, the point of this babble--acknowledged its existence as a viable coequal character gender identity without the onus of extra hurdles and tougher discoverability. Which is expected of a fandom that boasts and celebrates talking animals; A kingdom which the term 'Hermaphrodite' was made to include descriptions for. I myself have drawn hundreds--over a thousand--of pieces of work in the Furry Community. A large subset of that work involves hermaphrodites from various people who benignly enjoy and celebrate having them. Herms have been and are a function of this Fandom's expression, as much as any gender representation. As our LGBTQIA+ community overlap has grown and intertwined with the Furry community, this more negative angle on hermaphrodite has continued to be introduced, where the clash is between one strata and another's understanding of the identity of the term. I'd like to think the Fandom itself is not weaponizing this term against its own people it's drawn in to enrich itself with. I'm not naive and thinking we all get along and no one would abuse another it in the fandom (gods knows I've experienced some bad from other Furs...) That's not a signet of our subculture itself, but a sickness an individual brings with them. Yet, still the stigma introduced has lingered. And it is, chiefly, denounced by the contingent more sensitive to the history of its use outside of the Furry Fandom.
This was evident the last time FurAffinity staff tried removing the tag and reversed the decision, on the backlash from folk for whom the idea of using Herm as a slur is anathema and disliked being associated so by having their identity swapped to Intersex. Then, the staff did the correct move of including more lacking gender representation, so more people could be included without needing to type a keyword and nobody was forced to use a tag they didn't believe represented them. FA can do this and yet chose to drop some representation off into the 'Other' bin; A distinction from what you deem the "safer" representations to be found if you know to look it up. For which this grievance is made for the record. Man, that hurts even thinking it...
There's no reason to ever slander or abuse anyone with misuse of language, nor force people to assign themselves genders they don't believe are true. Thankfully that's not happening, but something else is. There's no denying bad actors and awful people have misused and abused terms before of which Herm is not the only one and your argument of whether or not to reclaim is justified; people were harmed by language abuse, and've found the fandom as a safe harbor to find support to reclaim pride and ownership of their expression on their terms, characters and iRL both. But from my and others of personal herm char representation's perspective, in the Furry Community our creations & expressions have nothing to reclaim and nothing to justify. Because we represent ourselves without hostility to others' own, welcome those seeking a safe space, and had a coequal representation before today when an extra visibility hurdle was added.
That last bit's key. As an African-American on the Meatspace iRL side of things, I'm aware of historical precedent for segregation big and small. Sometimes, even unintentionally, it can come from an act that simply makes one side work harder to be recognized. This removal is a small slight that nonetheless carries larger implications I think you ignore. It says: "You who identify as this term disliked by another cohort of the fandom must type it in where you were once coequal. You can still be found, sure, but only with pre-existing knowledge of your existence." Hit the back of the room, where others who find your term distasteful don't need to be reminded you're there but those who know where to look will find you. Congratulations: You're a minority in system now as well as population.
In the end this is more a grievance about something done without any attempt to find a peaceful middle ground for what is an unenviable situation to be in with two camps known for talking past one another. But there IS a middle-ground means of acclimatizing, empowering and healing trauma felt by a group group; the healthier alternative than marginalizing another. Isn't the former why we bother with Pride awareness t'begin with? Being changed to require typing one's gender to be found, while everyone else can do so and has a visible, informative checkbox to make theirs known and declared, isn't it.
... 🍪 🍪 🍪 🥛 There, told ya!
Thank you for bothering to reply above as you did, as I appreciate you expressing the sides of this since it's important to keep both visible if any sort of understanding's to be had.
In short, "Hermaphrodite" was NOT first used to describe animals, but originally and has always been a slur for intersex people. It's application to animal physiology came second. Biologists now are moving from "hermaphrodite" to "cosex" to describe these kinds of animals due to the history of "hermaphrodite".
The problem therein lies both using "hermaphrodite" as a tag at all, AND the fact that they are still insisting on trying to force intersex as an alternative, when irl intersex advocates are trying to separate themselves from a fantasy stereotype. (much like how Transwomen fought to phase out the use of the term "futanari")
I understand the frustration myself, since I used to use and identify with what "hermaphrodite" describes on a dictionary level. But, I will be happy to move on to a better and hopefully eventually widely accepted phrase rather than a slur from the 14th century that has a much longer history of treating intersex people as medical freaks and anomalies than being used to describe funny animal creatures on the internet.
Sad, but at least none was forced to keywords if don't choose any option when I tried to modify tags. And still can write it mannually to keywords... fow now.
I was on site more than 17 years and don't remember when "herm" in dropdown menu was removed (rarely look at this section and very rarely uploading something).
Out of curiosity: can you tell when this happend?
The gender topic is a chesspit, lol.
Here is an example of the difference between intersex and dualsex.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61365097/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61423601/
You can use "Altersex" to discribe characters with fantasy genitals (bigenital, dualsex, dicknipples, multi-boob, taur, tailcock, etc.) and "Dualsex" for characters with both male and female genitals
Wanted to ask if this was a me thing, or a site thing. Any information will be much obliged!
This is an issue with our third party ads. We are aware of the ad in question, and are connecting with our third party ad server to get this ad removed out of rotation.
Also the others are just as bad about it.
We did not partner with them. Sometimes malicious ads pop into rotation on our third party ad server. When they do show up, please let us know so we can report the ad and get it taken out. In this instance, we've got enough to work on to send the information to our servicer.
Is it possible in the future to have volunteers help add keywords like they do on imageboards?
This already happens on other sites that allow "community" tags.
Another potential option would be to allow a user to blacklist certain tags from being suggested on a specific image, or on their work in general. Alternately, suggested keywords can be hidden until accepted. There could also be an option to prevent fresh accounts from suggesting tags (similar to the options users have for restricting fresh accounts from sending notes or making comments).
We just need to take time to consider these issues when building the system.
It would also be nice to have a selection of check boxes on the submission page, like the ones for gender, but for adding content warning tags like #scat, #gore, #digestion, etc.
Like... if someone community-tags a user's submission, that user has a set amount of time (say, three days) to either approve or deny the tag. If they do nothing during that time, the tag gets auto-approved. (And of course the user could remove the tag after the fact; not everyone logs in every three days.)
You could start by searching for @keywords and (found in 14194679 documents) and @keywords the (found in 16273258 documents). I'm sure you could get better results with a more strict database query, but that'll at least give you a starting point.
No one bothers reporting submissions that violate the keyword policy because it's so weakly enforced and has been for twenty years, so literal tens of thousands of submissions are in violation.
The staff currently now is very willing and able to tackle this; we can't work to fixing it now if you treat filing Trouble Tickets like it is twenty years ago.
We will appreciate any help you give! You are apart of this community after all.
As for cleaning up spurious tags like 'and', 'the' and similar, we fully intend to make further improvements and cleanups as we go. As mentioned in the above announcement, this is not the last update we are making to improve our keyword/tagging system, and we intend to improve it and make it more usable as quickly as we can!
"iolite and mouse people that get sent on a probably fun journey wow look how much theyre having"
"should have been quicker to react when getting transported a new world she doesnt know"
"i had to freakin download and use tik tok for this goddamn image expose myself so much."
Removing "and" from the tags on these submissions doesn't fix the problem. They've still got problematic tag garbage. There are tens of thousands of images like this and they would need to be reviewed manually. The best you can do is do an automated filtering for potentially problematic submissions.
We would certainly like to provide users with better tools to fix their own submissions than having to go through them all one by one manually. I know I wouldn't want to go through all my stuff one page at a time! Other users have also suggested a 'tag suggestion' feature to allow users to suggest improvements that upload owners can then accept or reject. As with most things, this is all a matter of time and effort from our tech team, and we aim to make incremental improvements rather than sweeping changes. We're certainly not done trying to make things better.
Also, what do you mean you can't change it back?
Did you really go scorched earth when you over reacted during the last change?
I don't believe that. The Staff has recovered a lot more than that from site back ups before.
"Move fast and break things" is meant as criticism, not advice.
It just seems like they overreacted, and instead of removing or changing the offending word, they nuke a feature from orbit.
It just makes me think of that Spongebob episode where Spongebob cleared his mind and then later panicked because they threw out his name.
I understand that they can't tell us EVERYTHING, but for big changes like this, the least they could do is ask the community and get input, opinions, and suggestions before just changing it and telling us later, like it is for our own good.
It was the same for Neer's memorial thing. I was going to show my respects and get the badge, but since I was locked out, I just felt like I wasn't wanted there.
Was kinda hurt by that, if I'm completely honest. :/
This is not true. There may have been security features in place like needing an email or phone tied to your account to participate during the stream to prevent harassment and trolls but journal comments before and after the Town Hall stream were open to everyone.
I don't really have anything too negative to comment on, but some suggestions that would make FA easier for me to use due to my poor eyesight. Still, it would have been nice to feel like I was a part of things, even if it was just commenting where I thought I could be helpful.
It does mean a lot.
That not everybody fits a pre-defined list, unfortunately clashes with the fact that people do want to be able to search based on predefined words :/
Just because you want to reclaim it does not make it less of a slur.
And as a slur it is still actively abused to mislabel trans people and fetishize them by cis people.
That is why it is not being supported as a default tag. All of the drop-down categories are ultimately becoming tags. Because the final goal of the site is to switch to a tags based browsing/search system.
reclaim away, but please tag things how you want them so people like me who don't like seeing those terms can block them.
Adding the checkboxes here was part of the "rollback" because there was a lot of critique about the Gender category/dropdown disappearing altogether. So this is a birdge, where the checkboxes populate the textbox that you can indeed type in.
Submissions just have said tags greyed out and unclickable but it seems the blacklists were missed entirely.
The issue was they were allowed on the submissions page when they shouldn't have been, given they were already blocked in searches. So the keywords you're seeing as grayed out were already invalid - the update just tells you as such now.
So please stop, ACTUALLY roll back the original 6/18 update to repair the erased "Other", "Multiple Characters", etc. info, and THEN implement this stuff.
The most likely reality is "can't be reversed without deleting everything uploaded since then". Which is why they should really have reversed it sooner instead of dithering. But tough shit: they need to either bite that bullet and do it anyway (because as annoying as having to redo the back half of June's uploads is, it's still infinitely more feasible than users having to fix the destroyed labeling themselves), or find some other way of porting over the erased "Other", "Any, "Multiple Characters", etc. labels from the backups.
Bad bean, bad
Insert an indicator next to the username if that person is your follower (when accessing the person's profile, similar to Twitter and Bluesky). I think that would make things easier in my case because I like to thank everyone who favorites my drawings. When the person is already my watcher, I don't need to thank them for favoriting them because they already favorite my drawings frequently.
It's hard to remember so many people's names ^^''
If you feel that wouldn't suffice, let us know the reason. We will look into it. (You can also at any time submit a Ticket under the "Feedback" category for suggestions like this or whatever else.)
Or do you mean, a field that changes the actual image alt text that currently says "Click to change the View" when hovering over a submission image?
Also, the new tag format not accepting hyphens makes it a step backwards.
In the meantime, you can adjust your search terms to better narrow your results. Example: If you wanted to search the hyphenated term editor-in-chief, you could enter the terms with quotes and spaces "editor in chief" and search should return results that contain all those words, in order, without words in-between. This may be in the title, description, or tags, if you're using the Expanded Search. Other useful ways to refine your searching can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/help/#search
If you feel you're getting incorrect results, please do submit a Ticket with details, including the exact text you're searching, and we can look into it further.
at the moment we're not planning on doing any tag adjustments, especially after last update. those tags should still be searchable because of the full text nature of sphinx as an engine, so it should all still work as y2hecate explained!
1. Unlike last update, tag adjustments would be welcomed in this regard because of saving users work.
2. Speaking of last update, you need to port over "Other", "Any", "Multiple characters", etc. that were wrongly excluded from the previous tag adjustment.
Or possibly just won't, because we know they had a full backup from just 2 months ago at the longest, but apparently aren't willing to use that to restore what they deleted with the original update.
I am frustrated that they have yet to address the omitted tags, but in fairness the complaints about removing the gender dropdown were a lot louder and a lot more frequent from what I saw. And a lot of the attention right now is probably going to the backlash about the h-word being culled as a category (renaming would have been better IMO).
(The omitted tags are bad too, just not where my experience is personally. I prefer to focus on the parts I can actually make sound commentary on, rather than just parroting other's experience.)
Try searching for my name, then for poo-ky, then for the very common term ko-fi and tell me how to do those...
i really enjoyed the ability to blacklist untagged pics by default! sad to see it go but if this suits people better on the whole i can jive with it
Like as some random example, I could enter into the search bar "(@type fanart) | (@type comics)" and it'd return all submissions that either used the "Fanart" type or the "Comics" type.
Currently, there may be ways to do that if people have tagged properly or otherwise described their images in that way (I personally tag my fanart as such, sometimes the media used, and many people already tag species). If you use the expanded search options (combined with helpful refinements listed here: https://www.furaffinity.net/help/#search ), you can narrow your results further to hopefully find more of what you're looking for. The search will find terms in the Title and Description of submissions, not just tags.
I just want the normal (updated) gender selection back when uploading a submission.
Entering/updating submission keywords is now done in accordance with new parsing rules:
* Only a-z,0-9,_ (underscore) are allowed."
So... one of my characters' name now will be unusable, because it has a - in it... tyty...
If you find useful tags with hyphens not working (or even examples of hyphenated names negatively effected), please submit a Ticket about it. It will help us keep track of what's needed.
The recent site update https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11169318 has specifically highlighted the (LONG) existing problem with hypnens in words and, more importantly, names.
When pointed out, some of your staff has provided workaround suggestions which just don't work at all, because in addition to search treating hyphens as spaces, and dropping shorter than 3 letters parts (whereas searching for my name results in "ree", Poo-ky is in "poo", and e.g., ko-fi is not searchable whatsoever), tagging as described implements a differen behaviour, dropping hyphens and concatenating the parts. While that would somewhat circumvent the short-parts problem if -- and only if --- such a name is placed specifically in tags, it won't help with search for names of people posting or placed in descriptions. It would also exacerbate the search problem, since e.g. Free-Opium would not be searchable at the same time as the username (or desc mention) and in tags, requiring two separate searches to pull up.
We are also compiling an allowed list of valid 2-letter search terms, which will help a part of the issue.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention and providing detailed examples. Someone with more technical knowhow than I, should be able to address your ticket directly.
Being able to find artists is definitely something we want. I thank you for the good hyphen examples here.
The icon thing.. it is actually working for me, though I've personally never thought of searching by that.. so that's very neat and I thank you for bringing it up. If I search (icony2hecate) or (y2hecateicon) with colons instead of parentheses, it does find people who have tagged me with the icon format.
I checked both ways with m-ree and poo-ki as well, and it works, even with the hyphens in the names (though they pull up different results, based on how people have done the icon.. so an "or" could be put in there with the | character to find both variations at the same time). I also checked searching iconname and nameicon without the colons on all 3 names and it still worked.. though it does separate the search terms, so it pulls up our icon-tagged images AND anything with matching "ree", "iconm", "reeicon", etc. So.. similar hyphen issue. (If this icon searching is not working for you, please submit a ticket with details on your specific search, so tech can see what's going on.)
I will pass this along to tech. Maybe there is something helpful that can be done with that as far as hyphens/usernames go.
This gets way more complicated if you need to search for additional terms, e.g., if I want to find all my Halloween-themed art, or, gods forbid, all art drawn for me by Poo-ky...
This also does not solve the problem of character names, words, or even usernames mentioned just as plaintext...
On the other hand, while typing this reply, I have realized that simply treating a hyphen as a word part is not a solution, either, because if I had a picture that is "Halloween-themed" in its description, searching for "halloween" still needs to find it. Maybe have quotation marks or some other way to enforce literal hyphenation.
.... Also made me wonder how apostrophes (also common enough in character names) are treated... Quick search for both "D'Artagnan" and "Artagnan" has shown the same issue -- which also has the same complication of apostrophes serving a dual role, e.g., "M-ree's character"...
Unfortunately, both issues are more complicated than solved easily, even to compose the use cases, much less implement them... Gonna keep thinking on it...
Yesssss! So useful!
Heck, I'm glad that the main help page was recently updated to have better help on search terms. I've pointed out to a number of people the '@lower' search term that allows you to restrict a search to one user's gallery. The search functionality on this site is actually already pretty powerful, it's just also horribly under-documented.
Also, Firefox mobile supports unlock origin and a few other extensions, haven't seen an ad on my phone in years
And thanks for the 3 tag rule! I'd suggest adding a button to quickly open a trouble ticket for tag abuse though, knowing that some annoying people won't tag their stuff appropriately, so we can click once on it, suggest some tags, and submit (I'm painfully aware that community tagging is gonna take a long while to roll out, so this is a decent compromise for now)
Stills good job y'all!
The IAB has a set amount of sizes that the industry uses. Previously, two out of our three offered in-house ad sizes were non-standard sizes. Lils were 300 x 90 and squares were 300 x 200. This meant that when some companies would approach us for ad space, they would have to make all new creatives just for us.
We are aware of the malicious third party ad and have already reported it to our servicer so they will remove it.
The proposed changes look good.
You seem to be referring to the Species dropdown; this is independent of the Keywords system, much like the previous version of the Gender dropdown.
One of our future steps is to do the same migration of the Species dropdown to the Keywords system. We've garnered a lot of experience with the Gender one, and have a better direction on how to go with that future migration.
When it comes to the current state of the species dropdown, you can find a selection of dog breeds, such as "Akita", "Bull Terrier", "German Shepherd", etc. in the "Animal Kingdom" section lower in the selection box.
"Dog(Other)" is there in order to be able to "select" a dog breed that's current not listed.
As for the difference between "Dog(Other)" and "Canine(Other)", this mostly refers to the idea that dogs are domesticated animals, whereas "canines" refer to all of the family in general, which can include a number of members of the canidae family that are not listed, the same way "Dog(Other)" can refer to dog breeds that are not listed.
Following the selection of "Other", I would argue it would be best practice to add the species/breed to the keywords section manually.
As a long-time member of the "Dog(Other)" family, I understand the frustration.
I hope this sheds a light on it!
What I’m trying to see is how this works like the prior Browse function. There’s a particular piece of art that doesn’t show up when I use the new Browse function searching for male transformation. It’s keyworded Male and Transformation but it does not show up. And I’m seeing others when I first use the Browse for Transformation, I see the artwork. But when I search for Transformation and choose Male, it does not show up. Mind you, they are keyworded Male, Transformation and Category is Artwork (Digital)/Transformation.
Not sure why, but it’s almost like a huge swath of artwork that should show. I know I sound like I’m whining, but I sure miss the simple and reliable way of checking for all the latest artwork, which, for me, happens to be male transformation. I feel like I’m missing something I’ll love ❤️
Without knowing exactly what submission you're referring to, it's difficult to test on my end; what I can say is that the search indexer does need a bit of time to parse through all new submissions, so they don't show up immediately.
Once indexed, search has been pretty reliable so far. It has room for improvement, for sure, but this was a "first step" in how to better implement some parts of the browsing system into the search. And we've learned a lot, so the next time will be better and easier for everyone, no doubt. :3
Thanks for listening to the feedback (sorry you had to sift through so much nonsense to get to the legitimate feedback), and for the hard work. I love the complete transparency with the roadmap as well. How exciting!
Having intersex as one of the few available preset options, without corresponding education, is unfortunately likely to lead to more people mislabeling their art and characters without realizing they are doing so, and that can make it hard for more true-to-life representation of intersex characters to be found. Hopefully FA will be able to get things cleared up to created a healthier environment for everyone.
Also, your art is fantastic! Seeing you here reminded me I should give you a watch!
I'll definitely go give that thread a read~
(And thank you!!! I appreciate it ♥ )
Intersex was a common suggestion. I did check the FA Discord for a discussion on Intersex and the term "herm" a week or two ago and that opened my eyes to how much bigger and different that topic was than I thought. It was pitched to me as a sort of "catch all" term, and that seems innacurate.
On another art site a few years ago I was told to use the term "Altersex" for fantasy characters that don't follow real world logic. But not enough people used the tag to mkake it functional for searches. And I was told to stop using Altersex not long after.
Some larger community discussion for tags here would be super useful for people like me that just don't know the deeper meaning or reasons these tags exist. Dualsex seems like a interesting one if enough people adopt it!
asking because I submit a single story through two file types, and only want one to be discoverable. it's a unique situation I'll admit that, I'm just curious
as for seperating trans from cis tags, i think it comes down to the fact that porn is an undeniable part of FA's community, and certain bodies appeal to certain people so we should be able to search/censor them respectively.
Also one of my best friends identifies as intersex but have been told they need to find a different term for their own biology.
having "trans" just be a tag instead of a gender would still let people filter +/- with it, but allow it to be treated like the adjective it is without implying we are a separate gender. wasn't half the point of this update "hey you can just use tags to label and search for everything now"?
hate that even in queer friendly spaces trans gets used as the gender rather than a thing a gender can be
would be different if the available genders were cis gender and trans gender (male and female ig) but this way feels bad tbh
like "here are the real men/women and theres also a tag for the ones you might not want to see"
Actually better question, if I have a species I made up not recognized by the system and use a tag for it so people know what it is, does that mean it won’t count towards the minimum tag requirement?
I need to ask because I might have a problem in the future if I can’t think of more than two or worse my goofier ones don’t count towards it.
Thanks for the clarification.
If someone is struggling with tags here are the basic ones I always use:
- Body type [anthro, feral, taur, humanoid]
- Gender [+ important body parts; wings, horns, fangs, etc] | More can be added if mature/nsfw
- Species
- Art type [digital, traditional]
- Materials [acrylic paints, watercolor, pencil, etc]
- Completion year
- Artist name
- Client name/oc name + commission
- Solo/duo/trio/group
- Clothing [Clothed/nude/shirtless/etc]
- Furred/scaled/feathered
- The color of the above
- And any notable acts that are in the picture [swimming, cooking, sports, etc]
If you really just wanna do 3 at least do: species, gender/body type, anthro/feral/etc so it's at least helpful.
Yes, if you input your species as a keyword it will still count towards the 3 keyword minimum.
I'm not going to be one of the ones whining and fussing and demanding a complete and total rollback (especially since it's been made abundantly, repeatedly, inescapably clear that that is not going to happen, nor do I think it should) One suggestion, though: Not having the ability to include hyphens in tags could create more problems for users than it solves. I think you'd be better off allowing that as part of tags (even if a tag can't start or end with it).
We understand the frustration, but alas this is due to a search system limitation, as it reads hyphens as a negatory command.
As such, we cannot change this behaviour without what would basically amount to a serious rewrite of the entire system (from what I understand).
As of right now, we are suggesting either to concatenate words (example: "rin-tin-tin" to "rintintin") or use underscores (example: "rin-tin-tin" to "rin_tin_tin"), depending on the usecase.
I hope this helps shine a light on the issue to your satisfaction!
The current search only uses hyphens for negation, if they are the first character of a search word.
A search for
raccoon -male
will find everything that is tagged as raccoon, that is not tagged as male. (Notice there is a space before the hyphen, making it the first character of a word, meaning negation.)
Any hyphens that are embedded within words, with no spaces before or after the hyphen, are simply treated as spaces by the current search.
A search for
raccoon-male
or a search for
raccoon male
will find everything that has both raccoon and male tags. (The words are simply and'd together by the search engine.)
Hyphens should never be a problem when they are embedded within tag words, like tic-tac-toe. But, tags that begin with a hyphen, like --skunk--, could never work. The system should simply strip leading hyphens from all tags, but leave all other hyphens intact. That way, nothing should break, with the Sphinx search that FA is using. It's surely a lot easier to strip leading hyphens from all existing tags, than to actually rewrite the search system!
But given the other comments from staff, this is likely in the realm of "easier said than done".
Yeah, feels like I misunderstood some communication from Tech over the weekend, and some updated information slipped through my paws. My bad, sorry! x_x
The team's looking into ways to make this work. There are a few avenues being looked at, each with pros and cons... But right now, they haven't settled on any specific direction, especially in light of this hyphen fact.
I've forwarded your comment to the team as feedback, just in case. :3
Thanks for taking the time to reply. :3
If you're doing a search, you can use the "@lower" command to filter to just an artist. Just make sure to use their username and not their display name.
As an example, if I were to search for your submissions, I'd make the command "@lower christykitsune".
I hope this helps!
I was more-so hoping that sorta thing could be added like a tag or something to permenantly not show their submissions.
It can work with multiple artists; it just gets a biiiiiiiiiiit more involved.
You can use the following to display either my submissions, or yours:
@lower (firebreath|christykitsune)
The pipe ( | ) is a way to tell the system "this OR that". And you can add many, many more afterwards, all separated by pipes:
@lower (artist1|artist2|artist3|artist4)
and this will restrict the search to only those artists (I put in 4, but you could honestly keep going... the only limit is the maximum URL size).
As for tagging the artist names, some artists do it, some don't...
We haven't made it mandatory, but being able to block subs by artist is something that was requested, as well as an update to keyword blocking to just not show instead of being blurred, and the team is looking into that as well.
Hopefully, that helps a bit more. :3
About blocking artists...
Let's assume I want to browse all artwork with 'transformation' as tag, title or description. And I mean all of it. Let's also assume this takes quite a while, so I search and sort by date, searching to a certain date and some other day continue from there. Let's then assume I already went through a number of artists' galleries individually so I don't want them to show up again, so I can go through the rest faster. So I type in 'transformation -@lower artist1 -@lower artist2..." and so on.
Now, my question is, what is currently the maximum number of search operators or, as it seems to be now based on URL size, the maximum length of the URL. Because before the update I could insert as many search operators as I wanted to (the maximum then being the limited search time, around 15-16 seconds), but now I get a hard error screen after just 200 names. Is there a way to avoid that? Or do I have to accept that and adopt a more space-saving search format with -@lower (artist1|artist2|artist3|...)?
The search string is limited by the maximum length of a URL, which is ±2000 characters, not operators themselves.
Longer queries can timeout, however, which is what it sounds like it is happening. That always depends on complexity of the query, unfortunately. Without the actual text of the error you're getting, it's a bit of a guessing game.
I think your best bet in this case would be to use "transformation @lower -(artist1|artist2|artistN...)", though your format works as well, and hopefully that solves the issue!
Web server is returning an unknown error
Error code 520
If I add more and more names slowly it works in the beginning, but eventually hits a wall. And that wall now is the URL character limit, as I understand. I probably also reach the limit pretty fast because of all the '-@lower' and spaces between names and operators.
I tried the one -@lower (artist1|artist2|artistN...) format, deleting all spaces. It works and fits more names in, but if 2000 is the limit of the URL, I still won't be able to exclude all the artists I've already been through.
Just so you get the dimensions, I went through all transformation pieces on FA from 2005 to mid 2023 so far. The total number of TF pieces is currently +800K, but starting the search from mid 2023 and with a whooping 2K -@lower artistnames I reduced the number of pieces I still have to go through to only 90K. With the limit on search operators, or characters in the URL, that number goes up to +200K again.
So... can the search system go back to no longer being required to be spelled out in the URL, please? I know, very specific problem, probably affects only me, but I guess I can still ask. If not, well, I guess I have to priorize my artist names...
Doing this will allow the tech team to follow-up with you and provide you with better answers than I ever could. :S
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
people were suggesting a lot of useful categorizations on the last journal here, and it would have actually been really useful to have things like genderfluid instead of losing options that made it at least clearer that the gender tag is being used as a placeholder.
For the people saying "Why can't I use 'herm' anymore? Why can't I use 'D-girl' anymore? Why can't I use 'C-boy' anymore? Why can't I use (outdated term of choice) anymore?" You always could, you still can, and this series of updates hasn't altered that. You can still put it in your tags. It's just not in the aforementioned quick shortcuts anymore.
Enforcing the tag system. Take a page out of E621's book.
A lot of tags, and tagging is mandatory. As well as an easy-to-use Blacklist.
The changes/re-implementation of the gender stuff is good, tho.
In the pawst I just often came across posts that had little to no keywords. Making it a tad harder to filter things out.
Thank you for the reply. u.u
you separate out trans male and trans female (half of me) but you put (my other half) under an umbrella term.
I prefer feminine hermaphrodite.
Also you forget Herm as Chakats are labeled as Herm.
what about existing submissions?
I'm not insulting anyone, i'm using the specific term that's used for this species. if anyone else is insulted that's on them.
You can still use the term that describes you best. You always could and you still can. Most of the trans and intersex people on the site consider the term "herm" to be offensive, so it's been decided that it's not in FA's best interests to include it in something as prominent as the dropdown menus. This solution is the best of both worlds: the people who want to continue to use/search for the offensive term are still free to do so, and the people who are upset by it now no longer have to be confronted with it every time they upload something. It's a compromise. And it's rather hypocritical to try and throw a wrench into a compromise that works best for everyone while calling them the "snowflakes."
But both have the right to express Themselves i the way they want.
I get that the term is problematic in the bigger picture. And being dual-sexed does technically fall under intersex. But a lot of people apparently don't feel seen under that label, so just cutting "herm" from the dropdown probably wasn't the best solution, especially since you didn't roll posts previously labeled as "herm" in under "intersex" dropdown.
I feel like changing the dropdown option to "dual sex" might be a better course of action than removing it. Keeps the longstanding option and acknowledgement, while avoiding the bad term.
Edit: Oop! Sorry you got two comments! I didn't see Sciggles show up at the time of my comment.
IE - The Chakat species uses the Herm Term rather then intersex.
It isn't censored, it isn't hidden. But how is one to feel when an update boils down to 'We've improved everything, even added capabilities! Oh but we've decided your specific option which was coequal with the rest before doesn't belong in the dropdown and has to manually be included now. but it's still possible, don't worry!
This is not an isolated incident without precedent on FurAffinity and those of us who remember the last time this was done--then reversed--are more sensitive to it happening again.
People will argue for the change and that's fine. Doesn't change the fact it's specifically targeted and disappointing, when all that was necessary was an update to the new tagging system operation for everything.
"Hermaphrodite" has been co-opted as a slur and a pejorative to abuse and other trans people in the past (which is true)
"Hermaphrodite" is a scientifically-classified word for dual-gender in the animal kingdom, has been in use benignly and without animus in the Furry Fandom for decades, and has been the basis for characters and identities just as long (also true).
The situation is complex, and less adroit speakers tend to talk past each other without considering the notion of empathy for either side. When you listen to just one side, you only make one decision. Unfortunately it's just as you say: Simply taking the word of one side results in a specific change favoring that side. And so the other side is forced to concede accepting a new hurdle to represent themselves, without seeking conversation or input, where there was no issue with simply bypassing it before this change. This issue has history, which a number of us do recall with the site. The FA staff are good people who're just trying to make the site better. But input from one side without considering the wishes and feelings of others it may affect, send negative impressions to those thus affected: "You now need to do more than these but you're still tolerated at the moment "
And finally! This new search page is looking sweet!
I the future you should maybe consider doing something similar to Theme/Type (and maybe be consistent what you call it? It's Type in "Browse" but "Theme" when submitting...) dropdown, at least when submitting art: at least for visual art, pieces can easily overlap between multiple types and having to choose just one is kinda eh. Like anime style drawing of a human DnD-type adventure party could easily be anime, human or fantasy. Choosing one when browsing might make still sense, not so much when submitting. And it annoys me that "Theme > Specialty" (which houses more furry or kink specific things) has "General Furry Art" as the bottom option... it's not even in a correct alphabetical slot when the rest of the list is 😩
edit: I've also been thinking; why is "recipes" under visual art? Now, food photography, food art and plating I can see someone arguing to be visual, but recipes by themselves?
Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the search system we use, which recognizes all hyphens as a negatory statement (to exclude the term that follows it).
To support it would require extensive rework, which would require a lot of time and work (from what I understand).
We understand the frustration, and the suggestion at this time is to either concatenate (example: "rin-tin-tin" to "rintintin") or use underscores (example: "rin-tin-tin" to "rin_tin_tin"), depending on the situation/preference.
While I'm sure this is not the response you wanted, I hope it sheds a light on the issue, and helps mitigate problems going forward!
... Now try searching for poo-ky...
I'm sorry, it seems there was a misunderstanding in how I interpreted your message and replied; I didn't mean that you could replace hyphens in search, but when creating tags.
As for "searching with hyphens", seems like I missed/misunderstood some information from Tech and you are right; the search is inconsistent when it comes to these, as the search engine breaks them into two instead of a single word which will yield results in a different-than-expected way.
The tech team is already aware and looking at various ways to implement a fix; they are exploring various avenues of solutions, both with positives and negatives and are trying to figure out a way to make it work best for everyone.
Sorry about the misunderstanding and mistake!!
(This is essentially a copy of the reply I posted to y2hecate, as TBH, I have no slightest idea where/how is the best way to point these things out or where to direct the suggestions like this.)
I'll forward the suggestion to tech, however; seems like an improvement that would be good to have when searching for a username written in the description, though I could see how that would be technically... difficult. But that's why they are the technomancers, and I'm just a moderator. X3
As to your question about where to submit these sorts of feedbacks, I'd suggest the Trouble Ticket with the "Feedback" category for this. The team does read and relay those to the right internal groups, though we don't always reply individually to everything.
But we do forward them appropriately after reading them!
I hope this helps a bit!!
I mean, what you have described doesn't work like you have described it, which you would have seen if you actually tried it. It also truncates "m-ree" to just "ree" and shows e.g., uploads by sk-ree (who also gets truncated the same way).
... Not to mention that finding uploads BY user X is much less of a hassle in general than finding uploads MENTIONING user X, and that even if it was pulling up any user names, it'd only help with USER names, not CHARACTER names anyway...
I understand that the example I've provided you isn't perfect; as you pointed out, it is an issue due to the way your username is written and how the search engine parses it.
Fact remains that this system works on other usernames, and will only show uploads by that user, assuming they do not have the same name characteristics and/or hitting similar search engine limitations.
As an example: This search for user "Malachyte" works perfectly fine.
If what you are looking for is a forced search for ":icon username:" or ":username icon:" (broken down to prevent autoparsing by the system), you may want to try "@message <icon username>" (or any other flavour) which would force the search in the Description field for that exact string.
It seems to work okay at first glance, but is likely going to be held back by the same problems the search itself has:
https://www.furaffinity.net/search/.....sage+iconm-ree
Note that searching without any "commands" will search all fields; therefore, searching for just "m-reeicon" yields similar results - again, those are limited by the fact that your username has a hyphen, with the search limitations that are involved that were identified prior; searching with a username with no hyphens yields results closer to what you are apparently looking for.
As far as the character name is concerned, this is not something we can do ourselves and requires proper tagging by the uploader. It is an issue that we cannot control nor fix, one way or another, without user input. If the uploader does not mention the name of the character either in the description (which is searched by terms not forced with commands) or keywords, there is literally nothing we can do.
Again, this is an issue not stemming from Fur Affinity nor its systems, but the users' diligent tagging and/or description, and has been an issue since the launch of the site itself. If the uploader does not include character names, in the description or the keywords list, there is nothing to be done on our end at this time.
By starting to enforce keywords usage, we are hoping to help with this overall problem by instilling a proper tagging user culture. However, as it was previous stated, the current change iteration is just the first step, and we are learning a lot about migrating fields and what are the gaps in the search tool. And we are working to address them, but we require time to be told where the issue is, identify the root cause, and fix the issue - some of which can be pretty complex.
It also includes additional tagging issues, for which the team is looking at several potential venues of solutions, like community tagging, tag listing, popular tags, etc. Each solution has pros and cons and comes with a litany of technical requirements that may or may not require more time for the tech team to implement, which is why they are looking at various potential solutions and adapting the direction based off of community feedback and responses.
Again, we apologize for how the change was originally rolled out, and you can rest assured that the team has gained a lot of experience, as well as identified gaps in our processes and tools that are being remedied to ensure the likelihood of this situation repeating itself is as low as possible.
We understand this created unnecessary friction with the site for users, and have identified a number of pain points that we will be able to address before rolling out similar changes in the future, and have amended our process accordingly to do so.
I hope this answers your questions and concerns going forward.
As for character names, I don't mean situation when they are not mentioned, I mean exactly the situation when they ARE mentioned, but the hyphenated name has short parts. I don't think "put the name into the tags with no hyphen" could be considered "proper tagging by the uploader", it only exacerbates the problem by needing to search for more variations, e.g., in my case, if people would follow that suggestion, I would need to also search for "mree" and "m_ree".
The easiest -- and actually working the best -- way would be to treat the hyphens in the middle of the word literally, but barring that, it probably should be automatically omitted, concatenating, not splitting, the word parts for purposes of search -- and only search.
For example currently searching: weightgain vs weight_gain vs "weight gain" (or weight gain) brings different results. Another example could be: animation vs animated.
Is there something planned in the future to have nearly identical terms match into a unified keyword/tag or would we have to just have to include every possible term to match it?
I apologize if this was addressed already and I missed it.
That's coming! Though unlikely on the upload page as it is fairly extensive.
But it's in the works!
It's not much, but it's not nothing either!
-Bran
Is there a reason this option only exists when using multiple selections? This still seems to have completely removed the ability to filter searches to a single gender/sex...
* Actually, this is hard to test from the user side - is this even working? Neither the search bar nor the URL shows any indication that the non-selected terms are being filtered out.
Ok. So this is still purely search tags, the old filtering behavior has not in any way been restored. Disappointing.
You do not have to use a gender keyword as part of your minimum three. For adopts you can essentially just put adoptable, adoptable_sale, artist_(yourname), (adoptspecies)
My nickname contains a dash and because of the innovation I can't use it anymore. Please add dash to the allowed characters
Also the site is used by a lot of people for whom English is not their main language and there are tags that are used for local events, finding people from their country and other things.
The use of other languages is not forbidden on FA, so why should the tagging system be limited to Latin?
For example Ukrainian language uses Cyrillic and it turns out now my compatriots will not be able to use their native language in tags?
Essentially, "we did it this way, and it's too hard to redo".
Though ha, I see. I didn't realize the issue with hyphenated names was an old one.
I honestly can't even imagine how it could be set up to take more than 5 minutes to fix
I love FA more than anything I interact with online, but the code base of this place..... deplorable (I hope that word isn't an insult because I found it with the help of a translator now)
And there's more than one problem with hyphens, each piling up on each other, the tags treating them differently than search being the new one. Dropping the shorter-than-three parts of hyphenated words/names has always been an issue... Just try to search for my friend Poo-ky, or for the very common term ko-fi and you'll see what I mean...
Tags being reimplemented somewhat halfassedly (it is still a total free-for-all) as opposed to a structured way found on e.g. e621 solves just the single issue of some things chosen via dropdowns, and as we've just seen, even that is pretty dubious.
Herm was removed from the dropdown, but it's still a tag and can be added manually
No-one who self-identifies as herm is being silenced, and we're not being forced to identify as intersex either
We don't use the dropdowns anyway, everything is manually input (thanks Postybirb) so not being included in a drop-down does not feel like inequality to us.
Now, so long as FA does not go the route of e621 and in searches start showing results for "herm" as if we had searched "gynomorph", and start showing search results for "herm" as if we had searched "intersex" (because herm /=/ intersex and generally neither wants to be identified as the other because we are not the same), it should continue to be fine.
With regards to the gender list, as much as some people *do* find the term 'herm' to be insulting, there's still a whole load of people who very strongly do not associate with the block-term Intersex (as it does not allow for specifying of what type). There's also certain races that exclusively use the 'herm' term. Maybe this needs further discussion?
I love it when people take in feedback.
Thank you for your hard work and being open to feedback <3
Our community has always been strong on inclusivity, it has never been a derogatory term in this space. We have been here in the fandom since the beginning, many of us have always been open and accepting for everyone to identify and label themselves as what ever they wish to be. It is just deeply disappointing to feel that the same courtesy isn't reciprocated with such an intentional omission.
So where once a term was included coequal with all the other terms for personal representation and classification...having to now manually input such--with its removal from visibility as an option for those who do not identify as Intersex or Trans--is simply unfair and unbalancing.
It's deceptive in that it feels okay just because one can "just type it in", the simple rallying cry. How many people will think to bother with that instead of shrugging and checking a box of what's available? That's the insidious part of such a small change with larger implications and messaging.
It says 'You are tolerated but no longer the same as these, and you will pass an extra hurdle to be found, if you even believe it's accepted to.'
I want FA to thrive, but I'm disappointed we have to come back to this same old conversation.
Personally though, I've wondered why there's still no 'Multiple' in the Gender list like there had been in Species. Not everything we post is singles and this's just forced the selection of 'Any' (which doesn't specify well), or the gender of one occupant.
2. Uh, what did you think "Multiple characters" was for? That used to be a list option. But they didn't port it over to the tag system (and they really need to cross-reference with the backups and do so).
I do understand where that disdain comes from, I can see why others in our community don't like the term. I respect that and I would I'd never use it to describe anyone whose not, nor wishes to be seen as such--just as I would never intentionally misgender someone. Because to me it is not a slur, it's just a part of who I am. I would simply ask that others share the same kindness and consider the term in the context of its history in the fandom before condemning others for using it. It doesn't have to be evil, we can make it what we wish.
Bringing it back to topic of this update, it isn't that 'herm\hermaphrodite' is being made taboo, far from it as ultimately it is all just keywords and it can be added manually. It is more the principal of it. This has been a debate that has gone on for awhile now and my gripe is personal, it feels like being excluded. We were there, had been for 2 decades. Now we are not.
The h term has long been used by pornographic communities including on this site who are and remain cisgender to fetishize and objectify trans and intersex people while those same cis people carrying out the fetishizing pushed back against their civil rights.
Yes, cis furries on this site have historically very much used the term to objectify people as nothing more than disposable sex objects. It wasn't done with open malice, but the callous disregard that comes with bigoted sexual objectification that reduces ethnicities and body types to nothing more than a fetish.
That doesn't mean you can't reclaim the term but let's stop pretending it's always been ok here because it wasn't a slur. It's been ok here culturally so long because the fact it was a slur was ignored. That is why there is a growing pushback against it; because decreasing bigotry on the site has revealed issues that have been long ignored by the community.
And again, if you want to reclaim it I'm not interested in that argument. That's whatever. But lets be honest about what the word is and stop lying about it and its history. Let's stop erasing the experiences of trans and intersex people who have historically been objectified and mistreated on this site for decades.
You accuse another of being in an "information silo" without asking them anything about their further views beyond a paragraph. And assert, rather flatly, that expression of the term is a roving brand to assail others with no other use case and thus should be excised. There's not a speck of objectivity to be seen in that retort which simply reads as one-sided itself, and worse, labels anything and anyone in use of such a term t'be associated with bigots.
Not a good way to win over hearts and minds.
Considering this's been litigated before, more people than you think feel at home calling themselves herms and do so with pride and are happy to respectfully call anyone else whatever they wish. That won't change, and as you're my sibling in this Fandom, so are we yours, and we respect what we call one another or don't call one another. Bigots floating in the aether you speak of bring their awfulness with them. That's not cultural sickness and this IS a very sex-positive culture. It's worth remembering that.
As for what's not okay to use here, as a polite reminder: We don't use The N-Word in polite company, for it was invented to demean and other people in a disadvantaged and horrific state of living. There is no other use for it in our everyday parlance. Please don't act like a word which has scientific, classification, and benign historical fandom use is in the same (censor, remove) tier as ... that.
It's scientific misuse was part of centuries of violence against people without typical genitals including unconsenting genital modifications and eugenics based violence. And when I say centuries old I mean it has been a slur used towards intersex people since potentially as far back as the 14th century. And I do mean slur, as it was always derogatory.
The fandom use was never truly benign you just ignored the people your community hurt, and the people in your community who were bigots towards others.
And until you can acknowledge and understand how many people that word has hurt and how severely you will never be able to reclaim it.
Until you can acknowledge the bigotry within the spaces you have occupied and the harm it has caused you will not be able to reclaim it.
Because to reclaim a slur requires you to accept that history and spit in the face of those who have caused that harm.
But you defend the very institutions and communities that have committed violence and oppression against those they labeled as such.
Because doing anything else means admitting people you care deeply about have for decades ignored their own bigotry and violence casually. And still continue to carry out that bigotry. Because it might mean your friends who are cisgender but insist on using that term are actually kinda being shitty, and need to change their behavior.
I will state that my previous post was not an attempt to be hostile to the LGBTQ+ community I am a part of, laying any blame that way, nor did it attempt in any way to discredited or called into doubt the legitimacy of the negative claims around the term 'herm'. I was simply pointing out where the divide likely came from. Furthermore it was not my intention to debate that the word has been used as a slur. Regrettably it has and it likely will continue to be by small minded bigots. It is in those cases we definitely need to hold people accountable.
Like many things in life, it is more complicated than it has to be. The word itself carries multiple meanings with different weights and vastly different histories depending on which of our blended communities that introduced it to you. Understanding where other points of view come from, that is ultimately the point that I attempt to make. Share were we are coming from.
Is my perspective siloed? Perhaps it might be, but I can tell you my information comes for my 27 years of experience in this fandom. When I say 'always', it is of course purely subjective as I have only really had positive experiences coming from the hermaphrodite subculture in our fandom. We have fostered whole communities over the years, back in the dark ages of MUCKs, IRC and well just about anywhere that furries propagate. These have been places where people of like minds could come together, be open about themselves and explore what they otherwise may of never felt comfortable with in other spaces. Amongst our shared interests, we were able to explore our own sexuality. We had a safe space to discover the complexities of gender and where we aligned--many of us even going on to transition with the love and support of those around them.
I have made many of my life-long friends in these spaces. I am a traditional fur, this fandom is more than just OCs or collections of art to be tagged. As my dear Niko said, our culture is very sex-positive but to many of us it was never even just about that. It is representation as who we truly see ourselves to be and here in this fandom is the closest any of us will ever get to it. To many it is part of one's identity.
That is the side of things I want to share, I feel it is an experience of many that needs to be taken with some merit in all this. To claim it has always only ever been a slur in the fandom is just objectively false. I do not doubt that there are those even in this fandom who would abuse the term, detestable people exist even here. Neither of us deny that, nor do we discredit the harm that has come of it when it has been. Just simply saying that its other meaning and history for many shouldn't be so easily discredited either.
I'm not sure I quite understand why selecting a gender on the browse page kicks you over to the search page though? Is it simply because the code is mush and it won't let you add it back like it was, or is this a "we're guiding everyone over to the search page because that's what we're going to" type of thing?
I know I'm in the minority here but I truly do not want the search page to be the default way to browse the site. It's just so cumbersome and unpleasant to use DX
I hope you guys can convert me with the future changes though. It's either that or I abandon the place altogether because if it becomes like e621, I'll refuse to come back. e621 is one of the worst websites I've ever tried to use :c
I really don't like the new search. It makes me feel uncomfortable. Nothing is where it should be and things are all different sizes and it's putting me on edge >~<
There's (at least) three different kinds. Intersex male (andromorph), intersex female (gynromorph), and hermaphrodite.
It's good that you included it and the trans gender types, but it's... not specific enough.
Did you consider a system of user added tags? something similar to what e621 has? I can imagine versions of that system that still respect the agency of the uploader to remain untagged (or delete malicious tags) if they really want. Was this not perused for technical reasons? or were you trying to avoid a specific pitfall?
This is actually against the Upload Policy. If you see such things, feel free to send us a trouble ticket with the "Keywords" category so we can look at it and take action if required.
Thanks! :3
No one bothers reporting submissions that violate the keyword policy because it's so weakly enforced and has been for twenty years, so literal tens of thousands of submissions are in violation.
Doing that could mitigate the under-tagged or spam tag issue a bit as the gross would come from viewers and only needs approval by the uploader. If they still reject all even if they are just served to them and need a single button push to check they don't WANT their stuff to be tagged.
Sadly some people deliberately WANT their stuff to be hard to find for whatever reason.
A user-added tag system is a solution that's already being considered for a future update. There is a lot of figure out in that regards, but it is on the list of heavily-discussed topics when it comes to addressing the current system' shortcomings. And we want to do it right, so we're taking extra steps and being very careful and deliberate in how we work towards things.
We learned our lesson about releasing something too quickly. ;3
Also, just how many terms can we use in searching, because I've got a list of about 500 terms, and as of the newest update, I get hit with "host error"
Some questions:
-Are there plans for a curated tag list to come?
-If so can it be added to over time by user vote?
-Will there be a way for users to add or suggest tags on submissions? (Inkbunny for example has a suggestion system the uploader can then accept or reject)
Here are some answers:
- This is part of possible upgrades in the future. It's a very strong contender at this time.
- Too early in the process to tell!
- That's also part of the discussion for more long-term changes/upgrades. Loads to figure out, but it is another strong contender that we're looking into.
I hope this answers your questions! :3
That's been a very requested feature, and the Tech team is looking into feasibility of this feature.
I can't provide an ETA, but it is being looked into. :3
No promises and no ETA, but there is a desire to review/update the block feature, as well as improve the keywords blocking feature as well.
Hopefully, that makes things better!
In the future, would it be possible to have a way to hide the blurred images when we blacklist tags, similar to other sites? It would be useful to fill the space with other art instead of having to skip page after page to see content that didn't appear because there's so much blured ones....
No worries if it's off-topic of the main discussion! We're always happy to hear from our Community Members!!
This is actually a very requested feature, one of which the Tech team has been looking into. No ETA on an answer, but it's on the list!
The species one has a bigger footprint on the backend, and we wanted to also solve the different genders that weren't listed in the dropdown... without it becoming like the species dropdown. So we migrated the gender one first, and got a bunch of experience which should help making the eventual transfer of the species (and maybe others) easier in the future.
But right now, they are not keywords, so keyword blocking won't affect those, no. And another reason why we want to migrate those to keywords.
Sorry that it's not the answer you were hoping for, but at least, now you can rest assured that it WILL come eventually.
I think you can put quite a lot of videos in 10 mb.
If it's okay though, may I have a quick explanation of what the thumbnail fix is?
I don't want to be taken to the Search page just because I chose "Male" from the drop-down list. I want to be on the Browse page.
Next, when I choose Male and General Furry Art, I'm seeing a lot of works containing a subject which is a character is equipped with tits (not the fat guy kind) and a vulva.
Could it be, perhaps, that the word "Male" is contained within the word "Female?" The search system sees "male" within the tag "female" and ends up showing me both?
Do not mistake my concern/annoyance with this new system for me being anti-trans, please.
Maybe adding a category for "Penis and cock" or "no vulva no tits" would work? Because, honestly, I would not like my male characters to be identifying as different gender just because of their genitals. It just doesn't sit right.
Also no one called you anything, please, calm.
It would be different if, for example, our options were "cis male" or "trans male". It's always a huge red flag to me when someone can't seem to grasp this concept, but there are still apparently plenty of people in 2025 that are comfortable with the word "trans" being used like a little asterisk on our gender, so that "normal" people can filter us out.
(editing to clarify: there's absolutely nothing wrong with tagging artwork as trans, but it's just frustrating when people act like trans folks aren't "allowed" to use the regular "male" or "female" tags)
I have IRL friends who prefer to directly be referred to as their choosen gender, and I myself do that without any other label, just the gender.
But yeah having a cis male and trans or maybe non-cis male category would feel better for me personally.
It's for me too kinda sus that people, in this year, don't understand this concept. But I guess they don't care nor involve with this topics or prefer to ignore them as it's not part of their daily life's. I don't think they mean malice or hurt, it's worrying tho.
If they have a problems with males having a variety of different genitals and body types from one another that's their problem specially because male is not just a body type.
A good start for that to change is putting rules about it do they can understand specifics are necessary.
Tho with how lazy some people are I bet some will prefer to jump to another platform. The lazyness mostly always win.
Oh boy the tags... Already seen some and they're so lazy. Those artist will start not showing in the search bar and it will only affect them. I am sad for that, but nothing I can do about it.
Mods: I understand you stated this update cannot be rolled back to how it was before the gender drop-down box was removed from the Browse page, but there SURELY must be a backup of the site before this change was made. People didn't put proper tags on their work before this, and I doubt people are going to tag properly after this change (even with the three tag requirement). The Browse page was working fine in terms of filtering content! Removing the gender drop-down gimped the Browse page severely, and this update, pardon my language, does jack fucking shit to fix the problem.
"Male" is a very different tag from the "Male_only" that the dropdown previously worked as, from the user perspective.
(No, before someone suggests it: Requiring the user to manually add a string of exclusion terms to the search is not adequate when the functionality already existed with the old dropdowns.)
Until something like that is included, maybe the gender drop in Browse should automatically exclude all other genders to bring it closer to what it was before in functionality.
The minimum requirement of 3 tags is a good step in the right direction. I do have a question. What if said profile is deceased or inactive/abandoned and the images had no tags? Would there be a possibility of contributing tags? I could see the potential issues with abuse however.
This is a gap that we're aware of, and are trying to find a good solution to. Obviously, there are a lot of possibilities for a fix, and none of them perfect...
It's quite the puzzle the team has on their paws.
Right now, not forcing search to only go into keywords is a thing, assuming the "abandoned account"'s submissions have text in the description.
Search that precedes the "@keywords" command will also look in the description. So that is a temporary workaround, albeit very imperfect.
Community tagging is one of the main solutions the team is considering, but even that one is rife with potential issues as you pointed out.
We'll let the Community know when we are getting closer to an answer/solution. But in the meantime... It's an issue that remains. :\
- Simple_Background | Transparent_Background
- Cell_Shaded
- Digital_Art
- Artist name
- Creation Year
- Pattern on the egg [spots, speckles, spikes, etc]
- Could even do the species of the egg if you wanted!
Even if you only wanted to do 3 that's plenty to add in addition to your Protochroma and egg tag to hit that 3 tag min!
The minimum letter requirement however, not so much, I was using the abbreviation "uw" for "underwater" which is common in the aquaphilia space xD
Underwater Undulations! uwu !
....crap, wait--
I do see in the comment directly below this one at the time of posting, you've already discovered why: 2-letter tags were not searchable. This is due to the underlying system that powers the search feature.
They CAN still be used for tag blacklisting, however, as the 2-character limitation applies only to search. So, while we want to discourage people from using 2-letter tags haphazardly, we have a whitelist to allow specific tagging to make the blacklist feature more useful to users.
The ability to build a whitelist of 2-character terms implies that the search engine can handle them, which brings back the question of why disallow them and then have to go through the extra work of creating that whitelist in the first place?
I'm less certain on this one, but I think there are also some community-made browser plugins that rely on keyword data from submissions, so that would be another potential reason to still allow 'known good/popular' 2-letter tags.
What’s going to be broken or taken away next?
As for 2FA and other things, it is, in fact, possible for a dev team to have multiple projects going at once. One may not be as simple as the other - there's no reason to hold back things they can implement while other things are in development. That doesn't assign a relative importance to either thing; it's a simple case of one being ready while the other one requires more work.
I'm sure they'd be happy to put your coding expertise to use if you applied for a staff position.
It doesn’t take a programmer to realize this.
Since 2FA is an important security feature that you are unwilling to go without (and since, by your way of thinking, even if they implemented it right this moment, it wouldn't be good enough for you), I suggest Weasyl as a permanent alternative to FA (or a temporary one until FA manages to finish that part of their roadmap), as Weasyl does have 2FA as a security option. I see your latest journal actually already talks about going to Weasyl, which is fantastic - I use that site myself, and there are a lot of features on it that I like. You should probably understand, however, that Weasyl doesn't have a gender dropdown menu either; gender is all tag-managed there, just like it is here.
And yes, the changes were warranted. The site worked. Instead of messing with features, they needed to focus on security.
Hell, they just said there was a malicious ad they had to deal with. More signs of security and safety issues.
Instead of forcing in a new tags system, they needed to fix the security of the site and any infrastructure issues. We saw how bad the site backbone is earlier this year. Now they keep forcing more shit in, instead of making the site better.
FA has the things you're demanding on their roadmap. They're working on those things while also working on other features (like this one) that people wanted.
The site didn't work for everyone. A lot of people found those terms offensive - now they have come up with a solution whereby the people who identify with and want to continue using those offensive terms are still allowed to do so, but the ones who take offense to them no longer have to be confronted with them every single time they want to upload a submission or search the site. They've acknowledged numerous times that it was rolled out badly.
So what is it that you even want? If they're not doing things to your satisfaction - and you've made it very clear that nothing they can do now will satisfy you, since they "should have already done it" - what are you still doing here? It feels like you're just demanding blood for the blood gods at this point.
My worry still is that the tag system will still be underutilized with some amazing submissions missing important keywords. I would really like to see a keyword suggestion button on submissions that viewers could use and more importantly cleaning up and standardizing a lot of keywords that have an unessecary amount of variations/different versions.
The variance issue is something we're aware of, and we're looking into fixing in the near future.
It's a complex issue (hi, 5+ years as knowledgebase dictionary manager for a big telecom company speaking XD) that will require a LOT of ground work, but we're looking into it. :3
As for user-suggested keywords, that's a system that's being looked into for the future. It needs a lot of planning, but it's a strong contender for a future update to fix some of the current issues.
I hope this answers some of your concerns! :3
The change is intended to encourage the people who who don't think about tags to do so, but nothing will stop people who actively don't want useful tags.
Not really defending the feature, just providing a workaround. There's definitely problems with how things are being handled.
I’m very much a “don’t like it, don’t use it” person, so I hate the idea of forcing something onto someone. There’s ZERO need to force them.
Right now that shit is forced upon me and I don't like it.
We've got a blacklist system but without tags then it won't work which is why I support mandatory tagging to not only prevent people seeing content they don't want but also to allow people to find content they want to see and give the relevant artists the viewership they deserve.
Under tagging is a problem, yes, and honestly one that this change does nothing to solve. But I fail to understand how not tagging is resulting in you seeing content you don't want to see; having no tags should make a piece almost completely undiscoverable through Search, so what search terms are you using that could possibly bring it up in the first place?
Genuine question, because I feel like either a huge deal is being made out of nothing, or I'm fundamentally missing something.
Abusing keywords has always been against the rules. Someone doing that will eventually be reported and handled.
Nothing will stop people determined not to tag, but this is at least a step toward helping get tags on submissions from artists who just don't think about it.
On the other hand, I do know at least one artist who stopped uploading to FA years ago specifically because tagging was such a pain, and can't help but worry that forcing the issue will just push others off the site for the same reason.
Though I do feel like you're assigning malice to a situation that's more likely explained by either lazyness or lack of care, in your previous comment; it's far more likely someone's not tagging because they don't particularly care how searchable/findable they are, than for them to be actively avoiding blacklists.
Plus accounts dont seem to synchronise eve so often. I recalled Neer (rip) once told me that the server refreshed your accounts stats once a month or something like that. It was awhile ago, where he had to synchronise my accounts manually. This mostly your favourite counter, as your journal number changes when you delete them.
As for account syncs, i'll have to go look at the cron tasks to be sure, but maybe something needs to be fixed there. Thanks for letting us know!
The internet being what it is now, change is usually for the worse, and I think it's more than fair to be suspicious of it. But I'm glad you're being careful with the changes you make, and take the time to explain them. If there's a website that feels safe in that area, this is it. Thank you!
Would it be a good idea to trawl through old submissions and overhaul their keywords, you think?
I have a feature request - Alt Text! I've been queuing a lot of stuff in Postybirb today that requires alt text for other platforms and it always seems a shame for that effort not to contribute to my FA post as well, especially since I usully consider it the 'primary' post.
Additionally, it doesn't come up a lot for me personally, but reading the comments on a journal like this it can be hard to tell what someone is replying to in some instances. A little dotted line or indentation mark would be nice.
It says you have "Implementing Cloudflare Turnstile (Tool to verify users and block bots)" under code review, but you have not started researching the "Dev Friendly Initiative" stuff yet.
If Cloudflare is blocking bots (which I understand the need for), but there's no tooling/API for developers to interface with the site, what will happen to the artists who rely on stuff like PostyBirb for cross-posting? Will these tools still be supported, or will there be a dead-zone where these tools won't be (and if so, how long)?
Thank you for your hard work!
"Dev Friendly Initiative" is an internal name for our push to modernize the codebase and set things up so multiple devs can get onboarded and help with site development.
As for an actual tooling/api system.... Stay tuned ;3 We've got something exciting in the works.
I use a couple of different automation tools as an artist to help with Furaffinity.
1. The first is a custom build of Postybirb that makes it easier for me to tag things (although realistically I expect it'll handle Turnstile the exact same way Postybirb does).
2. The second is a notification monitoring service I built myself. I try to reply to (nearly) every comment I receive. If a piece is posted across 6 or 7 social sites, that is impossible to do. Similarly, I allow commissioners to contact me on any social site I'm on - it is impossible to monitor all of this stuff once you use a large enough number of galleries. So, what I do is scrape the site notification page (and other sites I'm on) with my login token and check to see if I have notifications, and if I do, my phone beeps at me and I know to log in and check them. It is, very literally, the *only* way I can keep up with socials as an artist. If it breaks on FA, I won't reply to comments as quickly and I don't know how I'll handle messages.
3. I am in the process of working on some tools to handle auto post-deletion and post description editing (which is a major weakness in Postybirb right now when posting comics) - again, it's just way too much work to edit 6 or 7 descriptions by paw for each entry in a comic every time you upload.
The technical details there don't really matter, the point is - when critters talk about scraping, what they think about is "scraping artwork" - I don't really care about that. But as a professional artist, it is absolutely critical to me that I'm able to build tools to automate gallery management, to get the contents of messages that get sent to me so that I can auto-sort them into todo lists - what I would love to be able to do in the future is reply to comments directly from my own notification app. I can eventually build that.. IF I can access Furaffinity though standard POST/GET requests without getting locked out by Turnstile.
If Turnstile does end up blocking that stuff, my ability to manage a community on this website will flatline. I can't stress enough, I don't know how I manage a community on here as a professional artist without these tools. If those tools even temporarily stop working, for at least the duration that they're down I can't treat FA like a primary gallery. Like, hell, the idea that somepony might send me commission requests and I might just not know about them for multiple days because I can't monitor the site automatically - that is a thing I am really concerned about.
Mandatory tagging now doesn't help when tags can't be used to reliably search for what you want, because there's a million different ways to tag any particular thing you could want to find.
That said, I agree that tag aliasing is the solution to inconsistency in tagging, and we fully intend to implement it. We're releasing incremental improvements as we develop them to let users benefit from the changes sooner, and also to gather feedback along the way.
The backlash to the initial change was essentially caused by that change being "this will eventually be part of a bigger change that'll make the site more like what we want it to be", but none of the infrastructure existed to make the change actually an improvement over what we have.
Basically, the result currently is that we have mandatory tagging - but this doesn't make the site more useful in its current state. A submission needing to have three tags doesn't make it any easier to find what I want, because I need to try a large variety of synonyms just to find something I might want, and similarly also need to add a lot of synonyms to the blocklist to avoid things I don't want.
The changes to the gender field in this update are good and useful, but is it really the best route to do these tag system changes one tiny bit at a time when the infrastructure they require to make the site more usable is not implemented first? No matter what else changes, searching and blacklisting won't be more usable until tags are standardized and aliased, and it genuinely confuses me that we keep hearing about how the staff team wants to try to do things right going forward, but doesn't seem to realize this.
Or, in other words - are these tiny steps forward the best route, or would the community and site as a whole not be better served by waiting until a major overhaul can be done all at once?
Unfortunately the answer essentially boils down to "tech limitations". We cannot do aliasing on keywords, as they are all stored together as just a block of text, so we don't have the necessary data to say 'this keyword is actually this other keyword' because it's all just plain text. A proper e621-style tag system is stored very differently in a database. This is the difference between FA's keywords and e621-style tags. Converting keywords to tags will not be easy, nor will it be fast, but it is possible, and we intend to do it.
We have no good way to be able to do aliasing in the current system. Tags must come before aliasing; that is why we cannot do aliasing/standardization first, before converting to tags. And so, these incremental changes are being done to work us towards a functioning tagging system.
A good analogy here is to think of keywords as a single post-it note stuck to each submission that just has all the keywords written on it. The uploader can write whatever they want. We can look through every post-it to see which ones have a given keyword on them (searching). We can look at a post-it before displaying it to see if it should be blurred out or not (blacklisting). Tagging, however, would be more like if we had little stickers of different colors and shapes to put next to each image, and some central directory that says "a red circle always means 'fox'" for example. We don't have that, we just have words on a post-it.
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal...../#cid:61161509
As per our Upload Policy regarding keywords we do not enforce gender-based keywords.
I hope this answers your question!
New system, even with "male -female" will still show intersex, trans, asexual, and other genders many of which most people won't actually even know the words for exist to begin with, all of which will show up in the results where previously they would be excluded as that was not what was searched for.
You can just "-" each of those new terms you come across, but by the time you get to something close to the old functionality, you've had to include negative prompts for at least seven different keywords, and that's without factoring in when there's variations referring to the same thing (TF_TG, TGTF, TFTG, not to mention misspellings).
It's a nightmare, and that's before you've even begun searching for anything OTHER than the gender.
in some cases, that might be fine. But for those who browse for kink art to get their rocks off to, it's obviously made the site near-unusable and extremely inconvenient because you're forced to view stuff that turns you off whereas before it was easy to filter out with just 2 button clicks.
Also, would there be any chance that a rating above "adult" can be made? I've seen things like "extreme" "explicit" and even "nuclear" as a rating? I only ask this because while I do like to look at adult rated artwork sometimes, I tend to like the more light or "base level" stuff. There's nothing separating lighter pornographic images from the extreme stuff, and tag blocking wont always work because every kink, fetish, etc. has mild and extreme versions of it.
The only time I ever use the browse feature on FA is "literally never" and the only time I use the search feature is to try to find one of my own submissions that got lost somewhere in my gallery that I couldn't find by just flipping through the gallery pages because apparently I'm blind and I skipped right past it.
Speaking of, adding a search box to each user's page that searches that user's uploads would be a nice feature. I know you can do it with the funny syntax in the regular search box, it'd just be nice to have a quicker way to access it, especially when some users use names that are tedious to type in.
Is there any intent for the future to have characters from other writing systems available in the tagging system? I.E. Hangul, katakana, ETC?
I can imagine this being difficult to get working, my curiosity is just intellectual and not a feeling that it must be done. Well wishes to all staff!
And I cannot reiterate this enough, warn us before you go making major changes! I can almost guarantee that someone out here will be able to point out something you forgot to consider and/or provide useful suggestions.
You cannot search, for example, for "RJ" and "Raccoon" as separate words - "RJ" will fall off and you are left with just "Raccoon". However, people don't always know this, and they happily tag it "RJ" and "Raccoon". Yes, they should have tagged it as "RJ_Raccoon", but they are not always aware while tagging it that this is even the case.
That should already be the case, unless the 2-character keyword falls under the allowed list.
We're working on putting together a "Keywords Best Practice" document for everyone, so that should also help with this issue.
I hope this helps! :3
Well, but that does not seem to be the case though! X3;
If there exists an allowed list of 2-character keywords, I dunno what it is, but regardless, the text says:
"Keywords must be a minimum of 3 characters long with a subset of 2 letter keywords being supported (eg: "yt", "tf")"
However, there is nothing preventing any 2-character keywords from being entered and submitted. Furthermore, "yt" and "tf" don't produce any search results - the same behavior as any other 2-character tag AFAIK - so I'm not sure why those are examples.
IMO this is a slightly confusing phrasing too, especially for those who may not primarily speak English. If the implication is that certain 2-letter keywords are supported, I would recommend rewording it to something like:
"Keywords must be a minimum of 3 characters long, with the exception of certain allowed 2-character keywords (eg: "yt", "tf")"
Either way, those two are definitely not supported, and I have never seen a 2-character search term which was.
~Kat
It's currently under investigation; as far as we know, the search engine does NOT work with 2-characters keywords. But they are also there for block list purposes.
There is a push to try and get the list of 2 keywords to be functional within search, but we don't quite know if that'll work.
Alternatively, we are working towards a "synonym dictionary" where those could be linked to their "full" version (eg: "tf" can be substituted for "transformation" in the backend, and vice-versa) which should hopefully solve that issue (alongside a bunch of others at the same time).
And also also, we're working towards a "keywords best practices" help document for the Community that will include the list of allowed 2-characters keywords (which we are planning on linking to from the submission finalization screen).
I hope this clarifies things a bit. X3
Sorry again for the misunderstanding!
It has been returned to Submission Form in the form of checkboxes so that you can tick all that apply to your image!
We are still moving forward with swapping to keywords, but have readded the checkboxes to quickly populate the keyword field with your desired gender(s).
Keyword abuse is against our policies and it can be reported in Trouble Tickets.
What they should do is add suggested tags like what SoFurry and InkBunny both have if I remember right.
As I said in another comment, adding a "suggested tags" feature would help a lot more with encouraging people to tag their work. But I've tagged mine already for years and it feels like I am being forced to add extra (and useless) tags just to use the site.
But tossing that tag out, simply gender, species, and headshot/ portrait should suffice! You don't have to add more, but things like "partially_nude" or "bare_chest" may pull in folks looking for art like that. Especially given you're good at lovely lady pinups!
A suggested tags sounds neat! I'd say toss it in a TT so tech can put it on their "neat suggestions" list. :D
But thank you either way. I'll figure it out I guess. The suggested tags thing, for me, would be the biggest change and QOL improvement for users I think, since it would help people to filter a lot of content they don't want to see by encouraging users to tag with those tags.
The keyword system is complete garbage and has been garbage for the 17+ years I've been on this site. Keywords are USELESS when there are so many different words that mean the same thing. INSTEAD of fixing that core problem FIRST then making these changes, you force the whole user base to use a broken system for who knows how long and may never fix that problem. Not only do you force that onto us without a fix, there is a threat of possible punishment for not taking part using a useless broken system that actually punishes the users more than helps.
https://www.furaffinity.net/browse/
Thank you
as a very clear example of how this would be beneficial to everyone, we are all aware that trolls sometimes spam the website with inflammatory posts. blocking them would instantly hide all of their posts, so you wouldn't have to wait for staff to deal with that user to stop seeing their spam.
alright peace. wish y'all well.
-Kiri
Trans male, instead of just male - bad
Trans female, instead of just female - bad
If someone transitions to being female, they just want to be female. They don't want an asterisk next to their name and gender.
Still no Asexual - bad
Did they even try?
If a person says their character is male and they tag it as just male, it's just male (regardless of body type or transition status), and users are free to do that. Tagging a character specifically as a trans male isn't necessary unless a user wants to do so.
Same with female.
You can use asexual as a keyword, too.
Anyway I am glad yall are adding in new block functions tho in the future.
Specifically for the most revolting stuff like scat/snuff/hard gore/cannibalism/ect like that. I'm gonna bet people won't be tagging the hardcore stuff if they were never tagging before hand.
Something like "cis_man" and "trans_man" as the format might be clearer and potentially less othering. Or, you could reverse it as "man_cis" and "man_trans" to be easier to search.
And despite my concerns about the good faith or lack thereof coming from a lot of people defending the h term, I do think using intersex without dualsex creates a potential point of confusion that could conflate the two concepts for les aware users.
And there are, indeed, some very less aware users on this topic who don't have malice but aren't up-to-date on changing terminology or aware of the differences in definition. And I know intersex people generally don't want to be lumped in with dualsex characters because someone was too lazy to manually enter the correct term.
Which is why I would suggest adding dualsex to the drop-down as a quick aside in future updates.
And before I forget, I do agree that there are some problems with having tag characters being as limited, particularly regarding hyphens.
This is definitely a step forward in the right direction
There's way too many artists that post stuff that I don't wanna see and they all (unironically) either tag extremely bad or have no tags at all.
I don't have anything against the artist themselves, just the art they post. Don't wanna see it.
I'd previously shared my own dislike of e621's handling of the terms, specifically their equating both conditions as one in the same. e.g. if a piece was tagged with hermaphroditism, it automatically populated the intersex tag as well, and vice versa.
I ended up stepping back from the fandom for several years out of discomfort, so I really am happy it's being discussed with more consideration presently. 🙏
Speaking only for myself, I do think it's important to emphasize that intersex is a biological condition one is born with, it's not a gender, nor a post-op condition. I know I'm ass at articulating myself, and I don't want to accidentally offend, so I'll share part of a write-up by the United Nations:
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics (such as sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, hormonal patterns and/or chromosomal patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.
Source: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Again, thanks to those discussing this topic thoughtfully, speaking for me, it means a ton.
/ᐠ˶╥ ﻌ╥マ♡
"I Was Here Wall" idea = beautiful 💖
I know this is too complex/involved to add at this point, but I really wish FA's tagging system worked like e621's does.
I feel like changing it to "dual sex" would have been a better approach than cutting it.
2. FA's tagging system working like e6's would be a disaster. There's no way mods would be able to keep on top of malicious tagging.
But is that what the community wants?
Because after looking at all the comments and feedback over this, I'm not sure it is.
Maybe having some kind of townhall or poll to find out the community's feelings before big changes are made would be a good way to prevent issues like this in the future. You're never going to please everyone, and some people will say no to any change, but at least asking the community how they feel about a proposed change seems like it would be a good idea.
A big part of the desire to move to tags is from a backend perspective. FA is quite the "Oh god, why" mess under the hood and they're trying to make it less "Oh god, why" in hopes of keeping it from exploding.
"Hey, we're considering changing a huge part of how the site works, but first, how does everyone feel about this? Is it a good idea? A bad idea? Have any questions, concerns, or suggestions?" sounds pretty reasonable.
Future things like this need to be in a format like this journal here, where people will actually see it.
No. It's what the staff want. This is why I doubt we'll see any kind of discussion or vote on it outside of some carefully curated group on Discord that already agrees with them.
Pretty much every single journal, including this one and the two prior ones, has people asking for tagging improvements (including the new tag limit now), it's just "easier" to post of you can drag and drop a file and press post
But I'm noticing many submissions and so on by artists with names I don't recognize and without the helpful reminder of their previous username immediately following. Surely I followed them at some point (and if they comment on their submission or I go to their main page, I can find out who I know them as), but I worry I'm not going to recognize half of who is in my watch feed (and I only follow 500+ people).
So are we going to lose that feature? Follow-up: can we get it included again on submissions on our watch feeds et al?
So there's no way to roll it back at all? Not even basing it on the final tag? What about pages that are no longer active? If you're going to make destructive changes in future, any way to give them protections?
I'm also super hyped for the writing update, whenever it comes!
I hate getting blocked without a good reason like I have not done anything wrong to someone or even said anything to them and I find I'm blocked by them with no reason why like it is already bad enough but to be stopped all together scares me.
I think if that happens then fa will lose a lot of users on here because they dont want to be on a site where people who block for the fun of it can make it hard on them
So you're saying the old metadata needed for previous functionality was completely destroyed with the original update? You somehow don't have a backup you can get at least most of the data from like you told us you did just 2 months ago?
They doubtless still have a backup. And they can and should extract the old metadata from that to port over to the new system.
What they can't do is outright reverse the 6/18 changes, at least not without completely reverting FA to the backup. Which would erase everything posted since then.
So they'd basically be trading one shitstorm for another.
Such a shame.
If you're going to fling around opinions, please learn to accept others.
Naive to think that not being able to view a profile would stop true scumbags (harassers,stalkers) from just circumventing it with another account.
I have no idea what you mean by feminine behavior though. It reads more like hypocrite to me.
It's great proof that the system will always be flawed no matter how it is implemented. You can't bar people from walking into a gallery on the street if all they want to do is view fine art no matter how much you value your opinion over theirs.
It's also proof that blocking can be weaponized and used improperly which is what I'm trying to convey.
Sad to see people act like this and think they're doing the right thing somehow.
It won't truly stop people from harassing or stalking just make it harder on everyone else
And to block someone then unblock to comment then reblock?! Like why would you. It baffles me
Although I suppose I'll never find out for sure because I never deserved to in their eyes.
Human behavior is interesting and as you mentioned; baffling at times.
But in any case if the updating blocking system does come into affect how many people will just create a new account and post random pieces of art just to make sure they're not seen as a blank bot account.
the what you mean by that??
There was absolutely no need to add that to being femenine. Not all femenine people is like that, it doesn't sounded right.
You only care about "science" in the form of hot takes that can be used to justify your prejudice, which in this case, it's just garbage macho propaganda and using feminine as an insult. I don't think you're a jerk, that is excusable. Instead i find you disingenous.
Like, they use as excuses pseudo neurology science and hormones which is honestly funny, specially because if they knew at least a bit of that they would understand that the times where ciswoman are more "passive aggressive" is when the hormone testosterone, the "male" hormone, get a high rate lmao. But oh well, I doubt they ever have talked to a ciswoman properly or profound.
Users do not have to remove them if they do not want to. They just simply appear greyed out on the submission.
If the only problem for you is that you can't open it in programs - you can always use ffmpeg to convert webm on mp4. Well, or you can use a program with a graphical interface for ffmpeg for this, if using commands is something difficult for you.
For example, I use FileConverter from Tichau. Quite a handy program for windows.
And until it can, can you at least TRY to bodge the OLD dropdown back in?
If you are searching something and getting results that don't include those terms in the tags, Title, or Description.. or if submissions are tagged incorrectly to show up in wrong searches, please let us know the details in a Ticket, and we will look into the issue.
Searching for keywords Intersex for example would delimit the search to posts tagged as "intersex", yes, but it wouldn't exclude posts that also had other gender/sex tags. Those would have to be individually, and manually, excluded. Look, I'll even give you an example. I found this in a search for "@keywords intersex" (no quotes): https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61418814/
In order to exclude that pic, I would have had to manually exclude the keyword "female". In order to delimit the search to intersex characters and nothing but intersex characters, I would have had to do likewise for all other gender/sex tags.
Whereas searching or browsing the previous system's "intersex" category would strictly show posts filed under that category (which would primarily be solo intersex art, and art that exclusively featured intersex characters), because it was a category and not a tag. And short of fixing up submissions to also have "intersex_only", "male_only", etc. tags where relevant - which is a big task with tens of millions of uploads, and one that would be difficult to automate - I'm not sure a tag-based system can duplicate that functionality and convenience.
That is the crux of what people are complaining about wrt the new system.
Admittedly the old category system wasn't super-great for finding non-solo intersex-only or male-only (and so on) art because plenty of such art was just filed under "multiple characters" (which by the way y'all still need to port over as a tag), which the right tags could compensate for (the problem is adding them en masse, and to archival accounts), but still.
Here would be the idea to look at IBs system which categorized tags in themes and you "have" to add at least 5 tags before uploading.
its just an idea and it sure would people actually use the tag system more. I mean come on guys 5 tags isnt that hard heh
but yea, so far lets hope it works out with the already 3 you have to use. i mean 3 is less than 5 so it should work. hopefully.
This is much easier said than done, unfortunately. While we work towards that long-term goal, updates like these are a way to have us take steps towards it and make little improvements along the way. We can implement a minimum keyword requirement separately from the tagging system, for instance, which we have done here. This encourages users to add keywords, so later when the keywords become tags, that part of the transition is simple for them.
We're going to keep working on this to improve it further! This isn't the last update we'll be doing to our keyword/search/tagging system.
IMO e621 is, mechanically, the gold standard of tagging systems. If I had a button I could push to copy e621's tagging system and transplant it into FA, I would. Aliases, tag categories (species vs. author vs. character vs...), showing how many times a tag is used, tags having definitions you can look up, blacklisting, and so on. The only change I'd really make would be to steal IB's tag suggestion system, since FA is an art gallery rather than an image board - the uploader should have the final say on what their art gets tagged with, but users in general should be allowed to suggest tags to help.
Heh, this is the most optimistic I've felt about this site in a very long time x3
Big kudos to the devs and mods, not only keeping this bedrock page alive, but improving it further, while keeping a positive and civil atmosphere! Looking that way, I am quite happy that Elmo screwed up Twitter, and people actually return to proper artist/gallery focused pages, rather than flooding 'X' with random memes and crap (and no image search function).
Keep it up!
the banner museum is a fun idea, i was wondering already who all of the lovely fuzzles on the current banner are
This makes searching for what you want based on a very long string very tedious.
Same could go for character names or chapter titles, since it's now reusing tags
Griping and snarking to every user on the page, including the ones who never asked, is not going to change that.
Monopolizing the conversation by shoehorning your demands into every reply is not going to change that.
Arguing with mods is not going to change that.
Egging on other users with legitimate concerns is not going to change that.
Acting like you're speaking for every user and Writing Great Wrongs (when it's clear there are plenty of users you don't speak for) is not going to change that.
Constructive criticism is one thing, but that is not constructive, however "unfair" or "unacceptable" you may think the new system is. If this new system bothers you that much and you don't feel like your concerns have been acknowledged here, you can file a feedback ticket. And at that point you can either make do until things improve, or find a site that works better for you.
If whining about the word "herm" on Discord or BluSky or whatever got this change made in the first place, then surely people actually complaining publicly will get it reverted?
for a queer inclusive space it should be given that trans people don't get othered/treated differently than the 'normal' males and females. would be a very small change but do a lot to actually include trans people!
i'm aware that people can tag however they want, but i also think it would send the right message to use trans and cis in the existing tags to model good bahavior and inclusivity!
just mentioning trans people is not inclusion, i hope there will be more steps in the right direction!
What are the changes they could make?
- Change "male" and "female" to "cis_male" and "cis_female"? How does that affect male or female users who are NOT cisgender but don't necessarily want trans to be part of their gender identity? Or, for that matter, cisgender male and female users who don't want it in their gender identity. Or male and female users, cis OR trans, who don't want either of those prefixes applied to a particular character, either because they don't think it's relevant to that specific submission, or for some other reason?
- Remove "trans_male" and "trans_female" altogether.? That would surely feel like erasure for a lot of trans users on the site.
- Remove the dropdown and checkboxes entirely? They tried that, and got overwhelmed by complaints and had to bring them back (albeit based on tags instead of the old way)
I was kinda with you initially in that specifically singling out "trans_male" and "trans_female" gave me very mixed feelings, but thinking about it, I'm not sure the potential alternatives wouldn't be an even bigger problem for a lot of FA's userbase.
i do think that it is nearly impossible to have a system that everyone is happy with, but to be fully honest, it is in the responsibility of the site owners to decide which losses are acceptable.
for example, removing the trans tags would definitely be the wrong choice here, be it for erasure or because of underlying transphobia in some cis people (which, to be clear, is often enough not even intentional!).
i think changing the male/female tags to cis_male/cis_female would be the right choice here. sure, there are some people that are not happy with either descriptor, but that's already the case! someone might not fully identify as male/female, but also don't want the trans descriptor for various reasons. custom added tags are there for genders outside of the binary if nonbinary as a term is too wide of a definition.
i do see how it could bother cis people to have to actively choose that term, but to be fully honest i just don't really care? it's such a small change that would literally not affect them, given that cis people overall generally don't have as much baggage connected to their gender, and while some would complain, it would a) weed out transphobes and b) be over quickly. i'm autistic myself and i dislike change, but even people like me get used to stuff eventually.
however it would definitely send the right message towards trans inclusion.
if someone does not want the cis or trans prefix they could manually tag, no harm done, but it would definitely show that trans people are welcomed and truly wanted and accepted here, which is an important message to send, especially right now! transphobia is getting more common and wide spread, and furaffinity as a website and community is one of the places i, as a queer person, feel most welcome in! i just wish that if things change they to so in the direction that's opposite to the mainstream right now!
Definitely looking forward to the user block improvements. ✧ദ്ദി( ˶^ᗜ^˶ )
This has created a situation where people have undergone even gender exploration and discovery within these micro-cultures over the past three decades, taking place over the past two on this site. So there are now people seeking to reclaim that term as part of their identity.
The problem is that these micro-cultures still continue to marginalize trans and intersex voices and refuse to come to grips with the fact their founders deliberately isolated themselves from those communities as part of refusing to listen to their concerns.
There's no easy way to untangle this mess now, but it has to start with an acknowledgement that for thirty fucking years this corner of the furry subculture has been actively hostile to and has marginalized trans and intersex furs. Furaffinity respecting and uplifting trans and to a STILL lesser extent intersex users is a recent change and one still in progress.
If we cannot come to grips with or even acknowledge that harm then there will never be a resolution to these conflicts. There will only be an eventual decision for the site on whether it wants to keep trans and intersex users or whether it wants to keep these micro-cultures.
And if your only understanding of gender comes from decades in a niche online community that silenced trans and intersex voices then you need to expand your horizons for your own benefit.
And pretending that the broader subculture or communities therein have always succeeded at this goal of inclusion is whitewashing.
What I'm personally interested in is whether someone has a cock, balls, vulva, a combination of these, or a multitude of them out in the open for anyone to see. Nipples are nipples.
What does it factually mean when looking for the "Trans (Male)" or "Trans (Female)" tag? Transgender folk come in various shapes and sizes. Some have a flat chest and a vulva, some have breasts and a cock, some have gone all the way and have a flat chest (with or without surgery scars) and a cock, while others have breasts and a vulva. They can be entirely indistinguishable from "male", "female", "intersex", or "non-binary".
Since drawings might extend past what is possible in reality, there might be proper hermaphrodites, either with a flat chest or with defined breast tissue, where do they go?
I'm not happy with the change at all. It also seems like all older artworks which used to describe sexual or gender specifics have had those tags removed and you're saying that's irreversible?
This is why you don't push an update to live but run it on a beta subsite to do testing first.
never mind the server bills will go way down if you buck all the digital spam that's clearly just ai crap and/or identical and traced from works 10 years ago and older. and did anybody bother to notice how much kinks are getting word saladed. transformation needs a sequence or its just whatever the end result is. vore needs the sequence of its just a mawshot or fatfur. if you cared, you'd start cracking down on that to make this site actually searchable, fuck the stupid menus vs tags vs checkboxes distraction. no respect for the community from the kibblemunchers, none at all. back in the day there was a vibe check for new applicants. i had to wait. that should come back, might make people actually have a reason to join the site instead of assuming its the same thing as their stupid scroll apps and after twitter, bluesky, mastodon, instagram, facebook, snapchat, and whatever the hell else don't you think we have enough identical everything-all-the-tume sites already and we can just have our damn myspace for Furries with a gallery? you do understand the difference between social networking and social media and why the latter is the worst thing ever, yeah?
its about time everybody started looking backwards fondly because no matter what you're aiming for, never looking back and expecting the future to always be clear to number-go-up is asking for heartache. so please, make the numbers on this site go DOWN so it stays AND YOU STAY UNDER THE RADAR OF STUPID PURITANICAL CUMSTAINS. this Zootopia integration brainworms and the gentrification needs to stop. read my words literally, the thing you all are doing needs to stop if you don't want to emd up overrun with a bunch of stupid children and REALLY make the community look like a bunch of p-philes....bad enough with how many of the brats are welcomed at YOUR conventions. don't you ever trip over them, or did you forget how to do anything besides stand around in your overpriced underarmor jails. i want the old furry back when queer was actually queer and not "only a little bit queer but i'm still a normal person i swear!". and i know darn well what the actual purple and yellow sitch is, as if i of all people didn't know when a gal comes around. and the charade in the meantime has gone on long enough.
if its just gonna replace recaptcha on the areas where its used, that might be a good change. either way if you are gonna use Cloudflare Turnstile, please ditch recaptcha. no need to have 2 different captchas. posting journals through postybirb is already broken due to it requiring recaptcha every time. if the entire site goes behind a captcha system then tools like that will be dead.
i really think captcha should only be needed on sign up and maaaybe login. but if its on the login, then requiring it for posting journals is just stupid. because i've already proven im not a bot. my suggestion would be to replace the captcha with simple rate-limiting on posting journals.
Also why is there the word paw? Do you actually mean paws or is that an acronym? It really would be very strange if paws literally have an own tag honestly, especially since its circled around stuff like TF, Water Sports and Inflation
They were created over 25 years ago by Bernard Doove.
The fact that you have removed this from the gender/sex dropdown list is a shame, as I mentioned previously. It is not a slur when being used for chakats, and many other hermaphroditic characters (NOT trans characters), have been using the term for decades in a non-slur way.
Yes, people can use it as a slur, but instead of punishing those people, you're just saying that people who've used that word in a non-slur way, genuinely, and innocently, are now being told, "Fuck you, you're no longer hermaphrodite, you're intersex'."
Which is stupid.
Intersex, basically feels like you're in between both sexes, and not you're own. Hermaphrodite means BOTH. not 'between'.
Hermaphrodite needs to be returned to the gender/sex dropdown list. Anyone who feels it to be a slur, is free to use 'intersex'. Do not punish those of us who see ourselves or our characters as hermaphrodites.
Btw it's only removed from quick-access checkboxes — you can still add it manually :3
FA should not be pandering to the hurt feelings brigade.
If people are using it as a slur, then punish the people using it as a slur. Do not take the option away from the innocent who have always used it in its correct way.
Trying to use Trans people as a scapegoat so you don't have to confront that disagreement thus othering trans people and directing harassment towards them is bigoted and cowardly.
Read what I wrote.
I read the part where you downplayed the harm the slur has done despite all the work other intersex people have done to discuss why it is harmful in relation to this change.
And I see it for what it is. Rather than defend your views you threw the trans community under the bus.
Re-read what I have written and put two and two together.
After clicking the tag I think it's best to show the newest art, but instead, with revelancy by default, it shows some very old pieces (which gainig thousands of views, lucky them hehe). And if you want to see new stuff you need to change revelancy to date sort, or open up advanced options and pick a time range. So it's two extra actions in total.
People are lazy and so I am, and even tho you can chage the search filter from revelancy to date sort and using advanced options for date range, it's still some extra actions to do and only for one search session. Just my opinion and if it was discussed I'm sorry, it's a lot of info :3
Thank you for your work
You can always change the default search behaviour in the Site Settings's search settings control panel (at the very bottom).
Once changed, the search will default to whatever you have selected there, including date and "direction" (I use "Date" and "Descending", myself, to show newest submissions first), when you make a search - unless you change settings for that instance, obviously.
I hope this helps!
But what we see as default after clicking any tag - seems kinda odd to me as an artist. Would be more fair if the default in tag search would be newest art, not something that made 5-9 years ago which appears every time if you don't make extra move, random arts get thousands of views just by default. E621 search system looks fair to me, when you click the tag - you see the most recent art, simple as it is, with no extra actions.
Just my opinion and leaving it here respectfully
Myself, I changed them to "date" and "descending", so newest submissions are always shown first, even when I click a keyword. The behaviour you're explaining is exactly my experience because I changed my own default settings in that page I linked you to.
But if you'd rather have something different, like "Relevancy" and "ascending", which would show what the search engine considers less relevant to the most relevant, every time you click a tag... you could do that! (I would say "the possibilities are limitless", but this is not zombo com...)
I hope this explains a bit better. :3
There's also a lot to be said about people not born intersex, cisgender people, "reclaiming" terms they do not have the right to reclaim, which is a huge issue.
and again
and again
read it.
take it in.
it should be obvious: you do not get to speak on behalf of all of us!
"reclaiming" terms they do not have the right to reclaim [citation needed]
Neither of these claims are accurate, nor are they claims that you as an individual can make. Please separate your personal opinions and personal feelings from the facts of the matter, which from reading earlier comments above, have been provided to you multiple times.
There is "Mammal - Feline" yet no "Mammal - Canine". There is no just "Dog", only a handful of breeds. So the only option really is "Dog (Other)"... seems rather messy.
Good to see the Gender options have changed and improved though!
Kudos, FA team! You are all doing Furry God's work and your efforts are not going unnoticed or unappreciated.
Would it be possible to know what is currently planned and/or what is being considered?
Thanks for all the work you guys have been doing!!
It replaces every " to a /", thus making phrase searching unusable.
From my experience it's more common to see "[species], tf" in tags than, "[species], transformation", and I don't think people know that doing the former completely oblitarates it's searchability.
You can still select transformation as the theme and then a species in explore, but with no popular/relevancy filters it's not a very helpful workaround :')
This includes both the hacking situation a few months back as well as now with the current issue regarding the malicious ads.
Not everyone is on Discord/Twitter/BlueSky/other social media. Site updates and announcements, especially those regarding security, really ought to be made on-site in a timely manner, please. Even now, there's not a word about it in this news but plenty of discussion about the issue from staff in the comments.
Overall, I'm extremely happy with the direction that FA has taken in regards to development and transparency over the last year or so. This is just one thing that's been bothering me greatly in terms of communication.
Thankfully, I keep an ad blocker on, but that would have been nice to have known.
Idea for any staff that may be reading this- consider a BlueSky feed embed somewhere on site if we aren't going to get timely updates written as full news posts. It would be extremely helpful!
Given FA's previous track record, I certainly don't blame you for thinking that way. (Though I feel that in general most large Discord groups are a mess of drama lol )
Keep it up team, this kind of high density information is awesome to see. I would have never expected 2FA to make it to furaffinity, and the updates to the search system and tagging are looking like something I'd thought about in the past (submission upload page featuring drop-downs of common tags to allow for faster user tagging).
Thanks for the open communication where it counts. Lots of balls in the air to juggle, I'm willing to give a whole lot of slack given just how much site culture and administration has changed for the better.
I’m talking about the fact that “Gender” looks like it’s no longer considered a “Type Filter” equal to “Category,Art Type and Species” but a “Tag”,one that it’s up to you to fill in with whatever you want or not.
And I’m not very fond it. (I think this may happen because you can now specify,with keywords, what genders are in one’s artwork when having 2 or more characters in it)
I browsed for One specific gender and the results regularly did not match with my searching. Sure, I could easily ignore those artworks that are not my preference at all… but i saw consecutive artworks that literally did not have anything to do with what I was trying to search for.
I got frustrated and uncomfortable so i gave a try to the new “Extended search options” and It was way too technical,that i got many errors messages.
Then, the last straw was when i luckily saw one of my fav artists.( And i say luckily cause the artwork happened to be posted recently and i did not have to type or browse.) But when i used the “Options”, i notice that this artwork did not appear. Why? The button“options”provided me with keywords that did not macth with those the artist wrote in the artwork ‘cause they were not exactly the same. Moreover,It did not appear ‘cause the artisit did not type any keyword related to gender (Definitely,it’s not the artist’s fault)
Before the dropdown was down, i’ve never had these kind of problems. My searching agreed with the things i like to see and those i tried to search for. Now, it is very mixed up.
For new users, it may be quite difficult to follow the keywords. For some users,including me, it negatively impact on how we see FurAffinity's website.
I get what you tried to do, i gave it a chance but sometimes less and simplicity are better. Glad to know you are trying to updgrade gender terms, but in terms of “searching artworks”, maybe you should consider how effective,faster and user-friendly was the previous one,which did not relied on tags at all.
Hope you have a nice day!
I'm sorry if I missed this in the discussion here, but there are a thousand posts here and I haven't found an answer to my question.
I know if you just edited an image to add tags sometimes it can take a little bit to update in the index, however. That could be one answer to the older images being updated, but that's only if I'm reading your question right.
First, I really hope you guys don’t go through with making older submissions not show up in search results. I agree with forcing new submissions and edited ones to have at least three tags, but hiding old submissions from search results is not a viable solution
Second, will you guys be doing anything to address people improperly tagging their submissions? For example, someone might use “lesbian” when it’s clearly not lesbian, and I’ve seen cases of people improperly tagging their submission as having a cloaca when the post in question has a slit and anus and not a cloaca
On an unrelated note, are you guys also going to work on a system that gives us notifications for when our comments get replies? Like sites such as Reddit or Twitter. It would be nice to know if someone responds to my comment without needing to search for the FA post again
Finally the website isn't gonna get flooded by paint "Art" anymore, or even if it is. I CAN FINALLY BLOCK THAT STUFF! bBecause the lazy people are forced to actually put tags on their work.
Troll. Blocked.
Other than that, I just wanted to say that I really like the path FA is taking. It feels incredibly healthy and refreshing to have all these updates and new features and to know you're doing this hard of a work, even if some end up not working, and to think there's still more to come is insane.
I very much look forward to seeing what you do given a bit more time, thank you very much for all your work! 🙇💕
I don't and WON'T use TikTok. Reported as spam and deleted. (To Retro_p.2. who's trying to make the account, make your own email account. It's free.)
Whether this is because of the malware ad, or the past FA email and password leak and forced reset I cannot say. But it's interesting it came after this ad, even though I never saw it.
Culture and views change overtime but with identity it's just not something you can instantly switch or stop calling yourself sometimes, especially if the word fits, you know?
Think I'm just worried about my friends who use that word for themselves, don't want them witch hunted
This just confuses me more.
If you upload an image, you'll notice that the gender dropdown has been replaced by multiple check-boxes. Clicking at least one of these will add that keyword to your list of keywords (aka "tags"). If you feel none of these apply, you can write in your own in the keyword box.
For many years I had characters/fursonas that I labeled as such as well. I've grown out of it, but that's just part of my journey. If I made a character with both parts (at the same time, I mean), I probably wouldn't use it myself, but I'm not banned from using it if I wanted to.
The uproar seems to be that the old gender dropdown is gone, and the gender dropdown on browse is lacking that term. I'm sure a replacement (dualsex seems to be the big one these days from what I've seen, though I've also seen others) may be added in the future.
Disclaimer: I am not staff but I believe staff has answered some questions like this elsewhere in the comments. (I don't blame you for not hunting them down, there's a lot.)
Maybe sometime in the future, would you consider implementing FABUI into the site? It makes uploading so much easier.
🦩 Add a pink flamingo. This is important. 🦩By adding a pink flamingo to anything you get 5% cooler. You can put the flamingo anywhere even in spirit .
+1 flamingo in replies everybody
I would suggest adding the "ych" and "commission" keywords to your blocklist; from what I've seen so far, a lot of artists are pretty good at tagging those offers properly. Not everyone, obviously, but we can hope the new minimum 3-keywords system will help in that regard, going forward.
As an aside, you can also click the "+" sign next to a keyword in the list displayed in a submission; this will add the keyword to your blocklist and prevent display in the future.
The tech team is working on making blocked submissions invisible rather than just blurred out in the future, as this was a heavily requested feature. So while not perfect right now, we're hoping to further improve on that feature soon.
I hope this helps!!
>minimum 3 characters
>still no way to filter "3d"
Okay...
Ffs
Can you people learn to stop rolling out updates without announcements?
While this change doesn't look bad on its face, I do see a lot of risks with tags, especially since there's less structure around how to describe art and other posts.
Let's hope it works out, but I'm 50-50 on if this is an improvement or detriment. The extended search is nice though. I was really sad when DeviantArt removed it.
I support everyone calling themselves what they want, but can we at least have some linguistical consistency?
In my mind those are clearly distinct. Also, in that context they're related to sex, not gender, so either both should be removed from the list since they aren't genders or they should both be on the list and the list should say gender/sex.
Or am I misinterpreting what intersex means?
but don't quote me on any of that. I think I'm just getting too old for this fandom and I often get the feeling a greymuzzle like me isn't wanted here anymore.
Anyways, yes Chakats are called (or were) hermaphrodites since they have male and female sexes at the same time, but as I said I have no idea if that's still acceptable anymore soI'm not going to say any more before I get banned or anything.
I quite often upload submissions that are more personal or I'm shy about with no tags specifically because I DON'T want them to be searchable (though since the blacklist feature dropped I add blacklist-typical tags if needed of course), are there any plans perhaps for an ability to exclude submissions from searches or the recent uploads main page? Obviously I can just do filler like "digital_artwork" as tags but being able to hide the submissions from casual browsers completely would be a much cleaner option!
If someone really want to hide the art I would do something like; username, personal, & scraps/private as alternatives? They could still be searched, but would be less likely to be searched. And if there is anything in the art that many would want to blacklist then adding that too.
I'll go change that then if it HAS to be searchable and found to expose personal information or things I don't want just anyone to see to preserve some privacy.
The only new thing is needing 3 tags min which isn't that difficult. It's been something many have been begging for, for years. Doubly so now that there are blacklists in place. And those don't work unless people, well... tag.
If images being searchable exposes personal information, I'm not sure why you'd want it posted here, though? I would suggest more private storage in that case. Or utilizing a website that has submissions reserved behind certain users and lists. I think Weasyl allows you to post images JUST for people in your friends lists, followers, or everyone as options. That might be a better alternative if it's something you want only shared among certain users!
Also if something can't be found by keywords it should not show up for blacklists either, seems like the easiest way to hide something instead of waiting for a designated folder (which scraps should already be.) That's just my opinion.
Also do I have to go back to add keywords to images I did not want to have keywords since they were intended more for those who watch me or I did not want them to be found easily by just anyone. Or should I move part of my gallery to scraps if I don't want to add tags and have them for watchers only?
Classic is considered legacy, and isn't being updated since 5 years ago when the new UI launched.
While there's no ETA, it will eventually be phased out (a case of "enjoy it while you can", alas...).
You are under no obligation to add keywords to old submissions; only newer ones will fall under that rule. We obviously encourage the addition of keywords on old submissions, but there is no plan at this time to force addition on those (subject to change in the future).
There are plans for a review and likely revamp of the folder system which would allow "private" folders that prevent those submissions from being indexed (also subject to change in the future - still very, very early in the design phase).
But right now, scraps are also being indexed; they simply do not show up on the main page when uploaded.
I hope this answers your questions! :3
I really, really hope they can solve the issues mobile users like me are having with Modern not showing the journal lists, mini gallery, and now keywords since this update. It makes Modern very limited in usability for me.
I did submit a feedback ticket. #276669 I hope it helps.
I've brought your ticket to the attention of the tech team.
I can't promise any time tables, but they've been made aware of the situation you're experiencing. Hopefully, they'll be able to come back to you soon with an answer, or questions. :3
Thanks for the feedback!!
(Hidden comment mine. It showed as posted to someone else. Odd.)
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....48396922290246
Hoping this doesn't mean users will have to register their personal phone number.
I value privacy.
I'm not looking stuff like tf or vore or something to be auto rated, but, for example, if something is tagged "fetish" or "sex" needing to to rated mature or higher to prevent the accidental general rating.
I think it might be worth copying InkBunny when it comes to tags via the submissions. On InkBunny when you submit a piece as part of the tagging process they actually have 4 boxes for tags appear, each with a title suggesting what each box is for, in their case it has sex/gender, species, themes and other. The boxes don't actually matter after the initial upload if you edit your tags it doesn't have the boxes and just a singular box to possibly submit new tags. So the boxes don't serve a practical coding services they're all just the same box for a singular image, but the titles at the side of them serve the function of guiding and helping the user in knowing what tags to give a piece they've uploaded. Such a feature might help people that struggle with tags being able to know which ones to submit.
I think it something similar might help with converting to a keyword system.
- Your prior attempt to correct these issues was myopic and rather than roll back you're using the dropdowns converted to keywords as a stopgap without realizing that these keywords don't correspond to the 'new' search options
- The 'new' pulldown simply functions by typing the gender in the search field
- Your proposed solutions going forward do nothing for millions of submissions and users that will need to manually be re-keyworded to appear in searches again
The fluffy corporate non-apology 'soft' writing does nothing but drives users up the wall. We don't want big blocks of text that include variations of 'we hear you' and 'we'll do better' because neither is ever true if your track record is anything to go by, we want results. If you were truly sorry, you'd apologize by rolling this back, but I imagine somewhere between the good idea fairy and covering your bases there's no back up for the submissions as they were when this change was implemented.
All you have to do is stop touching the hot stove, this is not difficult.
Especially aggravating when the only reply anyone seems to be able to get regarding the issues of tags not being capable of replicating the functionality of the Category dropdown is basically "here's how to use boolean search terms", apparently not understanding that lack of user knowledge is not the problem.
Good intentions, etc etc. I fully expect these changes to harm the site long term, if they don't do an actual rollback to restore what they broke. (I absolutely refuse to believe it's as impossible as this journal claims. They is no way in hell they made a change this big without a backup ready.) I already know myself and several friends who have significantly reduced usage of the site since Browse was destroyed as a feature.
Oh sure, there's "Blocked Tags", but that just leaves me with pages upon pages of blurred content instead of removing them from the results.
The new update seems to make the search incompatible with the autofill function, it would not even save new searches made.
Honestly, who thought this was a change that FA needed?
I understand that Herm couldn't be used, but hermaphrodite is still a viable option for many characters on FA. Suddenly, their gender doesn't matter now? I only have a couple of hermaphrodite characters, but that is the only gender that suits them. At least give us hermaphrodite if herm is off the table.
Ability to be tagged is irrelevant, it's about the message it sends to people like us who self-identify as this gender and have been removed. Not the first time; and at least this time we're not being force-changed to another gender (intersex).
You can still search for herm and hermaphrodite but it will not show up in the keywords of the images.
Honestly a tagging system (like on E621) is terrible, if you've ever posted anything there it takes half an hour to properly tag every possible obscure keyword that's in any way relevant to the image, and if you happen to forget even one you get grilled in the comments.
Though even as someone who always deligently tags my work, I do empathise with those who find adding keywords to be a time-consuming hurdle of the upload process. It is a monotonous task, especially when uploading many works of the same nature. The cognitive effort of analysing a piece of art to deduce appropriate keywords is genuinely non-trivial, which I imagine is especially true if English is not your native language. It can be tiring and I imagine it's one of the major reasons for people having an upload backlog.
Perhaps some features to reduce the friction of tagging will help ease everyone onto the same page. Auto-complete would be nice. And perhaps tags could be suggested during the upload process and easily applied with one click. Common tags such as artwork type, gender, species and themes could be always be suggested, with further keywords dynamically suggested based on what has already been entered - i.e. if something is tagged with "photography" then terms like "landscape" or "wildlife" could also be suggested.
Side note: Does FA plan on creating having a tag database? We can treat keywords as more than just simple text. They can be a more abstract concept with aliases, implications and even localisations into other languages.
I'm just so tired of stuff like this with every update, i thought after the staff exodus earlier in the year that things would be looking up.
Your fix doesn't work, and at this point i'm convinced that browse is just fucked forever, good job team.
I hope the 12 people who were offended by the term 'herm' are happy at least
Now that gender goes in the tag section, and "trans" isn't really a gender anyway, we might as well be able to individually pick and choose which labels apply. I think this would fix the issue of the current drop down feeling a bit "othering" for some trans folks, without getting too much backlash from the weird creeps, since they would be free to ignore the cis/trans labels.
While the drop-down menus aren't modern and can be unwieldy, it is super easy for me to find fat fur art featuring men. On other sites with kinky art, it's so much less organized or relies on user tagging in a non-formalized way that is... Not sufficient. It's so much easier to find new art related to kinky interests here than anywhere else!
I also worry for the future of the site where more and more of the older stuff will become un-findable. I realize how converting browse drop-downs into tags offers one solution to that, but I'd rather not lose anything, either.
Also: gender/sex terminology changes fast. Some gender terminology is appropriate in some contexts and not in others. For a kinky site like this, I'd never want to see any of that terminology removed as long as it isn't outright hateful and has had any historical relevance to the community. It does suck that male/female and trans are separate categories, so good on you for fixing that with the boxes, but... Man, it's just hard not to be wary from now on.
For example if I wanted to filter for "pregnant" content just having "preg*" should do with the * being a placeholder for everything that comes after. This could be combined with the - to exclude stuff, like if I don't want "hypnosis" I could just type "-hypno*".
Until there is a more organized tag library we can just pick from this would severely cut down on having to find all the permutations of tags.
The tagging system isn't going to be very consistant though with just artists tagging them, as artists by there very nature aren't very consistant. Making searching for new art frustrating on the viewers end.
User tagging should be allowed.
For one it can't even seem to put submissions in the correct order when sorting by date? I can see that images ABC were uploaded in sequence by an artist and then search will bring them up as BCA. One of the major advantages to using browse if you regularly look at specific categories is that by default, everything was in order, new items first. So you only had to look until you saw something you recognized and knew you'd seen everything come back another day. But how can you trust that if the search version can't even keep peoples sequential uploads in order?
Then comes the issue that something that gave fairly good results in about 3 clicks/taps has been replaced with something where what? You're going to have to go through and tag block a ton of stuff and then scroll past all the blurred images because a giant hole has been ripped in the net? Create a hyper specific set of keyword searches and hope everything is tagged correctly?
It doesn't matter what the planned features are not only is the implementation order wrong here but you took a feature that was very simple and forcibly merged it into one that is far more complex, requires more work on the end of the user whilst still not matching in functionality. It's no surprise why people are annoyed, don't like it and want it reverted.
It feels like a cop out, they could have kept the drop down system in browse like it should be. I feel like it's going to be even harder to find works now.
why am i forced to do it now? let other people tag images then, like you can do on e621
i don't like this change
We are working on improvements to the blocking system which should address your issue.
As for not seeing a user's posts, you can use the following pattern to exclude users altogether:
@lower -<username>
Just make sure to use the username and NOT the display name.
You will also need a search term, as that pattern does not work on its own.
So a search like diaper @lower -fetimation would display all the submissions that have "diaper" in their description or keywords, but would exclude the works of Fetimation.
I hope this helps!
<search terms> @lower -(username1 | username 2 | username 3 | usernameX ...)
This is faster than individually listing all of them and is also easier to read. :3
Also, since the search was changed to always modify the URL, you can now bookmark searches for future, easier re-use.
I hope this helps a bit more, even!!
I'm forwarding your comment to the tech team; but I would also advise to send a Trouble Ticket with the "Bug/Glitch" category so there's a figurative paper trail, and can be better tracked by the team.
Hopefully, they can figure out what's wrong quickly. :x
Yup! Changes are fully indexed once per 24 hours, if I recall what Tech had mentioned properly.
I hope this helps!
This hurts usability and was not well thought out.
I already like it. c:
Also let us view submissions full size 1:1 without clicking "download".
Can we get rid of them? Its been a royal pain to find any art as 90% of the time they are very wrong.
Foe example I look up dragons or deltarune, and get the complete opposite every few images bc of the meta-keywords.
Its getting annoying
A friend said I could just upload random pictures that are quick to make sometimes to stop my account from being seen as a bot
And I dont like the idea of improving the block system because many people do block randomly without talking to you ever and it makes you think like what you have done and what did you do wrong and think like you havent done anything wrong but worry about coming on here
I dont like the idea that because someone blocked me without saying anything to me to give me a reason or try to fix what I did I wont be able to see art or anything
People use blocking as a weapon and abuse the block button too much 😭😭😭😭😭
I'm a good person why am I being punished for nothing
Everyone here has their profile space, and you are not entitled to enter that space. You are not entitled to anyone's time, attention, or art. They can block you with or without a reason, and they are not obligated to explain "what you did."
In my experience, most of the people who complain about being "randomly blocked for no reason" are people who have no concept of social boundaries and are, in fact, usually being blocked for very good reasons. I'm 100% in favor of them making the block system more powerful - most other sites have a robust blocking system whereby when one user blocks another, they can no longer see each other's pages. I really hope FA introduces a blocking system like that.
Only further proving why I blocked them, and why we need an upgraded block system 😭