I'll be wrapping up my research on FA in the next few months. I just have a few unanswered research questions that came up and I thought I'd share them with you. Not sure how important they are to the overall project, but that's the nature of social science. You don't know which questions end up being the really important ones until much later.

1. Animated avatars vs. non-animated avatars. To what extent are avatars status symbols? Does having an animated avatar vs. a regular one or even no avatar at all affect one's popularity?

2. How does a topic thread on the FA forums get made into a sticky?

3. To what extent are the number of posts one has on the FA forum a status symbol within the forum?

4. Evidence of community in the FA forum vs. journals and art comments. Which community is more active? How much do they overlap?

5. What is the "Rant" section of the forum actually used for vs. what it is stated to be there for?

6. What, if any, social consequences are there for being banned from the FA forum or from FA in general for a time?

Larger topics on the furry fandom I will eventually be investigating:

1. The furry fandom and sexual orientation. I've noticed a pattern. It seems like some furs use the furry fandom as a medium for dealing with coming out as a homosexual IRL. I plan to research this further.

2. Furry art as sex objects and evidence that artists might feel pressured to draw adult content even if they don't intend to. Some artists who originally only drew clean or mildly suggestive art find themselves 'drifting' toward more explicit material.

3. Furs with kinks that make them socially ostracized from the rest of the fandom. For example, diaper furs and zoophiles.

4. The episode with Chewfox and Tyra Banks.

5. References to a "furry flag."

6. Furries' use of Livestream.

7. Furries and anime in general, Otakon specificially.

8. Furry-related blogs, such as those on Blogspot.com.

9. Interviews with the most popular artists/users of the websites I plan to study, FA included.