omg sheepdust owo

ikr I said the same thing

as did I

Understandable and happy to know that at least we have a reason on why there's a slow down.

Vary good to here that 2013 is off to a good start!

Glad about the Android app, it was really slow and I didn't like it much xD Hope FA actually makes a better one.

FA has said quite a few times that a mobile app is not coming, at least probably not until Weasyl gets their own out.

Never saw them say that anywhere. Prolly missed it. x3

They didn't say the Weasyl part, that's just what they've been going with feature-wise recently though. Someone else adds it to a site, people like it, FA adds it.

I hope at least they create a mobile web version of the site, much like how dA has. The little drop down menus on FA are really hard to click and don't work half the time on my phone.

I've got this problem myself.

http://i.imgur.com/hWI0Y.png

Same here, i found it helps when you refresh the page

On Android when that happens I can just try to touch the comma for a split second and drag my finger down so it does a soft touch and the menu items will appear.

Too bad FA has expressed no concern in fixing this bug in either Android or Apple devices stating that the only true browser they support is newer versions of Internet Explorer (and I believe chrome/firefox but I could be wrong)

Guess FA is hoping furs don't have enough money to buy a phone.

In my opinion, this is truly unacceptable if the FA app has been used THAT much to cause excessive requests.

Ahhh, You get that dumb comma thing too?
Have you found a fix? I hate it. :L

Easy fix, just bookmark 3 direct links - one each for submissions, journals, and direct messages. Makes using FA on a cheap Android phone a snap!

That's what I do, but it doesn't do much good on public or borrowed equipment.

I think the app was just programmed badly, and makes too many requests.

Actually I can't get FA to work on my Internet Explorer anymore. I have to use chrome.

Thats a rendering issue in mobile WebKit, but fa could work around it by making the links display: inline.

For everyone suffering this weird as hell Javascript-text-rendering issue on Android, if you have ICS or Jellybean, install Chrome from the Play Store, and use that. Far better browser, and stuff works always.

I have neither because apparently my phone is outdated by Nvidia before even being 2 years old. Go figure.

+1

I can confirm this working on my tablet. Also, both the stock 4.2 browser and Dolphin have the in-line link problem.

THIS!!! It pretty much makes me unable to get to anything but my notes. Glad its not just me having this problem. Click/drag doesn't work for me though. I hafta click the commas, & then try to click again quickly & just hope I hit it before my notes load. It only works like 20% of the time.

I use a Samsung Stratosphere Android phone, and while my link issue isn't quite the same as yours, I bypass the issue entirely by entering URLs in my browser instead of trying to click.

This.

I don't even bother with the broken menu anymore; I just go to my message center via bookmarking on my phone.

As long as I can opt out of the mobile version.. I HATE mobile sites I hate having to alter my user agent to see pages as they are to be shown.

In my opinion, that's usually because the mobile version is done improperly.

Most sites tend to think those browsing a mobile version want some quick features or limited access, but you can do a mobile version that is just a mobile-formatted layout. It's just a shame most are too lazy to actually do such a thing.

There's already a Mobile App of FA, an Unofficial one anyway, it works pretty much like if you were at your computer, and yes it can be a bit slow too because of the site itself being slow. You should be able to find it on Google Play Store if you have Android phone.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/.....mZhbW9iaWxlIl0.

This is the exact one they're talking about being banned and causing you to get banned. Don't use it yet.

I know that. I've used it and it was horrendously slow + in the journal they say it's not allowed to be used anymore and punishment will be taken to those users using it.

Banned from using it? I must of missed that one. :s

No, do not recommend this. This is the thing that this very journal is specifically telling people not to use as it abuses the servers.

it's physically impossible to be abusing the server just because it's already slow, sure it may slow down even more, but hell……FA is already slow, so I don't think people will notice any difference if they were using it anyway. Ahaha~! xD

Did you read the journal?

"Recently, we have been forced to take action against people using several abusive extensions. These extensions have a tendency to spam the site with excessive requests. There are two known extensions causing problems at this time: the "FA Status" extension for Chrome and the "Fur Affinity Mobile" app for Android. These apps are NOT supported by the site, and their use can potentially result in suspension or IP banning.

In the mean time, if you are using these apps we highly encourage users to STOP use immediately. We are willing to work with users who are suspended in such manner."

Only partially read the Journal. :/

No worries! I just didn't want to see you suspended over use of the app =]

You... did read the journal, right?

long before you made this comment.

Wait... now I dunno if I actually replied to you or what. D:

I would just be happy with a mobile formatted copy of the site, site like you see at http://m.youtube.com

TBH the site works fine on a mobile device, I don't know what people are always complaining about... It's such a simple and basic site there is no need for a mobile one. And idk but the menu has always worked okay on this device (it's a really inexpensive HTC android) so I guess I'm just lucky ......

Except for the fact you have to zoom in really far to see the text, and by doing so you gotta slide the screen all over the place, right left, up, down, to find your way around. As a smart phone user myself I have to say we are in dire need of a site formatted for a smaller screen.

I haven't really found this to be an issue and I'd be shocked if my version of android's browser is any different then other's o.O as I said, FA renders loads better then something like, say, DA does (and even DA's newest mobile version of the site is terrible).

Keep in mind, not everyone has the same device as you. Some people will have a larger screen size, smaller screen size, newer/older Android version, whatever. YMMV.

Of course (and the phone model I have right now is not the only one that I've used with FA... friends phones and temp phones given during repairs inclusive), my point is in contrast to something complicated such as DA's site, FA is a much more mobile friendly experience. It could be much, much worse...

They don't work out well on any smaller screens, as far as I can tell. And that includes old VGA tubes... The window just can't be wide enough to not drop something important (like the SFW and LOGOUT buttons).

HAHAHAHAHA! So true though!

Weasyl really doesn't need an app. Unlike FA, they've actually taken the time and effort to make a fully functional mobile site.

Exactly, they still said they're going to make one though and supposedly even have an Android developer. Funny that they're going that far.

An app will be nice just for optimization purposes, so I can see why they're going that far. At least Android isn't like iOS, where you're forced to pay to be a developer.

Where do they charge?
https://developer.apple.com/programs/register/

They charge the moment you want to test or list any app you make. Sure, Xcode is free for everyone, but if you want to test your app or put it up on the iOS store, you're forced to pay 100$. Note that this is an annual fee. If you don't pay up, Apple de-lists your app when your developer license expires.

So, they charge you if you're a big company or if you want them to publish for you?

This is a problem?

No, the problem is they charge the moment you want to do anything but write code. You can write for iOS until you're blue in the face, but unless you pay for a license, you can't test on your own hardware or publish your apps. Compared to Android, this is a major problem. Everything's free on Android. The SDK is free, testing your apps on your own hardware, publishing. The only time Google takes a cut is if you're going to charge for the application. Which means if you're developing an app, Android's the easier and cheaper option. Apple's development costs start at 100$, an that's assuming you're already using a Mac. If not, that 100$ just blossomed into nearly 1300$... Where as Android apps can be developed on a cheap 300$ HP notebook. Can't write/use Xcode on Windows or Linux.

I see no evidence you can't run the code without paying. Of course, none of this is listed - and Apple isn't the only one that hides the price.

You can't run unsigned code on iOS unless you jailbreak the phone, which while legal, also violates any user agreements with Apple. You can't get code signed without paying Apple for a developer's license, which is 100$. You can ask anyone that develops software for iOS, they'll tell you the exact same thing. No license, no testing or publishing.

Then stay there?

Once Weasyl is out of beta and no longer requires invites, I probably will while keeping FA as a backup. If you've seen what they're working on at Weasyl, you'd know it's an FA killer.

To be honest weasyl is far too pretentious for me. It seems the majority who join up are pretty much just deviantart wannabe douchebags. Give it a few years. Itll just be another deviant art. Sure weayl is probably a better site with undeniably better admins, owners, tech and coding. But the community here is better, it is easier to make money here, and i really couldnt care less about most of what weasyl offers. If i wanted what they had id just stay on deviantart.

DA's gotten worse over the years though, in community, content, and usability. It only seems pretentious right now because it is invite only. Once those walls come down and anyone can join up, a lot of the FA community is probably going to move there. If only to avoid some of the mismanagement and problems that come up here. Once more people are on Weasyl, making money will be as easy as it is here.

They said something similar about Inkbunny...it didn't happen 8P

Mostly because Inkbunny is just FA, only cleaned up and made pretty.

Don't forget the terrifying amount of cub porn and pedos and the dramahogs that were banned from FA 81

I can block that stuff though. Trust me, there are a lot of things on FA that I wish I could blacklist. But since FA doesn't enforce tagging, that's pretty much impossible.

Even with that, it depends on the people to tag them. Not all of them tag shit correctly.

That's why I'm liking Weasyl. Community tagging. If you don't tag your stuff, everyone else will. And tags are moderated, so they are accurate.

I know all about Weasyl. I still stand by how I dislike the community so I stay away. Perhaps it will get better in the future, but for now...naw.

At the moment, FA has a lot to catch up on and learn from the competition. They're just being insanely slow about keeping up and it does the site no favors to do so.

Agreed. I don't like the Weasyl crowd, which is sad because I wanted to join when I heard of it.

What?

So in other words:
"Weasyl isn't made just for furries, so I'm not going to join."

That seems pretty pretentious to me...
It's only easier to make money here because there are MORE people. If people realized, hey, this site is fucked up, and went over to another site, like Weasyl for example, the it would be easier to make money over there.

Besides, everyone I've talked to at Weasyl have been nothing but nice, so I dunno where your getting your information from.

I dont think you even read what i said. Or at least your interpretation was waaaayyyy off. But whatevs, you cant change my experiences with those people.

I don't get it. There's people everywhere that I don't like, but that doesn't keep me from going to these places. Is it someone running the site? If it is then it's not like they are going to call you out or something, they would end up losing their position.

I'll believe it all when I see it.

I understand that the Furaffinity application can't be used for Android. I have an Android phone, and frequently use the browser application to access Furaffinity to check messages and update my clients. Will using this affect me?

I wouldn't consider the messages menu disappearing on mobile browsers as a non-issue effecting the usability of this site.

Plus one. Also it disappears on older browsers or smaller screens anyhow.

The difference between the "FA For Android" app and using Android to browse FA.net is very similar to the difference between the "Facebook" app and using Android to browse Facebook.com.

But unlike FA, Facebook actually has a mobile optimized site.

True. But unlike FA, Facebook has a revenue and some staff.

But unlike FA, Facebook has no excuse for releasing slapdash code and violating users' privacy for profit. But they do.

ABOUT TIME. I've already had bad experiences with 2 of the new admins not knowing what they're doing though. lets hope they get trained properly and more good ones are added.

Sheepdust is awesome, good call there. :3

Who can I contact in order to verify that my FA Extension (http://keyaffinity.k0bi.tk) is not negatively affecting the site? I wan't to make sure I can continue development of this extension without causing any trouble :P

Yeah, it doesn't make any requests to the server. It only analyzes the page you're visiting. I was actually going to use a method used by FA Status to check for new requests but haven't gotten it to work yet. Looks like I'll find another way. Thanks for the response :)

Ahh, yes. That would proooobably cause some issues.

Have you been sleeping for the last few months? They are fixing a lot of code lately.

Seriously furries, you should be thankful, if any. Sure, FA has seen a lot of ups and downs, but all in all, it could have been much worse than what it actually has turned into. A lot of things are changing for the better currently and that's also a major transition on the site. But instead of being happy about good news for a change and thanking those responsible for the change, you're still just being bitching douche bags.

FA Status isn't a program made by FA either and that's what got stated to be flawed in this scenario. If your biggest concern in life is a cosmetic flaw when browsing FA on your phone, wow...

Thank you. People always seem to b*tch about the site, but it's mostly overreacting. The site is improving and even so the site as it is right now is not half bad. Granted, it could be fancier and the thumbnails could be fixed, etc. but it works, so I'm happy with FA and its accomplishments.

Agreed.

+1 to you! Finally somebody who understands!

Thank You very much

I don't think this is a big flaw necessary for them to attend to right away; simply enter the URLs to the relevant pages into the browser that you use, or bookmark them.

That doesn't work on public or borrowed equipment.

Bookmarking no, but entering URLs does .__.

That's just awkward.

How so? It's entering a few characters; it takes a few extra seconds at most.

Depends on the device and how much time you've devoted to memorizing it. Hence, awkward.

Same thing happens on my OpenPandora with Jumanji browser, which is NOT a mobile browser, so I don't get it.

It'd be super special awesome if FA made it's own extensions :3

Give it time. FA's technical department is slightly understaffed, so priorities move first.

More like severely understaffed in the coding department.

You were kidding when you said "department", right?

Wrong wording perhaps, maybe coding monarchy?

Not even.

I think there's an unattended 486 in there that has Notepad on it

Nah, it's an 8088 and it's not notepad, it's MS-DOS Edit.

Still overstating it, its edlin, not edit.

Umm... When I had MS-DOS, it was called 'edit.com' I know edlin, but that was older versions of DOS. Newer ones had edit.

There was no edit during the days of the 8088. :P edit came about only during version 5 or 6. I'm an older DOS dinosaur, heh.

Oh. I'm pretty sure my family's old 8088 had MS-DOS 6.22 on it, but that's cause we kept upgrading the OS instead of getting a new computer.

We're going about this the wrong way. We've actually yet to establish that FA's IT department has moved beyond the stone age.

Yeah, maybe. =p

I'm sure there's a possibility that FA could reach out to some of the users who are into programming and would be willing to help

Oh, the possibility exists, but FA admins current have a policy of turning them down, ever since  lexyeevee left.

Sadly there were actually a lot of programmers that reached out to THEM. And they were turned down. Pity because a lot were willing to work to improve the site and had some neat ideas. Oh well, I guess we'll see what's in store for 2013.

Hopefully that'll change >.<

It's pointless to even offer help because Yak will get defensive I think.

Well they're people, just as we are and are not without fault. However, I'm sure if enough people make it clear that it should be something to focus on and if someone presents an offer to work on it while being as respectful as reasonable as possible ^-^;

I know they are but literally every time *any* sort of help is presented it is turned down. I have seen it happen.

Trust me, I do want FA to move ahead codewise but it's still stagnant due to Yak's tight grip and recruit policies.

Yup,

Weasyl actually took up the offer from various people and thus.. well. You can see the results.

That's why I have fallback accounts on Inkbunny, Sofurry and Weasyl in case this place goes under in the future.

SHEEP!! AWH YEA!~

I have been getting the 'having a hard time processing requests' - I use chrome, yes, but no extensions. Am I okay with what I am doing? Or...what? lol

Just uninstalled the FA app off my phone a few days ago

Just a thought:

Give us a way to get information without scraping the site. Since FA is the epicenter of the furry community (online at least) this only seems appropriate. Saying "we don't support it" and leaving programmers to their own devices is what's causing this.

I agree with this; I'm surprised there's no sort of official API.

AN API?!?!?! I LOVE YOU

Adding an API means adding all the features that people develop against that API. Features you don't have to maintain and you get "for free".

+1

yay!

Best wishes to the new staff! :)

Wondering how the admin recruiting process goes, perhaps after I come back from my timely trip, I can inquiry on becoming a admin

Uh I use Google Chrome with one extension for this site, the Furaffinity Sticky Menu style extension. Is that know to cause any problems?

Is it alright to keep using it or should I disable it? In my experience it's a good add-on because it makes working on the site a lot faster without having to constantly scroll back up to do things.

Okay thank you for answering!

Glad I didn't install that extension. I did download it and was considering using it. Unfortunate that it's hammering the site.

What do you plan to do about "screencaps not being legitimate proof of harassment"? Will that change? Because with the amount of time it takes for tickets to get a response, most proof is gone by the time any admin gets to it.

I took 3 days compiling other members who had been harassed by a certain member and getting screen shots of it to submit as proof, so I guess I'll just spend another 3 re-messaging everyone. Maybe you guys should have a button that has a "report harassment" menu, like under the "manage shouts/comments" pages.

"High on the list"

Shouldn't that be a feature that you include when the site is launched? Not several years after creation, that's just slacking.

"Shouldn't that be a feature that you include when the site is launched? Not several years after creation, that's just slacking."
Yes, it should be a feature that you include when the site is launched. It's actually a must-have feature.

It is, you just don't make a website without inducting that upon launch. It's like FA is practically the definition of "bad coding and support team". Since when did FA actually even give a shit about our problems in the first place? All they've done is make this website a degenerative laughing stock for everyone to look at. Even these new admins are just basically picked from bias, since when have any of the admins that FA has chosen over the years actually done anything at all?

If you have such an issue with FA, why stay?

because unless you're willing to put your money where your mouth is, all that this comment is is a whine.

the reason i am staying on the website is that I simply have some friends here who I would happily stay for instead of going "fuck you and your crummy site".

I am basically pointing out that FA Staff is extremely poor and un-organized and needs a complete reshuffle in fact, a new owner and the lot. Not some owner who bans people for providing fair criticism

... and yet, despite them being so "poor" they've managed to keep this site up for close to a decade and it hasn't imploded from ineptitude.

I think your reason for disliking the site is unwarranted.

yeah, but it's only remaining up cause it is running on basic code, like nothing great at all, this is the most simplistic built website on the planet, a 1 year old could make it. The entire website is cheep. The site was down for about a month and a half last year and even longer before that.

dude, your account says you weren't even here during those times.

i was... and in the last two years most "downtimes" have been very minor. the major ones that i have noticed were because of hardware issues and they were fixed within a week at most.

stop being so bloody melodramatic.

I was around for the one in september (September or October, was one of the two) but didn't have an account. I did research on the entire website since I was literally expecting shit to occur judging from the reputation this place has.

please keep in mind this simple concept when researching companies/products/services.

satisfied customers rarely speak up... dissatisfied customers will make sure you know WHY they're dissatisfied... and more often than not will come up with the silliest reasons to justify their anger. i've worked in customer service, technical support and customer relations/retention and i've seen it happen with my own eyes.

And though FA has had it's slip-ups, a lot of the complaints that you probably came across are more than likely to have been over-inflated for dramatic purposes or people with a vested interest in seeing FA fall on it's ass.

personally, i've had my moment on both sides of the spectrum... there were times when i was wholly dissatisfied with how FA was doing it's thing... but that was in the past when there were issues which really bothered me (some of them quite legitimate imo.) but if i had left, i would not have been around to see them pull their socks up.

What i would like for you to take from all this is this.

if you have been directly affected by problems, instead of just complaining, try and have them resolved. if it's an issue with tickets that have been left for months of inactivity, try contacting a moderator directly?

a customer (and that is essentially what we all are here) can not reasonably expect the company to be able to fix things if they aren't aware there is a problem... and bottling them up and then exploding later never solves anything (and it causes stress which doesn't need to happen.)

so, keep that in mind... if you want the site to succeed (as i do as i will admit i have a vested interest in using it as a platform to advertise my video-games) then that means you have to be willing to take the smallest steps to try and help them do that. it's like littering... if you see a wrapper on the ground and there is no park-cleanup person around, instead of accusing the park-staff of incompetence, why not just pick it up and toss it in a garbage can?

That is why I am still here, because of friends. I also can't be told off to get a Sofurry/Inkbunny/Weasyl account because I ALREADY have one for those hardcore FA defenders.

Hindsight is 20/20... just sayin'.

You've been "discussing" this feature for about ten thousand times the amount of time it takes to code.

Just DO SOMETHING already.

I can understand your frustration, but admins are buckling under the stress of TTs as it is. I'd rather see them do a good job with TTs than add further stress of a reporting system on top.

Admins aren't under any stress, in my opinion, they're straight up lazy, since when have we heard anything about the website re-design?

Try it.
Seriously.
Walk a mile in their shoes.

Or just shut the fuck up.

I'm defending nothing. I'm encouraging a realistic outlook.

Do you want to provide any evidence for your rant?

oh derp, sorry, i replied to the wrong guy XD

Noted, but my reply still stands.

Are you seriously defending the people who have driven this site into the ground?

It is plain obvious that FA team is both corrupted and bias , since when have we even heard anything new coming from these guys at all? All we have been getting is bullshit excuses as to why they are not implementing new features

EXAMPLE: Report button, why the fuck is that shit not added on day one? Apparently according to some admins from a while back "too much money

Riiiiight... It's totally been dragged into the ground.

that's why it's the main hub of most furry socialization and art-sharing.

totally ruined, yep yep... Why can't they just do what Furnation did?... waitaminute...

I mean in the term of admins. Let us face it, the admins are useless, they have never cared about our problems and only act like it just so they maintain a "clear image" and I have no doubts that the current lot will just be as bad.

Look at some of the most recent comments "I'm still waiting on a response for submissions made about 5 years ago." that is how bad the admins are. 5 years and no response. Still on web 1.0 technology, no report button, admins lazy around. Yup, seems about right for this site in terms of "community cooperation"

So, the realization that they have a userbase into the hundreds of thousands and up until recently had a team of less than two dozen mods doesn't factor in to it?

sometimes things fall through the cracks... and while i will admit that is a bad thing it does happen.

I think you're being just a tad melodramatic about this whole thing.

Gee's, have you seen the admin abuse, favouritism, constant bending of the rules, bribery, etc.

FA team is like politics, no matter what you vote for or do, still can't be trusted.

Yes i have... and that was a long time ago. since then they have actually been fixing it. hell, I was caught up in the shenanigans of a deadbeat, power-mongering mod and was given infractions and bans by this mod abusing their power... admittedly in some respects i did deserve to have some humility served to me but their reaction was far, far out of proportion to the behavior (and they even noted me in their reason that they were itching for the chance to do that.)

but, you haven't been here very long and i have... and in that time i've seen drastic improvement in how this site is run. sure, it isn't perfect... i doubt any site can claim that title though... but it is improving.

so, stop being such a drama-queen.

You're bitching needlessly. You've derailed an entire thread which was devoted to improvement. Nothing you've said is surprising, or new, or helpful. If you are that concerned, please spend your energy somewhere else.

Let's say it's a reminder for those to get their asses in gear.

I'm not thrilled with a lot of what FA's done, but bitching about it when they're making a sincere effort at turning a new leaf is just counterintuitive, unproductive, immature, unprofessional and rude.

"B-b-b-but if i can't complain about the site, then i'll have nothing to distract me from the terrible realization that my life is actually kinda pathetic... i need this distraction! it's cheaper than a trip to the terapist."

or, that's probably what a good deal of people ought to say... given that it seems they need something to be angry with and FA just happens to be it.

I understand what you mean but why is it taking forever, it reminds me of Duke Nukem Forever's 12 year development hell cycle.

No, you are right about admin bias and general uselessness. Every group that doesnt like bronies is banned because of "drama causing" (when in reality none of the people in the group ever caused a problem and were in fact attacked by bronies constantly.) Yet the giant mlp group is allowed to stand even though they produce giant amounts of pony spam recolors. But that isnt even all of it, groups like atheistfurs who intentionally go around harassing people and causing massive drama (national blasphemy day? Draw mohammed day? I may not like or agree with muslims or christians but seriously fuck you.) dont even get a slap on the wrist. Not to mention the huge number of unpopular artists who have submissions removed for spamming, yet the more famous recolor "artists" never even so much as get noticed by them. But god forbid you point out the admins obvious hypocrisy because then all the hug boxing dragoneer fantards are going to come in and cry at you. I totally feel ya bro.

I agreed with this comment until I read the part about atheistfurs. I think religion is the root of all evil, and I support their right to protest.

Big difference between protesting and needlessly harassing people who havent done anything wrong. You will not accomplish anything by snarkily trashing all forms of religious people on the internet. But, i hate atheists just as much as the religious. They are the same exact people to me.

I guess you hate everyone then.

I know one of the new ones personally, and he's a good person. He's already helped me and a friend, so I'm thinking things will improve.

To be fair, since it's the main hub of most furry socialization and art-sharing, it should have really been up to date function and design wise years ago.

granted... but, how many people does this site employ?

i mean, you can easily expect a place like Conceptart.org or DeviantArt to have a top-notch system in place but they actually have a lot of people working for them (and some are even paid... which is the main difference here... the team don't get paid, it's all voluntary.)

expectations are one thing... expectations with little grounding in practicality are another.

That's entirely up to Dragoneer with how many people he wants to employ.
If he wants to keep the staff relatively small for the thousands and thousands of users for the website, that ball is in his court.

There are people that are more than willing to help keep FurAffinity functioning, or..you know, giving it an actual real update instead of the small knick-knacks we've been getting here and there as of late, but again, the ball is in Dragoneer's court.

I recall people from Furocity (Can't spell), or another site with a similar name, that was going to merge with FA, so that both teams would be getting the fruits of the benefits from having a much larger staff working together, and they pulled anchor from some shit that went down.

I don't know, I'm just not with FA admins on some levels of support. Granted, yeah, there's a couple of them that really get the job done, but it just seems like over the years (I've been on FA since the website first launched) of being promised a lot of things, and seeing nothing from those promises, I just tend to...not believe what is being advertised anymore.

and that's understandable... hell, i would think the best way to approach it is just do it and not advertise.

but i think the biggest issue here is that Dragoneer himself seems like he's not that big of a fan of being the bad guy sometimes... and i can understand that but sometimes you kinda have to be the bad guy to keep your employees (paid or not) in check. i'm not saying he's a lesser person because of it, it's just a guess really but that guess does seem to have some weight to it given the times when mods and admins have behaved in a manner that would get them fired from a real job (all the way to abusing the rules, deigning not to follow them when it suited them, lording their status over their peers and users, etc... ) it's one reason why i really do think that this site ought to have an H.R. position... someone to take the stress off of him so that the H.R. person can be the bad guy while he can keep on doing what he likes to do. less stress for him, he can rest assured that the site will remain operational, bad employees will be dealt with and everyone's happy.

but again, it's not that i think he's unfit or a bad guy, i just don't think he's happiest when he has to be the bad guy (and it kinda shows, well, to me it does.) which is why i do think an H.R. department/person would be a good addition to the team.

that being said, it can't be denied that things aren't running as smoothly as people expect them to (assuming we ignore the unreasonable and unrealistic expectations.) and that's likely the main reason why this site gets so much criticism... but, if you've been here from the start, you can't deny that things have been getting better bit by bit... slowly, but still (and the fact that people have been doing it for free is pretty impressive when you really think about it.)

Unless you have links to pages on which I can observe the messages that you claim to have seen, I'm siding with the people keeping this site running day in, day out as opposed to following your baseless accusations on their address.
As I said; Walk a mile in their shoes before complaining.

Having been an admin elsewhere, I know how much flak these people get. For no reason at all.
So, yes. I am defending the people who keep this site running.

If you don't like what you see here, go elsewhere or build your own site. It's as simple as that.

^This

Haha, wow.

A good reporting system would REMOVE stress. The way it works now is MULTIPLE trouble tickets can be filed for the SAME issue. A report system would either group or limit reports which would save a LOT of time.

It sounds like you're suggesting a new system to replace the TT system, and that you want it to do exactly the same job as the TT system.

No?

Currently, this happens:
+ Ticket 14679 - X Stole art!
+ Ticket 14680 - This art is stolen from X!
+ Ticket 14681 - Y is reposting X's art without permission!
+ Ticket 14682 - Someone stole my art!

Each of these must be individually processed and read. One admin might take one while another takes the other and create a big mess. Important information could be spread among them all.

The "report" button would group these all together, like this:
+ Submission 98974654 was reported for art theft 4 times
+ AnArtist added the following comment:
"That's my art from here! [link]"
+ ConcernedUser added the following comment:
"That's AnArtist's art!"

Or even better

+ A comment by BadUser has been reported as harassment:
"u r a terrible person"

It would work nothing like the current system.

That's great! Good luck with coding it into FA.

It is trivial to encode such a feature, It's pretty much a standard requirement. Code can be found all over the net on how to do this.

Also:

Ack, thanks random enter key :P

Also, I have been working on a text story site a la yiffstar and a few other corporate social websites.. so I have _DONE_ this. Getting it integrated into FA is an FA problem, not a skill problem.

That's the point I'm making, though. True that it's trivial to code the feature, but integrating it with FA would be a herculean feat, given the site's instability.

"U r a horrible person"

GLaDOS would be proud.

Or a button that takes a copy of the entire page and sends it instantly, allowing no time to edit at all. Or something like that. XD...

that would be nice to have :0

I wish any of the admins they have now were that creative. You should be an admin!

But seriously, yeah, the button could save the page sourcecode as it existed exactly, rather than being a directive link to the source.

I know that as soon as a submission / comment on Y!Gal is reported, they freeze it until a mod / admin can look at that. I'm sure that's what Fender meant by 'report button'.

And what, "freeze" a user's shout page for EIGHT MONTHS until someone finally gets to it? There HAS to be a better option than that.

With the new admins, it should no longer take months to get responses to trouble tickets. Once we exhaust the current queue of tickets, admins will basically be waiting to answer tickets, resulting in response times dropping from a few months to a few minutes or hours.

It does not freeze the shout page, rather the comment itself so it cannot be deleted / edited / changed - and certainly does not take eight months for it to be answered on Y!Gal. Their readiness and promptness has always impressed me. They have a fantastic admin team.

Wow... pessimist much?

There are, it's not that difficult if you're designed well.

For the site I used to work on we'd pull the data (generally all of the comments the reported user has made on that page) out of the SQL and store it in a report table in the admin database. (We kept them separate for security reasons)

Our comments were normalized pretty well, so even for massive threads the queries were extremely fast and the php code didn't impact the site. I don't know if FA's comment system is still... like it was a long time ago, but I'm sure that's one of the things they'll fix.

No, freeze a clone of it, and let the original continue to change. THAT would be the right way to do it.

The whole Page would be too much, in my Opinion. Like on this Page, too much unnecessary Text...
1) making it difficult to see what it's all about and
2) using unnecessary much Storage Space [yes, that sums up].

Also, Freezing it and effectively disabling Edits is another Thing that might be too much, People might just freeze Submissions for Fun.


And, it's not about you being able to edit the Page before reporting.
You can't change the Page on the Server either Way, you can change what your Browser is displaying, and only yours.

For example, I could modify your Comment on this Page so you seem to start a Fight with me, and make a Screenshot of that as 'Proof'. But I'm not able to change the Page up on FA's Server, just in my Browser - as soon as I hit refresh, the Page is back to normal. It's like editing Text without being able so save.


Long Story short:
There's no Issue with sending it right away or later, since you can't edit the real Page on the Servers either Way.
But there's an Issue with the Screenshots probably being faked [in whatever Manner, you could even use Photoshop].
Important is just the Snapshot at that Time, so the Harasser can't just delete his Comments after being reported.
Well, he can still delete them, but a Copy has been sent already [FA-Internally], and that's what the Snapshot Part is about:

The Report Button has to trigger a Function to create a Server-Side Snapshot of the selected Conversation/Submission, and send that to the Admins via PN and/or the Ticket System.

^..^

Better than a report button, if they get hurtful comments,they get over it and move on! The main problem with this site is that people get buutthurt get too easy. -_-

I don't think you understand how a report button works.

Yes I do lol :P

Then they don't work they way you think they do. As a person who has been the victim of a attack for daring to disagree with a popular artist (some petty bull shit too) I know it's not a case of getting over it. Some times you want to get over but some people keep trying to push your buttons.


It's not that one sided.

Thing is I have never seen a report button actually have an effect on something so I find them totally pointless. Even when 100's of people have pressed report nothing happens.

Admins,mods and the like are only human when you have a site with a ass hold of people and %75 of them like to start shit I think you would have to hire a team of staff so large you can have a soccer game.

Heh, probably.

then what is? what do you really expect us to do to show proof? My last harassment ticket took EIGHT MONTHS to answer and I didnt want to leave a harassing shout in the open that long.

Give us another option.

Apparently our option is a "report" button that doesn't exist.

good to know -w- they really dont seem to care about us being able to submit proof i guess. certainly decreases their workload!

What do you mean? Women don't exist on the internet and men don't harass men so why do we need to be able to report anything like that? Hurr durr. My only impression of this website is that NOBODY gives a flying cuss. I had messaged summercat directly to have my ticket looked at, and the reply I got was "I'm at work right now, I can't take care of it". I asked if it could be forwarded to someone who was online, or looked at later and I just didn't get a reply.

I've sent many notes to dragoneer, about cub porn tickets i have from October, and art theft from JULY. sometimes he says "its in my queue" but most of the time I can see he reads it and doesn't respond.

I've sent him another note about the 2 (new) admins not doing their jobs right, and the screenshots BS. We'll see what happens I guess :/

Wow, it looks like you two have been having a rough time with harassment issues. I'm sorry to hear that.
I had an incident a couple years back where a former college roomie was trying their best to ruin my reputation due to our personal fallout.
Every time I went to report their actions, they would delete offensive comments and journals.

In the end, I took it upon myself, made a well-written note asking them to leave me alone, and I banned them from my account.
They made another account, I blocked that one too after reminding them FA can track IP addresses.

My best tips are:
1. Don't give the haters what they want - a reaction
2. The block feature is a good friend - use it
3. When it comes down to personal issues, sometimes a simple "please stop" can help steer things in the right direction

Hope you both have a better time here on FA in the near future, and sorry again to hear you've been having it rough.

I had done all of those things. They have stopped as of now, but who knows who else he's moved on to harassing. I reported all 3 of the users known accounts, and since the report one of the accounts has been deleted. I did tell them to stop, multiple times. In fact apparently I was one of the "less" harassed users because I simply cut them off so quickly.

Some people are consistent, if not anything else. Just be patient and don't react to future attacks. Deal with them quietly as possible.

I had something like that happen to me, he spammed my page which got his primary account permabanned then made 10 or 15 other accounts and used each one of them to spam my page until each one was banned then the the admins managed to IP ban him like a week later, then he spammed my account on sofurry and inkbunny once then disappeared.

That's internet obsession if I ever did hear it. Sorry you had to go through all that.

yeah it was the first time I've ever met someone on the net so intent on causing trouble for me.

(copied from above reply)
With the new admins, it should no longer take months to get responses to trouble tickets. Once we exhaust the current queue of tickets, admins will basically be waiting to answer tickets, resulting in response times dropping from a few months to a few minutes or hours.

You do realize that in the time it takes to actually get around to the offending image, comment, etc., the person in question may have already have removed it? As someone else has said, in terms of shouts on pages, sometimes people don't want to leave the shout up.

Do the mods have no way of checking someones comment/upload history to verify whether or not a screenshot is valid? That's a serious issue, if not.

You do realize that in the time it takes to actually get around to the offending image, comment, etc., the person in question may have already have removed it? As someone else has said, in terms of shouts on pages, sometimes people don't want to leave the shout up.

Do the mods have no way of checking someones comment/upload history to verify whether or not a screenshot is valid? That's a serious issue, if not.

idk if I should say this but what if u (the site) use a certan tool that won't allow anyone to commet on ppl pages or art work till approved by an admin that would help with the harassment I think

Well that's an Idea.
Give the Submission Uploader the Option to read the Comments and approve them before they display publicly.

On the other Hand, look at - for Example - Narse's Submission Comments.
Congratulations, you got 538 new Comments on your Submissions to approve =D

Each and every Reply to those Comments, as well.
Also, the Uploader can hide Comments on the Page yet.

So, I really don't think that will work out for anything other than the Shoutbox.
Instead of Message Center's "New Shout by NAME" there should be the Shout itself, with ✓ and ✗.

Why in the hell is it deleted from the database when the user deletes it?! Surely it should be just not displayed on the site, but still saved in the database. This is basic stuff...

When a comment is deleted, remove from the comments table, add to a new deleted comments table, with a unique ID number. Display in place of comment "Comment ID #xxxx Deleted." Then users can give that number to the admin if it was deleted. Now if FA's code is reasonably well laid out and split into modules then this should be simple to implement. If it's a spaghetti junction of code, then God help you.

I imagine it's a space issue. Can you imagine how much data that would be? And it would be growing constantly. Eventually they'd have to disallow all new submissions just to make sure there's still room for old deleted comments.

Not exactly. Text is absolutely tiny.

Not just text. All submissions as well, since a submission can be offending too.

I was not suggesting doing it with submissions, just comments.

No, but they probably would.

Which is unfortunate (for both sides.)

this is one reason why i'm not incorporating a chatting/voip system in my game... too many diplomatic issues to take into consider (that and it's a bi#ch to get done right) that it'd be a lot easier for people to just use ventrillo or other systems to chat on teams... why reinvent the wheel?

The US courts accept screenshots as evidence, so I don't see the problem.

I know I could be a good admin as well, because I am always a hard worker and successful. But Thank you for the opportunity.

Helloooo to the new guys. :>
I totally missed the call for admins, where do you usually post that stuff? augh!
GOOD LUCK~

They had it up as a notice several months back - much like this one. :)

Ooooh...how I missed that I am...not so sure. XD

Maybe its about time FA develops an API so people don't have to scrape the site and waste bandwidth?

Cool beans Fender :)

Thankfully I perfer reading FA using my phone and tablet normally and not using any sort of app to do so.

my only question is do we have to live in your area to become a admin?
i've been putting a ton of thought into applying later down the line but i live up in seattle.
Is that still okay?

Yeah, but you still can't apply if your mother language isn't English... I'm from Argentina and I can speak/write better English than a lot of native speakers do....

Native language isn't important, just fluency. If you can speak English well, you're fine.

If anything I imagine non-english speaking admins are even more welcome; so long as they are fluent in English to a technical level.

I see the benefits of this too... since furry isn't a western thing solely... but, given the site is hosted and maintained by english speaking people the requirement for fluency in english i do understand as being a must.

but, i'm going to guess that proficiency in multiple languages would probably help one's case for being a mod. So, if you are muti-lingual and can show you've got the chops for being a moderator, why not apply? you've nothing to lose by trying. :)

That was the case in an earlier recruitment call but not in the latest one that went up - the requirement has now been changed to fluency.

thats great to know! i will start doing some research about the site to see if i can learn everything x3

Nope! Admins are all over the world.  hendikins is in Australia,  cerbrus is in the Netherlands (IIRC), etc etc. I'm in California; Dragoneer is out in the East Coast somewheres (I forget D:)

thank you so much for the info!

Yup, Netherlands. :P

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHH

yay new admins :D

Ya know, releasing an official iOS and Android app would clear up a lot of problems. The full FA site can use up a LOT of mobile data. You don't even have a mobile version of FA.

Why is FA so far behind the times where other sites are not? Hell, The Verge's default site is shit on a lot of devices (iOS devices included), but even they have a mobile site AND an app that both run pretty smoothly.

Well, an official Android app would be fine and a mobile site for iOS/other. I honestly forgot about how Apple treats their apps.

Why not work with developers to make an app that meets guidelines and won't screw the site over if you're not going to make one yourselves?

It's clear that a lot of people want the app however. It'd actually be easier to make an app if you get a group of developers dedicated to it and not just one person (FA Mobile was made by one person).

With the help of the mods on FA, the app wouldn't hurt the site either.

Of course, it wouldn't work with every phone, but that's just how it goes. You could still have a mobile site too but the app looks like it'd probably be more popular and less work for the coders of the site as you'd just have someone else do it while you all worried about the site.

when is this going to happen?

this seems desperately necessary if the site needs to reduce the load on the site

this punishment > solving problems thing is absolutely crazy

the FA Mobile android app was officla updated today. With a bigger and faster caching process to cause less of a take down.on the site.

Thank you.


P.S. Still suggest you message dragoneer before using it.

FA needs to get a mobile interface sooner than later as more are spending more time on the internet from mobile devices including me, and FA is a very mobile unfriendly site.

I believe that you will be running into similar issues with Android now as well. If memory serves, the Google Play store has started to implement similar restrictions with regards to adult content. So looks like a fully mobile compatible site is about the best we can hope for from that side of things. One suggestion to people in the interrim though who are struggling to get into their submission pages etc due to the issue with the comma on the header, just save a bookmark in to each page. Bit clunky but will work fine.

Guess you're right on that:

Sexually Explicit Material: We don't allow content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography. If we become aware of content with child pornography, we will report it to the appropriate authorities and delete the Google Accounts of those involved with the distribution.

Very first rule on the Developer Program Policies page.

Ah well, mobile site it is then. However, we still need it sooner rather than later. Banning people because your site isn't optimized for mobile and not actually doing anything to make it more optimized until LATE in the year is just ridiculous.

You seem to forget a very specific thing:
Multiple app stores for Android
Loading any .apk file

Sure, having it on an app store would be awesome, but giving a QR code/DL link on the site for download is also useful for distributing an app

Thinking about it, making a decent lil' mobile app/mobile assistant (if only for uploading/quick replies to your notifications and stuff) for like... .99 would be a good lil' way to get some more income to support the site.

Of course, that's just for the Play Store's guidelines. However, they don't even want to make a mobile site right now and don't want to work with the developer of FurAffinity Mobile so I doubt releasing it in other ways would work.

FA is pretty archaic. It exists by circumstance rather than convenience and usefulness.

Yeah, I gotta say I agree. However, it just really needs some work.

It can rack up quite a bit of mobile data if you load it enough. I'm not joking. I can rack up quite a bit of data just by loading an artist's gallery or streaming a song. The site's code is written for a desktop, it's filled with images, it can stream music, and a lot of the avatars (mine included) are animated.

Not only does all of that chew away at data, it chews at battery too as web browsing can be pretty intense on the processor and RAM of a phone.

About the only two things on FA that wouldn't hurt data plans or battery is Flash and stories. Stories are pretty much all text and Flash is dead on mobile.

The full FA site can use up a LOT of mobile data.
The webpages themselves are relatively lean, what eats data are the thumbnails and the submissions themselves. Flash applets & video players is something FA cannot do much about, as these cannot be compressed further on the server side.
However, you as a user can reduce the load:
1.: Reduce the thumbnail size in the 'Site Settings'. One example:
The thumbnail file size of Cureboltiums latest work went from 34KB down to 4.7KB by going from 200 down to 100 pixels.
2.: Switch down the 'Perpage'-setting.
3.: Disable Avatars.

Fender: How about adding a '6' & a '12' option to the 'Perpage'-Setting? Seems to be right for small mobile screens.