As I understand it, there are two core reasons why people are choosing to leave.

1. FurAffinity, despite being probably the largest furry-art site on the net, is extremely outdated, code-wise. It's been having troubles and issues for a long time, but the weeks-long outage late last year was sort of a "last straw" for some people. Now that there is competition (SoFurry, Weasl, etc.), people are choosing to leave. A lot of the people who do so are angry, possibly even searching for a justification for their actions, which explains SOME of the negativity from this type of leaving-person.

2. There has been something of a delayed firestorm regarding one of the main developers for the new layout; his FA username is Zaush. I've read stuff from both sides and don't really know what to think (or rather think it's not really any of my business). Specifically, it is alleged that he "coerced," or even raped/attempted to rape a woman who is also a user on FA, whose username I don't know. He claims that they had a long-term sexual relationship which was open and understood by Zaush, his (now ex) girlfriend/(ex) fiancée, the aforementioned woman, and her boyfriend. Zaush recently wrote a journal detailing his side of the story, so I won't go into a lot of detail from that standpoint. Long story short, he believes the "rape" accusations are her (now) much-more-negative reflection on something she regrets having done, which Zaush alleges is in part due to the influence of her boyfriend. From what I have heard (since I have not heard or read anything written by her), she feels that she was browbeaten and coerced into having sexual relations with Zaush that she wasn't fully comfortable with having.
Unfortunately, because of the long (year+) delay between the actual event(s) of sexual contact and the allegations of coercion or sexual assault, there is effectively no way to prove what happened one way or the other. All we have, at this point, is the testimony of the people involved, directly or indirectly (such as Zaush's ex), and the logged communications between them. Criminal sexual activity is an extremely hot-button issue that gets people on all sides riled up, no matter what the truth of the matter is. Unfortunately, both sides have good reason to be angry. Sexual crimes are often unreported, underreported, or ignored; it's believed that there are more unreported rapes than reported ones, for example. On the flipside, many people who come to an alleged victim's defense have a tendency to doggedly pursue the guilt of the alleged attacker, which often comes across as a "guilty until proven guilty" witch-hunt; even for someone whose name is cleared of rape/sexual assault charges, the mere allegation can haunt them for the rest of their lives, because no GOOD person would ever be ACCUSED of rape, right?

It's a super thorny issue, but I think it's a shitty reason to choose to leave the site. He's a coder. He's an alleged sex offender--for an offense that is now probably unprovable in a court of law (there's almost no way that, even if he was truly guilty, a jury would see evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt," particularly given the logged chat conversations). Whether or not those allegations are true or false doesn't, IMO, have anything to do with the quality of his coding, nor does it have any bearing on whether it is useful to the site for him to provide (as I understand it) unpaid, volunteer labor to help rebuild it. (I am not CERTAIN about it being unpaid, but I do know that he is just a coder, and has no administrative authority or power over this site nor the upgraded FA.) Not having any access to direct statements or accusations from the woman mentioned above, I cannot draw even a tentative conclusion about whether he is guilty or innocent. He is accused, but no charges have ever been pressed. That's all I know for certain, and that's all I can conclude.

Well being the biggest furry sight in the world would certainly be hard to keep up and running at 100% would be impossible. Of course i'm not an artist so I don't know how bad it really can get outside the downtimes. But I would assume that every sight is going to have that problem, granted i can see why some might feel the need to try out the other places at least.

As for the whole Zaush thing, that is really tricky to deal with. I'm with you though in that this should not have any reason for the people to leave FA. Its not like they are supporting his actions, or saying its ok if you did rape whomever. He has been with FA for years and until they find a good reason other then maybe some chick is pissed at him or maybe he raped her, there is no reason to not let him work on this. Paid or unpaid.

And in my opinion, given this info i would have to side with Zaush, not that it really means anything. Just seems like men can get the short end of the stick. If there is so much as any crime, accused or actual, with a man against a women, no matter what the man will always come out extremely downsided.

But at least now i know whats going on. All in all it sounds like just a big drama issue and people flipping shit that this site isn't ran on lolipops and rainbows.

Yeah, a lot of it is just drama. On the subject of sexual assualt stuff though, the vast majority of the time, things end up being victim-blaming. Statistically speaking, you're orders of magnitude more likely to see a woman who has been blamed for a rape, or who has endured insults, jeering, and shaming as a result of being a victim, than you are to see a man who suffers any ill effects at all. Remember, like I said: it's believed that nearly as many (and possibly more) rapes go unreported than the ones that actually do...and many of the rapes that do get reported never get prosecuted. Women still have it very, very, very tough in this area.

On the flipside, though, you have a point, and it's something that seriously concerns me, too. In those areas (such as where I live) where a lot of progress has been made, it's starting to flip around the other way. That is, all you need is the accusation of sexual assault, and the accused person's life is shot, possibly forever. Like I said above, a "guilty until proven guilty" mentality, where it doesn't even MATTER if you commited a crime or not. The simple fact of being accused makes you evil horrible wicked.

And I DO think that we're seeing that here. A LOT of people, with no knowledge of the situation and at VERY best second-hand information, have automatically assumed that the person accused of doing something is a rapist, and therefore inexcusably, undeniably, unpardonably, permanently evil, and anyone who willingly associates with or benefits from the labors of that person must, therefore, approve of and accept such evil, making them evil, too.

some people would just leave anyway because of boredom or just leaving the fandom :o

Lol yeah but that's a given. I was more talking about how a big group of people where leaving and saying they couldn't put up with FAs shit. But I knew of no shit XD

well, at times the site is unfair I admit D: