inb4 this journal disappears

I wonder if there'll be a sort of "Furry Re-Education" camp?

Oh good lord. I think if I told you the mental image that gave me I'd get suspended from the site.

You-know-who is Glorious Leader.

New feature of Project phoenix announced: Friendship Gulags.

I know exactly what you mean. First they say they want to give more transparency, then they start to censor opinions they don't like. It's really a shame where this "community" is going. At least they can't censor other sites.

It's like living in furry North Korea or something.

Please tell me you're kidding me

Obviously I'm exaggerating, I don't think being furry is allowed at all in North Korea.

lol

I'm heavily considering leaving this site even though I don't really give a shit about the drama itself.
The administration here has been shown time and time again that they're not fit to handle a site as big as this. These antics wouldn't matter at all if FA wasn't what essentially winds down to one of the biggest hubs in the furry community there is.

As someone who's trying to make a career as a comic book artist and illustrator it's, sadly, my best option for getting my work out there. So yeah, I feel ya.

Yeah.

To top it off, this whole thing turned into the primest of prime examples for the Streisand effect (i.e. their attempts to censor this stuff under the rug turned out to be the course of action that caused it to spread across the entire site in the first place).

Aside from a fairly shitty message it sends to their userbase. Oh well.

Yes, but they are not the first and if they mess up too badly, they won't be the last site of this kind. *shrugs*
*sigh* It's just a bother to track down all the artists again.

Which is why I'll maintain my posts here, re-finding artists you appreciate is a pain and I understand that.

Well, the this is the administration of this site is messing it up for years now. Way longer than any other site I know of.
Who knows when they'll finally realize that they can't control everyone like the NSA.

The admins in this case are mostly trying to stop drama. The problem is, in their campaign to lower drama, they're just stirring more. I don't know if they can't see it, or what.

I've seen a lot of the comments that were 'censored', and such talk would get you a slander/libel lawsuit if it hit the main stream media. That being said, when you're running a site and moderating a massive community, you have to stop and point out "Hey, you did wrong, stop that, here's the rule why" Before you start clipping entries. You can't just start deleting things left and right, thinking it'll somehow make the problem go away.

As someone with a huge persecution complex and no intimate knowledge of the situation, all I see is a big he-said-she-said that got way out of hand and was handled poorly and without grace on all parts. Censorship is bad. But so is slander. What do you do to balance the books? The world still hasn't figured that out, so I highly doubt the FA admins have either.

As a disclaimer, I'm fully against the apparent broad stroke suspensions and banning. It's a way over the top and just another sign of mismanagement I've seen over and over and over again here. I can't see that a community as large as FA would be easy to run... it's hardly facebook where you make money off everyone posting on it so you can't afford a full time staff. Still, that's no excuse for the flagrant abuses of power that get tossed around. The Ban Hammer is a WMD, and it should be treated with as much respect as a nuclear weapon on a social site.

Very well said. I feel as thougg I may be in a similar boat.

I have to ask, waht do you think the chances are this time that people will actually come back? At this point I might end up leaving myself... Also this was a pure example of a Streisand Effect. Very fun to watch, but also very scary since we are all participating in it.

These issues seem to keep happening and I'd like to think that, as a community, we could collectively be more image conscious and self aware. I think the number of people who want to do this ("this" being "be a successful artist within the genre") and get taken seriously is increasing and, with that, we'll see a rise in people taking themselves, their craft, and the community they stake a claim in in a more professional manner.

I think it also comes down to a question of ethics too. Like are they wlling to be on a site that is going to be changed by an administration that is very questionable? Theres a lot of questions to ask. Btw I've always wanted to say, your comic is awesome. Keep up the awesome work.

I think that we can't hold the administration accountable for the actions of its members, that's just too much, but they can be held accountable for who they hire and issues that they've been made aware of.

Thanks man! I love to hear that people are enjoying it, as I really enjoy making it!

I have no idea whats going on? What's up?

Can't post it publicly, people are getting suspensions for stating it aloud.

I hearya completely

ALSO I miss you, when you get your computer back, we need to talk more, maybe us and Lydia can skype

That'd be awesome!

Now this is a journal I can get behind. I've been hearing about what has been going on around the site; it kinda sounds terrible.

I was going to make a long drawn out comment about something, but instead I'll just say this. You mention sticking around because of the exposure, and I think that highlights one of the key hurdles we as a community face. It's kind of a downer to mention though, but: I think a lot of people are being influenced by their fear. Fear that no other art site could be a large or populous as FA.

People want, some even need, that sense of market security that FA provides. Artists for exposure and not-aritst laymen (like me) for the number of options when it comes to people to watch/commission art from. They think "FA is the biggest art site we have," which is mostly true, and lump it in with the belief that "No other website will ever be as big as FA." They take both fact and belief as a wholesale truth, which is fine. Because to them, status quo is the safest place to be. It's a risky bet to believe that any other place could match FA, even if such a new place did turn out 'better', subjectively. Even if FA changed itself, for the better, there'd be that sense of anxiety. Change is scary. Risk is scary. Let's all stay snug under the FA security blanket. It's got a few holes, and is pretty threadbare, but we've always had it. Why change? Heh.

Honestly, I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but it was just something that caught my attention, and I thought I'd share. You're right; things can always get better, and I'm sure they will. Eventually.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! It's a tricky issue for sure and requires a lot of thought on the part of admins and users alike.

There's censorship, and then there's enforcement of an AUP which upholds a law, held by most of the first world, which defends individuals against defamation of character. I suspect that this is a case of the latter.

Bookmarked you for when Weasely stops gasping like a fish out of water from all the traffic. Already have an account there, and I've been following people as I can.

...not going to comment on the issues at hand, aside from it's a little sad that these issues come up and up again.

It's actually not traffic, they've been under DDoS attack all day. u~u

It's a messy situation, but taking steps to protect against charges of libel is not the same as censorship.

> I Abhor Censorship

I think that if you run a private service, you should feel free to censor any information you want for any reason on /your/ service. I very much enjoy the fact that mail server censors spam and e-mails from China. In FurAffinity's case, I genuinely don't have a conflict of interests where an art site wanting to get rid of personal attacks, libellous comments on their own service.

It's also my thought that if you want free speech, you should be using platforms intended for such purposes such as the Freenet Project, where you cannot be silenced as opposed to privately ran services.

Censorship of cub porn?

I must have missed something. I rather like that FA slightly unfucked the old AUP and banned 'signal boost' journals for raffles. Journals themselves are actually a very clunky system though. Artists really need like an 'i'm streaming' button.

I tend to make an exception when it comes to fetishizing/glamorizing sex crimes. I'm certainly not shedding any tears over the banning of pornography featuring underage characters, and man "signal boosting" is just obnoxious, like spam.