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Fur Affinity announces Project Phoenix; Weasyl traffic spikes

Edited by mwalimu, GreenReaper as of Sat 21 Jun 2014 - 22:52
Your rating: None Average: 3.7 (6 votes)

On January 15, Fur Affinity made its latest announcement of its intention to revamp their site. This new effort, code named Project Pheonix, is intended to bring massive updated to the site's interface to make it more user friendly, as well as incorporate a simplification of rules and decrease response time to trouble tickets.

However, the news caused a stir as it was stated that Adam Wan, known in the fandom as Zaush, would be leading the user interface development. Major controversy has shadowed Mr. Wan following the note leaks back in late 2010 revealed a private correspondence where an individual went to Dragoneer to discuss the possibility of going public with their experiences of sexual abuses committed against them by Mr. Wan. In that correspondence Dragoneer told the alleged victim they believed taking this action was not a good idea as making such public accusations would lead to public backlash against both the accused and the accuser. The victim took that advise and did not go public. Only after the security leak did the public get a hold of these accusations.

A major controversy and divide unfurled

While there was some rumblings when those notes were revealed three years ago, the promotion of Zaush to the position brought the issue back into the fold and caused an intense controversy concerning sexual abuse, power abuse, and free speech.

Some journals popped up on FA that plainly called out Zaush as a rapist based on the leaked accusations. The staff on Fur Affinity reacted to such journals as harassing and removed them from the site. In response to the controversy Zaush also posted his own journal, which he was allowed to modify when it too was accused of going beyond the Code of Conduct.

Many journals started to announce artists shifting to Weasyl, either to go there exclusively or simply adding it as an additional resource. After a few days of journals like these and furs started to return from Further Confusion more counter journals getting agitated at the Weasyl journals began to crop up among more loyal Fur Affinity users.

At its worst, those choosing to go to Weasyl were painted as a social justice mob who believe rumors and speculation just to perpetuate drama. While on the other side, those who chose to stay were painted as rape apologists who sit idly by while popular furries get away with heinous crimes. Caught in the middle are those artists who have created a business off the site, who use the income from their labors to pay bills, despite their feelings for those at the very top. Fear of having to start from the ground up somewhere new far more daunting than those who have yet to leave their mark.

While some users were promoting a push to Weasyl, the official channels and staff of Weasyl kept a hands-off approach to the affair. Even going so far as to not speculate on a series of DDoS attacks which targeted the Weasyl site not too far after the controversy started to go into full swing and instead just deal with the issue of making the site more resilient to such attacks.

The implications

Many users on the Weasyl side of the argument paint the reaction to Fur Affinity's announcement as an exodus, however the actual statistics show something not quite so clear cut. As of the week following Project Phoenix's announcement Fur Affinity has shown no significant decrease in activity or ranking. However, what has happened is that Weasyl's traffic has gone up substantially.

According to Alexa statistics, both sites have increased in ranking since the announcement. For those who don't have an account to see the linked line graph, the table below shows the major four furry art communities and their changes in ranks from January 15 to ten days after.

Global Site Rankings

Site Name Jan 15th Rank Jan 25th Rank Change
Fur Affinity 7,896 7,438 458
Inkbunny 66,473 62,650 3,823
SoFurry 66,564 61,670 4,814
Weasyl 194,390 134,432 59,958

While we can see that while Weasyl had gained traffic, FA has not suffered any noticeable loss. Essentially artists have their feet wading in more pools now rather than a select few. Whether this means furry artists are diversifying their portfolios in a simple wariness of Fur Affinity's decisions or is an actual beginning of a shift is yet to be seen. However, at this point it would be foolish of those in charge of the largest furry website to not take notice and weigh carefully on future decisions, lest giving rivals more ground.

Awaiting the resurrection

After all the heat and flame of the announcement, Project Phoenix does have one thing that could save itself from being a complete disaster. That is if Adam Wan actually came through and updated the site's interface in the way which had been promised. Should however, Project Phoenix be yet another announcement without fruition, all the controversy that users had to deal with would have proven for no reason.

Given that Fur Affinity in its follow up to the outcry had noted there was concern of old projects that had not come to be, it is no secret that there is a jadedness that the fandom's largest website will incur the major changes it promises.

What doesn't help this scepticism is that while Dragoneer has said Adam Wan is qualified to perform the task given to him, there is nothing in Mr. Wan's visible history to indicate this is the case. In fact, he had announced an animation project several years ago (before 2006) which never came to be and seems to have been abandoned at this point. While he has shown himself a capable artist, when it comes to items of higher technical skill such as user interface development, his accomplishments are not as visible.

Another issue was how he had treated the programmers who were working on similar developments for Fur Affinity which included Ben Anderson. Ben posted interactions with Zaush that he found grievous before abandoning coding for the site (p1, p2, p3). This incident was something the follow-up alluded to, with the following statement:

Some rumors have circulated regarding a team of coders working on a new version of the site prior to the announcement of Phoenix. While they did ask permission to help, they were not a part of site staff and were working independently on their own project. They were not in communication with site staff, nor involved in site developments.

In this statement they did confirm that there was a group of coders working on new items for FA, they were brushed off as 'not official' in the end. What they did not do is more telling. They did not decline the other parts of the "rumor" which they have shown they are aware of, and that was Zaush's abrasive behavior towards those volunteer coders.

If this does indicate that indeed he is not a team player, and Dragoneer fails to find coders willing to work with Mr. Wan because of behavior such as this, it'll make the large task ahead all the more insurmountable. Even if this is not the case, the statement itself from Fur Affinity will most certainly cause volunteer coders to think twice before putting their sweat into improving the site or making applications for it, lest they too be waved off.

Fur Affinity's battle of trust

The follow-up gives the indication that major changes to Fur Affinity should occur this year at some point. With the shift in artists to other sites, now more than ever is it important that Fur Affinity take action that backs up its communications. The title of largest furry art community in the fandom has shifted before, and nothing on the Internet is too big to fail.

Whether the future of Fur Affinity is a rise from the ashes of distrust in following through on its promises, or this project becomes just a further burn to loyal users falls onto Fur Affinity alone. Only time will tell what 2014 has in store for the site.

Comments

Your rating: None Average: 1.8 (16 votes)

Not a response to this article but,

- Use of Furaffinity is basically a free gift from it's unpaid owners and operators. You don't have to use it, and they don't have to run it according to demands. Is it nice to... sure, but favors aren't entitlements.

- When an alleged crime happened, did the victim go to law enforcement? No? End of discussion.

- OMG it's a hobby who the hell cares

- If you do this as something of a freelance job, scrape your resources together and found something a little more permanent. FA isn't your sugar daddy. Start with an artist guild.

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (12 votes)

Free, especially in today's market, does not mean competator-less or that it's a gift. People spend time drawing the art that they give to FurAffinity (and other furry art sites) for free. Without the furry artist giving the furry art to the free art site there is no furry art site. Therefore I think it's a stretch when people say the artists owes the site makers everything, they are giving them their art to display which brings the viewers.

It has to be a symbiotic relationship. It takes times to tag and post your artwork. The more sites there are to post on, the more time it takes. Therefore, that is the cost. Time is the ultimate resource, because it treats all with furious equality.

It's also why FA has an edge right now, and probably it's biggest one. It has the numbers to back up the effort. You'll have more viewers there than anywhere else for visual art. As before stated, if you're a writer, FA is not where you'll get the most bang for your buck.

On the third point, you do realize you write quite lengthy on a website dedicated to a 'hobby', yes? So the answer I guess would be, well at least one packrat.

Your rating: None Average: 1.7 (10 votes)

It's a worthwhile point if you're talking about Facebook and other big business social networks. Arguably, Facebook has fake value (wait til the next tech bubble pops.)

FA isn't gathering content with business value. (Unless you forsee some kind of corporate buy in the future.) They spend way more on server cost alone than ad revenue would pay for. The more they get, the less easy their job gets. I think they have a few other (insignificant) sources of revenue, one of them being donations. What serious business works like that? It is a gift for them to operate a site for fans.

Competition has to do with markets. Other sites aren't fighting to own a finite market, they're just reshuffling the same deck of users or adding more to it. If one "goes out of business" it just means the operators lost interest and users can do the same thing elsewhere. If someone has tied their living to that site, they've been silly.

"Psychic income" is a term for art and freelancing with poor pay but rich self-determination. For furry content we could use some term like fan points. Rich, in FA terms, is "popufur". (Dumb word.)

The bulk of content that goes on FA is everything but commercial. Most wouldn't be able to sell it (or maybe even have a good place to put it) if such sites weren't hosting it. Drawing it to one site likely just gains it bonus attention it wouldn't get on it's own. The stuff that does sell, is more likely to be a real world liability than a furry world business asset. Two words to never put on your resume: furry porn.

Hobby: touche. It's my self-aware statement about keeping it weird in a conformist world. It's a satirical antithesis of things that are pretentious and fun-hating. It's a hand up the butt of the puppet that dances for the society of the spectacle. Combined with a contradicting sincere love for fabulous fluffy things, cartoons, science fiction, nerdiness, and DIY-ness. It's a happening place for unreconstructed nerd subculture, on the plaid fringe of intersection with too many others to know. I like playing here because it's outsider art. How could that be anything but a hobby?

On the other hand, "We should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere and studied triviality."

I love talking about stuff like "the furry economy". It's like fantasy football or something... and football is silly, while fursuit making is seriously cool. (Happy Superb Owl Sunday! Watch the Puppy Bowl.)

Your rating: None Average: 3.4 (10 votes)

Jesus Christ, if I wanted opinions on FurAffinity, I'd read them after Vivisector quoted them on their forum.

It's a "art" site with, estimating conservatively here, art that is 50% technically awful, 25% ethically indefensible, with obvious overlap between those two groups, and we're all worried about the admins and coding? Does the kind of crap people post on FA really deserve much better?

Your rating: None Average: 2 (5 votes)

75% of the art is ethically defensible? Way too much, they need to work harder.

Your rating: None Average: 1.8 (12 votes)

I SAID CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATE, ASSHOLE.

What, do San Franciscan's minds automatically censor the word "conservative" or something?

Your rating: None Average: 2 (6 votes)

Sorry, the cloud of smug made me misread. Anyways, if more furry art was defensible than not, I might have to leave for the veggie fandom, where everything's in the dirt!

Your rating: None Average: 5 (4 votes)

Please keep your comments civil.

Your rating: None Average: 1.8 (5 votes)

it's a joke, me and cross are cool like that :)

Also before I get dinged for being rude back, the "cloud of smug" comment wasn't a jab, I was joking about where I live!

Your rating: None Average: 2 (4 votes)

I'm sorry for calling you a San Franciscan, Patch. I didn't mean it.

But seriously, point of order, am I in trouble for saying asshole, making fun of San Francisco, or I guess both?

Your rating: None Average: 5 (4 votes)

All right, point taken, if you two are okay with kidding around like that. Just keep in mind that not everyone who visits the site is familiar with you guys and might get the wrong impression.

Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (3 votes)

In all fairness, I can see why the old "crossie pretends to be angry and cuss a lot" routine wouldn't exactly be hilarious to you.

Your rating: None Average: 4 (5 votes)

I was going to say it's a bunch of non-drama. It's very easy to make accusations against a person and get people to believe stuff that never happened, I had that happen to me when I was on the FurAffinity forums. People insisted I said stuff that I hadn't until others believed them. However, if there's no evidence to back up those accusations then they should be ignored. On a forum where I'm an admin we had a rape accusation, where we repeatedly told the guy (not the alleged victim) he should go to the police but we couldn't act on "he said, she said" claims. The accusations eventually stopped, after the alleged victim himself said it didn't happen and he'd overreacted in private. Admins can't control or punish people according to what they do off the site. We don't have the resources to investigate such claims.

The only reason I'm now seeing this as less of a non-drama is if Dragoneer told the supposed victim not to press charges. That is very bad advice. If it's true then it needs to be taken to the proper authorities. The fact that it wasn't actually suggests to me that it is all a fabrication. If your first thought is to message the owner of a furry site rather than go to the police when you've been raped then your thinking is seriously messed up.

But it's probably a pointless controversy because so many people have said they would revamp FA and it's never happened. I've pointed out a number myself, with the whole collapse of the Furocity merger being the most amazing example.

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~

Your rating: None Average: 3.8 (5 votes)

There wasn't any suggestion not to press charges. This story should cite sources... poor form.

From what I recollect the note only addressed using the site. There was concern about "going public". Implying that the person asked for advice wasn't in a position to give it, and could only back away from a landmine of ambiguity, manipulation, libel or stuff only professionals could investigate. Being silent about going to the cops says something, sure... if the accuser went to a hobby website instead of cops, that says something else.

Your rating: None Average: 4.4 (5 votes)

I followed the link for the note links there but that was just a general story about them. Sonious should really have linked directly to the relevant message or quoted it. If Dragoneer was only addressing site issues then that's fine. He shouldn't (and can't) address issues outside of FA itself.

"Being silent about going to the cops says something, sure... if the accuser went to a hobby website instead of cops, that says something else."
You implying there that cops wouldn't do anything? I get that, and it's sadly true, though probably not as bad in the US as here, but it's still a necessary step. It's completely unrealistic to expect website staff to investigate and deal with criminal matters.

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~

Your rating: None Average: 4.5 (6 votes)

"You implying there that cops wouldn't do anything?" - nope

"It's completely unrealistic to expect website staff to investigate and deal with criminal matters." - yes and that speaks for itself.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (3 votes)

The notes were taken offline (it's also a legal and ethic dilemma since the notes were illegally obtained anyway), however the fact that these notes exist or were the cause of the issue is not in question. If you read both Adam Wan's journal which was linked and that of the more accusative individuals they both note of their existance:

From the Adam Wan's journal: "But [the 2010 accusations] was something else. A note hacked from FA’s own administration was making the rounds, telling a confidential story of unwanted advances by a menace to society. A villainous cretin who has, or will, be a danger to others listed. Mind you, none of the people listed currently back her claim, even the ones who initially had knee-jerk reactions based on the assumption that her note was true." --Adam Wan.

So me saying the note caused the issue of drama is no different then saying water vapor causes rain. It's not something that's in dispute by either side.

I did provide a gist of what the notes content was, however what I did not do, that many others have is put a motive onto Dragoneer's advise. The more angry believe he conspired with Adam over it to dissuade the victim and him being hired somehow proves this. It doesn't really. Just as us going into Iraq doesn't prove that the government caused 9/11.

Dragoneer could have been giving advise based on the face that he may have legitimately believed victim faced an uphill battle in court, and so in his opinion they may have wanted to think it through. I have stated this opinion when the notes first leaked. Dragoneer seems someone who is very adverse to any type of conflict, so that he would tell someone to run instead of fight is not all that surprising. Bad advice isn't a crime, and I can't find any evidence to suggest there was any more to this private correspondence than that.

While I did note the notes as the cause of the contention, I kept the opinion of the actual event between the two in question out of the story, and instead decided to focus on FA's record of following through on updates and Adam Wan's background and its relation (or lack thereof) for the task he was given. To say this announcement was not a catalyst for increasing Weasyl's traffic is also not opinion, I've shown statistics that show it did have an impact. A lot of opinion has flown on both sides of the accusations and I felt it'd best to focus on other aspects of the story. If I was making this to be anti-FA I wouldn't have shown that FA's usage hasn't gone down. I too would have painted this as an exodus as others have. To say that it was would not be honest to the statistical facts.

In my opinion these accusations are a distraction to the actual situation that FA finds itself in, and the worst thing I think FA can do is believe that that is the only issue that caused it. It was certainly the surface one, but there are others as well. FA cannot control what others think of Zaush, what they can control is getting those updates done. Hopefully they put at least as much effort in the later as they have done with the former (2 journals were made in response to this incident.)

At this point I think what will effect the future of FA more is that if they continue to promise items they fail to deliver on. This statistical shift shows there is possibility of substantial growth in their competitors. As many have said, back in the days of VCL not many believed it could come to an end, however it did, but the fandom lived on. And so will come the day when FurAffinity will probably too end. And that site which follows in FA's footsteps too will end. The cycle will continue, but the fandom will then also live on.

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (3 votes)

Wait wait... you rushed into a long response and skipped the most important part! Back up...

This is the screwup:

"an individual went to Dragoneer to discuss the possibility of pressing charges for sexual assault against Mr. Wan. In that correspondence Dragoneer told the alleged victim they believed taking this action was not a good idea, and no public charges were ever pressed."

Unless you have evidence otherwise, there was no discussion of charges. That seems to be misinformation, and needs a retraction. The accuser never asked, and Dragoneer never responded about that. It's very important to point that out, because it skews everything else.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (3 votes)

It appears the leaked notes have returned to the website they were hosted on. I looked over the notes in question to see if my recollection of the correspondences were indeed erroneous. It does seem like the victim was simply asking to go public about their experiences with the accused and not about pressing actual charges.

I'll submit that particular statement for correction, thanks for taking me to task on it.

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (3 votes)

seemed unintentional, thanks for talking about it :)

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (6 votes)

Seeing people freak out over three year old news that has no restraining orders or police records is remedial at best. Never mind the MASSIVE debacle regarding Further Confusion's staff. ( With police records & restraining orders and the loss of staff members.) Way to go fandom, you completely bypass something important to focus on beating a dead horse.

Notice the accuser in all of this has not said a single word regarding this rehashing.

A lot of people talking about two people they know nothing about.

Your rating: None Average: 3 (5 votes)

What debacle?

I think you got the rehashing part almost right. The new news is Weasyl existing while the alleged boogeyman from years ago gets to be hall monitor.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (3 votes)

"Way to go fandom, you completely bypass something important to focus on beating a dead horse."

Since I've gone on record as saying FA doesn't represent the whole fandom I have to say that Flayrah is not a representative of the whole fandom either.

Semantics aside, I did not beat on any horses here. I made no accusations about what Zaush did or did not do in regards to alleged criminal action. I only said what had occurred as a result of the announcement and the reactions of others.

Obviously this FurCon issue is important to some anon viewers and should be addressed in some way. However, I have would need more information about the issue from the perspective of FurCon, and even then I'd be flying a bit blind. The real impact of the new con chair will not be truly felt until next year when he has a run of the place.

I'm not a west coast fur, so I don't have much skin in FurCon or have many connections there. If anyone wants to leave me information please PM me and I'll look into it when I have time. However I may go out of my way to talk with FurCon if I don't see any response from them concerning the decision or defending it.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

You are the most logical person so far. Thank you.

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (2 votes)

"I may go out of my way to talk with FurCon if I don't see any response from them concerning the decision or defending it."

I don't think you would find it worth your time- I made effort to look at the topic, as a volunteer Flayrah contributor, with no personal connection to any person pushing complaints or fit to respond about them. My only involvement with Fur Con was a very minor contribution of volunteer work at the 2013 con, to run an animator panel for the community. Journalistic conventions lead me to leave comments here the last word for now.

Your rating: None Average: 2.2 (6 votes)

Looks like furplanet picked it up before Flayrah.

https://twitter.com/FuzzWolf2000/status/426053478469738496

Your rating: None Average: 4 (2 votes)

What is "it"- a trash talking rumor? I've seen this posted elsewhere, with people claiming various bad things without being able to back it up, until the topic fizzles out.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (1 vote)

I personally am not one to go into the 'first' wars. "First" wars in the news is how you get manipulated into talking about something you don't know as much about as you should before speaking, which ends you up in actual wars if the one pushing to get the story out quickly wants one.

On this (FA) item there has been many articles written within the fandom already about it, I waited until the dust settled a bit before writing about it here. That and I was going over if I should write it at all. I've been trying to move on do other things outside of Flayrah. However, once I decided to do it I thought it'd be a good time to do so. Since I wrote it 10 days after the initial announcment I now had statistics to back up the effects on the websites. If I was concerned about being "first" all I could do is report what was visible instead of what was going on behind the words, which to me is more important in being informative.

Likewise I've heard little things here and there about the FurCon's new chair, however I don't know much about the actual background of the even in question. I do know there is some conflict going on, but the extent of the damage I have not been able to see yet. I've only been to 4 conventions in my time as a furry, and zero on the west coast.

If FurCon has made an official statement concerning the issue it would be helpful as when one is talking about those that are against the change it has to be countered with the fact that there are those that are going to defend the position, and why they feel this history is not a big deal.

In this case I was able to link to the articles where FA and Zaush were defending themselves against the accusations, I think it'd be only fair if FurCon had an opportunity to do the same. I haven't seen them address it directly yet though (though I wasn't going out of my way looking for it since I never planned on going to FC at all so my passion is not as much there as with FA improving since I use it daily.)

Your rating: None Average: 2 (5 votes)

You mean this PDF? https://twitter.com/lupinesilver/status/425158407231127552

Your rating: None Average: 3 (4 votes)

I'm procrastinating from work and posting a lot today!

Let's examine this doxxing:

- It's initiated by an ex-love interest on one side of the complaint, who wasn't involved. (It's in the link you posted.)
- The person making the complaint asked you not to.
- It's an apparent first-time report, with no prior record or other supporting documents.
- We see one side but not a response.

For the jury:

- The complainer admitted initiating confrontation in the dark. Is that abuse, or just a fight?
- It was a dispute between ex-lovers with another involved (possibility of he-said/he-said or "bitter ex".)
- It includes a member of BDSM community (possibility of roughness by consent.)
- The police report lists the complainer's birth date as 7/8/92. On Furaffinity he says it's 7/8/83. Should we believe everything alleged here?
- On FA, the complainer confirms the accused persons story about financial woes (possible motive for less than complete honesty)
- When you say "staff members" of furcon have resigned, why didn't you reveal that it was actually the complainer who resigned, and not deceptively hint that he was someone independent?

But, what jury:

- Did the assault charges go to trial? Was the defendant represented by a lawyer? If so, did the defense fail to refute charges, with an official finding of guilty?
- If not, so what?

No crime conviction is shown. An order of protection isn't a conviction. They're so easy to get, in many cases all you have to do is fill out a form. They're granted "ex parte" (only one party is heard by a judge), often without notice so facts can be verified later - without the ability to face accuser or be represented by a lawyer. They may be the most commonly granted court orders in the US.

If the order is obeyed, why shouldn't we let the accused learn from mistakes and let it go? And what does this have to do with a volunteer position to organize a convention?

You seem like a cool wolf in general, but with an agenda. You know, I don't know if this is fit for news, but you can submit articles here- just check the standards if you will.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

Nice article with lots of very informative points. It does seem to include A LOT of opinion which is stated as if it were fact. Maybe in the future, Flayrah could work on more clearly delineating the boundary between news and opinion.

Your rating: None Average: 3 (1 vote)

I agree with the above anon, lots of opinion on this write up. I can not even call it newsworthy. Maybe flayrah needs an opinions column so we can skim over these postings. To address the comments left on this posting:

Patch Packrat is from San Francisco, that might explain why he's trying to cover up for this ( alleged)behavior from Sasho's physical altercation with Scott Fox. Nice spin doctoring though Packrat! Nothing screams agenda like trying to justify why something fandom news is not fandom news.

Your rating: None Average: 4 (2 votes)

What is news, Anon? The mission of this site gives a clue:

"Flames - Organizations, named groups and websites are fair game for critical opinion. Individuals usually are not. Grind your axe elsewhere. "

If mental gymnastics was an Olympic sport, you just took gold by putting that second paragraph after the first. "I can not even call it newsworthy". :)

Your rating: None Average: 4 (2 votes)

Ooh...

My San Francisco jokes got a bit more unfortunate here, didn't they?

However, I like how paragraph one claims this is not newsworthy, followed by taking Patch to task for trying to claim its not newsworthy in the second paragraph.

Also, two anon posts in a row, the second post even saying "I agree with the other anon", is always fishy.

Your rating: None Average: 1 (8 votes)

The FurAffinity userbase already includes white supremacists, Nazi sympathisers, Christian Dominionists, thugs, thieves, creeps and junkies. Not to mention those who openly advocate child pornography (the real thing, not merely 'cub porn') and bestiality.

Why then should the (alleged) crimes of one man -- sleazebag though he may well be -- become the last straw that broke the backs of so many?

The last straw for Artdecade -- a gay pot-smoker who votes Republican.
The last straw for Joe Meyer -- who pals around with Crusader Cat.
The last straw for Sigil -- happy to draw page after page of sexual violence.

Some will reply, reasonably, "Because, as an admin/coder, he now has access to people's personal data." But I have to counter -- Why the fuck are you entrusting intimate information to a gay fetish art site in the first place?!

However, I am seriously pissed that the amusing satirical drawing by agouti-rex got deleted...*

*Viewable here: http://tgfb.net/drama/res/9082.html

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The Internet already includes white supremacists, Nazi sympathisers, Christian Dominionists, thugs, thieves, creeps and junkies.

^ fixed

Your rating: None Average: 3 (3 votes)

So...are these neo-Nazis &c given titles of metaphorical nobility?

Besides. As Sonious pointed out, people aren't leaving FA en masse as you seem to be implying.

Even if they were....FA has a long history of treating its userbase like shit. If defending Wan is the hill Fur Affinity wants to die on, it will be due to the quantity of their bs, not the perceived heinousness of this particular incident.

Your rating: None Average: 1 (4 votes)

"- It includes a member of BDSM community (possibility of roughness by consent.)"

This is a rather disgusting comment and boarders on victim bashing.

Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (4 votes)

The comment states "for the jury"

It's not the job of trial defense to present scenarios that make you feel good.

It's their job to present ones that may be possible (however unlikely). Then it's the jury's job to determine if there is reasonable doubt.

But there was no trial.

If you are aware of what BDSM is, you should be aware that this hypothetical is something they discuss in depth.

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As an update, on March 15th Weasyl has climbed the rankings and surpassed SoFurry
http://www.alexa.com/pro/comparison/details?cid=0d1ffd7f-2794-4d06-a4bc-19b79205...

Now Inkbunny, SoFurry and Weasyl are at about the same ranking. FA maintains it's normal patterns. Weather Weasyl will eventually taper off or continue to grow beyond the Inkbunny/SoFurry line is yet to be seen.

Stay tuned.

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We can't access private comparisons, even logged-in. You'd need to post a screenshot or the like.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

I'll just throw out the number on the 15th then:

1) FurAffinity- 6,770
2) Inkbunny- 61,619
3) Weasyl- 70,349
4) SoFurry- 70,396

Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

On April 16th Weasyl suffered its first loss of rank since the Project Pheonix announcement. At that time it was pulling a higher ranking than SoFurry and Inkbunny. However, since that time Weasyl and Inkbunny have come closer together again.

In the time between the announcement and April 16th, Weasyl went up about 130K ranks from about 190K to 60K. For now though, the dust has settled, and pending any other major blunders the trends seem to be around here.

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