I'd like to ask you to nominate and (later) vote for Flayrah as Best Anthropomorphic Magazine in the 2011 Ursa Major Awards. Here's why we deserve your support.

2011 was a busy year for Flayrah, with over 80,000 front-page visitors. More than half went on to read a story; others jumped directly to them. But which of our 350 stories did they like, and what might occasional readers have missed?

For historical purposes, a collection of links and other tidbits posted to Newsbytes in August.

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards and the Recommended Anthropomorphic Reading List, has made two changes.

First, an 11th award category, Recommended/Best Website, for any website that does not fall into other categories, has been added, taking websites out of the non-award Miscellany category. The websites ActFur On Air, Artists Beware, The Belfry WebComics Index, Matrices.net Costuming, WikiFur, and Xana Creations Furcast are already recommended.

Second, Flayrah has been moved from the Website to the Magazine category.

AddToAny – the blue + on Flayrah that allows you to share articles – adds an undocumented third-party tracking cookie (map.media6degrees.com) to aid behavioural advertising.

I have disabled the cookie and filed a feature request to disclose this option in documentation. Users concerned with privacy may consider opting out of behavioural tracking.

Ten years ago today, Aureth launched Flayrah.com, a service providing "news, commentary, reviews, interviews, and user interactivity."

A lot has changed since then. Furry conventions have grown four-fold, both in size and number. A multitude of comics, artists and websites have come and gone. Many fans have left the community for good – and many more have joined us and made it their home.

But the need for a good source of furry news remains.

It's almost a year since our relaunch. Over 300 stories later, which are worth a second look?

Today I enabled a feature that I've been toying with for a while: rating-based comment visibility.

The aim is to discount poor comments and mediocre replies while promoting good comments. You can see it at work in recent popular stories.

The algorithm is still subject to tweaks, but here's how it works now . . .

Recently I've found the time to make a few changes to Flayrah. If you're reading this on another site, you might want to drop by to see them.

As always, I'm interested in your thoughts as to how we could make Flayrah a better resource, from a technical, social, or content standpoint. The site's been up almost a decade, and I'd like it to remain relevant for the next ten years – so if you want something, speak up!