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?

Sixes Wild: Manifest Destiny by Tempe O’Kun. Illustrated by ShinigamiGirl. St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, June 2011 Paperback $15.95 (vii + 147 pages)

This slim volume is described on the Sofawolf LiveJournal as "a straight western crossdressing romance." It is more a straight Western, except for steamy interludes where the crossdressing hare gunslinger and the fruit bat sheriff lose their clothes and get into each other’s fur.

Sixes Wild is intended for an adult audience only and contains explicit sexual material of Male/Female nature. It is not for sale to persons under the age of 18.

This stereotypical Frontier drama, set in a small town in Arizona, is an unusual mixture of funny animals and anthropomorphics. Most of the folk of White Rock are typical funny animal characters who could just as easily have been humans: Six (Six Shooter), the hare outlaw; Doc Richards, the fox saloon-keeper; Harding, the bloodhound deputy sheriff; Morgan, the squirrel farrier; the ’yote native Americans; Morris, the villain’s marmot henchman; and so forth.

And then there is Jordan Blake, the fruit bat sheriff.

Fur Affinity user Xaevo was suspended from the main site and banned from #furaffinity after being accused of password harvesting and insulting Summercat, a support administrator.

Xaevo posted a link in the chatroom to a site that he claimed would allow people to see their FA stats regardless of who they were logged in as. Summercat criticised the site asking for users' FA passwords and requested that the site be taken down as it was phishing.

[14:18:14] <Summercat> Xaevo, please take it down.
[14:18:23] <Xaevo> no, i see no reason to take it down

Xaevo continued to protest the accusations of phishing, saying that phishing only applied when you were masquerading as a trustworthy entity. He maintained that his source code was public and did not save any passwords. When Summercat called it password harvesting, Xaevo called him a 'noob', and was banned from the chat room and suspended from the main site.

Update: 45 minutes later, Xaevo's suspension was lifted.

To better help understand the "Furry Fandom" - the mindsets of the participants, and how we compare to and differ from other fandoms (i.e. sci-fi and fantasy based fandoms), the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York, are conducting an international online survey of the Furry Fandom.

Conducting the study is Courtney "Nuka" Plante, a furry social psychology graduate student at the University of Waterloo and Dr. Kathy Gerbasi, a social psychologist at the Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York.

Dr. Gerbasi and Courtney (Nuka) have been studying furries through the use of rigorous scientific methodology in the hopes of understanding furries and their fandom. There is a lot of bad media and misinformation about furries, and they hope that by scientifically studying the furry fandom they can do away with misconceptions regarding the furry fandom.

Continue reading at Furry News Network, and see Flayrah's prior coverage of Dr. Gerbasi's work.

Update (20 Feb): The survey has concluded, with almost 7000 responses – wildly exceeding the 250–1000 anticipated. Now the analysis begins!