Messages

1

Weasyl Wankfest / Re: Weasyl prioritizes infrastructure overhaul while usage drops

« on: June 08, 2014, 03:21:36 am »

You can also bulk upload to Tumblr. I don't recall ANY furry-centric art site having a bulk upload feature.

On Inkbunny you can bulk upload multiple submissions, and also upload multiple files to a single submission (useful for comics, accompanying sketches/sketch dumps, alternate versions).

Tumblr, like any blog, is a great tool for distributing a stream of creative output. It's not so great at displaying lots of work in an organized fashion. Most artists can use both a blog and a gallery. Fans who are not looking at their blog may miss out on some updates and sketches, but to an extent that's always been the case (e.g. LiveJournal).

Ensuring that uploads are as easy as possible is important, but part of what makes it harder is adding value (i.e. selecting pools/folders/ratings, adding keywords).

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Weasyl Wankfest / Re: Weasyl prioritizes infrastructure overhaul while usage drops

« on: June 04, 2014, 01:49:48 pm »

I imagine they're putting the infrastructure in place to allow them to scale once they figure out who they want to have on the site, and what they want it to be about. There's little point in growing only to end up with a random assortment of users, and then to fall over because you are not ready to handle them.

A lot of people tried out the site as a result of promotion during the FA drama. Naturally, there has been decline as they realize it does not yet meet their needs. It isn't all bad news, though - they're levelling out to about five times the traffic they had last year. That should be enough to keep them going while they figure it out.

Anyone else notice that "active users" has disappeared from the site footer?

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FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: March 30, 2014, 11:13:24 am »

I can multitask. Do you have a point, or are you just trying to change the topic? :-)

There are alternatives out there. FreeBSD is quite popular among a certain crowd. Heck, a lot of businesses use Windows Server. (These are the same people keeping Azure afloat.)

What matters is whether your developers and server administrators know what they're doing. It's this which will determine the success of Phoenix, not the languages and platforms they choose.

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FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: March 29, 2014, 11:37:26 am »

I'm actually a little glad there's a single furry alive, as dumb as he may be, that doesn't think every IT solution is USE ALL THE LINUX!

It doesn't count as being thoughtful and considering alternatives if you have no idea what those alternatives are.

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Other Topics / Re: Plans for FC2014?

« on: January 14, 2014, 05:11:31 pm »

I know, they axed the "how to quit the fandom" panel.

Presenter dropped out.

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Weasyl Wankfest / Re: "nobody uses weasyl", except for the 5000 users who hit it, per day

« on: December 25, 2013, 03:53:50 pm »

... but only one of them is serving 5000 4000 members a day, right?

I'm not sure what the point of this discussion is. No, graphs are not the be-all and end-all, but you can tell some things from them.  Weasyl is not going to kill FA any time soon, but it's built up its own community and it can grow from there, like other sites have.

I suggest Weasyl's developers use the time productively, lest the site find itself faced by FA-style scaling issues later in its life. Inkbunny certainly has areas which could be improved (and I'll be writing about them in due course, elsewhere).

Merry Christmas, by the way. I'll save the happy new year for FC.

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Weasyl Wankfest / Re: "nobody uses weasyl", except for the 5000 users who hit it, per day

« on: December 25, 2013, 04:15:38 am »

Well, the top one's using an entirely different version of Munin to the one specified here, so it's probably not the same machine.

If I had to pick one as being Weasyl I'd go with the bottom one, which at least has a reasonable amount of memory (all the rest are 1GB, perhaps VMs?), and also shows evidence of a backup operation (increase in slab_cache and buffers) during a time when Weasyl is least likely to be active (early morning U.S. time). I see a similar pattern on IB.

Of course, this could be a trick question - the 1GB servers might be secondary servers for Weasyl. You don't need much to host a status site, or development tools. I wouldn't be too surprised if the old Weasyl server had 1Gb, either.

The "subtle difference" with the FA graph was that its time distribution matched Weasyl's sessions over 1h graph, not its 1d graph.

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Weasyl Wankfest / Re: "nobody uses weasyl", except for the 5000 users who hit it, per day

« on: December 24, 2013, 02:47:47 pm »

I think you're confusing the data behind the FA graph, which measures "online users" - that is, those active within the last hour (or possibly less; they don't say), and so comparing two different things - Weasyl's daily users with FA's peak active users.

It would be reasonable to assume that FA has a similar pattern of use. If so, then we need to compare peak usage. On Weasyl it is 800 registered users, while on FA it is 9000. This suggests that FA is roughly 11 times busier member-wise than Weasyl, at around 55,000 registered users in a day. (FA also appears to have a higher proportion of guest traffic, even accounting for the graph scaling and y-position.)

Inkbunny doesn't provide graphs, but the stats page shows over 15,000 active members per day (peak hourly users goes up to around 1,700-1,800). SoFurry does not provide activity statistics, but third-party traffic graphs show it roughly as active as Inkbunny. Neither is close to FA's traffic level yet (e621 is far closer, but a different kind of site), and Weasyl is about two to three times less active than IB or SF.

However, the fandom is large, and all sites are "competitive" in the sense that each has members who are choosing to use it as their primary gallery. Inkbunny was at Weasyl's traffic level a few years ago, so they just have to build on what they have. An uncompetitive site would be the VCL, which retains just a few active users despite its submission base.

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Other Topics / Re: Plans for FC2014?

« on: December 12, 2013, 08:10:37 pm »

One month later . . .

10

FA Obsession Collection / Re: [THE CREATURE STIRS] or "A rare FA code update"

« on: December 11, 2013, 02:59:17 pm »

How long would FA have to be frozen to see an uptick in other furry board activity?

Other sites see a significant increase in traffic almost immediately. It lasts about as long as FA is down. This has been the case with Weasyl the last few times FA has gone down and I'd imagine it's even more prevelant on sites like e621, SoFurry, Inkbunny, etc.

To put a few solid numbers to that, Inkbunny's daily incremental file backup is usually 1.0GB (plus another 1GB for the compressed DB). Yesterday morning it was 1.5GB, and today, 1.7GB. Site traffic is also higher, but only by about 10-20%. If the downtime continues to the weekend, I'd expect these numbers to increase. It tends to last for at least a little while after downtime as people decide it's a good idea to have a backup gallery.

As for FA:

The processing rate of the backlogged data made it clear that migrating to a new server would be a faster thing to do.
Migration status is at 53%. Until the migration is over FA will have to remain in readonly mode.
Using the opportunity to upgrade from MySQL 5.5.x to 5.6.x which brings a number of performance improvements across the board, some of which are directly related to our current problem.

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News Media / Re: NSA spies on furries, gamers, via SL

« on: December 09, 2013, 04:02:34 pm »

Apparently they haven't picked up on the fact that in most cases, furries' RL job is making VR models for other furries. :-)

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Other Topics / Re: Brief RF2013 notes

« on: October 08, 2013, 10:01:15 pm »

There was actually a complaint at the scritch and hiss that there wasn't enough cub-oriented programming

I have no idea what you just said

Most furry conventions have a hour or so shortly before or after closing ceremonies where members can deliver compliments or complaints to staff. It is given a theme-appropriate name. During that event, someone stood up and said that there were not enough events on the schedule which catered to the interests of fans of underage and/or diapered animal characters. The response was that only one of them had asked for any, so that was all they got.

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Other Topics / Re: Brief RF2013 notes

« on: October 05, 2013, 03:59:55 am »

I don't know about the multiple times, but my understanding is that someone (hotel staff?) meant to turn off fire alarms in the main events hall because they knew they'd have smoke machines in there, but fatfingered it and triggered the silent alarm test, which turned into a full-blown alarm about 30 seconds later. This was five minutes after they'd let about 500 furs into main events for the fursuit dance competition.

Thankfully the SpinDizzy MUCK crew (whimsical fantasy represent!) had just ordered pizza to the overflow hotel - they wouldn't let us order it to the main hotel lobby, as nobody had a room there - so we headed out ahead of the crowd. The sirens could be heard just as we arrived at our destination.

There was actually a complaint at the scritch and hiss that there wasn't enough cub-oriented programming. Staff pointed out that only one group (Babyfur.ME) had requested any. The Cub Hub was just across from registration, though that may just have been a coincidence (they put lots of party rooms in that area).

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Weasyl Wankfest / Re: Weasyl: Less of a Weasel, more like a Sloth.

« on: March 31, 2013, 02:11:23 pm »

Inkbunny is playing the long game here. Once all those cubs grow up . . . bam. (But seriously, the site is remarkably easier to manage without the 13-17 crowd.)

Back on topic. Weasyl is doing a lot of things right. They have some traffic, though only about 30-50% that of Inkbunny or SoFurry (FA has ~7-8 times the reach of both).

Will it topple FA? Nah. But all it has to do is build its own community, keep them happy, and maintain feature parity with other sites. If and when FA does go down, it'll be a contender. They'll need to be ready for a rush of traffic, though, and the delays I've seen at peak times suggest they're not quite there yet.

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Other Topics / Re: FC2013 Sudden Report

« on: January 25, 2013, 01:05:09 am »

Pokéfurs spent a lot of time during introductions (including the fursuiter) talking back and forth about the various games (video/card) and anime. For someone who attended without actually having a Pokémon character or having played any of the games, it was mildly informative. The title was Pokéfurs, not Pokémon, so at least it wasn't misnamed. I left early to try out the Dessert Social, but since it was InTheOtherCastle I got there 20 minutes after the start, by which time they were out of everything but cookies. Shame they weren't rocking like 2007, but I guess they have to cut back on costs given the last two events made a loss.

Someone stole my DSLR while I was petting bunnies, which I was rather disappointed about, though I should have known better than to leave it on my chair in an open room. Overall a fun time, though - kept running into people (hi Pi!) and had some good chats. And hey, I made $300 on the trip home getting bumped off my connection in Denver, which covered the cost of my flights and then some.

There were fursuiters.  How many?  Nobody but Larry cares

I counted 589 in the parade, 29 more than the official count - but some may have come back for another go around the end.

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Other Topics / Re: 2 Gryphon Is Engaged, you guys

« on: June 19, 2012, 10:52:07 pm »

Well, in fairness they disallowed marriage at Anthrocon years ago, so it's the next best thing.

It happened this year in the Artists' and Dealers' reception, too. All of a sudden, clapping. (I guess the four types of cheese and the chocolate brownies put people in a good mood.)

17

News Media / Re: The 2011 Ursa Major Nominees Are Here!!!!

« on: June 04, 2012, 03:58:43 pm »

To nobody's surprise, "Equestria Daily" won Best Website.

At least the ponies are happy.

I'm a bit surprised to see WikiFur of all things at #2, but FA is all the way down at #3, InkBunny right behind.

A few voters gave their reasoning in comments to the story about the nominations. Part of it may be that WikiFur mentioned its nomination; as far as I can tell, FA didn't. Our English edition gets ~200k visits a month, so you know some of those are going to vote.

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Other Topics / Re: 2gryphon and Kage want you to donate your money to failing business

« on: April 21, 2012, 11:19:20 pm »

Regarding comparative charity figures: Anthrocon is a 501(c)(7) social club. Its primary purpose is to run a convention so people can have fun looking at cartoon animals. Sure, it's nice when a little money is raised for real-life animals, but that's as far as it goes. Charities are, ultimately, not members of the club.

As a registered non-profit, Anthrocon's finances are (almost) an open book, just one you can't read until nine months after the convention. WikiFur has summaries; if you want the details, go to Form 990.

AC's per-person expenses and revenue jumped after moving to Pittsburgh, but have remained roughly constant since then. Membership fees have largely increased at the supersponsor level, but all classes increased $10 over the past two years, and at-door basic reg is $60 this year as well. I haven't seen too much complaining. Will be interesting to see what the effect is this year.

My take: AC manages its budget as well as any other furry con, and probably better than some; it has relatively consistent costs, and getting the services of a convention centre for $15/person is a bargain in my book. I guess one reasonable question is why travel and expenses for guest speakers cost $13,000 last year - it looks like it was half of that in 2010 (though that might just be travel). Big families? Big bar tab?

Oh, and predictably, it made the news.

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News Media / Re: The 2011 Ursa Major Nominees Are Here!!!!

« on: March 19, 2012, 10:29:34 pm »

That's why these things are often held at conventions . . . but at the time there weren't any big enough to guarantee a good turnout, plus the organizers didn't just want it to be "a ConFurence award" - prescient in hindsight. You could probably run one at AC or FC nowadays, but we're a worldwide fandom, so it'd risk being unrepresentative. Plus, how'd you choose the nominees?

For comparison, the furry researchers got barely a quarter of attendees at Furry Fiesta, and they were offering a chance to get a $50 Amazon certificate plus the opportunity to tell your life story in survey form.

It'd be fun to see the voting breakdown, if only to judge whether a particular decision was statistically significant. For that matter, I'd like to see an award that gave a tie if the difference between the top n wasn't significant.

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News Media / Re: The 2011 Ursa Major Nominees Are Here!!!!

« on: March 19, 2012, 06:05:56 pm »

How many people actually care about this thing enough to register and vote, anyway?

From last year's results:

Between March 13 and April 17, 1,372 voters from countries as diverse as Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Laos, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA selected the winners.