Messages

1

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Staff Changes Megathread

« on: June 19, 2014, 04:32:14 am »

Wow, they managed to get Cerberus to leave. I remember that he was perhaps one of the biggest defenders of the site back in the day. $5 says the "communication" problem had to do with either Chase or Sciggles.

There's a new admin sock puppet, SystemAccount (http://www.furaffinity.net/user/SystemAccount) being used for admin work (https://twitter.com/DanzaDragon/status/479302732965502976).  I'm willing to bet Chase and Sciggles are still doing admin work, but using SystemAccount instead of Carmen and HelperDog/Shivadramon.  Because FA's all about transparency, right?  Speaking of, I finally got banned from FA for sharing the common knowledge that HelperDog, Shivadramon, and Carmen are all sock puppets for Sciggles and Chase (https://twitter.com/Kitashi_/status/479443880530944000)!  

Also of note, remember that FA admin drive 8 months ago (http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5122085/) ?  Yeah, still waiting to see new admins from that!

I really, really love Oddy's reply to your tweet.

A long time ago, back when it was quite clear that a lot of the FA Admins had only clawed/sucked their way to the top just to show off their shiny admin badge, one of the ideas people had discussed as being possibly "good" for the site was anonymizing the administrators. The idea was that, without being able to yell "I'M AN ADMIN" and throw their weight around (without actually doing anything, mind you), that maybe only people who wanted to actually help the site would be compelled to be an administrator.

At this point however, it's fairly obvious that they're doing it just to cover up Sciggles' (and probably Chase's) reign of terror. I don't think it's a coincidence that "SystemAccount" started getting used right after Sciggles emptied out her other two admin sockpuppet accounts. Banning you for "posting private information" about the abandoned socks reeks of desperation. Sorry, Sciggles. You can't hide. We're not as dumb as you think we are.

2

FA Obsession Collection / FA breaks three things in less than an hour

« on: June 17, 2014, 04:37:12 am »

These all came from the same 35 minute time period. Somehow they managed to cycle through every single recurring problem they have in less than an hour.



Grate job team.

3

FA Obsession Collection / Re: FA staff give up on answering trouble tickets

« on: June 08, 2014, 05:39:57 pm »

Dragoneer apparently will prioritize your ticket if you tweet at him on Twitter. For those of you not on twitter, guess you're fucked.

https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/475382925295644672

4

FA Obsession Collection / FA ad server found to be serving up malware

« on: June 08, 2014, 05:28:14 pm »

A couple of users on FA have discovered that FA's ad server, running OpenX  has been compromised, and contains code that redirects some browsers to malware.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5828127#cid:40627895

Re-Post in hope to have NON-clicky links... Preview feature would also be nifty...

It's hidden inside "fab_json.php" which starts off with a
"document.write('<iframe src="SNIPPEDHTTP:// lat . lunakid . com/bannerid?5" width="1" height="1" frameborder="0"></iframe>');var ox_data = [];"

and the "lat.lunakid.com" - whatever that is - delivers a matching html that includes "SNIPPEDHTTP:// simplyfwd . com/?pid=1POB1UHJ2.....akid.com"

So, yes, it DOES stem from FA and *some* browsers pick up on it and others don't.

This comes after Dragoneer denies that it's coming from FA, and somehow conducts an audit of his site code in a whopping 9 minutes:

That's not related to FA, nor do I see any code anywhere on the site which would lead to that. It may be malware which was picked up by the browser somewhere.

He then had to backpeddle:

Yes, it looks like you are correct after all. We're investigating it right now and seeing if we can fix it while prepping some security patches.

They have since updated the news post about bringing the ad server down for apparently unrelated issues with the following:

Update: The server maintenance is complete. We are currently looking into an issue with ad server, and will credit all advertisers 48 hours for the downtime. We expect to have the ad server up by tonight (6/8/2014) and will post updates as we have them.

Love how they've made "we may have been serving malware" into "an issue".

5

FA Obsession Collection / Re: FA staff give up on answering trouble tickets

« on: June 08, 2014, 02:34:59 am »

The staff page is the smallest it's been in a long time. 12 admins (13, but Helperdog is a Sciggles alt.) and three technical staff members, which is one less than usual as tsawolf has disappeared. One of the last times it got close to this small was in September 2012, when there were 15 admins.

Also, has anyone ever actually seen Fox Amoore actually do anything? In the past he was listed as "Music Admin", and I have a hunch that his entire administrative appointment is just Dragoneer fanboying over him.

6

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

« on: June 07, 2014, 10:17:10 pm »

Some artists I've been following the work of have quit posting stuff on FA but they haven't moved to/become active on Weasyl or any other furry art site, instead they've been posting on tumblr and/or twitter. Anecdotally, I think there has been a certain shift of furry subculture community and social networking activity to twitter especially and also tumblr : away from FA and other furry run sites

Perhaps that is an issue here : people who don't want to use/be on FA can post their work and get feedback, comments and commisions from the large furry community on tumblr/twitter so for some that will be just as good, if not better than weasyl currently is.

This is likely a huge factor. Despite the fact that Weasyl is a relatively new art site, it still functions like the existing options. There are two completely seperate pages you need to go through just to upload something, and three if you're changing a thumbnail. Tumblr has one single page and you don't need to do anything other than select images. People watching then just see everything in one feed. You can also bulk upload to Tumblr. I don't recall ANY furry-centric art site having a bulk upload feature.

Something for new projects to keep in mind, I suppose.

7

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

« on: June 07, 2014, 12:45:56 am »

so, what features are they missing

Here's where they asked people to tell them exactly that. Including Two people (and someone replying positively to one of those posts) suggesting a marketplace/commission management idea like I have been.

The point is they need to add features other than ones that just put them on par with other sites. They asked for suggestions, they got them, but they have yet to even come out and commit to any of the bigger ones.

8

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

« on: June 05, 2014, 01:28:22 am »

weasyl is a competently run art site with more features than FA at the expense of a smaller community. what more can they do?

like honestly what features are they missing? so long as FA has the lions share of the activity weasyl is gonna trail behind, even if they implement a feature that sends you a muffin basket every time you upload a submission or post a comment

I'd be interested to know why you consider it "competently run". Many people who have gotten "too close" (including myself) tend to disagree. There are others who disagree just based on the fact of who's on staff. Additionally, Kihari, the actual site owner, being barely visible is concerning. Go onto the forums and find the last time he actually posted on the public forums. It was February. When the owner isn't even trying to actively involve themselves with the community (and from what I'm told, he's not much more involved behind the scenes), there's something wrong. For what it's worth, Both Kihari and Dragoneer have posted on their respective forums three times since January 3rd.

Weasyl acknowledges it needs more features. That much is fact. The problem is they don't even have feature parity with the other "big" sites, and certainly don't offer anything unique. That's the problem. As long as FA is online (or offline with the intent to come back online) you're going to have a hard time drawing people over and keeping them when your product is essentially a "me too" product. Nothing really functions differently than how anyone else is doing it. The "notifications" and "submissions" pages look EXACTLY LIKE FA (well, actually, FA's shows you the icon of people who followed you. Weasyl just lists this information. The whole page is just bulleted lists).

Weasyl lacks the premium features it sold people on during their fundraiser. The fact these don't exist nearly two years after the fact taints their name even further. Said features are apparently constantly tied up in development hell. Nobody there wants to just commit to them and get them done. Nobody there wants (or is able) to put their foot down and say that they need to be made a priority. Those wouldn't even be groundbreaking features.

I don't have any problems with them looking to the future, it's just there won't -be- a future if they don't put me in charge and do what I say because reasons

ftfy

I don't give two shits about ever being "in charge" of Weasyl. I am upset that the site that I, and many others, donated money towards, is now drifting along with no intention of ever becoming the site that was promised as the group of babbies running it cry in their IRC anytime Ben or I say anything about the site.

Perhaps if the people at Weasyl who thought I was out to "destroy Weasyl" and the people here who think I want to be "put in charge" combined their misguided assumptions, they'd even out and people could just realize I'm just trying to point out problems that, if fixed, would make the site better in the long run. And if you're going to post "huehuehue and how do you even know that", nobody on Weasyl's directors staff has any more experience doing this than I do. I just see things differently, and that apparently scares the hell out of them.

9

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: June 05, 2014, 01:03:50 am »

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5819207

Phoenix Team Recruitment   

By Fender, 8 hours ago   
   
We're looking for a skilled layout and CSS wizard to join phoenix team to help us finish our first milestone! Is that person you? Drop us a notice with some examples of your work in a comment on the journal.

What's this? Is Zaush really going to let someone else work on his part of the project? Or did he quit?

Because that would be fucking hilarious.

10

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

« on: June 04, 2014, 04:01:23 pm »

The official Vivisector Kickstarter will be launching soon; our goal is to be able to buy enough soothing salve to ease Conan's never-before-seen levels of butthurt.  Please give if you are able.

At least someone cares. Please make the check out to "cash" and watch my FA account for all the porn I'll buy with the money.

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?

I don't have any problems with them looking to the future, it's just there won't -be- a future if they continue to do nothing worthwhile and taint their name more than it already is. I've talked to people, people who have no idea that I post here or any of my past involvement with Weasyl, and they all have the same indifferent "it's not FA but there's nothing Weasyl does better" attitude. Turns out people don't care about folders as much as we thought.

Weasyl will never figure this out because the people who matter are too afraid to deal with anyone that thinks differently than they do, and Kihari apparently doesn't care enough to overpower them and actually get the ball rolling.

11

Weasyl Wankfest / Weasyl prioritizes infrastructure overhaul while usage drops

« on: June 04, 2014, 04:09:04 am »

It appears the rudderless ship that is Weasyl continues to be plagued by people not caring much about their product, as they prioritize infrastructure "upgrades" over doing anything that might make people pay attention to them.

Their publicly-accessible Munin page recently unveiled a number of new servers. I would imagine these are mostly virtual, as there is no way in hell Weasyl needs more physical servers than Inkbunny, FA, and SoFurry, when they have far fewer users.

Speaking of users, Weasyl's traffic is on a steady slide downards. You can go ahead and guess why, but I'm sure the official excuse has something to do with Ben doing something two years ago and me writing these posts.

12

News Media / Artist jailed 5 years for posession of CP, gets asspats

« on: May 22, 2014, 04:28:07 am »

John Fernandez, better known as Vamplust in the fandom, was arrested in February on 10 charges involving child pornography and has since been sentenced to 5 years in prison. This news came via a (now deleted) journal posted to his account by a friend. Apparently, his apparent love of older, bearish men with huge asses (as evidrnced by his artwork) was just a front.

The journal screenshot features some wonderfully concerning comments from members of Our Great Fandumb like "hope he comes back soon", people saying they don't care what he did as long as he posts more porn when he returns, and morons who don't get how the legal system works and think he can get off as long as he is "sorry".

Keep up the good work, furries!!

13

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: May 10, 2014, 10:24:21 pm »

Anyways they are gonna screw it up just like they have been doing. Phoenix is gonna be Ferrox 2.0, same deceit, same conspiracy to steal funds and never release anything.

These projects are always just a way for Dragoneer to pretend like things are happening while absolving himself of any responsibility. If this project fails, he will probably end up pointing the finger at Weasyl and crying about sabotage because Charmander is on both teams.

Though I've been told that Charmander is leaking information to Weasyl about the project, and probably vice-versa, so he wouldn't be too off the point on that one.

14

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: April 26, 2014, 02:26:03 am »

There's now a twitter account that autoposts new commits.

Like this really important one. How can you expect anyone to develop new useful things when the ridiculous site documents aren't already loaded in???

15

News Media / Dumbass furry blocked from entering Canada... on national TV

« on: April 20, 2014, 05:56:13 pm »

Canada's National Geographic Channel has a show called "Border Security: Canada's Front Line". It's exactly what it sounds like: a documentary/reality show about border security agents doing their jobs.

Enter an unnamed furry from Hawaii, trying to enter Canada to see his internet boyfriends while wearing a tail and without a return ticket to Hawaii and only $350. Spoiler alert: Canada won't tolerate any of that, but they will tolerate his furry porn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKGTx91RCjg

16

FA Obsession Collection / Re: HORRIBLE TRACERS

« on: April 10, 2014, 07:56:24 pm »

I think this says it all. These all came within minutes of each other. So in the period of like, two minutes he says it's bad, then says it's fine, just not on FA.

Also, the Chase note wouldn't make any sense if Dragoneer's sequence of events is to be believed. It's also wildly inappropriate to ban someone for thirty days when they clearly don't understand a rule and are in the process of asking for clarification. It's furry porn, for fucks sake. It's not that serious.

17

FA Obsession Collection / HORRIBLE TRACERS

« on: April 10, 2014, 01:11:16 am »

It's been displayed in the past that several members of FA's administration, among them the unholy trinity of Dragoneer, Chase, and Sciggles, have some sort of issue with "tracers". Perhaps it's because they can't ever think of anything original themselves, seeing as Dragoneer and Chase use Digimon/Pokemon as their own characters, and Sciggles rips of My Little Pony (and occasionally rips off ripoffs) at every opportunity. Also remember that the big Sciggles drama that got her "banned" for all of two days was because she threw a fit about someone tracing. The horror!

Why do I bring this up? Because yesterday, Chase decided that FA's rule against "tracing" also covered when someone commissions an artist to trace over/heavily reference a photo they took of themselves, which is apparently a trend lately. That's right, tracing over works you created or someone created for you is UNACCEPTABLE on the site who's original motto was "Where freedom of expression reigns supreme!" But please, continue posting "Your Character Here's" and your real original Digimon and MLP content.

Below, you can see the art that Kihu was commissioned to draw, and Chase's ruling from atop Mount Dogdick.



Read that carefully and notice the part where Chase hands down a 30-day ban on someone ASKING FOR CLARIFICATION OF A RULE. Apparently his new title of "Code of Conduct Enforcement Lead" (Being promoted from "Harassment Lead" to Forum King apparently wasn't enough) also entitles him to be a complete dick to the site's users.

Unfortunately, this seems to have really blown up on Twitter after Dragoneer went to bed, which means we need to wait a while to see the PR machine go into overdrive and promise that upcoming revisions of the AUP will "clarify" this matter.

18

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: March 29, 2014, 12:26:31 am »

I'm most surprised with the Weasyl dev, though, because Dragoneer has always been paranoid about that kind of stuff. This leads me to believe that Charmander is probably feeding him insider information.

Actually, he trusts me because I don’t have a Vivisector account.

Oh, I think that post explains exactly why he's trusting you. :3c

19

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: March 28, 2014, 05:00:16 pm »

Ferrox was open source, remember.  I think Dragoneer knows there's more positives than negatives there.

I'm most surprised with the Weasyl dev, though, because Dragoneer has always been paranoid about that kind of stuff. This leads me to believe that Charmander is probably feeding him insider information. Who wants to bet a future announcement of new Phoenix features includes most of what Weasyl collected from their feature request thing?

Also it's really fucking funny that the Phoenix developer is another person with a Pokemon character.

20

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Project Phoenix

« on: March 28, 2014, 04:08:11 am »

So an update came out today, and it turns out that Project Phoenix is open source. Also worth noting: the person who did the initial commit is a Weasyl dev.

So apparently they're serious enough about this they've taken to headhunting people from competing websites.