Messages

41

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Staff Changes Megathread

« on: October 04, 2013, 01:52:37 pm »

They're recruiting yet again:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5122085

On the google docs app. form they say:

Candidates must:
* Be 21 or older.
* Must not be currently enrolled in college/technical school.
* Must be able to give at least 10 hours to the community a week.
* Have Skype

Princess Piche insists that they've added new coders but evidently he couldn't be bothered to add them to the staff list yet:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5122085#cid:36326802

I suppose that at this point, they're only going to get new or hopelessly naive people to be on staff.

IIRC The Princess had mentioned on twitter a few weeks ago, in response to being questioned about how trouble tickets were piling up yet again, that they were going to get some more staff. So, as you might have imagined, no change in course.

42

Other Topics / Re: poundsignAdventureCru: it's well furry (was re: Welcome to the age of stupidity)

« on: October 04, 2013, 04:11:57 am »

Credit card fraud, if true, doesn't seem like a truly wonderful thing. Not bothering to credit other peoples contributions to things is a bit naughty too.

Benchilla says that it isn't true, he made a post in that lulz.net Adventure Cru thread:

In the interest of misinformation not being spread around: I'll bite.

>>2753381

Credit card thing isn't true. Explained it awhile ago here: http://waitwaitfixate.com/post/14904930088/alright-sure-this-too

No, I didn't start drag because of you. You're really conceited if you think that. http://ask.fm/BrendaBanks/answer/102875969745

I put hashtags on my Instagrams so more people can see them and give them likes, which boosts my Klout score and increases the chance of being offered free movie tickets. That's literally it.

Are you really going to talk about your trust being betrayed, when you're the one who engaged in a week long prank where you pretended you were in a polyamarous relationship with one of my exes and two other people, none of which you had ever met IRL, and spent hours upon hours convincing me something that ridiculous could even be true? Me being mad at you about that isn't me not letting go, it's because you were (and continue to be) too much of a sociopath to admit that was kind of a fucked up prank. I forgave the other person because they apologized. But no, not you.

I did the American Idol thing because it seemed like a fun thing to do. I never ever expected to make it past the preliminaries, or be one of the ten people out of 100s they would put in the episode (and obviously, I didn't -want- to be sick). I'm just glad it didn't actually ruin my life.

Also, coming at me for my appearance (I'm not happy about my balding ass believe me) is really weak when you don't even post pictures of yourself on the internet at all. Check yourself, seriously.

[...]

43

Other Topics / Re: poundsignAdventureCru: it's well furry (was re: Welcome to the age of stupidity)

« on: October 03, 2013, 06:47:59 pm »

From that lulz.net thread:

he goes by benchilla now. he's just the worst kind of person. Like that, sees people like you so they try to imitate you by getting into drag like you and imitating your mannerisms kind of person. also, never lets anything go which is amazingly annoying and he cant stop with his shitheaded "haters gon hate #yolo #imbrendabanks #instagay" attitude. he committed credit card fraud once, hacked someone's amazon account and ordered them a bunch of spice girls shit or something. i've basically cut him out of my life save for a few mutual friends.

The best thing about Adventure cru was collabing on a panel with prawst only to have it shut down by the con before it happened... Then he took all the stuff I contributed and used it at the next con that we both were at without attribution!

What a real stand up guy :-)

Benchilla was such a rude, entitled dude at FWA this past year. Dunno how anyone can stand him.

Credit card fraud, if true, doesn't seem like a truly wonderful thing. Not bothering to credit other peoples contributions to things is a bit naughty too.

44

Scandal! / Edited Commision uploads on SoFurry Drama Butthurt

« on: September 05, 2013, 04:19:45 am »

The short of it is, is that there have recently been several cases of commissioners uploading commissioned pictures which they have edited in some way on the SoFurry site (One case simply involved someone adding some text to a reference sheet). A moderator on the site ruled that it was acceptable to upload such pictures to SoFurry and that artists should make it clear to commissioners before hand if they don't want them editing their pictures. He entitled the official journal he made about this matter: Terms of Service and being butthurt.

However, as you probably know, copyright hoo-hah and people being sensitive about their stuff (sometimes even oversensitive) are part and parcel of the furry subculture and such a thing as that is guaranteed to upset members of the community which use the site and make people feel insecure about uploading stuff. Therefore, within hours the decision had been reversed and the site owner Toumal apologized.

I wonder if editing pictures has become more popular of late due to such things as a series of threads on lulz.net where edits of pictures are done (apparently to the great satisfaction of most of the people asking for edits), and the increased ease of sharing edited pictures (compared to say 10 years ago) on furry chan/image-board sites, tumblr and so forth. Indeed, I noted just today that a picture by Zaush was uploaded on FA and within a few minutes(!) someone had made a female character in it into a male one and shared it on lulz.net.

First the original butthurt journal:

https://www.sofurry.com/view/585692

Terms of Service and being butthurt

On why making rules clear is a good idea

Recently we've had a couple of reports come in from artists complaining about their works being edited and then posted on SoFurry. These pictures were commissioned and paid for, and then the commissioner (the customer) has then made some edits of their own and gone on to post the new picture.

Now, I can understand the artists in this case being annoyed, especially if they weren't asked permission. But here's where the important bit is - permission.

As an artist you can lay out the rules of the commission. This can be stuff like what kinds of content you are willing to draw, under what circumstances rejections and alterations can be made, and whether the customer can edit or repost the work and so on.

If you don't state these things, make them clear and get your customer to agree to them, then you are giving them goods that they can do with as they please. So, if they want, they can write all over it and change all the colours and repost it wherever they like - and because you didn't make it clear as part of the deal that that is not OK, there's nothing you can do about it.

Now, that doesn't mean it's cool for people to do that. It's still a dick move if someone pays you for a commission and then messes around with it and doesn't give you the credit you deserve and talk to you about the changes. But, it's also something that can be totally allowed.

So, artists, if you want to be careful with your work, how it's distributed and used and what people can or can not do to it, make sure you get your Terms of Service clear and understood. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up for a fall.

The two top-rated replies to it:

Wellp.

I am no longer going to use this site and am now pulling down all of my works. I will not support a site that has such bewildering concepts of copyright law. When you pay for a commission, you're not paying for the rights to heavily modify and reuse an image- hell, technically, you don't even have the legal right to repost it.

Whether or not a TOS exists is beyond the point, especially when an online TOS can and HAS been nullified by existing legal constructs. Just as an artist cannot legally get away with denying refunds and never producing the commissioned work, a TOS cannot override existing copyright law. If a TOS is absent, standard copyright law and legalities should stand.

The fact that you guys seem to think otherwise makes me believe that my work is not safe to be posted to this site.

Good day.

N... no... no. When creating a work for a customer, the artist retains rights to the work- that means that it cannot be edited, it can not be 'written all over', nor does it mean they have exclusive or ANY reposting rights unless directly told by the artist. I don't HAVE to say "you are not allowed to edit this work", for it to be un-editable. I have to say "you ARE ALLOWED TO EDIT THIS WORK" all caps, bold, font size 20, impact typeface, underline, doubleunderline, ITALICS- for the customer to be able to actually be allowed to make ANY edits to the piece OR pay anyone else to do so. It is ILLEGAL for them to do so under copyright law. It does not fall under fair use or parody.

Not having it in your TOS does not trump copyright law.

If you're going to run a site that allows for visual artwork to be uploaded, learn the law behind it. An artist CAN DCMA your site, as the content host, to remove the artwork- they should not have to. All they should have to do is ask, because they are the copyright holder, and you should be removing the offending image. An artist, should they care enough about an (apparently really shitty, by evidence of the two mod posts, both journal and comment) furry site, could in fact lawyer up and sue.

Personally, I hope that the artist in question posts an artist_beware post about this site, because I sure as hell do not want to EVER post artwork to this site again, considering the way you treat the artists residing.

Toumal's apology journal:

Our Apologies: Recent copyright issues!

Hey fellow furs, and furry artists!

As many of you heard, there has been an issue with a particular moderation decision. A user posted modified versions of commissions. Our moderator told the artist that he can't ask for the modified artwork to be taken down. Our mods called the artist "butthurt". When I woke up I saw a mushroom cloud from my window.

First off all: We fucked up. We're a team of volunteers strewn across the globe, so a good number of our team was unavailable at that time. But regardless, the end result was the same, and the harsh language from our side simply wasn't neccessary. On top of that our decision was wrong.

Of course a commissioner can usually repost a commission he paid for (unless the artist made him agree to other terms beforehand) - that's what everyone does in the fandom on all the sites out there. It's called joint copyright under US law.

of course a commissioner cannot modify finished artwork and then post the edited version up everywhere, without permission from the artist. That is simply not covered by joint copyright. It's rude.

That's the legal side of things. On top of that, SoFurry is not here for our own amusement and power trips. SoFurry is made and run FOR YOU. For artists, writers and musicians, for furries, for furry-curious people. So with everything we do, we must take into consideration the person who we're doing this for, and that person is you.

It's now early morning for some of the mod team, and even EARLIER morning for others but in light of all this let me just say that we're working on this. Please accept my apologies for the messy situation and everything bad that has been said. We're looking into our staff organization as well, though needless to say we did fail as a team and the point this post is not to put all the blame on individual mods.

Once again, please accept my sincere apologies for that mess. We're not closing any threads or journals about this by the way (unless things get personally insulting, mind you) so please do feel free to discuss this. We're always open for suggestions. You can also PM me if you want, though chat is probably easier. I'll be on the SF chat later today as well.

^
https://www.sofurry.com/view/585874

A comment by someone on lulz.net about this:

I oddly agree with the fact that commissioners are entitled to it. Speaking as an artist, it's hardly different from game mods and music remixes.

Other art fields explicitly mention the level of use that you have when purchasing the product.

^
http://lulz.net/furi/res/2725464.html

Someone else:

In before Sofurry will be dead by the end of summer comments! But really, while I partially agree, staff probably shouldn't be calling artists butthurt..not a great way to get anyone new on your site after this.

45

Scandal! / The alleged frauds of Darius Koopa

« on: June 29, 2013, 03:56:34 pm »

There is a certain fellow:  http://www.furaffinity.net/user/dariuskoopa

who one november (of that name on FA) accuses of being a fraudster. November alleges that Darius Koopa has pretended that his mother has both had lung cancer and  been shot, in order to scam money out of people; the money being spent on attending 20 conventions in 24 months. November went to the trouble of compiling a 53 page .pdf about the matter:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2058149/dmk/fleecingbydmk.pdf

Here is the introduction:

DariusKoopa has been leeching off of the generosity of this fandom for many years and continues to do so. In September, 2012, he claimed that his mother got lung cancer and received chemotherapy as treatment. In May, 2013, he claimed that his mother suffered multiple gunshot wounds in New York City. Both times, he requested donations from the fandom to help with medical bills and to see his mother. Both times, he attended a furry convention during his trip.

You will see a history of his habits which will establish a consistent and recurring pattern of asking for donations.

You will see his motive for making the cancer and shooting claims.

You will see basic medical information about cancer (such as treatment options and survivability rates) and why the alleged lung cancer
diagnosis does not mesh up

You will see pictures that a reasonable person would find highly suspicious for a shooting victim.

You will see how I followed due diligence by giving him every attempt to prove himself right and to prove me wrong.

You will see raw correspondence and how he tried to cover up his claims when confronted.

You will see how his actions seem to defy logic and common sense.

But ultimately, you will see the truth:

DariusKoopa is a fraud, fleecing members of this community by exploiting alleged family emergencies to take advantage of your generosity. cies to take advantage of your generosity.

Also, from livejournal, Darius Koopa allegedly got someone drunk and forced them to have sex with him:

46

News Media / Re: Bad Dragon Seriously PR'd

« on: May 22, 2013, 04:02:09 am »

A thread posted on lulz.net today:

http://lulz.net/furi/res/2616575.html

Someone claims to have gotten inside information on the alleged continued infighting, culture of fear and dysfunction at Bad Dragon. Selected posts from that thread (these posts were made by the same anonymous person):

Ready for Battlefield: Bad Dragon? Apparently one of the managers is a nazi so other workers there are pursuing legal action against them. I wonder how backed up the waiting list is going to get now with all the backstabbing?

the source is 2 people working there. I was told that they are told to keep things quite or they would get fired. Was also told that anyone who use to work there is to be shunned and ignored after leaving. That does explain a lot of their issues with former employees though.

bd is always a place for blackmail and lol. For example, apparently they have a few EEOC cases running against them. Then PETA seems to have issues with them for 5 different employees from chat logs they've received from "workers" there. I wonder what that's about and who? LOL

^
(EEOC is the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It is "responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information".)

Fun bits from an email that was forwarded to me and a few others:

"This all started after a friends with benefits relationship with Kamo and his BF, Wolf, that ended poorly...Another manager (who is a friend of Kamos) got in a girl managers face at work and irrationally screamed at her (so bad other employees thought they were gonna have to pull him away from her) and it was swept under the rug...Kamo seems really unstable.... And I believe he is the root of all that is wrong....the culture of fear that we all live under at work...I have a friend (another one of his victims) who ran a background check on Kamo and it said he failed his police exam because of severe personality problems. It said something along the lines of he should never have authority over people."

Whether or not this is all ACTUALLY legit, who knows, but the whole thing is pretty funny. If anything, it made for a good laugh.

47

Weasyl Wankfest / Reactions to Weasyl

« on: April 13, 2013, 06:38:46 pm »

While browsing Furaffinity I came across this journal asking for feedback from the community about the merits of Weasyl (it was not written by a weasyl staff member):

Okay, so is http://www.weasyl.com/ cool or not?

WHY? WHY NOT?

Y'all know I can't think for myself :B

Please advise, thanks.

ALSO, WHY?

ALSO, WHY NOT?

REASONS PLEASE.

And don't forget to mention why. Or why not, if it seems to be the case.

p.s. - give reasons; like, reasons why. Or perhaps maybe reasons why not.

= = = =

EDIT:
1. PRO:
- ORGANIZED FOLDERS
- TAGGING/FILTERS
- STREAMING STUFF

2. CON:
- EXCESSIVE NAVIGATION TO SEE ART OR SERIAL IMAGES (comics)
- COMMENT/COMMUNICATION CLUNKINESS
- AND OKAY, ENOUGH ABOUT THE SQUARE THUMBNAILS (Yes, we all agree it's a bad thing)

Mystery Meat Navigation: "Such interfaces lack a user-centered design, emphasizing aesthetic appearance, white space, and the concealment of relevant information over basic practicality and functionality." - wiki

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4519124/

There were over 100 comments on the journal: generally, many people were happy with Weasyl being a working website that is "not Furaffinity" and with it having folders &c. but it is clear there is still bread left unbuttered, especially with respect to the thumbnails. It also looks like people are well aware that the community and traffic is the only thing left keeping FA going at this point.

I thought the comment on Weasyl being "not really sure what exactly it is right now" was interesting, especially combined with the comment from a weasyl admin saying that it doesn't cater specifically to furries vs.  the comment that "By now it is clearly a furry site". A selection of comments:

In general the file handling is a bit wonky. From less-than-helpful thumbnails to poor image naming (images are named 1234.Submit.1234.extension). And some convoluted submission setups... 4 different places to put art, depending on who made it, if it's a character, if it's only for friends, oh and here, have a folder or two, sort your own stuff. If it's music or story... Eh put it with the art, I guess, I don't really care, mix and match at will, it's all good.

I think Weasyl is probably the best, but has several functional problems like I mentioned above. Really it's only fault is that it's lacking in community, and it's not really sure what exactly it is right now.

Frankly, It's made by folk who were upset about how FA was made/handled, and they are trying to handle those kinds of problems. Think of it as FA 2.0. I go there and try to be active because the only way it's going to survive is if people actually go there and use it. But I'll confess I won't upload content there until they correct pet peeves I shouldn't be having.

annoying square cropped thumbnails

it's got some shiny features, but i can't stand browsing that site. the forcibly squared thumbnails make the layout look nice but don't really do much for the actual content. it's convenient to generate thumbnails on the fly, but most folks either crop to a closeup of the face or closeup of the genitals, and a lot are wholly unhelpful. i "look" at art a lot less than i do on FA.

I do like the midsized "thumbnails" that FA gives. Big enough to see what the image is at a glance. Yeah, the square thumbnail thing is bonkers. Okay, thanks!

yeah, i mean, it's not a deal breaker or anything, but i never realized how detrimental those actually are until i tried to enjoy an art site that operates solely on square thumbnails.

other than that, the site is fast, has some helpful features, has some pointless/bloated features, uploading is straightforward, etc...

it's true, cropped thumbnails were a bad idea 10 years ago. Still a bad idea now. Having it as a option people can choose to set sounds better than forcing mystery meat navigation.

Seconding with the annoyance at the forced cropped thumbnails, but other than that I like the site. It's got a nice layout (though some areas are a little counter-intuitive--for example I had to dig for a while to find out what a character submission was vs a regular submission). I enjoy how clean it is, and the commission information is....a lot less confusing than the tab that FA recently got up and running again. I'd recommend getting an account there to be available to those who don't like FA or other sites, but I wouldn't use it as my main gallery, personally. Not enough people there yet.

It's got good features, but like some of the other sites lacks the community support to be really central.

I think it's good to have a presence there!

Also, it's distinctly stable and fast; but that might be because it doesn't have a lot of users.

How silly of me; the thumbnails are bigger, which appeals when an artist is highlighting a larger part of their work. It allows for more organization (sections for characters/concepts, subfolders, etc. which allow you to do more than just upload in droves and let people browse your complete oeuvre. The random browsing feature is nice if you like to be surprised (also it can be very -bad- if you don't like what the surprises are). It's a little more friendly to authors but in all honesty text is easy to host.

Also, what I mentioned above -- the stability and speed of the site are nice, especially when FA's getting bogged down.

Weasyl's submission browsing is really clunky and counter-intuitive to me; primary example I have was trying to view a comic that an artist had put all into one folder, but it lacked the ability to just go from one page to the next, instead insisting on showing me random other pages within the folder. There might be a way to toggle that but frankly I haven't bothered looking.

Some people used to dislike that Weasyl would lump artistic nudes and porn images together on their rating scale, but they recently fixed that? So perhaps the admins are more responsive to complaints over there.

For me, though, there's just not enough user base for me to jump ship or even keep a mirror.

I have had difficulty determining when I have received a reply, since they are either will not be listed or break the chronological order of the comment list. Somebody posting a stream notice contributes to the same total as a new page watch, which would probably be highly irritating if I logged in there more.
There is yet no way to conceal whose pages I watch and who watches mine from public view, though the point totals can thankfully be hidden.

CONTENT FILTERS. I wish FA had them!!! I seriously don't want to see everyone's specific, wacky, gross fetish so I just block them and then I don't see them yaaaay! Also you get to make this AWESOME custom banner. I like the layout! I just wish more art & artists were active there. Honestly if anything happened to FA I'd switch over without issue. FA is more active, which is sort of unfortunate - I honestly wish there was more activity over on Weasyl to justify a full move.

I don't think I'm going to leave FA until either FA goes down for good or the place becomes a ghost town because something truly better came along. I'm hearing some rather 'meh' reviews of Weasyl after the "mass exodus" that occurred a few months ago, and seeing as how a few people have actually come back to use their FA accounts again, Weasyl probably is just going to become another SoFurry.

Among the biggest complaints I've heard (keep in mind, I haven't used the art site myself):

(1) Lack of Community. Most artists I've heard from lament the fact that Weasyl does not have connected community features like FA does. Instead of forming a web of interconnected pages through favorites, comments, and the like, stuff seems all detached and buried under a lot of clicks. Galleries are treated more like personal, solitary things that happen to be public, rather than FA's seemingly inherent concept of putting art up on a public forum.

(2) Journals are treated as submissions.


Some things I've heard in Weasyl's favor:

(1) Much better organized than FA with a more robust tagging system and Gallery folders.

The whys:

Awesome administrative team, cool uploading system, runs fast, is actually coded well, many promising additional features in the works.

The why nots:

Many features still not in place yet, the "Collections" system seems to confuse people, only a fraction of the audience of FA (at least right now).

There isn't much in way of exposure for people who don't have scads of fans to take with them to another site. Favorites aren't readily visible, for one thing, so the fluid browsing experience I get here and on dA (surfing new artists AND their favorites for further artists from the same place: the individual profile page) doesn't happen. I also thought I'd like the square icons but I really don't. It'll be interesting to see how they continue to develop the site, but right now, it's useless in terms of exposure for me.

I personally feel like everyone has stockholm syndrome towards FA; people like what they know, you know? I think Weasyl does everything FA does but better, and were they introduced simultaneously (rather than FA having many years head start), Weasyl would stamp out FA in a heartbeat.

I wouldn't let a thumbnail issue be the deciding factor as many people are doing lately.
Weasyl is bringing loads of functions to the artist that aren't available on FA. Such as detailed and well organized commission info, series/comic oriented organization, character/profile management system (like profile pics for characters giving info in a convenient way).
Theres loads more too. This is also in early beta so you can expect more to come as well as changes from community feedback (perhaps a change in thumbnails?).

The biggest benefit in my opinion would be leaving FA.

I like it pretty well. I feel like it's well ahead of FA, and I haven't had many of the problems people are listing. I dunno. I just wish FA would go away. It sucks that people are like, "It's the trailer park of art sites, but I don't mind the roaches enough to go somewhere better." I'm frankly ready to leave, but the truth of the matter is that no one has established a music scene on the other sites. I've thought about doing it myself, but I don't trust myself with organize people. I gave it a small try on InkBunny, but I lack the focus and perseverance to pull it off.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, speaking of music, one thing I LOVE about weasyl is that you can link your music from bandcamp and soundcloud! Which means, if I release an album, I can stream it through weasyl instead of making a preview file and linking to the album in the artist's comments section. That alone is super useful, as a musician.

The fact of the matter is that it's in beta, and all of these problems need to be directed to the beta staff who are dedicated to improving the site before official launch. Perhaps you should just wait until then :3

+ Organized (submissions), good commission info options, has a trades/commissions/requests setting that shows off the bat, layout adapts to your window size surprisingly well.

/ Character pages are interesting but not exactly necessary. I'd rather commission info be something under a tab so it isn't dominating your entire page along the side. Redundant buttons (go to gallery, submissions - both very close to each other)

- Cluttered, Hard to navigate, not many people, hard to communicate, square thumbnails (dead horse), you have to actively dig to find new artists which makes it into a chore to view art. Entire website is sort of tedious.

at least one person assured me that despite the title, the mascot, and the front page containing furry art exclusively, weasyl was not a "furry" site. By now it is clearly a furry site.

I'm an admin you should join. :3c :3c :3c :3c :3c :3c :3c

Haha, but honestly, we're still in beta. We work to try to implement good ideas to improve the site (we recently added a fourth rating system to separate sexual 18+ art from things like artistic nudes). However, the community is still mostly here at FA, and Weasyl doesn't cater specifically to the furry fandom; we just happen to attract much of the community because a lot of staff are in the fandom.

48

Scandal! / Re: The sound you're about to hear is a 52 year old, unskilled manchild...

« on: April 11, 2013, 06:33:27 am »

Someone made a thread about this on lulz.net, a post made in that thread:

Rebekah's been threatening divorce for years now. Search deep enough and you'll find another divorce filing about 1 year after they got married however back then they recommended marriage counseling and essentially told her 'try to make it work'. She knows better now

She's also done some additional preliminary prep work to prevent her from getting the bad end of the deal [i.e. if not done very carefully courts might wind up handing Jim a good chunk of the house she bought, handing Rebekah a bunch of Jim's debt, and/or possibly having Rebekah pay Jim some kind of adult version of child-support].

^
http://lulz.net/furi/res/2569913.html

49

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Furaffinity leaks - An Ex-Admin speaks out about the terrible state of FA

« on: April 09, 2013, 04:36:37 am »

There is a (closed membership) livejournal group called "Furrydrama_2". I am told that a thread was made on there about these Furaffinity leaks. Sciggles felt the need to hop on there and defend herself. I was given these quotes from her:

We normally stay out of drama sites, but I do have permission to say this: These logs have been edited and Simba removed vital information and context which changes the meaning of the original logs.

Sciggles was then apparently asked to provide proof that these logs really were edited and to give further context. She refused, which makes me suspect she was just engaging in reflexive denial:

You know I can't without being just as bad as the people doing this. We have an Admin CoC and sharing such logs goes against those rules and calls for admin removal.

All I ask is for people to be subjective.

Presumably she meant "objective".

I am told that the ex-FA admin Hendikins responded to Sciggles asking her what context was missing from the logs. She did not reply, but instead lashed out as she knew only how by permabanning him from FA; accusing him of leaking admin logs. However she presented no evidence he did leak logs and he has stated that he deleted all FA related logs, e-mails &c. after he quit.

She even hid his FA account page, which is a very spiteful thing to do.

The funny thing is, Hendikins apparently didn't even agree with the furryleaks thing:

That's just... well, entirely expected TBH. I'm not saying what they want to hear, after all.

The joke is that I'm not really taking sides on this one. I can't say the logs are BS because they're not, but I can't condone the behaviour of the person who released them because it was entirely unprofessional (and I've said as much).

Therefore even if he had kept the logs, no doubt he wouldn't have leaked them.

(Note: Hendikins did not pass me any of these quotes/information in this post).

50

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Furaffinity leaks - An Ex-Admin speaks out about the terrible state of FA

« on: April 08, 2013, 04:33:17 pm »

think he's too nice to give Yak a kick up the behind, yes, though I also (and have heard from other people) that Yak might have something on Dragoneer.

Do you have any further details about Yak possibly having something on Dragoneer? I've seen people speculate about such a thing, and I think it would be very interesting if anyone has any solid information.

Also, with respect to Dragoneer being too nice, are you aware that he sockpuppeted on FA using the account of someone who died in an accident (and who he personally disliked) to troll someone? Details here:

https://forums.vivisector.org/index.php?topic=533.0

I think that Dragoneer is very two-faced. He can put up a good show sometimes, but he has a very nasty streak as the sockpuppeting shows. I suppose sockpuppeting would fit in with him being timid though: he's happy to attack people if he can hide behind a sock.

51

FA Obsession Collection / Furaffinity leaks - An Ex-Admin speaks out about the terrible state of FA

« on: April 08, 2013, 03:45:38 pm »

Simbathelion was an admin on Furaffinity for several months. Before he became an admin he dismissed  criticism of Furaffinity, however after becoming an admin he realized that a lot of what is said is "very true". As a result he has spoken out about FA:

http://furaffinityleaks.blogspot.co.uk/

TL:DR:

1. Dragoneer re-admin'ed the terrible chase and lied to the userbase about it.

2. Sciggles is completely lacking in the qualities needed to be a lead admin and has no idea what she is doing, linking people to non-existent wiki pages &c.

3. Yak is always too busy playing computer games to do any work on the FA code. Dragoneer kicked the coders with free time off the staff in a fit of paranoia because he thought they were leaking logs.

4. Dragoneer complains about the state of FA, how it is causing him stress &c. but does nothing to fix things and just rattles off the same old "we're working on it".

You might be aware of all this already, but this is someone who was recently an FA admin, therefore there is more weight than usual behind their criticisms. In addition it shows how nothing has changed at FA and raises questions over whether or not Dragoneer will squander the huge donations of money and hardware so recently taken from the userbase.

Here is a digest of the blog:

Chase used to be an FA admin, before being dismissed for throwing his weight around and being a terrible admin.

Dragoneer decided to allow Chase back on the admin team and chose to lie to the FA users over it:

04:55] <~Dragoneer> Chase may have had a rocky past previously, but he was a good admin. We're still on great terms. He's basically going to be coming in to help with harassment tickets (and only harassment).
[04:55] <~Dragoneer> Kitashi: He and I got into a fight.
[04:55] <&Kitashi> Ah :x
06[04:55] * @Hendikins twitches
[04:56] <~Dragoneer> Hendikins: ?
[04:56] <@Hendikins> I'm just thinking PR.
[04:56] <~Dragoneer> Again, hence with all admin accounts, why he's on an alt and it's on the downlow. If it comes out, we'll announce it.

Dragoneer ignored the objections of the other staff:

[02:12] <@Hendikins> When we've got a glut of staff, bring somebody else in is a slap in the face.
[02:12] <@Hendikins> Particularly when it is done without consulting the team.

Sciggles is lacking in the qualities needed to be a lead admin:

"When we new admins were brought on, we got the number of tickets down from about 16 pages (100 per page) to 3 pages. Sciggles had an obviously splendid idea of decided to split everyone into "specialist groups" and then saying training was required for said groups! I've got around 8 years of experience as a mod/admin dealing with harassment, so naturally I went into that group. Sciggles then informed me we would have a Skype chat for her to "train" me. She was late. Not only was she late, but when she arrived she had the following to say:

<Sciggles> It looks like it was pulled offline last night so Neer is trying to poke Net-cat to get it back on. That had all the information I was going to give to you on how we handled certain issues. If you had any questions or anything or think something should have been added to it that wasn't was basically what we were going to go through.

By "it", she's referring to a Wiki page with "FA harassment guidelines". She then proceeded to wall of text me with a lot of very generic information I knew within a month of my 8 years doing this stuff.

[...]

I don't think Sciggles is inherently a bad person, but I do strongly think (and the evidence shows) that administrative qualities are lacking. I'm sorry for those of you who have tickets open from months ago (there are 100+ if not 200+ of these)."

The FA coding crisis:

"[17:47] <@Summercat> One of the biggest complaints we have is that we don't have enough coding staff to deal with issues. We have talent onboard already, but we are not using them.
01[17:48] <@SimbaTheLion> Yeah, that seems a bit nuts - I work as a software engineer as my full time job and Kitashi and a few others here also are very techincal.
01[17:48] <@SimbaTheLion> technical*
[17:48] <&Kitashi> I've been trying to change how we do things so we can actually make use of people who have technical experience
[17:48] <@Summercat> I want to start bashing peoples faces in for talking shit about how we treat other coders, but god damn if I don't have that wiggling doubt that they might be right, regardless of Eevee/Crpyto being giant douches.

[...]

You see the people in this chat? The people who actually wanted to get something done and not just give empty promises of "oh it'll be ready on Monday"? Kitashi, me, Hendikins, Summercat. None of us are admins anymore. The very people who had the time, the ability and the skills to sort things out."

Dragoneer:

"I've saved Dragoneer until last for a reason. He owns the site. As you can see from the log just above - he could have helped us, he could have saved FA. He chose not to. Yak did not get the kick up the arse he needed to utilise the talent FA had just waiting to go. Sciggles never received training to be able to administrate efficiently and upset other people pretending to do so. Chase - well. Chase was allowed back on staff, because Dragoneer "trusts him"."

52

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Staff Changes Megathread

« on: April 08, 2013, 04:00:21 am »

There is another informative thread about chase here: https://forums.vivisector.org/index.php?topic=319.0
if you are unaware of why he is not an appropriate person.

"TheModergator" has recently vanished from the staff page, along with simbathelion. Hendikins has posted a journal mentioning why he quit:

Just a cross-post since the FA staff can't delete it here.

Since it is now out in the open (lulz, vivisector, stated on user's admin account, etc.), I'm going to say it in as many words - the direct appointment of Chase to the FA admin team was the final straw that resulted in my stepping down from the team.

Edit for the lulz folks: Sorry guys, I haven't posted in that thread. And I didn't hang around to see if I got along with the guy. This wasn't "I don't get along with this person *ragequit*", it was "I object to this person being here to begin with, based on their history. As this matter is not open to discussion, I'm out of here."

Place your bets folks. Do they remove the journal or ban my account, and do they claim "leaking private information" (hint: none of this is private), "inciting drama", or something else?

Edit #2: Removed as a call out journal. Interesting...

Edit #3: The flushing out of my account there was my own action, not administrative action - just before anyone starts wondering. Yeah, now it has progressed to "ragequit" (well, more along the lines of "fuck 'em, but close enough), not a month ago when the step down happened...

Regards,
Hendikins

^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/12396

And he had this to say on lulz.net, in response to someone defending the re-appointment of Chase:

Yeah, I tend to be a handful when confronted with excessive stupidity, and I'm not a "yes man". I also tend to work better in environments where all staff are valued team members whose input is listened to.

Needless to say, once Sciggles started throwing her weight around my days were numbered anyway. This just made me leave sooner rather than later.

-- Hendikins

^
http://lulz.net/furi/res/2566075.html#2566936

Summercat had this to say (in the same thread):

The worst you guys came up with was that I'm socially awkward, and I like to help out instead of enjoying things. Not exactly anything... damning. Right now I'm not ready to talk about anything, as there's still a chance that things might be worked out. I'm hopeful for that, because I like to help. I like to help out. Sure, I make mistakes. I'm not a perfect being, after all. I'm usually* willing to listen when I'm wrong about items. *I've got hot-button issues. Won't deny that. That said, I'm not saying anything else of substance at this time.

But a local furry responded to him:

I believe the actual allegation was "you suck up to any furry in any position of authority, regardless of how trivial, in order to have recognition, your name attached to the event." There's a difference between being "involved" and being a sycophant, you're the latter.

And you do. At Califur, at the PS house, you suck up to that OggyWolf girl who is in charge of the so cal furs group all the time... You do more "white-knighting" than actual helping. I think you even suck up to RainbowJokerHound, for fucks sake... and apparently you're still sucking up to Neer and Co, according to the above post.

Why don't you try living life on your own terms for once?

I, and I think a lot of other so cal furs think you're a total brown-noser and for that reason, we have no respect for you, even if you're otherwise a nice person.

53

FA Obsession Collection / Re: FA's new "Commission Info" tab is released half-finished and broken

« on: April 02, 2013, 04:48:48 am »

Is this why the site has been extremely slow again? It's taking anywhere between 30 seconds and three minutes to load a page, and it's been like this all day. (Pages usually load instantly for me)

No. There's another issue (a bug) that's causing sporadic slowdowns, and is something we're trying to fix. The cause of it has so far been illusive. We know what the problem is, but not what causes it. We're trying to hunt it down.

Can we disable it if we don't offer commissions?

Eventually, yes. Not currently.

Certain characters like > < & and ' aren't shoing up right, also I've suddenly lost the ability to add things to it :o

We're working on fixing the special characters.

We were fixing an issue in which you could use other people's submissions as a thumbnail. May have been due to that. If you had thumbnails that did not belong to you at the time it was causing issues. Being repaired.

Now when I leave the "Submission ID:" section blank it won't allow me to post it because it thinks I'm using someone else's image.

I like it, only problem I have is the inability to edit prices without having to delete the whole commission type and posting it again.

Things that will be worked on in the near future. =3

an edit button to edit the whole image and description of one of the commision prices without having to delete it completely?

In time, yes.

^All from the news post: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4493430

54

FA Obsession Collection / Re: How To Train Your New Admin

« on: March 10, 2013, 05:31:27 pm »

Onta posted a journal complaining about the Avatar removal. From the comments on that journal:

A lot of the new admins actually have no clue what is serious and what isn't. I have had a lot of 'issues' or 'warnings by admins' come up that I had to personally address and hold their hand with. It seems like a lot of the admins really haven't gotten training or clarifications with the rules.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4419445/#cid:32315358

Dragoneer's wife, Sciggles, is the "team lead" who is in charge of training admins. Just as Sciggles expected that FA users pay for her wedding with donations, she is now expecting them to train the new admins for her.

Also, Dragoneer responded to a journal about the icon removal and didn't even realize an admin did it:



http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4421414/#cid:32324306

55

Scandal! / Bad Dragon bad PR on twitter or "Rubber dog vagina maker in misogyny row"

« on: March 08, 2013, 01:37:00 pm »

Today is international women's day, this is how Bad Dragon celebrated it:

56

FA Obsession Collection / Re: Dragoneer makes sockpuppets, on FA & elsewhere, to troll and talk about himself

« on: February 28, 2013, 02:46:21 pm »

Recently challenged about this on Twitter, he dodges the question:



Dragoneer, a few hours ago at time of posting, deleted the comments of and banned a person from FA who mentioned this matter:

57

FA Obsession Collection / Re: FA Begs for Hardware to Ameliorate Sloppy Code

« on: February 27, 2013, 03:35:44 am »

It's not even half of the final list for what we still need to buy on our side.

^
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4383428#cid:32088938

Many of the responses so far doesn't seem to be very positive. a selection:

Im just going to laugh because there is nothing wrong with the server, more the actual coding of the website is done so inefficiently that it requires a high powered server to handle it.
I was expecting a new UI by January/Feb and we are at the end of febuary and once again like all the other times...nothing seems to be appearing.

If this site falls through, the last thing I'll do is donate to it to ensure it's shitty system stays up and running. Let's be realistic.

Will this help fix the shitty coding as well?

I can understand the costs of upgrades, but for a site like this, I have my doubts as to why these upgrades are even needed right now. IMO, focus should be given to site performance software wise and if that isn't enough, then focus on hardware. Software updating typically costs less than a dime and just requires a few hours of focus and analysis on the overall system itself. Hardware migrations and updates should be considered a last resort, not an instinctive decision.

For some people FA has been a good site to them but i happen to be one of many that FA has not been kind to and wouldn't care to donate to this site even if it was going down the toilet.

how is new hardware gonna help a site that is still ancient when compared to its competitors? 

that new furry and those 399 alternative accounts people sign up for because folder support still hasn't been rolled out must be a real burden.

I understand that good hardware is part of successfully running a site of this size but I do have to wonder if the hardware issues aren't partially due to the way it is abused daily by how overly inflated the system is. I would love to see how much the overheads come down if the new site ever appears.

why pay for a site that can hardly maintain itself staff wise and user base wise. Cause I sure don't want to spend my money which could go towards my bills and crap for a site that can't even do it's listed proper functions not to mention someone who doesn't do what they are supposed to do.

I wish you didn't support the things you do.

The new FA admins are flailing about. This was one of them explaining why other websites manage to run better than FA:

Other sites had the benefit of an arbitrary number of years of technology advancing. What you can buy today versus what you could buy 5 years ago for the same price is not fully comparable.

^
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4383428#cid:32090137

"We're working on it":

I don't know the details because I'm not involved in the project, however I can say for certain that the new UI is well underway and has been for a while.
Likewise for other requests and such, several features are being developed by the tech team. But at the same time they are working on sorting out the issues you get while running a major website, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff that they have to do.

^
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4383428#cid:32089534

from what I have seen and heard etc etc, regardless on what they have or haven't done in the past, 'neer etc is fixing things up and trying to get things as good as he can now. Regardless of whats been done in the past, that's what he is trying to do now.

^
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4383428#cid:32089846

You'd think new admins were deliberately chosen to be ones who hadn't been on the site long so that they wouldn't know FAs history.

58

Scandal! / Re: Security Scandal: Trouble at the Furry Convention

« on: February 26, 2013, 04:11:52 am »

Furfright now responds:

Improvements & Feedback:
After a con people often post accounts in their personal blogs, and occasionally someone will say they didn't have a good experience. Because blogs are sometimes overdramatized and contain misinformation, and because they're scattered all over the internet and don't reach the convention staff, they're not an effective tool for addressing real problems. We want to make your con better, and in order for us to do that you need to contact us directly! Unfortunately no one has contacted the convention since last year's con so we can gather information and make improvements. We reply to and save all con-related emails, and have for the past 10 years, so all correspondence is documented in order for us to gather facts, compile feedback, and fix things. So please, if you were at the convention and have ideas on how we can improve, CONTACT THE CONVENTION DIRECTLY through the furfright.org website (be sure to include your legal name, mailing address, and an accurate, detailed account of any issues or improvements). Issues/improvements are handled by a board of directors, not just one or two people, so it's vital you contact the convention directly so we can gather information and act. Just go to the "Contact Us" link and drop us an email. It's so easy!

Over the past 10 years FurFright has prided itself on putting our attendees first. Whether it's attendees or staff, we deal with people as individuals and work to improve your convention experience and make sure everyone attending is treated with the utmost kindness and respect. But talk is cheap. The proof is always in giving you the best con we can year after year.

^
http://furfright.livejournal.com/479029.html

Belicbear, who I think is convention chair, had this to say:

For reasons that are my own (i.e. not dictated by recent events) this account has been permanently closed.

All future art, photography, music, journals, etc will be posted here:

Weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/profile/belicbear
SoFurry: http://belic-bear.sofurry.com

I'll miss all the wonderful friends I've made here, but I hope to see and keep in touch with you on Weasyl and SoFurry. ;o)

***PLEASE DO NOT NOTE ME OR COMMENT HERE. Nothing will be read or replied to***

When an individual bashes a person or group of people, or intentionally creates drama, or is too weak and cowardly to do the right thing, or feels they're above rules and the law, or constantly paints themselves as the "victim", you should stop and take a hard look at their credibility before you take their word as truth. Perhaps this person has a long documented history of lying, spouting endless excuses and empty promises to cover their appalling behavior, a gross lack of moral fiber, and that their actions are driven by ego, weakness, selfishness, petty vindictiveness, or worse. If a person exhibits this behavior over and over again, for years and years, that should tell you something. People who are constantly at the heart of drama are there for a reason. They create it. Instead of instantly buying into all their hysteria and insincere damage control, like mindless sheep, get up off your ass, get the facts, and use the brain you were supposedly born with to make up your own mind. We all have a choice in what we tolerate and accept.

^
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/belicbear

59

FA Obsession Collection / Re: FA's Horrible Admins (AKA Death of FA)

« on: February 25, 2013, 01:07:43 pm »

He is referring to Princess Piche and Sciggles:



Someone on lulz had this to say:

60

Scandal! / Re: Mitch Beiro in jail on child porn charges

« on: February 20, 2013, 04:11:54 am »

A 47-year-old security guard who was caught with child pornography on his computer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and lifetime probation

^
http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/courthouse/sex-offender-sentenced-to-prison-and-probation/article_40a834f0-7a16-11e2-8490-001a4bcf887a.html

With respect to that image, Mitch Beiro's fame (previous to this) comes comes from his participation in a faux marriage service wherein he 'married' a cartoon character called 'Minerva Mink'. He drew that picture to celebrate the occasion, a decade after it occurred.