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Our old friend "Yiffstar" is no more, and good riddance. The name was appalling.

In its place we now have the snappy web 2.0 friendly SoFurry. It's run by the same people, so we can't really expect too much. Indeed, that's about what we get: something completely unnavigable, prone to failing gracelessly, and all-in-all, amateur.

http://clanspum.net/~pi/sofurry/ contains screenshots of how this thing looks under two different browsers; it's completely bonered in both.

<Kindrift> also maybe this is just me using a standards compliant browser but you can't actually click on any of the text in the results, you have to click on the border
<Kindrift> here's a story result
<Kindrift> don't click on the title, doesn't work
<Kindrift> click on the space around the title
<Kindrift> and how in fucking hell is this sorted?
<Kindrift> this means I actually cannot view any art on the site in the default mode for listing art

I had a different problem from Kindrift. I just can't easily select any text in the list modes; it's either select the whole cell or select nothing.

For all of the hype they're kicking up about groups, that's probably the most horrifically fucked part of the site:
<Kindrift> I've noticed that pictures in groups might not load for no apparent reason
<Kindrift> oh pictures in groups are often just uh not found
<Kindrift> Not Found
<Kindrift> The requested URL was not found on this server.
<Kindrift> Servage.net Clustered Webhosting running enhanced Apache Webserver
<Pi> there is no useful way to sort groups apparently?
<Kindrift> none at all
<Kindrift> once you are in a group's forum, there is no link to go back to the main group... or even see what the group is called
<Kindrift> "rooms" and "users" have no icons for them
<Kindrift> there are FIVE groups for "Intersex Males" created by one user

If something is tagged mature, you can't upload it until you tag it with 'a gender tag', which isn't well defined. It takes a long round-trip to find that out, unfortunately. You couldn't maybe, i dunno, check it on the client side like you're doing everything else?

The URLs are almost right compared to the old site, but it's kind of stupid to carry information like the user's selected tab around as part of it.

Long story short: SoFurry is so fucking furry (whereby I mean "SoFurry is a completely mediocre effort unnecessarily hailed like it's the second coming of god") it hurts. Good to see the users have their priorities straight, too:

Im confused I don't know how to just view M/M any hints? xP

Oh yeah, and all of the comments have #msgWHATEVER direct links, but no way to get to them except by viewing the source.

The twitter feed for #sofurry is a general bitchfest. There's also their Mantis install, which is pretty much the worst possible interface for taking user complaints.

Great job, guys. You deserve a pat on the back.

Oh my god.

There is seriously a feature on this site called

SPOOGE CUMS


Guess they had to name something with a retarded furry neologism.

A predictable back and forth between myself and alex cross on the twitterverse.

<alexconline> It just cracks me up. Someone posts a story on @furrynews about #SoFurry, complaining about a custom-coded site on pre-packaged forum.
<@two_pi_r> @alexconline as if that somehow negates the complaints
<@alexconline> @two_pi_r Actually, it does. Simple Machine Forums was not created by you so you don't have to account for bugs and errors.

So, we're not allowed to complain about their custom-coded site because we're not using a custom coded site. That's not a really convincing argument. SMF works, and someone is accountable for its bugs and errors. Of course, what's going on here is that SoFurry doesn't work very well, and he's responsible for its bugs and errors, so he's got to find some way to defend himself without admitting that.

<@alexconline> @two_pi_r It's probably not a smart idea to complain about #SoFurry by using doctored images. Site works in IE8, Chrome, but not Opera.

Next up, we have the usual ad-hominem attack, claiming that I'm a malicious individual and produced fake images. Yeah, or it could be that his testing environment is different from, say, my viewing environment, and that his site doesn't degrade gracefully. I'm sure it's much more reasonable to believe his point of view, though!

<@alexconline> @two_pi_r I used Chrome to do half the bug testing and I used it around the time you uploaded those screenshots as a matter of fact.
<@alexconline> @two_pi_r Were there problems? Sure, but not to the extent that was shown in your screens. Nice try, sir. Good show.

Oops, backpedaling. Apparently it doesn't work right, but it's not as fucked as I'm making it out to be, now.

<@alexconline> @two_pi_r I couldn't emulate the same results you had tonight. Besides, when there are bugs, there are fixes.

There's some more inane babble back and forth, including me asking just how long their shit has been in development.

<@alexconline> @two_pi_r I think that you should hold off on your criticism only because we're actively fixing a lot of these problems.
<@alexconline> @two_pi_r About a year. Let me ask you something. Have you come across a bug-less video game after it was released?
<alexconline> Video games take months, even years to develop. There's beta testing, but people find problems at the RC phase.

Yes, and the analogy breaks down right here.

Video games go through QA and usability testing before they're unleashed on an unwitting public, and generally at least look like someone's tried to interact with them. SoFurry just kinda went *bang* and replaced yiffstar one day, and is glaringly difficult to interact with; it doesn't behave like a web application should. But because this is how (he imagines) video games are developed, I should shut up, since they are also trying to fix it. Perfectly logical!

Still, are any of us surprised?

Your anonymous jizz isn't so anonymous.

^http://sofurry.com/threadview?threadid=60&pagenum=16



Alex Cross, he who bandied words with Pi, has this to say in his journal re the first few days of so furry:

When the countdown ended and SoFurry was launched in its buggy glory, a lot of people said, "Wait, what the heck is this?" and it is disorienting. There is one thing that many furries don't like: change. Changing the layout, the design and the likeness is like dropping the atom bomb and everyone is caught in the radioactive fallout -- and if there are bugs, the claws come out and there's chaos in the streets. This is a natural reaction, which I totally understand, but keep in mind that a bug today may not be a bug a few hours later or it will be fixed tomorrow or the problem will be minimalized to a point that your experience isn't hindered by it.

[...]

Do your mental state a favor and let the site grow. Let the site evolve. Yes, it's true that SoFurry had been in development for a year and there were things that should've been taken care of before hand; it's also true that there will always be a set of problems that require solutions.

http://sofurry.com/page/114548

In a journal a few days earlier:

As a graphic designer, I find the layout to be chaotic. Too many things are happening on the screen. [...] My suggestion would be to merge all the submission elements into one lump [...] I would make the logbook sidebar a collapsible unit [...] the forums should look and act differently [...]

Nothing else that's substantial comes to mind as far as improvement goes

http://sofurry.com/page/112925/user

From the first sentence of the WikiFur article:

SoFurry is a furry website "based on Yiffstar, but expanding to non-adult content and with emphasis on user communities."

Yes, the screenshots in this thread show just how family friendly this site is.

Thread bumped mainly to point out that hey, SoFurry has security issues now!

Thread bumped mainly to point out that hey, SoFurry has security issues now!

You've got to be some kind of spectacular fuckup to have the same bug in two different codebases.

Of course, they're probably going to be doing their salting entirely incorrectly, because, yes, bersl2, being a furry is highly correlated with "not knowing what the fuck you're doing". Whine more.

Looks like hackers got tired of Twitter, and are now moving onto bigger and better things.

Wow, you gotta be whacked in the head to think that SoFurry is a bigger deal than Twitter.

Looks like hackers got tired of Twitter, and are now moving onto bigger and better things.

Wow, you gotta be whacked in the head to think that SoFurry is a bigger deal than Twitter.

For the sake of benefit of the doubt, I'm going to assume that Aeturnus's comment was meant sarcastically.