FA Banning Cub Porn Again?

[threadshitter]

Why aren't these same people bringing up FA's recent revision that disallows photographs of non-anthro-related possessions?  Photography's an expression of art, am I right?  They want everybody to speak up when they come for the cub porn lovers, but when they come for the people with photographs of stuff they own in their gallery, they won't speak up because they're not interested in anything without prepubescent private parts depicted somewhere within.

I think everyone kind of knows the only reason for that is to keep FA from becoming a myspace. Even the stern language about not posting collections hasn't stopped people from putting up "here's all my video games", or throwing in a plush and calling it furry. Really now though, what's left in terms of photography if only things anthro related are allowed? No wildlife photos? Nothing artistic for it's own sake?

Nope, just a lot of drunk fursuiters. Oh, but they can't fuck.

I report shitty photo uploads on a regular basis. I usually contact the users and remind them of the AUP. Most of the time they tell me to fuck off, or mumble-scream with caps on about how a shitty blurry low-rez photo taken of their xbox is "art"  Most of the time, if the user uploads one shitty picture, there is a ton more in their account.

[Conan]

Witchiebunny's an admin again. Her suspension lasted less than a week. Already back on Dragoneer's good side for helping with the trouble tickets that he was whining about earlier. Coupled with his response when asked what people need to do to get kicked off of FA staff, it appears you can get away with anything as long as you take away work that Dragoneer would have to do.

Stay classy, FA.

[LordNagetiere]

I report shitty photo uploads on a regular basis. I usually contact the users and remind them of the AUP. Most of the time they tell me to fuck off, or mumble-scream with caps on about how a shitty blurry low-rez photo taken of their xbox is "art"  Most of the time, if the user uploads one shitty picture, there is a ton more in their account.

To be fair, I would tell you to fuck off if you're playing pretend moderator too. The fact the response to shitposting photos is to ban virtually all photos is just a fucktarded move though.

[threadshitter]

To be fair, I would tell you to fuck off if you're playing pretend moderator too. The fact the response to shitposting photos is to ban virtually all photos is just a fucktarded move though.

Again, it has everything to do with lack of any real content control. Reporting items that violate the AUP when you actually don't care about it is just a fun way to waste the admins time and irritate people.
And because the site is a free-for-all,with no gateway checking the quality of submissions, even mass banning of items won't work because there is simply not enough people to police the site. Real content control starts with limiting who can upload material and how much they can.




 

[ProvincialTwit]

The problem there is that FA is more Facebook than art site, perhaps by design and perhaps not.  It would require a drastic amount of code rewriting to differentiate different user types into artists/contributors and mere viewers, and considering how much the fandom is like one gigantic incestuous popularity contest, there is quite literally no way they could ever begin screening users who want to contribute poorly drawn dongs and/or poorly written fan fiction in any way that could be considered 'fair' or 'unbiased'.

I mean, remember the SCFA/Yerf.com?  They had a hard enough task just screening 'clean' art based on subjective criteria. Can you imagine trying to screen some of the godawful porn currently sitting up there?  Or, god forbid, some of the writing?

OTOH, didn't the VCL have some baseline requirement for talent and skill before they would grant an account?  Not that Draggy would ever take advice from Ch'marr.

[threadshitter]

The problem there is that FA is more Facebook than art site, perhaps by design and perhaps not.  It would require a drastic amount of code rewriting to differentiate different user types into artists/contributors and mere viewers, and considering how much the fandom is like one gigantic incestuous popularity contest, there is quite literally no way they could ever begin screening users who want to contribute poorly drawn dongs and/or poorly written fan fiction in any way that could be considered 'fair' or 'unbiased'.

I mean, remember the SCFA/Yerf.com?  They had a hard enough task just screening 'clean' art based on subjective criteria. Can you imagine trying to screen some of the godawful porn currently sitting up there?  Or, god forbid, some of the writing?

OTOH, didn't the VCL have some baseline requirement for talent and skill before they would grant an account?  Not that Draggy would ever take advice from Ch'marr.

As it looks now, http://us.vclart.net/wiki/Apply, VCL screens who can join and upload. I have no clue how successful that is.

eh..http://us-p.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/ArtisticLibido/workout-ink.jpg

Yerf tried very hard to be THE quality furry art site. Exclusivity without revenue to support it equals death.


 

[ProvincialTwit]

Yerf tried very hard to be THE quality furry art site. Exclusivity without revenue to support it equals death.

Yes, but Yerf did have quite a bit of donation revenue behind it.  That and Dingo was making ridiculously fat bank from the dot com boom back then.  Then the hard drive (supposedly) crashed, and Dingo took the money and blew it on drugs.  Allegedly.  That'd be a good topic to research and write an article about.

[LordNagetiere]

OTOH, didn't the VCL have some baseline requirement for talent and skill before they would grant an account?  Not that Draggy would ever take advice from Ch'marr.

VCL also allows people who aren't members to view smut. FA's policy of requiring membership for adult access would seem to collide with the exclusive membership approach. If I as joe smo furry can't log on and get off, why bother with it? That and VCL would let people in if they knew people, or whatnot. Hell Urban Hermit was on there! The last thing FA needs is to become a club with a bouncer only allowing in their little cadre only.

Really, if VCL had a comments section for people to gush over how great x, y, or z was, it would have had a much better shot at relevancy in the fandom.

[ProvincialTwit]

VCL also allows people who aren't members to view smut. FA's policy of requiring membership for adult access would seem to collide with the exclusive membership approach. If I as joe smo furry can't log on and get off, why bother with it?

Well, yes, exactly.  Really I'm amazed VCL is still able to get away with not requiring accounts to view smut; I assume there's some little ass-covering "18 and over only" disclaimer tucked away somewhere on the site.  FA would either need to drop non-artist accounts entirely, or set up some tiered system for submissions.  Neither action is very likely, since, again, FA is more Facebook than art archive, in that all users are 'equal' in their abilities to post so-called 'art', yammer on about whatever in the LJ-esque journals, and fav/watch/e-blowjob others.

That and VCL would let people in if they knew people, or whatnot. Hell Urban Hermit was on there! The last thing FA needs is to become a club with a bouncer only allowing in their little cadre only.

Which again is a point already made above in the thread.  As noted before, content control can only be obtained by limiting who can post material, but considering the incestuous popularity contest social structure of furries, objective moderation is literally an impossibility.  Even moreso considering the idiots running FA, whose actions seem more geared toward generating drama than actual moderation of a website.

Really, if VCL had a comments section for people to gush over how great x, y, or z was, it would have had a much better shot at relevancy in the fandom.

VCL with comments would be like a *chan with persistence.  Allowing any form of commenting from viewers on pretty much any furry-related site pretty much -requires- everyone to sign up for an account first.  If only because 99.95% of 'furry webmasters' don't understand the concept of firewalls or htaccess.

[MazelTovCocktail]

The problem there is that FA is more Facebook than art site, perhaps by design and perhaps not. 

Whichever is the case, I'd say they'd be smart to keep it that way.  FA has to be the most popular furry site by a longshot, and a great deal of that is simply because it offers a form of social networking for furries.  I bet if you could determine the number of watches because someone likes someone else's artwork versus the number of watches between people who simply know each other, the numbers wouldn't be too far off.  Aside from that, if art's the main criterion, why have journals?  Sure, they have the fact that people have to sign up for an account to look at porn going for them, but if the furries really need the jerk-off fuel, they can go to Fchan and never have to enter login information. 

[threadshitter]

The last thing FA needs is to become a club with a bouncer only allowing in their little cadre only.

So whats wrong with creating a tiered system where paid members get prioritized front page time, more account space,no upload size limitations, etc?

 

[ProvincialTwit]

Nothing, aside from that it would never work.

Objective content control would still be nonexistent - any pencil-chewing troglodyte with a few bucks could still buy themselves a 'premium' account.  And any account holder who dares cross the mod/admin staff would likely find themselves banned or at least lose their paid privileges.  Plus, they'd still need a reliable payment processor, some kind of billing system to keep track of it all, and a significant overhaul of the site itself to support tiered users.  Which would require competent leadership and competent developers.

It's far too ambitious a proposition to ever work. 

[Dr. Dos]

This is why the plan is that FA donors get Furcadia quality badges for donating! Honors and benefits.

[LordNagetiere]

Staff cocksucker wings... for life! Only 299.99. You pay the bills so they can play TF2 in confidence.

[Jim Demintia]

Somewhere, maybe here, someone used the example of Something Awful as what might eventually happen to FA. The long and short of it was that SA pretty much couldn't sustain itself with the amount of work required to keep it running, and no one was ponying up donations and Lowtax or whoever didn't feel like subsidizing the user base. So they started charging for access to the forums, and minimized the loss of existing users by grandfathering accounts. It didn't work well, but it apparently generated enough income to sustain the site. Or something. I don't remember exactly.

But I think it's reasonable to expect that at some point, despite Dragoneer's protests to the contrary, that FA will have some kind of subscription. I kind of doubt that will be access to the site itself, because that would never work. Everything would end up on Fchan or e621, as someone already pointed out. It could be premium features, it could be some kind of donor-perk scheme, who knows. It's not exactly easy to figure out how to "monetize" (god I hate that word) a site, and even some of the best and brightest with millions of VC dollars can't figure it out. While I think we'll see something, the jury is clearly out on what it will be or how successful or sustainable it will be.

Princess Piche isn't exactly a Harvard dropout with VCs begging to give him giant sacks with dollar signs on them.

[loki]

Well, yes, exactly.  Really I'm amazed VCL is still able to get away with not requiring accounts to view smut; I assume there's some little ass-covering "18 and over only" disclaimer tucked away somewhere on the site.  FA would either need to drop non-artist accounts entirely, or set up some tiered system for submissions.  Neither action is very likely, since, again, FA is more Facebook than art archive, in that all users are 'equal' in their abilities to post so-called 'art', yammer on about whatever in the LJ-esque journals, and fav/watch/e-blowjob others.

A lot of porn sites don't filter anything based on age; don't see why FA would either - then again porn makes big bucks unlike FA....

[ProvincialTwit]

Somewhere, maybe here, someone used the example of Something Awful as what might eventually happen to FA. The long and short of it was that SA pretty much couldn't sustain itself with the amount of work required to keep it running, and no one was ponying up donations and Lowtax or whoever didn't feel like subsidizing the user base. So they started charging for access to the forums, and minimized the loss of existing users by grandfathering accounts. It didn't work well, but it apparently generated enough income to sustain the site. Or something. I don't remember exactly.

It's astounding how you managed to get not just some, but EVERY part of this completely wrong.  Great job, go hog wild!

But I think it's reasonable to expect that at some point, despite Dragoneer's protests to the contrary, that FA will have some kind of subscription. I kind of doubt that will be access to the site itself, because that would never work. Everything would end up on Fchan or e621, as someone already pointed out. It could be premium features, it could be some kind of donor-perk scheme, who knows. It's not exactly easy to figure out how to "monetize" (god I hate that word) a site, and even some of the best and brightest with millions of VC dollars can't figure it out. While I think we'll see something, the jury is clearly out on what it will be or how successful or sustainable it will be.

It's more realistic to assume some other site will come along in the future with this sort of model to usurp the FA throne, as it were.  A 'facebook' to replace the aging, flawed, and bloated 'myspace', so to speak.  The odds against FA actually managing to reinvent itself in a meaningful manner, with competent staff to manage the place are so astronomical, even mathematicians who study infinities are like 'damn son that's a big number'.

t loki fix your quote tags, faggot.  Also it's pretty much commonly required by law in most Western nations these days to have at least an '18 and over only' disclaimer on any website with adult material.

[Conan]

Princess Piche isn't exactly a Harvard dropout with VCs begging to give him giant sacks with dollar signs on them.

Unfortunately there are several furries who are.

I'm under the belief that Dragoneer will do nothing to harm the status quo, and that in the event FA isn't making enough to operate he will work himself deep in debt to keep it alive and keep himself relevant. All so when the Repo men come he can shout "I SINK MY OWN TIME AND MONEY INTO THIS COMMUNITY AND THIS IS THE THANKS I GET IN RETURN?"

[LordNagetiere]

Somewhere, maybe here, someone used the example of Something Awful as what might eventually happen to FA. The long and short of it was that SA pretty much couldn't sustain itself with the amount of work required to keep it running, and no one was ponying up donations and Lowtax or whoever didn't feel like subsidizing the user base. So they started charging for access to the forums, and minimized the loss of existing users by grandfathering accounts. It didn't work well, but it apparently generated enough income to sustain the site. Or something. I don't remember exactly.

And it's all bullshit. They double dip with ad revenue and revenue from accounts/avatars/whatnot. Especially when you consider they have a fairly crappy frontpage and just a modified forum software holding the majority of the site together. Oh, and don't even start with volume of traffic or bandwidth excuses. 4chan is doing just fine with pretty much the same ads. Dammit J-list, I don't even want a friend in Japan!

As for FA, the way the fandom usually works is any 'community' site is little more than an ego operation for the handful of people running it. Unless it's not a furry site originally, like livejournal. Things get replaced, like how FA replaced Sheezyart. Maybe eventually FA will go away, or kick on as a living dinosaur like so many before it, but he'll try anything socially 'safe' first to avoid that. I kind of agree with Conan, he's willing to pay to cart 2's useless ass out to FA:U for no other reason than to have all the bells and whistles for his own little shin-dig.

FA is simply put, the biggest internet phenomena the furry fandom has ever gotten into that was a home brew. Sure, it's a clone of a clone of Deviantart with about 10% of the functionality, and in large part the popularity is due to the snowball effect of everything from the Furnation era passing away and the influx of kids who identify as furry like it's a culture/fashion fad a-la 'emo', but it's not going away anytime soon. It has it's own con for fuck's sake. VCL never could claim that. The cub porn hubbub was over lawsuit potential, not them failing to meet the bills. If anything, failing to meet the bills would be mismanagement and ad related more than anything.

The real problem with FA, the thing that WILL eventually be the linchpin of it's own mortality, is that it offers very little in the way of service. At least it offers virtually nothing someone else can't do, if not do better (and for a while that was the Inkbunny pitch). What it offers is the people who are there. The come because so-and-so is over there. Which also means in theory when the numbers thin, it will domino into an exodus.

It really is funny to think of the entirety of the fandom as a band of nomads, with an unrelated landowner declaring himself king when the tents go up and then retiring with a bitter cadre when the last caravan pulls away, over and over again.

[Jim Demintia]

It's astounding how you managed to get not just some, but EVERY part of this completely wrong.  Great job, go hog wild!

Well, I apologize for not being an expert on Something Awful.