FurAffinity: Six Years of Mediocrity

[Conan]

FurAffinity turned six today, and Dragoneer's celebration post (when he wasn't plugging FurAffinity: United) featured even more promises for a better FA. Again, we here about a great new version of the site (no, not Ferrox again, but this time just "FurAffinity 3.0"), new features like a "commissions and ratings system", the long-promised new UI and the hosting service that's been expected for nearly a year.

Not too long ago I set out to document just how many times FA has done just this: made announcements for something that never came to be. I found around 10 without really trying. A simple search of "coming, soon, shortly, future" on the FurAffinity Forums and filtered to only include Dragoneer's posts. Very few of the relevant results have actually been seen through to completion. Remember that this list only includes things I found on the forums. There could be more on sites like LiveJournal, IRC, and FA itself.

http://forums.vivisector.org/FAtimeline.pdf

I've also included what I feel are significant events in FA's history, and a timeline of how many servers they had. FA may run on more hardware today than it did three or five years ago, but very little has changed. I think my favorite of all the failures is the CD project, which Dragoneer claimed was being held up due to a lack of cover art. Yak summed it up nicely (emphasis added):

Okay, now this is just beyond silly.

This thread is six months old, enough to finish a little playlist considering the content is actually as your disposal, Dragoneer.
It wouldn't be as bad as it is if you didn't say you had the CD finalized already, and only cover art's all that remains. I'm sorry, but Fur Affinity is an art site, and the only thing that's delaying the project is cover art?

You've missed a perfect, probably the best ever chance to sell these things at FA: United and get some money back from all the expenses, and probably have some left to cover that hard work you were supposed to be putting in it.
Or simply give them away as a promotional move, in the way Ubuntu's been handed out to people everywhere.

Whatever you'd've chosen as your action we all would be fine with, even an apology and an explanation that this will never happen would suffice - but for crying out loud don't leave this thread agonizing for so god damned long.

But i digress *shrug*

Dragoneer never apologized. The next and last post in the thread was someone withdrawing their submissions to the project.

FA. FA never changes.

[Freehaven]

Yeah, I'm pretty much in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp when it comes to FA 3.0.

[Conan]

Some great things in the celebration thread:

Yes, we were talking about that. Folders need part of a file system revamp that will have FA offline for a few days, so trying to lump that in altogether is beneficial for the site.

I don't understand
do you think you need to put the submission files in actual folders?

[Pi]

<_fox> What's this thing about coders for FA 3.0?
<_fox> Sounds like it would be fun
<&yak[work]> Yah. I just need to finish setting up proper backups and damage control tools so that any and all shenenigans (that will inevitably happen) can be restored from.

I still don't understand why he's so worried about this. Are they going to be working on the production dataset? Backing up your test playground shouldn't be a higher priority than, say, protecting your users (you know, the COMMUNITY) from the "shenanigans" that are still possible on the prod site!

<&yak[work]> I've been converting it to MVC all this time and at this point it's 80-85% converted. But that's not the main problem. I'm sitting on a legacy database archetecture (and all the current data in it's current flawed model) and legacy filesystem organization. These thw things... really need to change before any serious work is to be attempted. It's just a PITA
<&yak[work]> I can't even do file backups properly because of how the files are stored :/
<_fox> I noticed the stuff in the UCP about file directories
<_fox> Are the art files actually stored in the paths that compose a facdn url, or is that wrewritten?
<_fox> rewritten*
<&yak[work]> It's being rewritten, but to a similar hierarchy. FA's data storage is pretty much a flat /art directory with a bajillion of directories with user account names. I guess alkora initially didn't plan for more then 32k users or, which is more belivable, didn't know about filesystem limitations.
<&yak[work]> So at this point I have like 12 /art directories with symlinks from 11 of them back in /art
<&yak[work]> and every once in a while I have to add a new one

You've been hobbling along with a filesystem that can only fit 32k files per directory all this time? (ps: this is tunable with mkfs, if you know what you're doing) And now you're trying to fix the architecture at the same time that you're working on the UI? Good fucking luck with that.

Hey, I seem to recall that someone whose name rhymes with "Tee vee" managed to deal with the "legacy database architecture and filesystem organization".

Also I think this explains what Dragoneer is trying to get across with the 'folder' thing. I bet he thinks that user-facing 'folders' on the site will fix this problem.

Finally, one would think that once you had to do this nasty kludge with symlinks twice, that maybe something was wrong and you should look into it, instead of letting it grow to be a 12-directory problem. Just saying.

<&yak[work]> At this point however I really could use an UI designer. I need somebody to finish that template set for all other pages so I could begin to port it into FA
<_fox> Oh, I though FA had a UI designer already?
<&yak[work]> Need more/more reliable.

we;lp

[Eevee]

I'm also fairly certain that FA has no backups of the actual art; hence their inability to restore the actual contents of wiped galleries.

[Fiz]

<&yak[work]> At this point however I really could use an UI designer. I need somebody to finish that template set for all other pages so I could begin to port it into FA
<_fox> Oh, I though FA had a UI designer already?
<&yak[work]> Need more/more reliable.

wh

I'm also fairly certain that FA has no backups of the actual art; hence their inability to restore the actual contents of wiped galleries.

Yea I think one of the admins admitted to this. Submissions aren't backed up, just the text data. Have they even reposted the back up data for the people who's stuff was wiped yet?

[Eevee]

Yea I think one of the admins admitted to this. Submissions aren't backed up, just the text data. Have they even reposted the back up data for the people who's stuff was wiped yet?

They should be restored by this weekend.

So, no.

[Fiz]

So, no.

Welp.

WE'RE WORKING ON IT, GUYS!!!

[Pi]

<Ice-Wolf> Yak: as for the new codebase, it's not in the best of conditions right now if only becasue not much happened with it after I was relocated to Europe, and unable to prod people.
<Ice-Wolf> I've been back on it in recent weeks, and have tasks other quality coders to some tasks (if they get to it great, if not, well, not making vain assumptions anymore.
<Ice-Wolf> Though I do need to get some changes in git pushedup D:
<Ice-Wolf> Motivating people on a free project is hard when everyone has their own full-time jobs to worry about, and life events :|
<Ice-Wolf> I know crashing nmy motorcycle on the interstate killed my motivation to work on FA for a few months <_<;

They have one template, no way to slot it into their existing broken architecture, a new codebase that's starting to get bitrot... but they're announcing future announcements of amazing plans!!

[Fiz]

I think my favorite of all the failures is the CD project, which Dragoneer claimed was being held up due to a lack of cover art.

Actually, this reminds me of another "contest" sort of thing they did.

They had an art contest type of thing for a variety of art to be shown on error/upgrade/etc. pages. There was no real "prize", except maybe having your art selected for one of the pages. Plenty of people entered, but no winners were ever announced afaik and none of the art was used, save for one person's picture became an avatar for the Fender Account (if you can remember, the one of Fender holding a big wrench) and my entry was used as an icon for the now abandoned Ferrox twitter account.

Probably not major enough to go on that timeline, but just another "goes to show you" type of thing, I suppose.

[loki]

I can't wait to see what new vulnerabilities they create by trying to hobble together a patchwork clusterfuck of code. I'm constantly blown away by how laissez-faire they are about the work they want to do; it's that classic avoidance of responsibility or doing actual work that seems to dog lazy people. They can't understand why everything is so jacked up despite only putting in half-ass efforts and ignoring genuinely helpful advice....

[a pigeon]

Ok, guys, You've had this conversation plenty of times before, We know you guys think FA is badly run, We know you guys think FA is poorly coded, and we know some of you have a problem with FA's staff's attitude towards these problems.

Now, please, drop it.
We don't have to see the same conversation for a Nine-thousand-and-first time.

I kindly ask you guys to leave it at the door for this one time. "Or else" *Cough-Cough, Nudge-Nudge*

That settled,

Happy Birthday, FA! May you provide all furs with art for another 6 years to come!

[loki]

...

Give us asspats or we'll ban you! Ha-ha!

[nrr]

Is it a bad thing that I've grown jaded enough to the point of giving up caring about this whole mess?

[Ben]

Is it a bad thing that I've grown jaded enough to the point of giving up caring about this whole mess?

Absolutely not. By all means, care about more worthwhile things. Lord knows I'm trying to do the same (although the above post isn't really any indication).

[Pi]

In between bouts of embarrassing myself on FAF, the conversation on IRC turns to the topic of FA's mediocrity fairly frequently. especially with Yak around. Today we got to discussing FA's alleged plans to have things fixed by May 21 (during FA:U):

<@verix> so then may 21st all of these grievances will be irrelevant
<yak[away]> most of them, probably. for anything else, nab a copy of the code and put your work where your mouth is
<@verix> will do
<@verix> where is it
<yak[away]> ut's not may 21'st yet
<@verix> excuse me?
<@verix> I want to help move the date to sooner than may 21st
<@verix> I have to wait until you actually supposedly release things to get fixed?
<@verix> I'll help you fix things now
<yak[away]> Appreciated, but I can't do that. Not until the glaring issues are fixed, the network setup changed and servers re-purposed
<@verix> yeah, fuck you
<@verix> I put up and you reject
<@verix> you clearly explain to us that you are in over your head, and when I offer help, you say you can't accept the help because things are broken
<@verix> seriously?
<@verix> I AM OFFERING TO HELP FIX THE THINGS THAT ARE BROKEN
<@verix> so I'm going to ask one more time
<@verix> and then any help from me whatsoever is off the table
<@verix> I want to help fix things now
<@verix> can I help you fix things now?
<yak[away]> verix: and at the same time you, or anyone else given the opportunity to help might end up exploiting what they find and without proper damage control tools and data to recover from, it might spell the end of the project. Many people tried to achieve that for the longest time,  and I'm not going to make it trivial for them with the careless move until FA's setup is ready.
<yak[away]> don't get me wrong, regardless of not knowing whether you were actually serious or not I appreciate the offer. I just can not accept it yet.

This marks the third person that I personally know to finally get fed up with this attitude enough to withdraw their final offer of support, and the third time that Yak has said something along the lines of "i can't let you help fix things until things are fixed". Meantime... Well, Eevee said it better:
<Eevee> yak[away]: again, while you were ~restructuring to provide a safe dev environment~, you were attacked and administrative privileges were stolen and a great deal of data was lost and over three dozen users' private correspondence was leaked

[bridgeportcat]

Jesus fucking christ, I can't believe that Yak actively turned down help SO QUICKLY.

HEY THE SITE SUCKS
YEAH WELL IF YOU CAN DO BETTER DOWNLOAD THE CODE AND FIX IT
OK I WILL WHERE'S THE CODE
BLUH FART SECURITY

[Pi]

There's more where that came from, but now I am tooting my own horn:

<@Pi> how about you give me access to your fucking router
<@Pi> and i put in a firewall
<@Pi> and then i will shut the fuck up about your production credentials and your fucked template system and your buck-passing fucking shit for at least 24 hours
<yak[away]> we're working on redoing FA's entire networking. what is there now is legacy setup that evolved from a two server network

"i will fix one of the problems you are currently having, right now"
"we're working on it"

[Conan]

what is there now is legacy setup that evolved from a two server network

A legacy network.

A legacy network that runs on hardware installed after the 2009 outage (4 active servers and two inactive ones at that point).

A legacy network that has seen two switches.

A legacy network that they could find time to fuck around with and say "UPLINK TO PANTS" earlier this year... but couldn't find the time to "fix" the setup.

They're not even TRYING to lie anymore.

[verix]

hi guys. here's a really cool sha1 sum: f76298b2e48408aa6875f5019abf09fff1ea476d

it corresponds with a pastebin that I can't fucking encrypt right now because pastebin.ca is being lame and apparently I'm too stupid to figure out how to encrypte a pastebin.com post, so right now it's sitting safe on a shell server. when the time is right I'll post the data that corresponds to this hash. it's a little lame but I'm doing it for a reason, you'll see in a few days. (Pi if you have to plz2defend what exactly I'm doing here.)