Banned from FA
So I don't know what kind of stick Dragoneer sat on today, but he decided to ban me from FA today for whatever reasons. The excuses he cited were threats against him and against FA, however I've never done anything of the sort. He also seems to be embellishing the truth most heavily about me and our discussions from the past. Either his ego's gotten completely out of control or he's simply having a bad day and using me as a scapegoat for some recent stress. He claims he has kept all of the chat transcripts and would gladly post them to PROVE all these things he's claimed I've said and done, and honestly I WELCOME HIM TO DO SO. Because I have the same chat logs and what he's claiming are a gross misunderstanding at best and a horrible fabrication at worst. Since he's banned me from FA and not given me anywhere to rebut or defend myself from his attacks and slander on FA where he's made his attacks, I will post them here:
To the claim that I asked to be the sole developer on FA: Total horseshit. I asked that Eevee and ONLY Eevee be dropped from the dev team because he was not a team player and was counter-productive to progressing on Ferrox. Ironically, I heard that some months later he turned out to be a loser who backdoored FA and took off after all. And now I'm hearing that he's working on a site intended to compete with FA as well. Whatever, it would likely be another fchan or lulz or e621...
To the claim that I refused FA's offer of "free hosting for FurBuy": FurBuy strongly values its commitment to users in protecting their personal information, and the 'offer' made by Dragoneer to be hosted with FA was that we move our database and software to THEIR physical machines, grating them root (admin) access to ALL of our data and programs. Given our policies and inability to get a written, signed contract for discrete hosting and accountability of all admins who have access to our software and data, we could NOT in good conscience accept such an offer. Given the amount of security issues with FA and their servers to date, and their downtime to boot, we would not feel comfortable being hosted under their administrative power. Furthermore, FurBuy is written as a scaling system and requires at minimum two physical server machines to run for redundancy and task separation, and FA could not accommodate that.
To the claim that I have somehow "threatened FA continually": Dragoneer has a strange way of taking legal ADVICE as a threat. I politely informed him that the US FTC sets up several rules and guidelines for hosting online sales and auctions, and that FA is not currently setup for that. I never ONCE insinuated to him or alluded to informing the FTC myself or having anyone ELSE do that. It's a simple fact that there ARE rules and guidelines, and they are quite clearly not being followed on FA at present. If Dragoneer wants to change that and make FA a sales site, then more power to him! My messages to him about that topic were basically asking him to either go one way or the other with FA: either go all the way and offer FA sales and auctions, or make it clear that it's not what FA is for. Plain and simple and totally fair IMHO.
I'd like to FURTHER add that the private messages from FA that Dragoneer has sent to others discussing me has been QUITE enlightening (from YiffyLeaks). He has repeatedly slandered me behind my back to other users on FA, and has engaged Yak (one of FA's main devs) in setting up entrapment intended to catch myself abusing the FurBuy account and a special messaging API made for it on FA. Then when we talked about the fact that the system had security flaws with people publicly, he attempted to accuse us of not informing FA admins of the potential to exploit the security holes; when in fact we expressed direct concern over them FROM THE START to Yak, who had coded the system. His response was "don't worry about it, we'll take care of it soon, it will be fine". Don't take MY word for this though, feel free to download the entire YiffyLeaks archive and search for my FA username "jurann" in it and see for yourself. You can also see my private discussion with Dragoneer, which have been civil and friendly with no threats or insinuations ever made.
As for the ban, some messages on FA say it's permanent while others say it's temporary. So I have no idea if or when it might be lifted, so please don't ask me. I simply do not know and have NOT been contacted personally by anyone at FA yet.
http://jurann.livejournal.com/173869.htmlWhereof Sean comments on this:
We offered to let Jurann host Furbuy with FA for free. He was into that... but ONLY if we gave him the entire server (free), we'd have no access to it and lack the ability to even touch the box. In short: give him a $5,000 server without question.
On a bandwidth side, at the time, FA cost about $850 a month. Furbuy cost $400. FA had an average of 5,000-6,000 users on at any given point (we average 7,000-9,000 now). And Furbuy wouldn't saturate but a megabit or two. Minuscule costs. There's no reason for him to have the costs that he does. Any dedicated host could be had for about $100-150 and offer all the hardware he needs for a site like Furbuy. Having tested an FA auction site in the past (2007), even at its highest, we didn't saturate enough bandwidth to make an impact on resources.
He also offered to join FA as a coder... but only on the condition we remove every other coder on the site because he refused to work with others.
So yeah. I dunno.
Jurann keeps threatening FA for allowing people to host auctions in journals, and outright has even gone on to the point of dredging up the fact he could get the FTC on us over that. But if he did that, wouldn't that stop people from commissioning artists on the site, too?
Yeah. Lotta BS.
Frankly, I'm sick of Jurann constantly threatening our users, encouraging them to "go to Furbuy... or else!" followed with a shit ton of consequences, potential for being "banned" and more.
I'm tired of it.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2158118/#cid:17567392Note Jurann's original comments:
Why would you post this on FA, an art site for fans, instead of on an actual auction site, where people go specifically to spend money? Just curious what the auction sites are doing wrong for you. Thanks!
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2158118/#cid:17557044I think I mentioned before that he once pulled Furbid's advert on FA in a fit of pique when he saw Jurann denouncing some of FA's flaws in a comment on FA.
My thoughts are that Jurann certainly puts his foot in his own mouth a lot* and is terrible at PR (Just like Sean) and has hanged himself well enough in the past, but Sean no doubt has fuming, bubbling grudges and hatreds from Jurann insulting his honour by not wanting Furbid to be hosted by FA and all that, so he mashed the ban button.
Thought also occurs that if people are going to start using FA for auctions, presumably that will eventually bring trouble when inevitably someone will not deliver the goods or skip out on paying and then Sean is going to start having to involve himself (if he dares) in those sorts of matters.
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*The sort of things Jurann would do to put his foot in his mouth, so I've seen people say, is harassing people on FA, with repeated notes or comments asking them why they're using FA to sell commissions instead of furbuy. He also implemented an unexpected fee on Furbuy:
http://community.livejournal.com/fursuitlounge/775016.html and has allegedly arbitrarily banned people from furbuy and has had other drama surrounding his person. He has admitted he is not a people person:
http://community.livejournal.com/fursuitlounge/775016.html?thread=7766120#t7766120 I suppose he's similar to Sean in some ways. I.e not being able to competently run his site, lashing out etc. Perhaps they both see something of themselves in each other and hate it...
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EDIT:
A previous thread concerning Furbuy and Jurann's behaviour including allegations of TV throwing and police involvement:
https://forums.vivisector.org/index.php/topic,189.0.html
