Furry Art Site Roundup

[Conan]

There's quite a bit of news in the world of Furry Art Sites so to save time I'm only posting this one thread.

Firstly, after dropping offline for most of September for unexplained reasons, Furocity.com once again disappeared from the internet in late November, just over a year since it was "hacked" and shut down. There has been 0 communication made about these shutdowns, further proving that Gavin is a perfect fit for FurAffinity co-owner (A title he still retains, despite showing no activity whatsoever).

Secondly, Co-founder of Weasyl Benchilla has been removed from staff due to reasons that are unclear. But we're told that his "actions outside the site" had something to do with it.

Speaking of Weasyl, it's quite overstaffed at this point, when judged against the current upload rate of "Not very much." Browse through two or three pages of recent uploads and you've probably seen all the art uploaded in 24 hours and then some.

FurAffinity is sputtering and choking towards it's 8th birthday on Wednesday. Accomplishments so far this year? A badly broken, ugly "new UI" preview and more of the same when it comes to the site and the staff (take a shot for every time they've said "There's no excuse for that." or "We're intent on turning over a new leaf, and providing better service in every aspect of the site." or "We're working on improving the site".)

FA has also made some recent software and hardware upgrades (Files loading slow? Another 16GB of RAM in the file server will fix it!), but not without Dragoneer jumping to conclusions and sticking his foot in his mouth. Following a PHP update, he tweeted

Well, that PHP upgrade seems to have given FA a bit of a speed boost. Not complaining.

There was no "boost", in fact for a few minutes following that tweet the site was responding significantly slower than usual before returning to normal speeds.

Finally, new staff is being brought on board to fix the problem of FA's badly broken trouble ticket system. As is usually the case, the new staff are causing a stir doing things like asking for proof that art is stolen when the uploader is asking who drew it and banning accounts for the heinous crime of CHARACTER THEFT without making sure there's actual "theft".

It's 2013 and the golfcart races straight to the bottom are well underway!

[pmart]

There has been 0 communication made about these shutdowns, further proving that Gavin is a perfect fit for FurAffinity co-owner (A title he still retains, despite showing no activity whatsoever).

No he doesn't.  Look at the Staff page on FA.  You noted yourself on March 21, 2012 that Gavin was gone.

Secondly, Co-founder of Weasyl Benchilla has been removed from staff due to reasons that are unclear. But we're told that his "actions outside the site" had something to do with it.

Presumably because he has a Vivisector account?

Weasyl is so depressingly dead.     Will it get a boost when (if) it emerges from beta?

I don't understand how, with all the bitching about FA, FA is still not only growing, it's growing faster than its competitors.  I no longer think anything can bring it down except for itself.  And let's be honest, how many of us 2 or 3 years ago thought it was about to collapse any day?

Current number of submissions:
Furaffinity 9.7 million
SoFurry 368,679
InkBunny 272,222
Weasyl 85,858

[Conan]

There has been 0 communication made about these shutdowns, further proving that Gavin is a perfect fit for FurAffinity co-owner (A title he still retains, despite showing no activity whatsoever).

No he doesn't.  Look at the Staff page on FA.  You noted yourself on March 21, 2012 that Gavin was gone.

There has been word from staff on FA that he is still in fact a "co owner". He, like other admins, was removed from the staff page by request.