Reactions to Weasyl

[a pigeon]

While browsing Furaffinity I came across this journal asking for feedback from the community about the merits of Weasyl (it was not written by a weasyl staff member):

Okay, so is http://www.weasyl.com/ cool or not?

WHY? WHY NOT?

Y'all know I can't think for myself :B

Please advise, thanks.

ALSO, WHY?

ALSO, WHY NOT?

REASONS PLEASE.

And don't forget to mention why. Or why not, if it seems to be the case.

p.s. - give reasons; like, reasons why. Or perhaps maybe reasons why not.

= = = =

EDIT:
1. PRO:
- ORGANIZED FOLDERS
- TAGGING/FILTERS
- STREAMING STUFF

2. CON:
- EXCESSIVE NAVIGATION TO SEE ART OR SERIAL IMAGES (comics)
- COMMENT/COMMUNICATION CLUNKINESS
- AND OKAY, ENOUGH ABOUT THE SQUARE THUMBNAILS (Yes, we all agree it's a bad thing)

Mystery Meat Navigation: "Such interfaces lack a user-centered design, emphasizing aesthetic appearance, white space, and the concealment of relevant information over basic practicality and functionality." - wiki

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4519124/

There were over 100 comments on the journal: generally, many people were happy with Weasyl being a working website that is "not Furaffinity" and with it having folders &c. but it is clear there is still bread left unbuttered, especially with respect to the thumbnails. It also looks like people are well aware that the community and traffic is the only thing left keeping FA going at this point.

I thought the comment on Weasyl being "not really sure what exactly it is right now" was interesting, especially combined with the comment from a weasyl admin saying that it doesn't cater specifically to furries vs.  the comment that "By now it is clearly a furry site". A selection of comments:

In general the file handling is a bit wonky. From less-than-helpful thumbnails to poor image naming (images are named 1234.Submit.1234.extension). And some convoluted submission setups... 4 different places to put art, depending on who made it, if it's a character, if it's only for friends, oh and here, have a folder or two, sort your own stuff. If it's music or story... Eh put it with the art, I guess, I don't really care, mix and match at will, it's all good.

I think Weasyl is probably the best, but has several functional problems like I mentioned above. Really it's only fault is that it's lacking in community, and it's not really sure what exactly it is right now.

Frankly, It's made by folk who were upset about how FA was made/handled, and they are trying to handle those kinds of problems. Think of it as FA 2.0. I go there and try to be active because the only way it's going to survive is if people actually go there and use it. But I'll confess I won't upload content there until they correct pet peeves I shouldn't be having.

annoying square cropped thumbnails

it's got some shiny features, but i can't stand browsing that site. the forcibly squared thumbnails make the layout look nice but don't really do much for the actual content. it's convenient to generate thumbnails on the fly, but most folks either crop to a closeup of the face or closeup of the genitals, and a lot are wholly unhelpful. i "look" at art a lot less than i do on FA.

I do like the midsized "thumbnails" that FA gives. Big enough to see what the image is at a glance. Yeah, the square thumbnail thing is bonkers. Okay, thanks!

yeah, i mean, it's not a deal breaker or anything, but i never realized how detrimental those actually are until i tried to enjoy an art site that operates solely on square thumbnails.

other than that, the site is fast, has some helpful features, has some pointless/bloated features, uploading is straightforward, etc...

it's true, cropped thumbnails were a bad idea 10 years ago. Still a bad idea now. Having it as a option people can choose to set sounds better than forcing mystery meat navigation.

Seconding with the annoyance at the forced cropped thumbnails, but other than that I like the site. It's got a nice layout (though some areas are a little counter-intuitive--for example I had to dig for a while to find out what a character submission was vs a regular submission). I enjoy how clean it is, and the commission information is....a lot less confusing than the tab that FA recently got up and running again. I'd recommend getting an account there to be available to those who don't like FA or other sites, but I wouldn't use it as my main gallery, personally. Not enough people there yet.

It's got good features, but like some of the other sites lacks the community support to be really central.

I think it's good to have a presence there!

Also, it's distinctly stable and fast; but that might be because it doesn't have a lot of users.

How silly of me; the thumbnails are bigger, which appeals when an artist is highlighting a larger part of their work. It allows for more organization (sections for characters/concepts, subfolders, etc. which allow you to do more than just upload in droves and let people browse your complete oeuvre. The random browsing feature is nice if you like to be surprised (also it can be very -bad- if you don't like what the surprises are). It's a little more friendly to authors but in all honesty text is easy to host.

Also, what I mentioned above -- the stability and speed of the site are nice, especially when FA's getting bogged down.

Weasyl's submission browsing is really clunky and counter-intuitive to me; primary example I have was trying to view a comic that an artist had put all into one folder, but it lacked the ability to just go from one page to the next, instead insisting on showing me random other pages within the folder. There might be a way to toggle that but frankly I haven't bothered looking.

Some people used to dislike that Weasyl would lump artistic nudes and porn images together on their rating scale, but they recently fixed that? So perhaps the admins are more responsive to complaints over there.

For me, though, there's just not enough user base for me to jump ship or even keep a mirror.

I have had difficulty determining when I have received a reply, since they are either will not be listed or break the chronological order of the comment list. Somebody posting a stream notice contributes to the same total as a new page watch, which would probably be highly irritating if I logged in there more.
There is yet no way to conceal whose pages I watch and who watches mine from public view, though the point totals can thankfully be hidden.

CONTENT FILTERS. I wish FA had them!!! I seriously don't want to see everyone's specific, wacky, gross fetish so I just block them and then I don't see them yaaaay! Also you get to make this AWESOME custom banner. I like the layout! I just wish more art & artists were active there. Honestly if anything happened to FA I'd switch over without issue. FA is more active, which is sort of unfortunate - I honestly wish there was more activity over on Weasyl to justify a full move.

I don't think I'm going to leave FA until either FA goes down for good or the place becomes a ghost town because something truly better came along. I'm hearing some rather 'meh' reviews of Weasyl after the "mass exodus" that occurred a few months ago, and seeing as how a few people have actually come back to use their FA accounts again, Weasyl probably is just going to become another SoFurry.

Among the biggest complaints I've heard (keep in mind, I haven't used the art site myself):

(1) Lack of Community. Most artists I've heard from lament the fact that Weasyl does not have connected community features like FA does. Instead of forming a web of interconnected pages through favorites, comments, and the like, stuff seems all detached and buried under a lot of clicks. Galleries are treated more like personal, solitary things that happen to be public, rather than FA's seemingly inherent concept of putting art up on a public forum.

(2) Journals are treated as submissions.


Some things I've heard in Weasyl's favor:

(1) Much better organized than FA with a more robust tagging system and Gallery folders.

The whys:

Awesome administrative team, cool uploading system, runs fast, is actually coded well, many promising additional features in the works.

The why nots:

Many features still not in place yet, the "Collections" system seems to confuse people, only a fraction of the audience of FA (at least right now).

There isn't much in way of exposure for people who don't have scads of fans to take with them to another site. Favorites aren't readily visible, for one thing, so the fluid browsing experience I get here and on dA (surfing new artists AND their favorites for further artists from the same place: the individual profile page) doesn't happen. I also thought I'd like the square icons but I really don't. It'll be interesting to see how they continue to develop the site, but right now, it's useless in terms of exposure for me.

I personally feel like everyone has stockholm syndrome towards FA; people like what they know, you know? I think Weasyl does everything FA does but better, and were they introduced simultaneously (rather than FA having many years head start), Weasyl would stamp out FA in a heartbeat.

I wouldn't let a thumbnail issue be the deciding factor as many people are doing lately.
Weasyl is bringing loads of functions to the artist that aren't available on FA. Such as detailed and well organized commission info, series/comic oriented organization, character/profile management system (like profile pics for characters giving info in a convenient way).
Theres loads more too. This is also in early beta so you can expect more to come as well as changes from community feedback (perhaps a change in thumbnails?).

The biggest benefit in my opinion would be leaving FA.

I like it pretty well. I feel like it's well ahead of FA, and I haven't had many of the problems people are listing. I dunno. I just wish FA would go away. It sucks that people are like, "It's the trailer park of art sites, but I don't mind the roaches enough to go somewhere better." I'm frankly ready to leave, but the truth of the matter is that no one has established a music scene on the other sites. I've thought about doing it myself, but I don't trust myself with organize people. I gave it a small try on InkBunny, but I lack the focus and perseverance to pull it off.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, speaking of music, one thing I LOVE about weasyl is that you can link your music from bandcamp and soundcloud! Which means, if I release an album, I can stream it through weasyl instead of making a preview file and linking to the album in the artist's comments section. That alone is super useful, as a musician.

The fact of the matter is that it's in beta, and all of these problems need to be directed to the beta staff who are dedicated to improving the site before official launch. Perhaps you should just wait until then :3

+ Organized (submissions), good commission info options, has a trades/commissions/requests setting that shows off the bat, layout adapts to your window size surprisingly well.

/ Character pages are interesting but not exactly necessary. I'd rather commission info be something under a tab so it isn't dominating your entire page along the side. Redundant buttons (go to gallery, submissions - both very close to each other)

- Cluttered, Hard to navigate, not many people, hard to communicate, square thumbnails (dead horse), you have to actively dig to find new artists which makes it into a chore to view art. Entire website is sort of tedious.

at least one person assured me that despite the title, the mascot, and the front page containing furry art exclusively, weasyl was not a "furry" site. By now it is clearly a furry site.

I'm an admin you should join. :3c :3c :3c :3c :3c :3c :3c

Haha, but honestly, we're still in beta. We work to try to implement good ideas to improve the site (we recently added a fourth rating system to separate sexual 18+ art from things like artistic nudes). However, the community is still mostly here at FA, and Weasyl doesn't cater specifically to the furry fandom; we just happen to attract much of the community because a lot of staff are in the fandom.

[habnabit]

poor image naming (images are named 1234.Submit.1234.extension)

this complaint continues to confuse me. have these people ever used not-FA, not-lulz websites?

[winserv03fan]

I love how people keep using the "there's no-one there, so I'm not leaving here. Yeah, it looks well built, and this site is fucked, but it's just going to die."

CONTRADICTION?

It just seems like the lazy mans excuse. The admins of the site could damn well help out rape criminals and dog fuckers and they would just say "NOT MY PROBLEM."

Oh. Right. They do.


(But in all seriousness, some of the admin team are a bit power hungry on Weasyl (not that some aren't on FA.))