Weasyl begs for more feature suggestions

[Conan]

Despite having over a hundred open tickets in the Weasyl feature request bin and even more suggestions on the forums, Weasyl's lead developer Struguri has posted a journal asking for people to give more ideas on how to make the site better. This comes as Weasyl's traffic continues a steady decline from it's peak at the height of Zaushmania.

Even with over 20 people listed as "Developers", Weasyl is still slow to push out any new major features that people seem to want. One of the last major updates and certainly the one they were the loudest about, the conversion to Markdown from BBCode, was something nobody really asked for, something the developers elected to do on their own because they didn't like BBcode. A search of the Weasyl forums for "Markdown" lists one result before a developer announces their intention to switch many months later. Additionally, during my time in the developer chat, work was beginning on coding custom forum software because it was decided vBulletin was "bad". None of these things were things people wanted, but things the developers seem to prioritize over actual useful features. "The inmates running the asylum", more or less.

One of the loudest complaints, thumbnails, has been left unaddressed since about the time Weasyl launched. Someone else suggested a commission management system, again. It'll be interesting to see if anything comes from this, as so far I see a lot of things that were previously suggested being treated like they're brand new ideas. Either no one was paying attention then, or they're just pretending to now.

[Kindrift]

so what's the proportion of decent ideas to wacky magical imagination requests at the moment?  how many people want something usable, versus how many people want furrycoin donations here

because 7/10 sound as terrible as common suggestions to steam greenlight titles, and another 2 points are completely uninteresting and will amuse maybe a dozen spergs who demand completely useless bullshit or actively stupid shit

[winserv03fan]

work was beginning on coding custom forum software because it was decided vBulletin was "bad".

To be fair, vBulletin really isn't that great. Just last year approximately 30,000 sites got hacked through a vulnerability including Ubuntu Forums where 1.8 million logins and emails were stolen. I can understand wanting to get away from it.

[ProvincialTwit]

work was beginning on coding custom forum software because it was decided vBulletin was "bad".

To be fair, vBulletin really isn't that great. Just last year approximately 30,000 sites got hacked through a vulnerability including Ubuntu Forums where 1.8 million logins and emails were stolen. I can understand wanting to get away from it.

Oh, haha, yeah that totally absolves them of ignoring feature requests because everyone knows the forums are the most important part of an 'art site'.

PS if vbulletin is so bad why the hell did they go with it in the first place? 

[winserv03fan]

work was beginning on coding custom forum software because it was decided vBulletin was "bad".

To be fair, vBulletin really isn't that great. Just last year approximately 30,000 sites got hacked through a vulnerability including Ubuntu Forums where 1.8 million logins and emails were stolen. I can understand wanting to get away from it.

Oh, haha, yeah that totally absolves them of ignoring feature requests because everyone knows the forums are the most important part of an 'art site'.

PS if vbulletin is so bad why the hell did they go with it in the first place?

No of course not, it's just some backstory on VB and a possible reason to get away from it. Another question that could be raised is why didn't they switch from VB when the exploits were found.

[ColonThree]

work was beginning on coding custom forum software because it was decided vBulletin was "bad"

Coding their own custom forum software is clearly the best solution, since vBulletin is the only forum software in the world, and there definitely aren't many other ones they could use instead. I look forward to the upcoming forum beta around 2016.

[a pigeon]

On that journal of Struguuri's, this seems to be the most popular response so far, judging from the replies to it:

Make it easier to find art / artists.

The search / tagging is great, but I think there's also the type of person who would prefer to browse a directory with categories. When you upload a video to Youtube you can tag it, but you also have to assign it to a category.
Maybe have a list of tags that are popular at the moment. An empty search box can be a bit daunting, especially if you don't even know what you're looking for.
I found a lot of art browsing FA that I didn't even know I liked. It would never have occurred to me to enter it into a search box, because I didn't know it existed at that point.

On FA your favorites are displayed directly below your own gallery, on your front page. I think this is a good thing.
People find a lot of art that is relevant to their interests by going through the favorites of artists they like.
I notice I get a lot of watches from people who just recently watched another artist who featured my work in his favorites.

In general I feel like I need to way more clicks to navigate this site than I do on FA. I'd rather scroll more than click more.

The thumbnail part is probably being addressed already so I won't go into that.

Also this is just a feature request, but please put a "previous" and a "next" button right below an image inside a folder, would be nice for comic navigation!

That's all I can think of for now.

^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/44078#cid104809

FWIW, My own personal experience using weasyl is, as PA says, that lack of visible favourites + drop down species/category/kink lists hinders finding art/artists compared to FA.