I guess this is the most appropriate place to discuss FurryNetwork. So...

I haven't been visiting FurryNetwork much after its grand beta opening. I was active in its issue tracker, followed the cub/blacklist drama, but then FN went off my radar. Today I decided to check how it's evolving.

Looks like nothing happened. More so, it looks abandoned. Silly bugs like forgetting serach tags when switching modes are still there. Top art of all time is still the same, Kenket all over the place. Art popular this month seems lackluster, with a few artists occupying all space.

Then I went to the support website aka issue tracker. Literally nothing has been implemented. The same feature requests about pagination, groups, editing files, multiple pages, transparent images (are you kidding me?), friendly file names, nested comments are on top. Last completed "feature" was cub porn ban 2 years ago.

Then I go to the blog. Commissions, commission system, commission reviews blah-blah-blah. Looks like the only feature which has been evolving all this time is this commission thing. I'm confused. This is a sort of feature which is hard to sell. You either need to make furries pay for the service, which is unlikely to happen, or you're doomed to sink money infinitely into it while being blamed for all sins imaginable.

Last check was crosslinking on FurAffinity. FurryNetwork's art pages have been directly linked 9 times this month. For comparison, it's 776 for InkBunny.

So... What's FurryNetwork's status? Is it dead? Being reimagined as primarily a commission service? What's going on?

Hey, FeralBeast! Just so you know, I'm the community manager over there, and development is still planned; we've had a few updates over the past year, but it's been a bit of a slow process. The biggest struggle right now has been discussing the place in the fandom - basically, what can we do to make the site help furries' needs?

The need we're focusing on the most now is with commissions. We have active testing for the commission tracker right now, but we're planning on doing some sprints in January or February to roll out some major changes. We plan on having a review system, a search function for sellers, more visibility for sellers, and possibly some cross promotion with sister sites.

I can understand why the site doesn't appear super active right now - it looks nice, but it doesn't have anything extremely unique. Fingers crossed, that will all change in early 2018.

Doesn't help much that when you go to browse stuff, you get the deviantart vibe because it will automatically show you most popular stuff e.g. stuff that doesn't change much because it's at all time most popular list. So it feels pointless to just go and look stuff up.

I'll browser there somewhat regularly, because that and inkbunny are the only ones right now accepting proper modern video formats for animated stuff, meanwhile others still force flash or just gif only. Speaking of the devil, they still have ways to go to match what inkbunny has already achieved from technical standpoint. Sad how inkbunny became the cub heaven so nobody cares that much about it.

It's still a work in progress atm. I also don't like how "most popular" is defaulted and frontpaged with the same posts since the start while the new posts are buried underground like a seed without water. I like the UI and the features though

Echoing the "stop making the popular section the default lander" sentiment. Until this changes I refuse to use FN, despite having made an account a long time ago.

Would be great if you just got rid of it altogether. Everyone knows about those same 5-10 artists and have for years; they don't need to be showcased even more.

Yes, it is one of the less active furry sites. To be fair, there is rarely much movement in 'most popular of all time' lists since being on that list pretty much guarantees a steady stream of likes.

Really it's kinda similar to how the most active sites tend to remain the most active. What people want from an art site, more than anything, is activity. Artists want views, faves, and comments. People also want a steady stream of a variety of art. It's really hard to convince people to switch sites or even invest time in a new site where activity doesn't exist yet.

Another recurring thread is that there are already a bunch of active/semi-active furry sites. Uploading can be a chore, especially if you're uploading to more than three galleries all with slightly different uploading systems. Someone already uploading to fa, weasyl, sofurry, e6, inkbunny, and tumblr might not want another site added to that list.

#the_truth

I skimmed the_truth for the OP and found these relevant.

post #422913 post #575939

digbythefox said:
I'm the community manager over there

post #204671

Mario69 said:
Sad how inkbunny became the cub heaven so nobody cares that much about it.

It's community seems fairly large and active, who's the "nobody"?

SirBrownBear said:
It's community seems fairly large and active, who's the "nobody"?

*Its

SirBrownBear said:
It's community seems fairly large and active, who's the "nobody"?

If you read the sentence, it has become the site where everyone goes for cub content and that's pretty much it. It has become that websites image, even if it's not exclusively for that and image is something that's hard to manage or alter and which can even drive some away. If I'm searching for higher quality source and artist has listed inkbunny on their furaffinity profile, there's usually ~80% change that account is inactive and they only used it to post couple posts years ago or just have their name reserved and that's also why inkbunnys MD5 search almost never brings up anything unless the content is portraying underage characters.

I know couple 3D artists post primarily there, but that becomes to my another point of that site being one of the only ones allowing high filesize video content. Rest are at Tumblr. And this comes back around to problem with FurryNetwork, it doesn't seem to have any kind of identity right now, it's not the most popular and it's neither a place to go look up something in particular. It's just place where there are handful of most popular stuff being admired for eternity and some animators to have their files up.

EightyNine said:
*Its

My english teachers of old weep at my forgetful proofreading.

Mario69 said:
If you read the sentence, it has become the site where everyone goes for cub content and that's pretty much it.

With all do respect, don't patronize me. I did read your comment, and it implied that the site was irrelevant and/or ignored in a general sense due to it's content, which isn't the case. Just because some moral grandstanding popufurs and scattered others make it a show to publically decry the site doesn't mean they represent the majority's opinions or views.

Many (artists in particular) don't use it simply because FA has both a wider install base through virtue of being the older "original" furry site and most have used it for so long they'd rather stay than start from scratch and dump their catalog of images elsewhere, which was also a contributing factor to FNs decline and stagnation. I'm not trying to say there's no one out there that refuses to use it because of it's content/reputation, no, but those people aren't the rule.

Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, on top of looking and functioning like the updated FA people have wanted, one of the big draws for FN was the fact that their content policies we're more open and accepting than FA. The FA hack mess proceeding the sudden popularity spike only further boosted it's status as "a new, better preforming, more free FA", but after some people would rather sink the ship with lies and slander than use their blacklist, cub was banned, and with that a large chunk of users left either because their work/interests were no longer accepted, they were angered that the site buckled under pressure, or they heard from someone on Twitter that the site's full of pedos, racists, and one of the microcosms of ____phobs.

digbythefox said:
The need we're focusing on the most now is with commissions. We have active testing for the commission tracker right now, but we're planning on doing some sprints in January or February to roll out some major changes. We plan on having a review system, a search function for sellers, more visibility for sellers, and possibly some cross promotion with sister sites.

How will disagreements be handled? What role will FN take, other than technical? That's my primary concern with the commission system. Another issue is interaction with the default blacklist. Will reviews be hidden based on blacklists?

Mario69 said:
I'll browser there somewhat regularly, because that and inkbunny are the only ones right now accepting proper modern video formats for animated stuff, meanwhile others still force flash or just gif only. Speaking of the devil, they still have ways to go to match what inkbunny has already achieved from technical standpoint. Sad how inkbunny became the cub heaven so nobody cares that much about it.

One major reason why banning cub porn on FN sucks, other than freedom of expression blah-blah-blah, is that InkBunny is being isolated even further now. The more websites succumb to whines and join the witch hunting, the further InkBunny from gaining popularity.

And leaving InkBunny behind is terrible, considering it's the most advanced furry art website. Well, its search engine is garbage, coding is questionable, but on the whole it's still ahead of others.

Mario69 said:
And this comes back around to problem with FurryNetwork, it doesn't seem to have any kind of identity right now, it's not the most popular and it's neither a place to go look up something in particular.

It seems to me FurryNetwork's owners couldn't decide on the identity. Or rather the identity they want is impossible. They want pure furries who prefer art over porn. This is why rape is blacklisted by default and cub porn is banned altogether — those mystic pure furries don't want to be even close to that.

The problem is, there's already a place for artists who prefer art over porn, who draw furries in some form or another and who value community over image fast-food — it's called DeviantArt. There're other websites too. Better. Larger.

Another problem is, furries tend to value community, but the website FurryNetwork is a rip off of, is centered around artists showcasing their awesome stuff, not about communicating with fans. User interface is built around pictures, not comments or descriptions. Thumbnails is all you see in the image list.

Considering the beta opened around the yearly oops-everything-leaked FurAffinity holiday, with the usual accompanying fake exodus, FN's owners wanted to be a better FA. Did they deliver? Hardly so. No major features were implemented since the beta, it's the same FA stagnation all over again.

Commission system is nice in theory, but incredibly hard in practice. Reviews will cause so much drama, cub porn drama will look like a kid fight in comparison. And even if the commission system manages to work, it'll be crippled by FN's content policies — both bans and default blacklists. Want to commission a picture with someone peeing? Can't do that. Go find a setting which hides peeing from you. Then artist will say he has reviews, but others won't see them, because blacklists. Any artist or commissioner who draws anything from the default blacklist, will feel unwelcome.

So what do we have now? FN who wants to attract pure furries who value art over fetish porn, who don't care about community and who aren't too demanding. Therefore, the target audience of FN, which is an intersection of these properties, dare I say, is pretty much empty.

Overall, I think focusing on a killer feature, such as a commission system, is the right idea, but I have a hard time imagining it working. Maybe I'm too pessimistic, I don't know.

FeralBeast said:
The problem is, there's already a place for artists who prefer art over porn, who draw furries in some form or another and who value community over image fast-food — it's called DeviantArt. There're other websites too. Better. Larger.

Good fucking luck making any money on Deviantart given the average age is like 14. There's plenty of porn on DA too given the site staff simply don't give a shit to delete it for one reason or another. The site is also in no way furry-focused, instead catering more to either just "everything" or poorly-drawn anime.

FeralBeast said:
Considering the beta opened around the yearly oops-everything-leaked FurAffinity holiday, with the usual accompanying fake exodus, FN's owners wanted to be a better FA. Did they deliver? Hardly so. No major features were implemented since the beta, it's the same FA stagnation all over again.

Supposedly they don't want to be an FA clone, but want to offer some services other than a generic online gallery dump since there are already a lot of them. People just flock to the places where there are people...because there are people. I've been to and used better sites, but without any hopes of business most won't see much reason to post to those places.

FeralBeast said:
Commission system is nice in theory, but incredibly hard in practice. Reviews will cause so much drama, cub porn drama will look like a kid fight in comparison. And even if the commission system manages to work, it'll be crippled by FN's content policies — both bans and default blacklists. Want to commission a picture with someone peeing? Can't do that. Go find a setting which hides peeing from you. Then artist will say he has reviews, but others won't see them, because blacklists. Any artist or commissioner who draws anything from the default blacklist, will feel unwelcome.

I wasn't aware that things like reviews and whatever would be a thing. A way to manage commissions (or just "jobs") would be nice, but it's been done before. There's even already a system for commissioning furry artists. The things people want already exist, but they're not all under the same system. While it would be nice to have them in one place, is it really worth making an entirely new site for it?

I mean, as someone who doesn't draw porn, I would like some chance at getting business. Lo and behold, all my business comes from FA. It will probably be that way for several more years at the least, since once people are in a place, and more and more people join, those people aren't likely to go anywhere anytime soon.

Ratte said:
I mean, as someone who doesn't draw porn, I would like some chance at getting business. Lo and behold, all my business comes from FA. It will probably be that way for several more years at the least, since once people are in a place, and more and more people join, those people aren't likely to go anywhere anytime soon.

As random 2 cents, when I did commissions--around 5 years ago-- I got way more commissions from FA too. DA was full of people asking for gifts. I had way more followers on DA, yet FA got me way more business.

I think my ideal art site would be:

• e621's tagging system (complete with user-tagging)
• Deviantart's groups. Or similar. I love being able to join a group and see that kinda art)
• Some mix of FA and DA's interface. What mix? Beats me. I like devart's notifications compared to FurAffinity's. The stacks are great. I like how FA displays pictures--without a lot of clutter along the sides, but do like deviant art's multitude of suggestions--seriously, I find so much art via the suggestions.

Not that my opinion matters much, but hey.

SnowWolf said:
As random 2 cents, when I did commissions--around 5 years ago-- I got way more commissions from FA too. DA was full of people asking for gifts. I had way more followers on DA, yet FA got me way more business.

I think my ideal art site would be:

• e621's tagging system (complete with user-tagging)
• Deviantart's groups. Or similar. I love being able to join a group and see that kinda art)
• Some mix of FA and DA's interface. What mix? Beats me. I like devart's notifications compared to FurAffinity's. The stacks are great. I like how FA displays pictures--without a lot of clutter along the sides, but do like deviant art's multitude of suggestions--seriously, I find so much art via the suggestions.

Not that my opinion matters much, but hey.

I've been on DA for 7 years and FA for nearly 10, and have about 700 more followers on FA than DA despite having like 4 Daily Deviations. I've been commissioned on DA maybe three times over those years, but countless times on FA. Most people on DA ask me for free work or trades yet I cannot recall the last time someone did this on FA. I say right on my profile that I only take paid work, but people on DA have the attention span of a gnat. I'm also not about to do business with minors, which they more than likely are on DA.

I like e6's tagging system and DA's group system, but like FA more for pretty much everything else despite being hot garbage codewise. Popular works don't need to be showcased above and beyond everyone else's work because it's already popular. Like, really, what is even the point of this? Big names don't need to get bigger; all you're doing is making it harder for people who don't have a big name to get anywhere, and then people wonder where the variety went. While I don't really look at others' art (because I'm busy making my own), I don't like the idea of posting to a place where my work won't be seen and where there's no hope of business. That's just a waste of my time.

I joined FurryNetwork a while back and uploaded some stuff, but the way the site is laid out is not really intuitive. It feels cluttered and confused, and it took me way too long to just find the recent uploads.

If there was an option at a later time to do custom layouts or something, maybe that would help. I don't know, it just doesn't feel nice at all.

The tagging system here and on InkBunny is really, really nice. I love that other people are able to add tags that the artist might miss, or fix wrong tags.

Ratte said:
I've been on DA for 7 years and FA for nearly 10, and have about 700 more followers on FA than DA despite having like 4 Daily Deviations. I've been commissioned on DA maybe three times over those years, but countless times on FA. Most people on DA ask me for free work or trades yet I cannot recall the last time someone did this on FA. I say right on my profile that I only take paid work, but people on DA have the attention span of a gnat. I'm also not about to do business with minors, which they more than likely are on DA.

I've been inactive for like 5 years, but... I've got 111 FA followers and 689 watchers on DA. But I also whored myself out to a bunch of different groups, and made a product that was very.. flavor-of-the-month, I-want-one-of-those!... I think my commissions were split pretty evenly between the two sites, despite this.

And there is no counting the number of "can you make me one?" requests I got over the years from deviant art. There is seriously a heap of kids there who want stuff for free, or for pennies. D:

My perspective is that furaffinity has a much more mature community where people place more value on artwork done. It's jsut a shame that the site feels like an outdated brick.

I like e6's tagging system and DA's group system, but like FA more for pretty much everything else despite being hot garbage codewise. Popular works don't need to be showcased above and beyond everyone else's work because it's already popular. Like, really, what is even the point of this? Big names don't need to get bigger; all you're doing is making it harder for people who don't have a big name to get anywhere, and then people wonder where the variety went. While I don't really look at others' art (because I'm busy making my own), I don't like the idea of posting to a place where my work won't be seen and where there's no hope of business. That's just a waste of my time.

I agree-- little names should absolutely get opportunities. That said, Deviant art's daily deviations can be pretty fun: the fact that they have a whole bunch of different categories, accept suggestions, and have a rule about not being featured more than once every 6 months helps to ensure that, while only 'good' art is featured, there's a lot of exposure given to not-just-the-popular-people.

BUt yeah, I feel yah.

The biggest issue with Furry Network as it stands is probably the FA data importer.

Letting people put accounts on autopilot says "you don't need to be part of the community to have a presence here". Within reason, this is manageable, adding variety, and it benefits those for whom the site is their home as well as those who do the posting.

But once auto-posting becomes a sizeable proportion of uploads - especially if they're the best, quality-wise - it becomes corrosive: limited viewer attention (and technical/financial/staff resources) is devoted to the work of productive-but-absent artists who simply don't care about FN.

Without favouring those who make their home with you, you won't have many of them. Viewers learn it doesn't pay to comment because they never get a response. Artists learn they get a better response elsewhere. You can't develop a speciality and build a community around it because it's averaged out by cheap imports.

What happened here is that FN tried to short-cut the process of building a community. They've ended up with an incomplete mirror of FA - like e621, but without quality criteria, and subject to FA's content limits. 1.5 million submissions in an S3 bucket. And no users. The "Community" is chock-full of absent professionals who get the lion's share of views because everyone imported their watchlists, leaving crumbs for the few who're really there.

tl;dr: Stop being a parasite. FN can be as fancy as you like, but if you don't wean yourself off the firehose, balance posts with viewers, stop featuring artists who won't give you the time of day, and develop a community of your own, there's no hope.

I could be wrong but I don't think the auto importer is ran repediately, I think it is primarily for if someone has a shit ton of art they don't feel like reuploading manually so they can catch their gallery up.

It's not fully automatic, no - unless there's some trial of that running that I'm not aware of. And don't get me wrong, Inkbunny has similar options if you want, and there are people using multi-uploader tools with other sites.

But by promoting the import tool so heavily at the start, and incorporating it directly in the UI, it became central to the experience of a lot of members. The next time a user wants to upload something - or more likely, several somethings - why not use it again? After all, the work's already on FA. And so FA remains the place to upload first, and it'll never be any better quality than what's on FA, so why wouldn't users just get that artists' work there?

This is compounded by the whole "if you're popular you're popular" thing going on the community tab mentioned above. It seems to be based on follower count; there are people there like Meesh with no public activity in the past year, or Kenket in the past two.

It's important to give users a reason to be active. Cutting out those who haven't dropped and posted something in the last month - or three - might not be noticed by the people affected (who, after all, aren't there), but could make a big difference to those actively participating.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying building community is easy. It takes a long time and you have to stick it out and keep working through the down phase of the hype cycle . But here's a thought: if the goal isn't actually to build a new community, perhaps the right solution is not to run a competing site, but instead provide technology focused on those specific needs which can be integrated or used with existing sites.

GreenReaper said:
Without favouring those who make their home with you, you won't have many of them. Viewers learn it doesn't pay to comment because they never get a response. Artists learn they get a better response elsewhere. You can't develop a speciality and build a community around it because it's averaged out by cheap imports.

It must also be noted that FurryNetwork is based on ArtStation, the website built to cater solely to professionals, to help professional artists find contracts by posting their top-quality portfolios. ArtStation is designed to be against building a community.

ArtStation's rules severely limit any sort of communication, fans are esentially disallowed, but anti-community idea goes farther than that and affects the very design of the website, which FurryNetwork blindly copied. Descriptions are collapsed and tiny, comments are put into a tiny scrollable area and severely limited in functionality.

You can't build a community if you can't communicate. You can't put a new label on ArtStation and expect furries, for whom community aspects has always played a huge role in all areas, including creativity, to find a new home there.