Just noticed a FurAffinity update posted 4 days ago: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10126126

"2/7/22 - Search Engine Changes, Avatars, & More

Search Engine Changes
We are making some simple, but significant changes to the search engine.

The search engine’s default settings have been updated to show results from the past five years, defaulting by submission relevance. Prior to that, results were pulled from Fur Affinity’s entire catalog of user generated content – over a decade and a half’s worth of content. ..."

Posting this topic for those (like me) who hadn't noticed the change to FA search. (and haven't noticed DEFAULT search now just five years of art)

"Sort by range" options are: "24 hours", "72 hours", "30 days", "90 days", "a year", "3 years", "5 years", and "All time" (glad "All time" is still option)

(did forum search for "FurAffinity" hoping to find a FA thread to post this to, searched back a year and closest i got was topic #23086 but felt offtopic to post/necro that thread)

Ah. I had been wondering why my results were suddenly incomplete. Saying "98 matches found" and displaying only one of them. Much obliged.

"Hurr, you wanted us to fix the search, right? Right? I DO A GOOD FIX AND BREAK MORE!"

Fuckin' FA, man.

I say the customized search settings found under the settings section is an improvement. Now I don't have to press Advanced search all the time every time I search something. I have mine sorting the search by Date and set all results to "All Time".

It doesn't feel that bad a change tbh. I was getting bored of decade-old posts coming up for certain searches, and you can enable "all time", and change your defaults and stuff. Seems great

Just noticed (what i assume is) a recent-ish change to FA search.
(or has FA search been like this for while and I did not notice??)

If a FA user has "voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents.",
then their uploads seem to no longer turn up in FA search.

example: dirtyyeen still has uploads viewable at FA
I found six uploads uploaded to dirtyyeen main FA-gallery
latest : https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43695727/ (WARNING: MATURE rating)
earliest: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43252323/ (WARNING: ADULT rating)

but if you FA search for dirtyYeen ( https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=DirtyYeen )
the FA search doesn't include any uploads posted by DirtyYeen account.

https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dirtyyeen/ "User "DirtyYeen" has voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents."

***

Similarly,
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/impawstar/ is "User "Impawstar" has voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents."

I found 46 (hope my count correct) uploads uploaded to Impawstar main FA-gallery
latest : https://www.furaffinity.net/view/31496047/ (GENERAL rating)
earliest: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28796849/ (WARNING: ADULT rating)

but if I do FA search for impawstar ( https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=impawstar )
i get ZERO matches.

(edit: I wandered across impawstar art while using kheina.com to search for an artwork by another artist)

listerthesquirrel said:
Just noticed (what i assume is) a recent-ish change to FA search.
(or has FA search been like this for while and I did not notice??)

...

I do recall that being a long-running loophole for people to still view a disabled account's gallery (through the thumbnails) if they had once fav'd or otherwise bookmarked the post in the past.

thegreatwolfgang said:
I do recall that being a long-running loophole for people to still view a disabled account's gallery (through the thumbnails) if they had once fav'd or otherwise bookmarked the post in the past.

Yeah, they have... epicness all over. Also, I don't think disabling works that way? I thought it was separate setting for gallery view and profile page? And many many people didn't use both? The trick where you could do that with gallery view was nice while it lasted. XD

alphamule said:
Yeah, they have... epicness all over. Also, I don't think disabling works that way? I thought it was separate setting for gallery view and profile page? And many many people didn't use both? The trick where you could do that with gallery view was nice while it lasted. XD

If you disable your account, the submissions are still in their database; you can still get to them if you have the direct link. This is so if you restore the account later, you don't have to start over from scratch.

It actually works the same way on deviantArt, too.

lonelylupine said:
This is so if you restore the account later, you don't have to start over from scratch.

didn't even know you could restore an account after deactivation

whygena sure didn't know that

dripen_arn said:
didn't even know you could restore an account after deactivation

whygena sure didn't know that

Not deactivation.
Disabling is different from deleting an account entirely.

(was checking another artist and issue came up which reminded me of this thread)

Correction or update to Lister's post below:

listerthesquirrel said:
Just noticed (what i assume is) a recent-ish change to FA search.
(or has FA search been like this for while and I did not notice??)

If a FA user has "voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents.",
then their uploads seem to no longer turn up in FA search.

example: dirtyyeen still has uploads viewable at FA
I found six uploads uploaded to dirtyyeen main FA-gallery
latest : https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43695727/ (WARNING: MATURE rating)
earliest: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43252323/ (WARNING: ADULT rating)

but if you FA search for dirtyYeen ( https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=DirtyYeen )
the FA search doesn't include any uploads posted by DirtyYeen account.

https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dirtyyeen/ "User "DirtyYeen" has voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents."

***

Similarly,
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/impawstar/ is "User "Impawstar" has voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents."

I found 46 (hope my count correct) uploads uploaded to Impawstar main FA-gallery
latest : https://www.furaffinity.net/view/31496047/ (GENERAL rating)
earliest: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28796849/ (WARNING: ADULT rating)

but if I do FA search for impawstar ( https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=impawstar )
i get ZERO matches.
...

Above two examples (DirtyYeen and impawstar) seem to be the same (ie. uploads to their accounts don't seem to show up in FA search).

But SOME artist(s) * who have disabled their accounts have their uploads show up in FA search.
(* = I wrote "artist(s)" because I assume there could be other artists whose uploads show up in FA search.)

Was searching FA for artist nathradas and
uploads to their account show up in FA search.

https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=Nathradas has 21 Nathradas account uploads in results (search sort-by DATE, descending):
page 1 (results 1-48): 13 uploads to Nathradas account
page 2 (results 49 - 96): 8 uploads to Nathradas account
page 3 (97 - 132 of 132): no upload to Nathradas account

(EDIT: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/nathradas/ is now "User "Nathradas" has voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents." and has probably been like that since 2014-or-later)

EDIT: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dogbreath/ is also "... voluntarily disabled access to their account ..."
with various uploads visible via FA search
https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=dogbreath

earthfurst2 said:
Was searching FA for artist nathradas and
uploads to their account show up in FA search.

https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=Nathradas has 21 Nathradas account uploads in results (search sort-by DATE, descending):
page 1 (results 1-48): 13 uploads to Nathradas account
page 2 (results 49 - 96): 8 uploads to Nathradas account
page 3 (97 - 132 of 132): no upload to Nathradas account

(EDIT: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/nathradas/ is now "User "Nathradas" has voluntarily disabled access to their account and all of its contents." and has probably been like that since 2014-or-later)

EDIT: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dogbreath/ is also "... voluntarily disabled access to their account ..."
with various uploads visible via FA search
https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=dogbreath

Looks like those are gone again, but the "found in X documents" counts still include those, they just don't show in the results list, interesting

Today I noticed FA search upgraded again (not sure when this happened).

The part that I'm most excited about is now we can restrict a search to a specific username. (ie. uploads made to a specific FA account)
(example at bottom)

quoted text FROM https://www.furaffinity.net/search

"Advanced Search
Search understands basic boolean operators:
AND: hello & world
OR : hello | world
NOT: hello -world -or- hello !world
Grouping: (hello world)
Example: ( cat -dog ) | ( cat -mouse)

Capabilities
Field searching: @title hello @message world
Phrase searching: "hello world"
Word proximity searching: "hello world"~10
Quorum matching: "the world is a wonderful place"/3
Example: "hello world" @title "example program"~5 @message python -(php|perl)

Available Fields
@title
@message
@filename
@lower (artist name as it appears in their userpage URL)
@keywords
Example: fender @title fender -dragoneer -ferrox @message -rednef -dragoneer "

***

So restricting search to just uploads by specific username:
example: in @fender's account

SEARCH string:
sheet @lower fender
(ie. searching for "sheet" in username Fender's account)

https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=sheet+%40lower+fender

earthfurst2 said:
Today I noticed FA search upgraded again (not sure when this happened).

The part that I'm most excited about is now we can restrict a search to a specific username. (ie. uploads made to a specific FA account)
(example at bottom)

quoted text FROM https://www.furaffinity.net/search

"Advanced Search
Search understands basic boolean operators:
AND: hello & world
OR : hello | world
NOT: hello -world -or- hello !world
Grouping: (hello world)
Example: ( cat -dog ) | ( cat -mouse)

Capabilities
Field searching: @title hello @message world
Phrase searching: "hello world"
Word proximity searching: "hello world"~10
Quorum matching: "the world is a wonderful place"/3
Example: "hello world" @title "example program"~5 @message python -(php|perl)

Available Fields
@title
@message
@filename
@lower (artist name as it appears in their userpage URL)
@keywords
Example: fender @title fender -dragoneer -ferrox @message -rednef -dragoneer "

***

So restricting search to just uploads by specific username:
example: in @fender's account

SEARCH string:
sheet @lower fender
(ie. searching for "sheet" in username Fender's account)

https://www.furaffinity.net/search/?q=sheet+%40lower+fender

It's worked like that for years.

SMALL(?) new-to-me thing at FurAffinity.

Just noticed one post webpage at FA now says:
"System Message
The page you are trying to reach is currently pending deletion by a request from its owner.".

( https://www.furaffinity.net/view/22745559/ ,
which is source of post #1150445 )

Potentially FA has had this pending-deletion thing for year(s),
but I always assumed if an uploader wanted to delete something, that it was automated process that took only a few minutes.

Probably minor issue in the scheme of things,
just something maybe be aware of, and possibly an indication that an artist might delete more of their art soon.

EDIT: OH WOW, just checked https://www.furaffinity.net/user/jailbird
and it is also
"System Message
The page you are trying to reach is currently pending deletion by a request from its owner."

Started a Jailbird thread at topic #36454 .

FurAffinity is going to close the forums and open an official Discord channel. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10411624

Fender said:
After roughly 17 years we have made the decision to close the forums. As technology and the internet changes we need to re-evaluate our positions every so often, adapt, and shed our shells like the majestic Alaskan king crab. We appreciate the time, input, and energy members of FAF have given to both the forums and FA as a whole. Closing a community is never an easy decision but fret not! While we are closing one door, a new one is opening in its place.

Stepping in to fill the void will be the all new, all shiny, Fur Affinity Discord!

FAF has a long history with FA, and it was a project that we started back in 2005 to help bring the site and community together. Over time, the forums have fallen to the backburner as platforms such as Telegram and Discord filled the role forums once held.

The forums will go read-only effective January 1, 2023.

We hope to see you in our new community and look forward to chatting with everyone soon!

electricitywolf said:
FurAffinity is going to close the forums and open an official Discord channel. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10411624

They have a forum?! (Joke, it's hidden behind some menu or something, so most people don't even see it - I forgot it was even there)

post #976030

electricitywolf said:
FurAffinity is going to close the forums and open an official Discord channel. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10411624

What could possibly go wrong?

leotheairwolf said:
What could possibly go wrong?

Right. Somehow we can do both but they can't (I know, this is vastly different and I definitely prefer it)... Maybe considering they're just getting started on that platform. I think you had to register separately, so I never used it, but still, I read their explanation just shaking my head with a slightly dour expression.

crystali_cast said:
Right. Somehow we can do both but they can't (I know, this is vastly different and I definitely prefer it)... Maybe considering they're just getting started on that platform. I think you had to register separately, so I never used it, but still, I read their explanation just shaking my head with a slightly dour expression.

The idea that the FA staff are bass-ackwards enough to not understand the concept of phasing out doesn't surprise me at all, it's... very in-character for them. If you want to go from one to another, you don't flip both switches at the same time, you add the new thing, and encourage the users of the old thing to go over, give it like, three months minimum, then give a deadline if the new thing is proving viable.

The fact they have their server set to require your discord account to have a phone number tied to it is pretty lame as well.