Talk:History of Fur Affinity

Some talk has been moved from Talk:Fur Affinity to accompany the text. --GreenReaper^(talk) 00:26, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Protected and artist listings

Why is this article locked? It's not drama to report the facts, whither or not it's liked. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Honeymane (talk • contribs) .

I will try to make this brief, but I'm not so sure how brief it will be. For that, I apologize in advance.

The intent behind adding a list of users who are leaving FurAffinity is moot, and does not have any worthwhile informational value behind it. The fact that numerous people plan on or have left FurAffinity is not relevant to FurAffinity's history. That is relevant to the individual's history. If one wishes to write in the individual's article, "In 2006, [he/she] left FurAffinity," that is fine, because it is relevant to the individual. However, the fact that they left the FA community is not relevant to FA's global history.

What I will contest is relevant, however, is that this had become such a scandal to the FurAffinity community, and thus, deserves historical notation. (I understand how pretentious it is to say "historical notation" on a Wiki, but you get my point :) So, I have decided to protect this article to prevent others from adding in this information, since the influx of people adding things to the Wiki will be great, I'm sure.

I know I don't come around here very often to flex my administrative muscle, but seeing this drama explode and expand onto other places is just too much. I'd like to nip it in the bud where I can. Verix 06:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I've unprotected this article (before seeing this, I might add). People should be free to add and remove sections as they see fit. If there is a disagreement here over whether or not there should be a list of people leaving, they should argue that here and get consensus from WikiFur editors first.

Protection is appropriate in cases of vandalism. This is not, it is a disagreement on content. I appreciate your motives, verix, and I agree with your view in part, but I would ask you not to use your administrative powers to preserve your point of view. Contest it all you like, but on an equal footing. --GreenReaper^(talk) 06:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

You've a point. However, I'd like to warn you that I believe there's going to be a rather large influx of edit battles soon to arise out of all of this-- people adding the list, deleting it, back and fourth, etc.-- so I admit I jumped the gun and protected it before I believed it got started. The polarization of FurAffinity is certainly causing its current drama to expand to other parts.

I agree with you, GreenReaper, and apologize for jumping the gun (and, essentially, using my own logic before consensus). But, again, I feel I must warn you that a rather large edit battle may arise, and we may have to protect the article again. Verix 06:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not the first time we've had such things happen. What normally happens is there's lots of adding (and some removing), then a few days later people get bored, and then a week or so later someone comes around and cleans up, and we end up with an article with more useful information than we started with.

My personal view is that numerous people leaving Fur Affinity over this decision is worth mentioning, but that it's not particularly relevant who the artists are, except for those of particular prominence in the fandom. We could say something like "around 50 artists left over the new policy, including X and Y".

For reference, I was looking at Wikipedia's protection policy when unprotecting, which is quite clear on people not using protection to enforce a particular edit they made. Of course, we're not Wikipedia, but I think it's good advice in general. --GreenReaper^(talk) 06:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yep. Again, I agree, the list is irrelevant, which is why I deleted it, but also agree that the statistic of people leaving is relevant as well. It was overkill to protect it. (Most of this is just reiterating what you've said already, but I'd still just like to make my point clear.)

Hopefully, though, this will be the catalyst to bring me back to this thing so I can actually do my job as an admin, instead of just doing what I did here tonight when I find it relevant. Sorry for the knee-jerk. I'll make sure not to let it happen again. :) Verix 06:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

where should the list be posted? here? it maybe useful because alot of artist proflies are going to be in need of editting. and I forgot to sign again--142.177.139.173 07:01, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Quite frankly, I'm not sure. Perhaps in an article dedicated to the actual event itself? (Although, in that regard, I'm not sure if the event even deserves it's own article. Perhaps it does, though, since its informative reach has even gone to the likes of Encyclopedia Dramatica.) I just don't really see a point to maintaining a list of artists who've left, since the intent seems more to document a counter-offensive and make a mountain out a molehill, rather than inform. But on my judgement, if one were to post the list of artists who left, it'd certainly be in an article about the situation itself, rather than the site. Verix 07:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that a list of the artists that have left would be overkill; I think the article would be better off with a notation of how many people have left, with maybe one or two "big guns" mentioned. I don't think the situation merits its own entry; it's pretty much confined to Fur Affinity itself. Carl Fox 08:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

But really, how would you get those numbers with any sort of accuracy? How many artists have declared their intent to leave but never actually did. How many artists left the site quietly? There is no way to really get an accurate number which would be more speculation, especially if those artists decided to comeback after cooling down from their initial reaction.

I understand your reasoning, but there's just no way to have solid numbers -- and even as lead admin for FA, I don't have those numbers on hand. There are too many variables to consider, and even if I did have them I would not release them because all they would do is further the drama. At some point, the drama needs to stop, people need to let go and move on.--Preyfar 09:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

What we would like to do would be to quote a source which had done that research, and let the reader decide how accurate it was, based on the evidence they gave (which would probably include the names of those people they claimed to have left). For example, "A post on Place X stating that Y artists had left the site, including A and B". If there is no source, of course, no exact figure could be given. Even rough figures would be useful - after all, there's a big difference between 5, 50 or 500 artists leaving. And no, I wouldn't expect you to be able to furnish such a list, or desire to do so - it would be something that one of the artists would do, if they bothered to (that they'd done at all it might be some indication of relevance in itself). --GreenReaper^(talk) 09:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

It is difficult of course to do such a thing, but I am trying to compose a list of artists who have left based on FA jounral's they've posted.

I attepted to leave a request on the FA LJ ask for anyone with information to post the artist's names, as I would assume that the majority of the people on there would have FA accounts and be watching people, and have prehaps seen other journals of people I do not watch, which state they are leaving/have left. However, I was told that such questions where too dramaic and was revolked from that Community. --142.177.139.173 22:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

There is the question of what constitutes an artist leaving. Some have taken all their artwork down, others are leaving it up but won't be uploading anything new (and they could be subdivided into those who will still be checking in and those who won't). Some are leaving temporarily until filters are in place. And some are taking time out to see what happens and then decide whether to return or leave for good.

Possibly relevant is that some users were still upset over a database upgrade about two weeks ago that caused all private mail messages to be lost. For many it was no big deal, but some users had important information about trades, commissions, etc., that was lost as a result. While not really related to the cub issue, it may have contributed to some user's overall impression of dissatisfaction with FA. --mwalimu 22:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

An excellent point--Honeymane 01:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The issue of when the cub problems were brought up have occurred numerous times, starting well before August of 2006. The original issue exploded in the first iteration of Fur Affinity, brought up by myself, which originally lead to 8horns being banned and causing the cub rule to enter the TOS in the first place. It has been an ongoing issue on FA, and was started along with the site's birth, well before August 2006.

It's been debated off and on with no clear resolution since I joined FA in mid-2005.--Preyfar 09:09, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Probably why it was so painful now. It's bad enough deciding things when a site is young. I've made what seemed to be appropriate changes to me, characterizing it as an ongoing discussion that restarted with no resolution. --GreenReaper^(talk) 09:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

That fits much better. This is going to be an ongoing issue not merely with Fur Affinity, but the fandom as a whole. Where do the limits end and begin for freedom of speech, the fandom's image and the sexual nature that lurks behind (and in front) of the scenes? I don't like the change we made, but it was the only one I feel I could make. It's hard to tell where to draw the line when the fandom's proverbial "line" has been pushed so far back it's impossible to tell where it is anymore.--Preyfar 11:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

With regard to Fur Affinity, I don't see that any other choice was consistent with the site's initial promotion. If art of any rating depicting just about anything is allowed, then it becomes hard to justify being picky about a particular topic.

As for image, I think it's possible to worry too much about it. The people that matter will either get into the fandom or not, but only if they hear about it at all first. Plenty do so through things like CSI, and I don't see that as a bad thing, even if the portrayal is inaccurate. It's unfortunate when (e.g.) a hotel uses that kind of work as a reason not to continue a contract, but as we've seen with Anthrocon there is no guarantee of hotel stability even if you do try to run the cleanest of ships.

Personally, I dislike lines. They tend to divide people. The furry fandom is big enough that there are places you can go if you like X and other places to go if you don't like X. There is no real need for the fandom as a whole to take a stand on any particular issue. The whole reason there are different stands is that different segments of the fandom have different views, and you can't just cut a segment out of the pie and keep calling it the whole pie. Just pick out the mushrooms if you don't like 'em. --GreenReaper^(talk) 17:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

24-Jul-07 outage

((unverified claims follow, here for the record only)) Alkora Husky, the owner of FA domain name, attempted to sell it Dragoneer for $8000 even though Alkora only owns the domain and not any of the content on the site. Dragoneer got upset and removed Alkora from the admins; in retaliation, Alkora requested the site's hosting provider to pull the plug. As of Jul 25, the site is up and running normally. -- Wesha 18:16, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

See Fur Affinity access disrupted amid ownership dispute. --GreenReaper^(talk) 20:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

2008 Outage

The section of this article discussing the 2008 Outage resembled an out-of-date news article more than an unbiased, basic presentation of facts, and I have pared it down as such. Who users PMed during the down time, what kind of issues FA had with buying the equipment, what the error message looked like etc are trivial details that are considerably "not encyclopedic". I have left a few of these details to avoid being labeled a vandal, but IMHO it could use some more whittling. 128.196.204.224 23:29, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

In addition to this, I modified the "site run from/to" section. The site had a hardware failure, yes, but that did not shut down the entire community as the previous edit implies. The FA community exists beyond more than just the main site, and as such, this is simply misleading FUD.

--Preyfar 23:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely happy with those edits. Yes, the forums were up, but that's like saying WikiFur's LiveJournal or Tapestries' website was up - the main deal was out of commission for more than a month. There is a precedent in the coverage of Yerf, which went down for a couple of months in mid-2006, and was noted as such - and the expectations of uptime for Yerf were, by then, far less than for FA. Perhaps a reference footnote explaining the period of downtime would be suitable.

I am surprised that you would want to remove the CDW details, as this seems to remove part of the explanation for the length of the outage. --GreenReaper^(talk) 00:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I removed the CDW details, not Preyfar. In either case, I still feel that such information is better suited to "news" than this particular article. And obviously, you or anyone else inclined to do so is free to put it back. I was merely making a bold suggestion. 128.196.204.224 00:48, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

If that's the case then why haven't every other prior minor and moderate outage been recorded on the site if you want to show we have had more downtime than Yerf? FA has had a turbulent period in the time leading up to the outright failure, no doubt. However, the way the site reads is that we "gave up" and shut down running the community for that month. I don't think it's quite accurate of a portrayal. That's not to discount the events of Failoutage, but I disagree with the portrayal. What we have posted here is still accurate, considering the community is both FA, the forums, the gaming wing and many other facilities that are a part of Fur Affinity.

As for the other... there were shipping delays. That's all matters in the end. And it wasn't just CDW, it as HP and DHL to the bone. Discussing the failings of the shipping companies could run into multiple paragraphs if the true events had been accurately described in the original entry, but it wasn't. If you want to show the reasons for the delays, just link that there were significant "shipping delays" out of Fa's control, and reference the posts on FA's forums that contain further details. Otherwise it just becomes filler to the article of what amounts to "Fur Affinity was offline for over a month due to catastrophic hardware failure and extended shipping delays in obtaining replacement parts."

--Preyfar 01:03, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

2009 Outage

This 2009 edit seems awfully biased. Aren't we aiming for neutrality? --IanKeith 19:30, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Pure facts. Feel free to point out where it seems biased and I'll adapt it. --Xenofur 19:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

We can't even begin without an account of supposed events from both sides of the story. --Rat 20:29, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you available on IRC? I'd like to discuss what kind of sources you'd accept. --Xenofur 20:42, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Only noting this here for sake of paper trail: Situation discussed, article changed to be neutral and include sources. --Xenofur 22:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

See, now that doesn't read like a "HEY ITS FUN TO HATE ON FA" post, does it? The original addition to the article was painfully biased and blatantly anti-admins. --IanKeith 01:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Down again

It's down again. For how long by now? It's not mentioned in the article yet. --TlatoSMD 19:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's been less than a day. We don't need to note every short-term outage of Fur Affinity in the article. --mwalimu 20:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's three days now, and the FA twitter says that "thousands of websites" are affected by this outage which is an ISP issue.[1] According to FA LJ, they're currently looking for a new colocation because of this.[2] --TlatoSMD 20:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

PS: FA LJ says it's even four days now, and that their ISP even keeps refusing to reply to them for all of those four days. --TlatoSMD 20:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

At this point the outage has lasted long enough to be worth mentioning in the article, and in fact someone already has. It may or may not be worth keeping in there a year or two down the road, but at this point people may be checking here in an effort to find out what's going on with the site. And it hasn't been four days yet; I was able to do stuff on FA on Sunday evening, less than 72 hours ago. --mwalimu 20:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not a "may". Traffic has doubled - sitewide. The increase is due to people checking for information on FA. Adding more seems appropriate. --GreenReaper^(talk) 23:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The FA staff have located a new colocation center which, conveniently enough for some of their staff, is just a mile away from preyfar's current place of residence/employment. To quote the newest LJ post: "With all due respect to Canada, our new colo facility shall remain in Virginia". But due to the threat of snow/rain and bad road conditions as a result, they don't expect FA to be back online until Monday night. [3] --Markus^(talk) 11:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

FA Hacked

I herd that it's due to XSS expoits more then Gawker - Anyone got a valid source to this? - Supposely Dragoneer clicked on a link inside a ticket which then sent his cookie information to the user.

It is the exploits, lulz.net is DDOS fa. No that is not how it happened, the hacker(victim's brother) posted up a ton of screenshots of how Zaush used his popularity to get the girl in a situation where she got raped and because of dragoneer's involvement in the situation fa is getting attacked because of how he tried to get sweep it under the rug instead of calling the cops on the guy. Pretty much lulz.net is planning on continuing the attack so long as dragoneer is site owner and are not going to let up one bit on the attack until he resigns. In short dragoneer is taking us down with him instead of just resigning for his actions.

Pornographic cub art

In regards to In conclusion, drawings depicting underage characters involved in pornographic works remains illegal under the U.S laws,thus the FA administration complies with the current law, and a lot of artists and members supported this initiative and most cub artists and supporters agreed and apologized for the turn of events. there is no US law against this except in local state laws. Canada on the other hand has made a stand against this. Though not liked the legality of this in the US is still legal. KaciFox 14:55, 19 April 2011 (EDT)

I would like to point out that Alert Pay no longer handles their payments anymore, and that it's money orders. So the reason for banning cub art still is no longer valid. Maybe someone can help with it. 74.233.254.65 11:22, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

I think their ultimate goal is to re-establish service with another payment processor; the issue was not just with AlertPay. I suspect they will face problems with other art still permitted by their terms of service. Their processing of donations through money orders should be noted. --GreenReaper^(talk) 12:48, 1 May 2011 (EDT)

Q: Paste-bin/YiffyLeaks refs and Chase

In regard to the latest additions to the "controversy" section, two things: Bringing up a point that was never set as law, and that is if we do consider Paste-bin and/or YiffyLeaks valid reference material/sites?. And two, is this former FA admin Chase the same Chase that is a moderator at WTFux? - Spirou 08:26, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

When did FurAffinity come online again during the 2005-2006 period?

I was scrutinising FurAffinity's Wikifur page on its history when I got confused on one part.

So one of the paragraphs says FurAffinity raised enough money through 2005 for a new server but it did not come online until mid-2006. But the paragraph below then says FurAffinity came online in December 2005 - isn't that when they're apparently fundraising? Is FA's resumption during the 2005-2006 period in end-2005 or end-2006? Pawsry1808 12:47, 6 Feb 2021 (UTC+8 Singapore)

Internal Policy Update

On May 19th, 2023, the site "directors" decided it was time they update their internal policy regarding section 2.7 of the Acceptable Upload Policy that will go into effect on July 1st, 2023. While the policy itself has not changed, their internal policy will now apply section 2.7 to Pokemon and Digimon characters and more globally consider anatomy/proportions as well as context when determining if a user's submission(s) does or does not violate AUP section 2.7.

This created an explosion of negative reactions on their Discord server over how "vague and unhelpful" the wording of the announcement is. Staff updated the post a little later to try to make it more clear, but discussions still remained largely negative and focused on how it is still vague and lacking clear descriptions of where the dividing line is.

Staff are trying to do damage control and take people's feedback into consideration for creating a "document" outlining a what is safe to post, but this is an ongoing discussion in their Discord that has forced moderators to close two prior threads already for one reason or another. The discussion spilled over onto Twitter too, and some users posted journals on FA voicing their thoughts and opinions on the topic.

In short, this is like the third time the old August 2006 controversy was touched, the second time being November of 2010.

I think we could include this in the article, but only once the dust settles. It makes no sense to me to cover a topic that's still on-going. --Markus^(talk) 11:11, 22 May 2023 (EDT)