# Site Status [12/12/2013]



## Dragoneer (Dec 12, 2013)

Just an update: we're still copying data over to the new server, and should have that nearly completed mid-day tomorrow. We've also encountered an issue where one of our RAIDs is currently running in a degraded state. We've overnighted replacement drives to repair the RAID ASAP. Net-cat and I will be heading to the colo to take care of that and get things patched up. And, if all goes well, finalize the fixes we need in order to bring things back online.

Will keep you updated as I/we know more.

Invoice proof of drive order:
http://www.frostdragon.net/drive_order.jpg


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## Malcolm the Bear (Dec 12, 2013)

Thanks for keeping us updated, and for all the hard work of the FA team!


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## Smuttymutt (Dec 12, 2013)

Hope the site is back up soon =X *crosses fingers*  Thanks for the update!


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## Astramasq (Dec 13, 2013)

The update sincerely is appreciated by a large portion of us! Thank you.


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## robbo (Dec 13, 2013)

Much appreciated for the update, even if it's not the greatest of news. Here's hoping that things go smoothly the rest of the way and that this is the end of it.


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## teil (Dec 13, 2013)

Update is greatly appreciated! I hope the shipping goes smoothly! : )


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## StevenRoy (Dec 13, 2013)

Ouch, dude. I hate when hard drives fail. Good luck!

Just out of curiosity: Could the failing drives have contributed to the database blockage, or is it an unrelated problem that happened at the same time?


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## Deleted member 82554 (Dec 13, 2013)

15k dirves?

They'd be damn near as fast as SSD's, wouldn't they?

(â€‹never owned both so I wouldn't know)


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## TimeShift (Dec 13, 2013)

Mr. Fox said:


> They'd be damn near as fast as SSD's, wouldn't they?


not even close. But they're still a bunch cheaper than server-SSD's - those start at around 1.5k dollars. But you need RAID controllers that are able to work with those - unless you want to destroy the SSD within a few weeks because it's beyond it's maximum read/write cycles.

@Dragoneer: You should really consider migrating to RAID level 6 with 1 hot spare. Same harddrive space like RAID 10, but higher performance in normal AND failsafe-mode - plus more reliable. It's being used in almost every SAN I encountered for a reason


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## zizii (Dec 13, 2013)

godspeed!


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## BRN (Dec 13, 2013)

[yt]whnn9ReUV04[/yt]<3


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## Dragoneer (Dec 13, 2013)

StevenRoy said:


> Ouch, dude. I hate when hard drives fail. Good luck!
> 
> Just out of curiosity: Could the failing drives have contributed to the database blockage, or is it an unrelated problem that happened at the same time?


No. The failing drives are not related to the slowdowns or issues. It's just major case of incredibly bad timing.


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## Tailmon1 (Dec 13, 2013)

I'll be happy when "The Great Furry Migration" Is over! 

(When Furrys Migrate all kinds of stuff happens!)


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## rednec0 (Dec 13, 2013)

Dragoneer said:


> It's just major case of incredibly bad timing.



Or good timing if you think about it. You nipped this problem in the bud before it became an issue.


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## Socks the Fox (Dec 13, 2013)

Dragoneer said:


> No. The failing drives are not related to the slowdowns or issues. It's just major case of incredibly bad timing.



I'd be willing to place money on the extra stress of the migration being the cause of the failures. I just hope that the backup disks don't fail as well...


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## Loki's Right Hand (Dec 13, 2013)

*salute*


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## Deleted member 82554 (Dec 13, 2013)

Tailmon1 said:


> I'll be happy when "The Great Furry Migration" Is over!
> 
> (When Furrys Migrate all kinds of stuff happens!)



It would be a lot better if some users actually took part in the rest of the forum, it's always so refreshing when new people come along. :3

In fact, I equate FAF to being a lot like that of a pub, a place you go after a long hard day at work to talk about random shit and "relax".


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## Ruethel (Dec 13, 2013)

Huzzah for the progress, a big thank you to those doing the work!


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## Mazz (Dec 13, 2013)

Dragoneer said:


> No. The failing drives are not related to the slowdowns or issues. It's just major case of incredibly bad timing.




It's that damn Murphy's law. 
Thank you for the update. 

I got some silly bird doodles I drew for people and I WANT TO SHARE THEM


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## WhiteMantis (Dec 13, 2013)

Thanks for keeping us informed! I'm hoping FA will be back soon!


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## Etiainen (Dec 13, 2013)

Dragoneer said:


> It's just major case of incredibly bad timing.



Or a really convenient excuse.


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## Aesural (Dec 13, 2013)

Can't wait :O

Not being able to refresh my FA and browse tab at least once every 20 seconds is really starting to get to me. D;


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## Shadowmoo (Dec 13, 2013)

Etiainen said:


> Or a really convenient excuse.



$50 on this please. People might believe this better if the responses to the outages were more than just a sentence or two of hand-waving techno babble.
And didn't this site change its setup completely less than a year ago? That is not a 'random' occurrence. Drives don't have such a bad failure rate.


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## thoron (Dec 13, 2013)

Etiainen said:


> Or a really convenient excuse.



So even though he showed the billing as proof its some how a convienent excuse?


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## Zepher_Tensho (Dec 13, 2013)

thoron said:


> So even though he showed the billing as proof its some how a convienent excuse?



Where did he post that


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## thoron (Dec 13, 2013)

Zepher_Tensho said:


> Where did he post that



Theres a little link in his opening post showing the order for the part thats to be replaced.


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## Stargazer Bleu (Dec 13, 2013)

Shadowmoo said:


> $50 on this please. People might believe this better if the responses to the outages were more than just a sentence or two of hand-waving techno babble.
> And didn't this site change its setup completely less than a year ago? That is not a 'random' occurrence. Drives don't have such a bad failure rate.



If you are talking about the link to the receipt posted, its a lil over $500 not $50.

Tho yeah I remember people getting asked to help with buying a lot of new server things about a year ago too.
Tho sometimes one can get faulty things. Tho it does not happen a lot.


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## Socks the Fox (Dec 13, 2013)

Stargazer Bleu said:


> If you are talking about the link to the receipt posted, its a lil over $500 not $50.



No he's saying he's betting $50 on whatever it was (I'm too lazy to go look it up).


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## robbo (Dec 13, 2013)

Etiainen said:


> Or a really convenient excuse.



You heard it here first. This whole site outage is a conspiracy Dragoneer is spearheading to... Uh... to uh... What exactly is the goal of this conspiracy again?


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## Shadowmoo (Dec 13, 2013)

thoron said:


> So even though he showed the billing as proof its some how a convienent excuse?



Convenient excuse as in, why is this site going though so much hardware when there are bigger sites getting less money that are not crashing every 6 months.


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## Mazz (Dec 13, 2013)

robbo said:


> You heard it here first. This whole site outage is a conspiracy Dragoneer is spearheading to... Uh... to uh... What exactly is the goal of this conspiracy again?



To piss off furries who are already foaming at the mouth.


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## Shadowmoo (Dec 13, 2013)

Mazz said:


> To piss off furries who are already foaming at the mouth.



Yes there is foaming at the mouth, because nothing else seems to work as to getting this site improved. You have a friend you love but who keeps messing up in ways you don't like. You try and talk with that friend about the issues you don't like, they mostly ignore you and continue what they is doing. You eventually get to the point where you either want to yell at them to stop f*cking up or decide to stop being friends with them. Correct?


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## maxgoof (Dec 13, 2013)

Thank you for update. You might want to consider posting that on the site itself (if possible) so as to assuage those who frankly don't know how to get to the forums, or even know that they exist.


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## Armaetus (Dec 13, 2013)

Why is it that FA is the only one that has had constant hardware replacements, stallings, crashes opposed to the other three major furry art sites (Sofurry, Inkbunny and Weasyl) ?

Why do some people think throwing money into a problem unless it absolutely is a hardware issue will solve everything?


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## Littlerock (Dec 13, 2013)

Oh, [insert ass-kissing text that partially degrades own self-worth]!!!


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## AliothFox (Dec 13, 2013)

Dragoneer said:


> ... should have that nearly completed mid-day tomorrow. ...



It is now "evening tomorrow" - midday passed and no update.  Look, I'm not whining and complaining about the site being down.  I know EVERYONE's frustrated about that, and there's no need to add to the people who've already talked about it.  There've been good suggestions made (many of which will, unfortunately, go ignored, and we'll have to do this again six days/weeks/months from now), and it's up to the owners/staff to decide how much they want to actually listen to the people on their site.

I know they're working as fast as they can to get the site up.  But here's the thing, guys: the lack of updates is inexcusable.  When you set an expectation, you _meet_ that expectation.  If you _can't_ meet that expectation, you let people _know_ you're not going to meet it.  When someone commissions me, I say, "You should have your commission by [date]."  If that date is approaching and I know I'm not going to have it finished by then, I will tell my commissioner, "Sorry, but things have prevented me from getting your commission done - but it should be ready by [new date]" (and offer a partial refund sometimes).  

I'm not going to join the hordes who are saying, "Get the site back up now or else I'm leaving".  I like FurAffinity too much.  Yes, it has issues.  I'm not a coder or IT professional, but I know things could be better.  But I _like _FA.  So I'm not going to say I'm leaving the site if it doesn't come back online NOW.  Let's assume good faith here.  BUT - at the same time, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect more updates or them letting us know what's going on.  I went out earlier today thinking, "Okay, they said mid-day today, so FA should be back up when I get back."  Not only is it NOT back up, but it's showing the same banner it's BEEN showing for TWO DAYS, and there's no word on any new developments.  That is the PINNACLE of unprofessional behavior.  If it's going to take a while to get the site back up, okay - we'll just have to live with that.  But the lack of updates when you KNOW how many people are waiting for words is just not acceptable.


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## robbo (Dec 13, 2013)

Mazz said:


> To piss off furries who are already foaming at the mouth.



Well then, mission accomplished I suppose.

I mean, I understand the frustration of course, but 4-5 days without a website is hardly the end of the world (and if it is, then perhaps there are some other personal evaluations to be made). For artists whose sole income is via commissions, email correspondence with clients is always going to be more professional and reliable than correspondence through a third party website. At the very least, diversification of avenues of communication is the smart thing to do. There are other sites out there to fall back on if FA goes down.

At this point, FurAffinity is a known commodity: It's a great, large community with a website that has periodic troubles. I can buy frustration at the those troubles -- I'm frustrated too -- but outrage? Foaming at the mouth? Accusing admins and owners of some grand conspiracy in which they're either purposely keeping their own website offline or they're purposely trying to make it suck for its userbase? Eh. Not so much.


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## thoron (Dec 13, 2013)

Glaice said:


> Why is it that FA is the only one that has had constant hardware replacements, stallings, crashes opposed to the other three major furry art sites (Sofurry, Inkbunny and Weasyl) ?
> 
> Why do some people think throwing money into a problem unless it absolutely is a hardware issue will solve everything?



InkBunny and Weasly are still pretty small so I wonder how they would do with the same user base size as FA. SF is better than FA but it still has its hickups but they seem to have different people around the world in different time zones to handle it. I also notice that in the no-script list Googleapis is listed and thumbnails don't seem to work without it.


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## Zepher_Tensho (Dec 13, 2013)

thoron said:


> Theres a little link in his opening post showing the order for the part thats to be replaced.



I see it now. I'm dumb XD


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## StevenRoy (Dec 13, 2013)

*Sufficiently advanced unluckiness indistinguishable from malice?*



Shadowmoo said:


> Drives don't have such a bad failure rate.



Some of them do.

In my experience (and also according to online reviews at NewEgg and TigerDirect), it seems Seagate Barracudas in particular have sucked ever since that one flood in Thailand temporarily halted the world's hard drive production. (Note: Only about 98% of that last sentence was meant to be taken seriously...)

Server configurations probably contribute to the shorter lifespans, too. (Someone on another thread made an interesting point about vibrations, for example.)


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## nuzzcat (Dec 13, 2013)

Myr said:


> Since benanderson posted UI images earlier I'm going to post a couple of potential database images.
> 
> 
> http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h357/aurorandragon/AffinityUserPage_zpsa4d5f21f.png
> This would be the data required to render a user page at the moment.






benanderson said:


> The only issues I see there are some of the names need to be more descriptive ("watcher" for the primary, for IE, could be something like "user_in_watchlist_id") - but from a very quick glance at 2:45 in the morning I don't see anything I'd change.




I see a lot of things that I would change.  Mostly with the naming convention used.  I am very picky when it comes to these things but I will try to explain the reasons for it. 


First off I am not judging you for this or trying to put you down or anything, and I hope these comments can be taken as constructive and helpful to anyone who is interested in reading. 


1. I prefer to have primary key id columns always named "Id".  This reduces the algorithmic complexity of any generic utility methods that are allowed to operate on any table/model type, which translates to making the system easier to maintain (or less like what FA is now).  


2. Foreign key columns that reference a primary key usually have the full name of the table followed by "Id", which makes things easier to understand, which translates to easier to maintain.


3.  Instead of things like "approved" or "pending", try naming it "IsApproved" or "IsPendingApproval" - So if I look at the groupUsers table I can see that IsApproved lets me know what the column means, but if it just says Approved it might take me a bit of extra time to make the connection for what that column does. 


4. Dump the 'rid' column on the users table and set up another table for UserRoles, because a user is going to need more than one role at a time.  


5. What is submissionUser.Relationship and submissions.Format?  What is the submissionUser table for?  Is the primary key 'sid' for both tables, or if 'sid' is the FK on 'submissions', where is the PK on that table?  


6. userDetails.BlockedUsers, blockedGroups, and blockedTags should not be stored in TEXT format, but there should be a separate relational table for each of those, or it is going to be a nightmare to maintain IMO.  


7. I would not store the userDetails.submissionCount, commentsCount, or any "count" of anything in a column, because it violates the DRY principle.  This is basically an ad hoc cache of an aggregate query and best left to the cache provider.


There's probably other nitpicks I would find but all in all it's a good start.  There will likely need to be 2-3x more tables than what is shown here, just for starters, and that number will grow as the number of features increases.


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## Deleted member 3615 (Dec 13, 2013)

The downtime is no big deal for me, but I'm wondering if we'll be given information regarding ways to prevent further crashes / faster recovery time? Looking for peace of mind I guess.


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## Shiekra Tora (Dec 13, 2013)

DJ-Moogle said:


> The downtime is no big deal for me, but I'm wondering if we'll be given information regarding ways to prevent further crashes / faster recovery time? Looking for peace of mind I guess.



As was stated in the other thread, pretty much the only thing that can be done is the coding for the site to be totally re-done.

However, since it looks like Yak/the coding team is less then forthcoming with receiving help and countless volunteers have been turned away or met with no answer when it comes to helping with said coding, I doubt anything will be done and the frequent downtime will continue.


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## Myr (Dec 13, 2013)

nuzzcat said:


> I see a lot of things that I would change.  Mostly with the naming convention used.  I am very picky when it comes to these things but I will try to explain the reasons for it.
> 
> First off I am not judging you for this or trying to put you down or anything, and I hope these comments can be taken as constructive and helpful to anyone who is interested in reading.
> 
> ...


1 and 2 -- I can implement these changes. The whole uid, cid, rid, and so on was done for speed of prototyping.

3 -- Using Is is much more readable. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't use Hungarian notation when I wrote those. I tend to do that most everywhere else. Old habit from the Unreal Engine 2.x days!

4 -- I had a little debate with myself about that and finally settled on assigning one role to each user. To me it seemed like a performance vs. flexibility issue. It's better for performance if I don't have to do another join or query another table for roles and then go figure out which roles the user has. However, this limits users to one specific role if I go for pure performance. This is how FA is currently (as you already know, but I'm spelling it out for anyone else reading). You're a Member, Administrator, Banned, Deceased, or some other role. You can't be more than one. Quick lookup no matter what page you're on or what site powers you have.

Now the flexibility angle you are advocating lets users have multiple roles. You could roll in "Artist Type" (which I want to eliminate no matter what along with mood) very easily too. So we could have someone who is a Member, Digital Artist, Animator, Policy Enforcement, and so on. I wanted to use the roles table for groups too so there would be a Founder, Moderator, Member, and other things (I'd be open to letting groups make their own roles). It makes it really easy to just tack on or remove roles from people. Some can be applied by users themselves, and some must be granted. I get why you advocate it.

I actually propose a third option. Why not apply tags to users? F-List will hate me for this, but there's no reason why the tag catalog can't be applied to users. However, it would more tell about what they like and what they do as opposed to what they don't do. I'm not sure what the extent of caching for the database is so, again, to me it was a performance vs. flexibility issue.

5 -- submissionsUser.Relationship is how I accomplish my desire to eliminate seeing the same image posted by the artist, the commissioner, and then someone who just happens to be pictured in the image. In the current FA only one user can own an image. I see tons of duplicate images show up in my notification center, and I thought allowing a single submission to be linked to multiple users based on their relationship to the image was a good idea. A user can have a relationship of artist, commissioner, pictured, referenced, and anything else we can think up. This way the original artist is more likely to get credit, people must favorite the proper image and not some duplicate, and we don't end up having multiple copies of the same file. The way I described this in the database could be better, but I think this is something that would really help the site and its users. The primary key for that table is a compound primary key since only one user may be linked to a specific submission at a time. They can't be both the artist and the pictured (even if that is the case in the image). Artist would supersede the other categories.

There's also a pending and approved fields on there because when someone submits the image I want them to be able to add other people to it if they want to be associated with the image. Modem_Redpill drew my avatar and I'd be quite happy to have my name listed as commissioner right next to his as artist. But if Crazy_Guy drew drew an objectional picture and tried to link me with it, then I wouldn't want him to unilaterally tie my name to it. Hopefully this makes sense. I'm not aware of another artist website doing this right now. They do it with groups such that multiple groups can claim a specific image (I want to support that), but not with users.

6 -- It probably should, yeah. I thought it might be faster to grab a CSV blob of blocked IDs.

7 -- I have no problem with this. I originally stored those numbers because I didn't want to calculate them with every page visit.

I will resume work on this tomorrow and get some better documentation and justification up for a database concept. I am totally happy to discuss why and how we each think things should be done. I am open to change! I'm sure there will be several rounds of changing things and tweaking details until it's actually ready for prime time. That's pretty normal. I just wanted to get the ball rolling.

I need to go draw up some commissions tonight though, so this dragon has to get to arting!

We should probably also take these conversations somewhere else since threads here keep getting locked.


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## eshilieth (Dec 14, 2013)

Shiekra Tora said:


> As was stated in the other thread, pretty much the only thing that can be done is the coding for the site to be totally re-done.However, since it looks like Yak/the coding team is less then forthcoming with receiving help and countless volunteers have been turned away or met with no answer when it comes to helping with said coding, I doubt anything will be done and the frequent downtime will continue.


if you had seen raptros's update on the site status, you would know that everything will eventually be resolved. they're working on it. the site will most likely be up within the next couple days.


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## Shiekra Tora (Dec 14, 2013)

eshilieth said:


> if you had seen raptros's update on the site status, you would know that everything will eventually be resolved. they're working on it. the site will most likely be up within the next couple days.


And it will be a temporary fix because they are replacing the hardware when the problem is back-end with the coding. That's the trend that's been going for a long while now and I doubt it'll change anytime soon.


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## Etiainen (Dec 14, 2013)

thoron said:


> So even though he showed the billing as proof its some how a convienent excuse?


Cool, we got new hardware to fix hardware that apparently broke during the time that FA's terrible database coding resulted in the site practically crashing itself. I supposed the reason everything glitched out in the first place is because the hardware broke. I mean let us forbid FA from taking any responsibly for trouble it created for itself.


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## Vrghr (Dec 14, 2013)

Myr said:


> 1 and 2 -- I can implement these changes. The whole uid, cid, rid, and so on was done for speed of prototyping.
> 
> 5 -- submissionsUser.Relationship is how I accomplish my desire to eliminate seeing the same image posted by the artist, the commissioner, and then someone who just happens to be pictured in the image...



Just a quick suggestion on this one.  I recommend coding so that the image is retained as long as one of the relationships still exists.  You don't want to have a commissioner "post" a commissioned image on their page (which was in fact just a relational link to the artist's original image), only to have that image vanish unexpectedly because the artist either deleted it on their account, or removed their account entirely. Same applies to the other categories, whether they be "someone pictured" or just someone reposting it (with permission) because they liked it.

Even if the artist does have reason to delete it, or remove their account, the commissioner at a minimum should still retain the right to keep it posted within their own page(s).

You've probably already considered this situation, but I thought it worth mentioning Just In Case.


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## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

Vrghr said:


> Just a quick suggestion on this one.  I recommend coding so that the image is retained as long as one of the relationships still exists.  You don't want to have a commissioner "post" a commissioned image on their page (which was in fact just a relational link to the artist's original image), only to have that image vanish unexpectedly because the artist either deleted it on their account, or removed their account entirely. Same applies to the other categories, whether they be "someone pictured" or just someone reposting it (with permission) because they liked it.
> 
> Even if the artist does have reason to delete it, or remove their account, the commissioner at a minimum should still retain the right to keep it posted within their own page(s).
> 
> You've probably already considered this situation, but I thought it worth mentioning Just In Case.



I personally like it when the commissioner and artist post seperately, I know some find it annoying but I've seen artists post commission work in low resolution and the commissioner post in high. Low resolution pic drive me batty.


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## Lotix (Dec 14, 2013)

That is actually often meant to prevent theft and the commissioner was better off posting the lower resolution to protect their purchase. A reason I give my commissioners both sizes is so that there is a file to upload online and share with others but the nicer size to be privately enjoyed or shared as a reference when commissioning others. If resized properly, the quality shouldn't be too noticeable but significantly less detailed and smaller, depending on the original size the artists started with of course. If it wasn't meant to prevent theft, it's due to the artist not knowing how to upload the higher resolution. A lot of people don't know about that and im pretty sure it's not meant to be known, as it could be taken advantage of. Larger image sizes could be offered besides the standard we have now, especially if we're saving storage room by not double posting images.

I would say that if the artist goes to leave or delete, then the commissioner should then get transferred the image to their gallery instead, if desired. OR if you can have different gallery sub areas, like a "commissioned" gallery and a normal gallery which you would upload personal work to. This would also be less confusing for people and you wouldn't have to put a million "I DIDN'T DRAW THIS" all over the place.

So more on the "commissioned" gallery. Here it would show the original image and you have your own comments section and your own page but every favorite and view is given to the artist. The artist also has their gallery with the same image but it has it's own comment section, etc. So all you're seeing is the same image linked to different pages. If the artist leaves or deletes from their gallery, the image in your own "commissioned" gallery stays behind as well as all your comments. Stats could then reset and count towards your own, freeze or stay and just add on to whats already there previously. So artists old favs plus anything new you gain.

a thing:http://i.imgur.com/A3cd84i.png

A few other ideas i'd like to be looked into are:
1. get rid of notifications of unfaves and unwatches
(if someone does this, their avatar or name is just removed, the notification is removed and no more "favorite has been removed by the user")
2. allow artists to see comments that are deleted on their page
(this saves artists from people falsely bidding on auctions and then deleting bids. if you wanted them undeleted you send out a help ticket to a mod)
3. ability to mass scrap and mass edit tags, etc
4. folders for different category of work besides just scraps or ability to make your own folders/sub folders/hidden folders. tabs you can swap/edit on your main page.
5. revamped notes system
6. ability to comment back to shouts on your page instead of going on their page to shout back
7. auctions, adopts and YCH are in their own categories where you can search through them but opt out of receiving one of those things or all three.
(make the selection mandatory just like choosing rating, not relying on tags. this also makes it easier if you want to specifically look for these things and these things only. i'd also recommend that they NOT be combined into one mass group. whether or not you receive notifications for them would be under your settings. this also means that they would not show in your inbox, number or image wise but if you go to the artist in questions page, you could see it there, in their respective folder.)
8. a subscription option that comes with nice perks for artists and commissioners alike.
(this would be great for giving more pay to the site and for giving some of the more intensive staff incomes and more incentive to make FA their main job. this would also mean running the back ground of FA more like a business than ever before.)

Thats all I can think of off the top of my head but im sure there are more and plus others can think of some im pretty sure.


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## Northern-Crosshair (Dec 14, 2013)

thoron said:


> I personally like it when the commissioner and artist post seperately, I know some find it annoying but I've seen artists post commission work in low resolution and the commissioner post in high. Low resolution pic drive me batty.


Also, the commissioner sometimes will include a lot more detail, perhaps even a short story with the picture.


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## Lotix (Dec 14, 2013)

Northern-Crosshair said:


> Also, the commissioner sometimes will include a lot more detail, perhaps even a short story with the picture.



If they took my idea in my previous post into consideration, that would still be possible with still only having one image on the server.


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## PheagleAdler (Dec 14, 2013)

lol i like how this thread somehow blossomed into the UI idea thread


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## Lotix (Dec 14, 2013)

Admittedly, it should have probably moved up to the suggestions box where Otti has specifically made a thread just for this. But im kind of following benanderson, nuzzcat and Myr around because I've found that they have a lot of good to say and contribute to FA. I want to see FA blossom and thrive even further than it does now. By changing the layout, code and implementing changes and ideas from us users, FA would be the perfect furry hub spot as well as securing it's wavery future. A website this large can't run like a mom and pop held together with gum and rubber bands and empty promises anymore. It's time to grow and become more of a business.


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## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

Lotix said:


> If they took my idea in my previous post into consideration, that would still be possible with still only having one image on the server.



Of course how does one reconcile the issue of one party wanting to post one version and other party wanting to post a different version? Especially when the difference is something like image size.


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## Trpdwarf (Dec 14, 2013)

If at all possible could those of you interested in posting these ideas detailing UI stuff, and those of you following it take it to the Suggestion Box? This has bumped down what should be the thread that should be the focus of people's attention. Plus as productive as it is, it is quite off topic. Not saying there is anything wrong with at all, there is just a better place for it is all.

EDIT: For what it is worth focus it there and keep it properly civil and I'll see about prodding those higher up to take a serious look at it.


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## Lotix (Dec 14, 2013)

thoron said:


> Of course how does one reconcile the issue of one party wanting to post one version and other party wanting to post a different version? Especially when the difference is something like image size.



The artist would be the main party and it would be at their discretion but im sure if you communicated with your artist, they'd be willing to upload the size of your choice if it followed site TOS & AUP. By not double posting that would also allow more room on the servers, which would maybe give us the chance to upload files larger than 1200x1200. Though realistically, around 3000 is where you get into print territory and it becomes cumbersome and awkward to even view under nice resolutioned monitors without having to scroll over and up and down too much. A reasonable medium could be found that would look best on the common sized monitor.

If a commissioner wants to and it's acceptable by the artists TOS, maybe some detail shots could also be provided by the artist or done by themselves and uploaded to scraps by the commissioner.


edit: will do Trpdwarf ! thank you for being awfully nice and letting us know <33
this will be my last as i had been typing while you had posted your, my apologies!


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## GreenReaper (Dec 14, 2013)

thoron said:


> InkBunny and Weasly are still pretty small so I wonder how they would do with the same user base size as FA.



To give some scale on this: Inkbunny is about the same size as SoFurry when it comes to active members and visitors. Weasyl isn't yet in the same ballpark, although it probably got a fair number this week. Both Inkbunny and SoFurry get significantly less traffic than Fur Affinity (or even e621).

Inkbunny's current server is capable of handling at least three times its current load; but Fur Affinity handles at least six times that, probably closer to ten. We would need to expand, and would want to add multiple servers for redundancy, etc.

That said, we don't expect (or hope) that Fur Affinity will go away anytime soon. For a start, we'd get a flood of underage furs trying to get in!


----------



## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

Edit


----------



## Kaeko (Dec 14, 2013)

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threa...GESTION-THREAD-By-Programmers-For-Programmers


----------



## EvilLugiaXD (Dec 14, 2013)

People really need lives. What is wrong with going to a different site until FA recovers?

I actually see FA's downtime getting shorter. Back in the day.... It crashed often and the downtime would last months before any sign of recovery.


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## Northern-Crosshair (Dec 14, 2013)

EvilLugiaXD said:


> People really need lives. What is wrong with going to a different site until FA recovers?



To answer this question for the 500th time. Because believe it or not, people use FA for stuff other than porn. When the site went down there was an auction for a YCH in one persons comic I was bidding on. There are another person who is trying to put together a small Holiday Animal Alphabet Book that is now probably now not going to happen due to the length of the downtime. FA is where everyone is furry wise.


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## DarkOverord (Dec 14, 2013)

EvilLugiaXD said:


> People really need lives. What is wrong with going to a different site until FA recovers?
> 
> I actually see FA's downtime getting shorter. Back in the day.... It crashed often and the downtime would last months before any sign of recovery.



Urrrrrrrrrrrrgh not this statement again.

Basically: Any artist who does commissions will see a significant drop in custom while FA is down as not all their potential market is in one place. Yes they should work on other sites, but there are some people who don't go to other sites out of some weird "FA is the best and if I don't use it exclusively I'M BETRAYING IT" reasoning. It happens. Trust me. Secondly, as this was unplanned, there was no real way to set up backups in time, so if an artist needs access to their notes etc., or hasn't been able to post "Here's other ways to commission me" in time, they have to rely on FA. FA is also a community, and while the forums do exist, people will scatter all directions when it's down, making it hard to get in touch with certain people if they're not on X/Y/Z/Etc. or if they never got chance to post they're on X/Y/Z/Etc.

It's not a matter of "Needing a life" it's a matter of FA's the largest Furry site and when it goes down puts a large dent into the fandom. 

As for downtimes, yes it's better than it was, but that doesn't make the regularity of "whoops something broke" any better.


----------



## Williamca (Dec 14, 2013)

DarkOverord said:


> Urrrrrrrrrrrrgh not this statement again.
> 
> Basically: Any artist who does commissions will see a significant drop in custom while FA is down as not all their potential market is in one place. Yes they should work on other sites, but there are some people who don't go to other sites out of some weird "FA is the best and if I don't use it exclusively I'M BETRAYING IT" reasoning. It happens. Trust me. Secondly, as this was unplanned, there was no real way to set up backups in time, so if an artist needs access to their notes etc., or hasn't been able to post "Here's other ways to commission me" in time, they have to rely on FA. FA is also a community, and while the forums do exist, people will scatter all directions when it's down, making it hard to get in touch with certain people if they're not on X/Y/Z/Etc. or if they never got chance to post they're on X/Y/Z/Etc.
> 
> ...




This right here. There's a number of artists that rely heavily on FA for income. This week outage may not seem like much but lets try to put it into context.

An artist normally offers 10 slots per week at about 30-60$ per image. So without FA that is a pretty significant drop in income for them.
(I mean it's good that it's up and read only at least in the aspect they can still access refs and notes. Not so much in terms of communication if needed)

Not to mention it's not just one or two artists, but quite a lot whom primarily use FA. While they have 3000 - 12000 watchers here, that 200-400 they have on another site often does not help them much at all when it's the only site they can use.


----------



## maxgoof (Dec 14, 2013)

So, it's almost been another 24 hours since the last update. Can we assume that they are hard at work replacing the hard drive and we should see the site back up by this evening?


----------



## Shiekra Tora (Dec 14, 2013)

maxgoof said:


> So, it's almost been another 24 hours since the last update. Can we assume that they are hard at work replacing the hard drive and we should see the site back up by this evening?



I wouldn't get your hopes up, to be totally honest.


----------



## marmelmm (Dec 14, 2013)

maxgoof said:


> So, it's almost been another 24 hours since the last update. Can we assume that they are hard at work replacing the hard drive and we should see the site back up by this evening?



Hold not thy breath, lest thou resemblest a smurf.  

Say, have I mentioned I'm on SoFurry now?  Same username as FA.  ^.^


----------



## GamerFox (Dec 14, 2013)

I'm checking Neer's Twitter to see if anything has happened, but his latest twet remains something about turning Fender into a steer.


----------



## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

maxgoof said:


> So, it's almost been another 24 hours since the last update. Can we assume that they are hard at work replacing the hard drive and we should see the site back up by this evening?





Shiekra Tora said:


> I wouldn't get your hopes up, to be totally honest.





marmelmm said:


> Hold not thy breath, lest thou resemblest a smurf.
> 
> Say, have I mentioned I'm on SoFurry now?  Same username as FA.  ^.^





GamerFox said:


> I'm checking Neer's Twitter to see if anything has happened, but his latest twet remains something about turning Fender into a steer.



http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/831823-Site-Status-12-13-2013

This was posted at around 11pm eastern time last night, the main site administrator notice was also updated yesterday evening as well.


----------



## Bornes (Dec 14, 2013)

If everyone hates FA so much, isn't it the community's fault for not leaving to greener pastures? That is the way I see it. I think FA would get its act together quickly if the user base migrated and FA wasn't the center of attention any more.

(That being said, I actually prefer FA's layout over the other sites. This is the reason I continue to use it)


----------



## DarkOverord (Dec 14, 2013)

Bornes said:


> If everyone hates FA so much, isn't it the community's fault for not leaving to greener pastures? That is the way I see it. I think FA would get its act together quickly if the user base migrated and FA wasn't the center of attention any more.
> 
> (That being said, I actually prefer FA's layout over the other sites. This is the reason I continue to use it)



The problem is that FA is so large and is basically the most well known, that people pretty much default to FA in the fandom. Great you left FA because of how bad it is, but you've essentially by doing so cut yourself out of a large portion of a community.

There's no way of mass organising it, as that kinda thing has often cost people accounts on FA etc. and even if you did, there's no guarantee people actually would for the reasons I posted above. The only way FA's userbase would do a dramatic shift is if it just disappeared for a while, as in a significant while, forums and all. Until then, it's unlikely it would happen.


----------



## Stratelier (Dec 14, 2013)

maxgoof said:


> So, it's almost been another 24 hours since the last update. Can we assume that they are hard at work replacing the hard drive and we should see the site back up by this evening?



Well, there's a good chance that up to 8 of those hours were spent being AFK....


----------



## Shaon the Kozo (Dec 14, 2013)

Stratadrake said:


> Well, there's a good chance that up to 8 of those hours were spent being AFK....




So a third of the time they were gone, I get that. They had to sleep, do other stuff, awesome! But at least a tiny update of "we're still working on it" would be nice. It's kind of annoying how there's only an update only after a very long time - in this case it's almost been 24 hours since they said they were almost done. People are affected by this (artists, commissioners, etc) for various reasons, so for all the apologizing it feels like they can't be assed to make a comment on unscheduled down time unless people start getting upset by the lack of it.


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## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

Shaon the Kozo said:


> So a third of the time they were gone, I get that. They had to sleep, do other stuff, awesome! But at least a tiny update of "we're still working on it" would be nice. It's kind of annoying how there's only an update only after a very long time - in this case it's almost been 24 hours since they said they were almost done. People are affected by this (artists, commissioners, etc) for various reasons, so for all the apologizing it feels like they can't be assed to make a comment on unscheduled down time unless people start getting upset by the lack of it.



Far less than 24 hours actually. http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/831823-Site-Status-12-13-2013 Dragoneer made this update around 11pm eastern time last night.

Though he probably shouldn't have locked it as it caused it to blend in with all the other recently locked threads.


----------



## seadog-driftwood (Dec 14, 2013)

For what it's worth (i.e. not that much, seeing as I'm not in Neer's inner circle), I'd estimate that FA should be up before Tuesday.

I say Tuesday because many things are closed on Sundays, which could hamper being able to obtain new parts or programs should there be any further problems. If new problems do, in fact, arise, then assuming the parts/software/whatever arrives Monday, installing the new stuff would take several hours at the very least.

Of course, if there are no more problems â€” or at least no more major or pressing ones â€” FA may yet emerge from read-only mode sooner than that.


----------



## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

seadog-driftwood said:


> For what it's worth (i.e. not that much, seeing as I'm not in Neer's inner circle), I'd estimate that FA should be up before Tuesday.
> 
> I say Tuesday because many things are closed on Sundays, which could hamper being able to obtain new parts or programs should there be any further problems. If new problems do, in fact, arise, then assuming the parts/software/whatever arrives Monday, installing the new stuff would take several hours at the very least.
> 
> Of course, if there are no more problems â€” or at least no more major or pressing ones â€” FA may yet emerge from read-only mode sooner than that.



They already have the parts supposedly so the only thing that could cause a delay is another hardware failure.


----------



## GamerFox (Dec 14, 2013)

https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/411980681195974656

It appears he's as in the dark as we all are.


----------



## BRN (Dec 14, 2013)

GamerFox said:


> https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/411980681195974656
> 
> It appears he's as in the dark as we all are.



Of course he is. He's not in charge of the transfer, he's only got oversight of it. 

Sounds to me like he's looking for an update, and I'd assume he'd share it with us when he gets one. I prefer an informed status update when one becomes available rather than an on-demand "I don't know", myself...


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## DarkOverord (Dec 14, 2013)

BRN said:


> Of course he is. He's not in charge of the transfer, he's only got oversight of it.
> 
> Sounds to me like he's looking for an update, and I'd assume he'd share it with us when he gets one. I prefer an informed status update when one becomes available rather than an on-demand "I don't know", myself...



Except he's the guy at the top, he should be at least getting a regular update without pestering, even if it's "no change"


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## BRN (Dec 14, 2013)

DarkOverord said:


> Except he's the guy at the top, he should be at least getting a regular update without pestering, even if it's "no change"


That's true, I can't argue with that! But maybe he is getting that sort of update - even if he was, a "no change" doesn't seem newsworthy...

It's possible he received the tweet and started chasing up Yak as a result of it, posting that he's looking for an update. I don't know what kind of periodic update he would get, but whether he does or doesn't, it seems like a fair thing to do.  Hell, it's even possible he just woke up and updated twitter first thing, before looking for updates.

I don't know. I guess I just have faith that lines of communication are reasonable here. I'd like to think so, anyway.


----------



## StormyChang (Dec 14, 2013)

thoron said:


> Far less than 24 hours actually. http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/831823-Site-Status-12-13-2013 Dragoneer made this update around 11pm eastern time last night.
> 
> Though he probably shouldn't have locked it as it caused it to blend in with all the other recently locked threads.



in that little thread it says something about how things should be fixed by tomorrow and uh, according to the date on it it's already been tomorrow afternoon... try again.


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## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

StormyChang said:


> in that little thread it says something about how things should be fixed by tomorrow and uh, according to the date on it it's already been tomorrow afternoon... try again.



You need to try again as this was in responce to people claiming that no update has been posted in 24 hours.


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## maxgoof (Dec 14, 2013)

thoron said:


> You need to try again as this was in responce to people claiming that no update has been posted in 24 hours.



Yeah, which was claimed because the official thread on "Site Status", http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/812997-Server-Issues-Migration-status , is now 25 hours old. I expect to find official status posts on "Site Status" not "Site Discussion".

Even the one you mention is now 20 hours old. I just think we deserve another update from the people actually doing the work, don't you?


----------



## Duraji (Dec 14, 2013)

How about let's all just "try again"? XP

But, yeah, it's pretty shocking to see that Dragoneer really doesn't have as much control over the situation as he should. I mean, he literally owns the site, why is it that Yak has been completely unable to give straight answers? Combine that with years and years of empty promises, and it makes me honestly wonder why Yak is still on staff. And I'm not being insulting or anything, I just honestly and legitimately wonder why he's still in charge of anything, let alone all the code to the biggest furry site on the Internet.


----------



## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

maxgoof said:


> Yeah, which was claimed because the official thread on "Site Status", http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/812997-Server-Issues-Migration-status , is now 25 hours old. I expect to find official status posts on "Site Status" not "Site Discussion".
> 
> Even the one you mention is now 20 hours old. I just think we deserve another update from the people actually doing the work, don't you?



Yes, at this point there should be another update. But trying to point fault hours after the fact really doesn't do anything. If I were trying to point to Dragoneers most resent thread now faults could be pointed out.



Duraji said:


> How about let's all just "try again"? XP
> 
> But, yeah, it's pretty shocking to see that Dragoneer really doesn't have as much control over the situation as he should. I mean, he literally owns the site, why is it that Yak has been completely unable to give straight answers? Combine that with years and years of empty promises, and it makes me honestly wonder why he's still on staff. And I'm not being insulting or anything, I just honestly and legitimately wonder why he's still in charge of anything, let alone all the code to the biggest furry site on the Internet.



Because he pays the bills for the site even if the money to fund those bills come from ad revenue by the users. He is also the final arbiture of the rules of FA.


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## Duraji (Dec 14, 2013)

thoron said:


> Because he pays the bills for the site even if the money to fund those bills come from ad revenue by the users. He is also the final arbiture of the rules of FA.



Dragoneer owns the site, Yak doesn't. I was referring to Yak when I said that I'm surprised he's still on staff considering that all the problems stem from bad code and not fixing anything after years and years. I like Dragoneer and consider him a friend IRL, you won't catch me badmouthing him. Dragoneer does what he can, and I'm absolutely certain he's just as frustrated as the rest of us. Yak is the one who always seems completely emotionless about everything and clearly doesn't care that his inaction is upsetting a lot of people, so I wonder why anyone would tolerate that. I certainly hope it's not because Yak has blackmailed 'neer or something.


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## BlazeIgnitus (Dec 14, 2013)

I think, with that last quote thoron, you're referring to the wrong person; Duraji was asking more about why Yak is in charge of the coding of FA. He was not questioning why Dragoneer was still in control of the site as a whole.


----------



## chicobo329 (Dec 14, 2013)

BlazeIgnitus said:


> I think, with that last quote thoron, you're referring to the wrong person; Duraji was asking more about why Yak is in charge of the coding of FA. He was not questioning why Dragoneer was still in control of the site as a whole.



Indeed, if anything Dragoneer's been very stressed over the situation as much as we have. The real person in question here is Yak because the site's coding and peculiar steps to mitigate the problems have caused this 5 day semi-blackout. What we should take out of this is that the site sorely needs to be modernized and fortunately several well qualified coders have offered to volunteer and offer solutions to make sure this won't happen again. If the status quo is kept, this may well happen again in the future.


----------



## GreenReaper (Dec 14, 2013)

Maybe yak is Dragoneer's secret alter-ego. Like, Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hyena. Same body, completely different personalities!

. . . but probably not. It'd be a neat art topic, though. 

At this point there's honestly very little use for an update. Artists should already have attempted to contact commissioners via another route if necessary. And frankly, once it comes back, it'll likely be hectic on FA for a while, so it's perhaps better to just chill and come back in a few days.


----------



## Lobar (Dec 14, 2013)

chicobo329 said:


> Indeed, if anything Dragoneer's been very stressed over the situation as much as we have. The real person in question here is Yak because the site's coding and peculiar steps to mitigate the problems have caused this 5 day semi-blackout. What we should take out of this is that the site sorely needs to be modernized and fortunately several well qualified coders have offered to volunteer and offer solutions to make sure this won't happen again. If the status quo is kept, this may well happen again in the future.



Man, this has been an ongoing pattern for as long as I can remember.  Why would they start listening now?


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## Duraji (Dec 14, 2013)

Lobar said:


> Man, this has been an ongoing pattern for as long as I can remember.  Why would they start listening now?



That's exactly what worries me. Also, I had to reply to you, I love guinea pigs.  (unless your icon is not a guinea pig, then I'll be embarrassed XD)


----------



## AliothFox (Dec 14, 2013)

GreenReaper said:


> And frankly, once it comes back, it'll likely be hectic on FA for a while, so it's perhaps better to just chill and come back in a few days.



The biggest problem with this is that a lot of artists (myself included) have got Christmas stuff they're trying to to get done for their watchers/commissioners and have no way to communicate with some of them at the moment.  I see your point though.  This was just really bad timing for everyone involved.  I'm sure poor Dragoneer must be ready to tear his hair out by now.


----------



## Shiekra Tora (Dec 14, 2013)

AliothFox said:


> The biggest problem with this is that a lot of artists (myself included) have got Christmas stuff they're trying to to get done for their watchers/commissioners and have no way to communicate with some of them at the moment.  I see your point though.  This was just really bad timing for everyone involved.  I'm sure poor Dragoneer must be ready to tear his hair out by now.



For some reason, I doubt that.

The community has come forth time and time again showing it's coding problems, and they've come forth time and time again offering help to fix said problems. Yet nothing ever gets resolved... so what you will but I'm counting down to the next downtime streak because of the status quo.


----------



## STrRedWolf (Dec 14, 2013)

GreenReaper said:


> And frankly, once it comes back, it'll likely be hectic on FA for a while, so it's perhaps better to just chill and come back in a few days.



Did that already.  It's still down.


----------



## AmaruKaze (Dec 14, 2013)

I wonder mainly how Furaffinity manages to keep having disk failures and be surprised by them :/

There are advanced monitoring systems and HDD Health surveillance that should warn and indicated performance loss or upcoming breakdowns. This would allow them to buy the disks in time and exchange them before they finally fail. Still the number of hard drives that failed is immense, no idea why it is so hight. My company I work in has hosted several download song for coupon websites and we had maybe one faulty drive in three years of the shop/gift website being online.


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## Kesteh (Dec 14, 2013)

I can think of a few things that are more active and demanding than FA, but needing 80% less hardware replacement. I just don't understand how it happens so hyper-actively here.
All of which involve VMs and very active writing to hard drives with extraordinary amounts of RAM allocation. Hardware replacement is actually a once-a-few-years kind of thing. Here it's every 6-12 months.


----------



## teil (Dec 14, 2013)

i'm going to burn a hole in the internet by hitting this refresh button so many times. lol
update, please!


----------



## Shiekra Tora (Dec 14, 2013)

Kesteh said:


> I can think of a few things that are more active and demanding than FA, but needing 80% less hardware replacement. I just don't understand how it happens so hyper-actively here.



As established in the one thread that was locked previously, most of it has to do with the coding. The site is running on antiquated code and the answer to the downtime is not to update it, but to just replace/upgrade hardware hoping it'll fix it. It's like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. It's only a matter of time before everything goes to hell unless you take the proper steps to maintain it.


----------



## GamerFox (Dec 14, 2013)

I don't know why Dragoneer has considered Yak's continued involvement in FA after these recent incidents.


----------



## StormyChang (Dec 14, 2013)

GamerFox said:


> I don't know why Dragoneer has considered Yak's continued involvement in FA after these recent incidents.



the only conceivable option i could think for this is someone has some dirt on someone.. like seriously.. for all the effing up yak has done over the years and not let anyone help.  someone has some dirt on someone.. -_-


----------



## maxgoof (Dec 14, 2013)

Okay, now it HAS been 24 hours since the last update, when we were told it would likely come up today.

It did NOT come up today.

Please, update.


----------



## zachhart12 (Dec 14, 2013)

maxgoof said:


> Okay, now it HAS been 24 hours since the last update, when we were told it would likely come up today.
> 
> It did NOT come up today.
> 
> Please, update.



Wasn't the following posted about 8 hours ago?  Maybe I'm getting time confused.

*Administrator notice:*

Data migration is nearly complete. Our replacement hard drives arrived as well, and we will get the drives updated and installed before bringing the site online. Updates will be posted to the Forums and via Twitter once we have a more accurate time frame on getting things back up and running. We would like to apologize for how long this has taken. This was an unfortunate issue that we had hoped to avoid.


----------



## robbo (Dec 14, 2013)

Nah, I think that notice was posted late yesterday. Rather disappointed that we're not back on our feet today in any case. It'll ultimately be done when it's done, but I had high hopes that today would be the day that we saw some progress. Fingers crossed for tomorrow, I suppose.


----------



## Loki's Right Hand (Dec 14, 2013)

Patience, young one. Good things come to those who wait.


----------



## Kesteh (Dec 14, 2013)

Here's to a dozen other promises and deadlines that will never be met.


----------



## Dragoncat (Dec 14, 2013)

Loki's Right Hand said:


> Patience, young one. Good things come to those who wait.



We're not impatient. We just want to be kept in the loop rather then having to squeeze someone for it >:


----------



## thoron (Dec 14, 2013)

Kesteh said:


> Here's to a dozen other promises and deadlines that will never be met.



They never made any promises only that they hoped to have the site up and running again. Hope and promise are two very different things.


----------



## Duraji (Dec 14, 2013)

Loki's Right Hand said:


> Patience, young one. Good things come to those who wait.



Like a better running FurAffinity with the new promised interface and awesome competitive features? At this rate it will have to be LEGENDARY to have been worth the wait after all the promises and delays. I want FurAffinity to succeed, but it has so much it needs to show to the community before it can earn its spot as the best and get people to trust it again.


----------



## Dragoncat (Dec 14, 2013)

Either way, neer's twitter has some reasonable insight. He knows people want an update, but there isn't one ready to give.


----------



## Shiekra Tora (Dec 14, 2013)

Dragoncat said:


> Either way, neer's twitter has some reasonable insight. He knows people want an update, but there isn't one ready to give.


Why aren't we getting updates or any type of communication from Yak? 

That's the million dollar question.


----------



## Duraji (Dec 14, 2013)

Shiekra Tora said:


> Why aren't we getting updates or any type of communication from Yak?
> 
> That's the million dollar question.



Well, my theory is that he doesn't care. I've been on the site since the beginning and I've never seen him post a single thing that demonstrates any amount of caring for the community. I've honestly never seen such an emotionless person in my entire time in the fandom, which is just making it all the more aggravating that he's somehow given all the authority even when much better, much more compassionate coders have come, been denied any leeway because Yak might not approve, and then turned away. As someone said before, I do feel like someone has dirt on other people, it doesn't make any sense otherwise why someone who has proven time and time again to be completely unable to handle what's required from such a big site hasn't been shown the door yet. And I think Dragoneer is a fantastic guy, so I'm 99.9% certain it's not him. There just seems to be something bad going on behind the scenes, but I don't want to speculate and create unfounded rumors.


----------



## maxgoof (Dec 14, 2013)

Loki's Right Hand said:


> Patience, young one. Good things come to those who wait.



I am reminded of the story of the dog who always waited at the train station for his master to return home. Unfortunately, his master died while at work. That dog waited at the train station until he died, many years later.

No, good things do not always come to those who wait. Sometimes good things come to those who say, "HEY!! WHERE THE HELL ARE THE UPDATES ON THIS PROJECT THAT YOU SAID SHOULD BE COMPLETED TODAY??"


----------



## Chazykins (Dec 15, 2013)

Why hasn't there been any update? They were gonna give us one this morning but now its 12am. I'm not rushing or irritated but I and many many many others would like to know whats going on. I'm pretty sure the data has been transferred and the hard drives had arrived. Something would be pleasant. uvu


----------



## chicobo329 (Dec 15, 2013)

maxgoof said:


> I am reminded of the story of the dog who always waited at the train station for his master to return home. Unfortunately, his master died while at work. That dog waited at the train station until he died, many years later.
> 
> No, good things do not always come to those who wait. Sometimes good things come to those who say, "HEY!! WHERE THE HELL ARE THE UPDATES ON THIS PROJECT THAT YOU SAID SHOULD BE COMPLETED TODAY??"



Neer can only do so much, he's not getting anything from Yak so there's nothing to report. Yak has not posted anything about the outage since the 9th at all and nearly everything else since then has been relayed by other people. The lack of upfront messages from the people who are responsible for the site's coding is what's making the wait so painful.


----------



## maxgoof (Dec 15, 2013)

chicobo329 said:


> Neer can only do so much, he's not getting anything from Yak so there's nothing to report. Yak has not posted anything about the outage since the 9th at all and nearly everything else since then has been relayed by other people. The lack of upfront messages from the people who are responsible for the site's coding is what's making the wait so painful.



True. They can claim all they like that they've been busy, but I bet they have not been too busy to eat three meals and go to the bathroom. One quick text to someone who can give us an update would be enough.


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## Shaon the Kozo (Dec 15, 2013)

Dragoncat said:


> Either way, neer's twitter has some reasonable insight. He knows people want an update, but there isn't one ready to give.



Honestly, I think it's terribly unprofessional to use twitter as a means to give status updates instead of the site itself. Why not at least say as much on the site instead of some social media site not everyone uses or wants to be associated with? 

I'll be one of the first to say I'm being patient, but I am rather irritated at all of this. And I find it terribly hard to believe there's no update after 24 hours of work. At least give us a percent value. I'm getting mighty tired of all these false promises and excuses. I know they can't move any faster, but honestly this whole thing is ridiculous and has been handled very badly, and I know several people agree. Updates only after a dozen threads and questions, and even then Dragoneer and Yak aren't giving any insight to the issue besides Neer giving a few vague words about the issues. I am sure Neer is as frustrated as us, but I wish he would listen to the people who sound like they know what they're talking about (the coders who've chimed in) about the issues. It's frustrating that the site has been down THIS CLOSE to Christmas. It's affecting commission business. I know you can't help downtime, but this has been happening (lags, slow downs, other issues) for several years, and been worse these past few months. I feel these issues should and could have been fixed a lot sooner.


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## FlynnCoyote (Dec 15, 2013)

Loki's Right Hand said:


> Patience, young one. Good things come to those who wait.



...So does death.


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## GreenReaper (Dec 15, 2013)

With Fur Affinity in read-only mode, it is impossible to die. "During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them."

But it is also said "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find." Yet beware! You may find more than you were bargaining for. "When they find, they will be disturbed."


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## AliothFox (Dec 15, 2013)

Ishtar5 said:


> ...So does death.



...which FA is in serious danger of if they don't start updating their users.  I'm loyal to FA - I'll wait this out.  I'm not going anywhere.  But I have a feeling that after this fiasco, there's going to be a sizable chunk of FA's user base that is going to move on to other things.  We've seen lots of coders in here who've offered great suggestions and been ignored, or the threads have been locked.  I feel bad for Dragoneer because I'm sure he's having as bad a time as anyone here - worse, really - but it has been more than a day since anyone's said anything about when we can expect the site to be back up.  And no, maybe they don't know, but they could at least say something about what HAS been done or what IS being done.


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## Draconas (Dec 15, 2013)

Shiekra Tora said:


> Why aren't we getting updates or any type of communication from Yak?
> 
> That's the million dollar question.



Best answer: He's busy with fixing it and RL most likely.

Yak doesn't say anything for a long time, people will bitch, yak is here discussing the issue, people would most likely bitch that he isn't working on the problem.


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## AmaruKaze (Dec 15, 2013)

Draconas said:


> Best answer: He's busy with fixing it and RL most likely.
> 
> Yak doesn't say anything for a long time, people will bitch, yak is here discussing the issue, people would most likely bitch that he isn't working on the problem.



Those who would complain whilst he does write in the forums simply have no clue. It is not that he has to drag and drop the data from A to B himself. He has to watch the process and monitor it, which doesn't need him staring at the screen all the time. The fact Yak is not updating us makes me worried much more.

 Say your loved in is in a hospital and underwent surgery. The only person speaking to you is the head of the department, who technically is the one in charge but has no clue at all because the treating doctor is not giving a damn about informing his superior ( Ignoring authority and responsibility? ) nor caring about the persons connected to the patient, therefore I must really wonder where Yak is...


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## maxgoof (Dec 15, 2013)

AliothFox said:


> ...which FA is in serious danger of if they don't start updating their users.  I'm loyal to FA - I'll wait this out.  I'm not going anywhere.  But I have a feeling that after this fiasco, there's going to be a sizable chunk of FA's user base that is going to move on to other things.



I donno... It survived Augustgate, it survived the cub porn purge, it survives the sonic porn purge. The userbase is twice any other furry art site, at least. It is going to take something as big, or bigger than Augustgate combined with another site providing a better interface and attarcting a comparable userbase for something like that to happen.


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## PheagleAdler (Dec 15, 2013)

Unless a REALLY LARGE CHUNK leaves FA at once to A SINGLE SITE then chances are relatively low that the site will lose a lot of its members. People go where the art is and most of it is on FA. That's not going to change anytime soon. 

I call it the Facebook problem: sure there may be better sites out there, but no one's using them. So despite complaints, most of the userbase stays.


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## Muzz (Dec 15, 2013)

AliothFox said:


> The biggest problem with this is that a lot of artists (myself included) have got Christmas stuff they're trying to to get done for their watchers/commissioners and have no way to communicate with some of them at the moment.  I see your point though.  This was just really bad timing for everyone involved.  I'm sure poor Dragoneer must be ready to tear his hair out by now.





To be brutally honest, artists of FA should have set up off-site communication a long time ago. I have always communicated with my customers through email. so I don't have much sympathy for artists that don't do this and are simply twiddling their thumbs and not getting work done. It doesn't stop for me, I'm still working OFF site, because I've built up other places as a back up. Its common sense and more artists need to do this if FA is their only main source of income.


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## FlynnCoyote (Dec 15, 2013)

Muzz said:


> To be brutally honest, artists of FA should have set up off-site communication a long time ago. I have always communicated with my customers through email. so I don't have much sympathy for artists that don't do this and are simply twiddling their thumbs and not getting work done. It doesn't stop for me, I'm still working OFF site, because I've built up other places as a back up. Its common sense and more artists need to do this if FA is their only main source of income.



Genius! Though utterly pointless if the throngs of watchers are not willing to do the same. A lot I've tried to convince to join Weasyl or dA have simply replied that FA has everyone so there's no need to go elsewhere. And not everyone is so forthcoming with emails or IM's either. 

Only now with this am I starting to get through to _some _of them. 

My point here being it's not entirely up to artists. Sometimes our watchers have to be willing to take this kind of advice, and in many cases they simply are not.


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## Serperior (Dec 15, 2013)

To be honest, I'm a bit annoyed by this "establish your contacts elsewhere" argument. And mind you, I'm not in trouble because FA is down, because I'm lucky enough not to rely on commissions, but this is just unfair. 

I have more watchers on DA than on FA, and I have significant following in other places. But if I would decide to open commissions, I'd do it on FA. You know why? Because people on DA are more likely to whine about prices being in real money and not in points (or how they are not old enough to have credit card). Other sites are just dead in that regard. And naturally, I wouldn't go from door to door, spamming everyone with emails, asking if anyone wants to commission me. 
So please, stop blaming artists. It's not their fault that FA happens to be the best site to do business on. 

And I do love FA, and I want it to become better. And it just won't happen if people continue defending things, that are clearly not okay, screaming how "it's FREE, GET A LIFE!". You know, honestly, if FA had premium membership, I'd gladly pay them. I just want to see it change for the better.


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## Haystack (Dec 15, 2013)

Muzz said:


> To be brutally honest, artists of FA should have set up off-site communication a long time ago. I have always communicated with my customers through email. so I don't have much sympathy for artists that don't do this and are simply twiddling their thumbs and not getting work done. It doesn't stop for me, I'm still working OFF site, because I've built up other places as a back up. Its common sense and more artists need to do this if FA is their only main source of income.



this. so much this.

never, NEVER rely on a single line of communication when money's involved.

anyone who commissions me has my email address, and many of them can contact me via various IM systems as well.

I've not been affected regarding current commissions and other art by this outage,
because I can stay in touch with clients through avenues other than FA. 

for those of you who were doing auctions or other timed events...
just add X days to the ending time, where "X" was the number of days FA was out of kilter.
maybe even add a day or two in case folks take a little time to find out FA is alive again.

it'll delay your payment a bit, yes, but it'll also be totally fair to your clientele, 
and might even win you some love for being graceful in dealing with this unexpected situation.

[OnT] I'm a little upset that there hasn't been any word from staff for more than a day regarding an ETA on FA returning to service.
I'd rather know that "it's gonna be a while longer" than be totally in the dark.   
the haphazard communication from staff throughout this incident has been very... disappointing.


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## Muzz (Dec 15, 2013)

Serperior said:


> To be honest, I'm a bit annoyed by this "establish your contacts elsewhere" argument. And mind you, I'm not in trouble because FA is down, because I'm lucky enough not to rely on commissions, but this is just unfair.
> 
> I have more watchers on DA than on FA, and I have significant following in other places. But if I would decide to open commissions, I'd do it on FA. You know why? Because people on DA are more likely to whine about prices being in real money and not in points (or how they are not old enough to have credit card). Other sites are just dead in that regard. And naturally, I wouldn't go from door to door, spamming everyone with emails, asking if anyone wants to commission me.
> So please, stop blaming artists. It's not their fault that FA happens to be the best site to do business on.
> ...



Don't get me wrong, my main source of business is also via FA. My point was more directed at communication though. I've seen countless artists say they can't get any work done because they're unable to contact their customers. This is pretty poor management to be honest, if I do /anything/ on FA that may require further contact, I always get email addresses. If artists, writers, suit makers what have you don't take time to gather this information then they will find themselves stuck without being able to complete work. ESPECIALLY if its Christmas related. Good lord.

So again don't assume I'm poking at artists who work on FA in general. I open every Sunday on FA for 10+ commissions, since this week for me will be sporadic in work I'll most likely open up on my art twitter account which is where I ask ALL my customers (and users that watch me on FA) to make a note of if they ever need me off-site (as well as my email address). I would still need to build up my commissioners on another site if FA were to eventually fail entirely, but its not impossible, and I just think people need to make sure they have back-ups, because many don't.


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## Haystack (Dec 15, 2013)

Serperior said:


> To be honest, I'm a bit annoyed by this "establish your contacts elsewhere" argument. And mind you, I'm not in trouble because FA is down, because I'm lucky enough not to rely on commissions, but this is just unfair. . . .



why is it bad to have alternative methods of maintaining contact when the primary method has a track record of going kaput unexpectedly?

seems like plain old good sense, and good customer service, to me, to ensure that contact is kept open regardless of site outages.


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## Muzz (Dec 15, 2013)

Ishtar5 said:


> Genius! Though utterly pointless if the throngs of watchers are not willing to do the same. A lot I've tried to convince to join Weasyl or dA have simply replied that FA has everyone so there's no need to go elsewhere. And not everyone is so forthcoming with emails or IM's either.
> 
> Only now with this am I starting to get through to _some _of them.
> 
> My point here being it's not entirely up to artists. Sometimes our watchers have to be willing to take this kind of advice, and in many cases they simply are not.



Oh of course, if customers aren't willing to share info either then its difficult. Its a two way system for that matter. That being said though, if I've ever found that I've had to look for customers details when they've failed to provide it, the internet is useful in that you can endlessly search for it if it got to that point. Even luckier if contact info is on their FA page, like twitters, skype etc. But yes they need to make sure they keep this end of communication also, not just artists alone.


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## Jaki-Kun (Dec 15, 2013)

zachhart12 said:


> Wasn't the following posted about 8 hours ago?  Maybe I'm getting time confused.
> 
> *Administrator notice:*
> 
> Data migration is nearly complete. Our replacement hard drives arrived as well, and we will get the drives updated and installed before bringing the site online. Updates will be posted to the Forums and via Twitter once we have a more accurate time frame on getting things back up and running. We would like to apologize for how long this has taken. This was an unfortunate issue that we had hoped to avoid.



Actually, yesterday the site read as follows.



> *Administrator notice:*
> 
> Data migration is nearly complete. We will be attempting to resolve thins tomorrow (Saturday). Our replacement hard drives arrived as well, and we will get the drives updated and installed before bringing the site online. Updates will be posted to the Forums and via Twitter once we have a more accurate time frame on getting things back up and running. We would like to apologize for how long this has taken. This was an unfortunate issue that we had hoped to avoid.




I can understand that outdated info should be removed from statements like this, but it annoys me that no pertinent information was added to it. If progress was made on Saturday, we should know what it was. And if progress wasn't made on Saturday... well, we should know that, too. At this point, I'd happily receive bad news just so I could understand why this situation is taking so long to remedy.


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## Drakkenmensch (Dec 15, 2013)

thoron said:


> They never made any promises only that they hoped to have the site up and running again. Hope and promise are two very different things.



With all due respect to the site admins, "we never promised that the site would come back, only hope that it would" is not what any of us want to hear at this point.


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## Serperior (Dec 15, 2013)

Muzz said:


> Don't get me wrong, my main source of business is also via FA. My point was more directed at communication though. I've seen countless artists say they can't get any work done because they're unable to contact their customers. This is pretty poor management to be honest, if I do /anything/ on FA that may require further contact, I always get email addresses. If artists, writers, suit makers what have you don't take time to gather this information then they will find themselves stuck without being able to complete work. ESPECIALLY if its Christmas related. Good lord.
> 
> So again don't assume I'm poking at artists who work on FA in general. I open every Sunday on FA for 10+ commissions, since this week for me will be sporadic in work I'll most likely open up on my art twitter account which is where I ask ALL my customers (and users that watch me on FA) to make a note of if they ever need me off-site (as well as my email address). I would still need to build up my commissioners on another site if FA were to eventually fail entirely, but its not impossible, and I just think people need to make sure they have back-ups, because many don't.



That I agree with. If anything, this outage made me consider getting a commission specific email to display publicly, because I never had one, and never felt need in one, mostly because I don't do commissions that often. 


In any case, I just want to say that I hope it might be an eye opener for administration, to maybe start changing things? To make this site more professional, maybe?.. Because again, I, for one, would totally pay for a subscription, and I have friends who say the same(and it doesn't mean everyone has to, just make premium membership for those who can\want to afford it). Just please, improve it already, give us proof that you work on it; if it dies (and looking at the state of things it might as well do it eventually) we'll all suffer, no one needs that. I'm definitely not a person to gloat about it.


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## Muzz (Dec 15, 2013)

Serperior said:


> That I agree with. If anything, this outage made me consider getting a commission specific email to display publicly, because I never had one, and never felt need in one, mostly because I don't do commissions that often.
> 
> 
> In any case, I just want to say that I hope it might be an eye opener for administration, to maybe start changing things? To make this site more professional, maybe?.. Because again, I, for one, would totally pay for a subscription, and I have friends who say the same(and it doesn't mean everyone has to, just make premium membership for those who can\want to afford it). Just please, improve it already, give us proof that you work on it; if it dies (and looking at the state of things it might as well do it eventually) we'll all suffer, no one needs that. I'm definitely not a person to gloat about it.



I agree, I would also pay for a subscription if it helped the site as a whole and make it a bit more professional. I appreciate all the hard work and effort they put into the site. Subscriptions is never a bad thing, especially if we know most, if not all the money collected will help support the site as a whole on hardware, coding, paying for work to be one to correct issues etc etc. I know its easier said than done, though, and a lot of work has to go into adding such a thing as subscriptions. But I do look forward to it being a possibility in the future maybe.


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## Ash-Fox (Dec 15, 2013)

Muzz said:


> I agree, I would also pay for a subscription if it helped the site as a whole and make it a bit more professional. I appreciate all the hard work and effort they put into the site. Subscriptions is never a bad thing, especially if we know most, if not all the money collected will help support the site as a whole on hardware, coding, paying for work to be one to correct issues etc etc. I know its easier said than done, though, and a lot of work has to go into adding such a thing as subscriptions. But I do look forward to it being a possibility in the future maybe.


I think the problem with money stems from the fact that the site would need to make money to employ someone full time to work on it, perhaps subscriptions would be a way to deal with it. However, I think there is more that needs to be considered here. I would like to put forward some of my insight into the situation (I don't speak for FA). I would point out that one if the biggest problems, is that at the moment, this is all done in spare time after people's day jobs and I would like to relate my own situation to what is probably happening with the current developers of FA.

In my personal circumstance, I do a lot of IT related work; my work flows over my 'official working hours', staying in late, it also follows me home often as well. Yet, I also spend some time contributing to projects (not related to FA or work) in the very little time I have available. I expect there are similar situations that the FA staff experiences. Sure, in my case, perhaps this Saturday I could have not gone to the cinema and watched the new Hobbit movie when I could have done some fairly critical and necessary contributions to projects that I am involved with, but one needs to draw a line between working and relaxation.

This type of work is not fun and games most of the time, it is tedious after you have done a full day's work, it can be very unrewarding (you lack resources, lack proper testing due to resources, get negative push back from users because things mess up). This type of work cuts into your relationship/family time, it cuts into your fun time and it even cuts into your house chores time, especially when your real work does not generally end when your hours end.

I wouldn't quit my day job to work on the projects I contribute to because there is no decent pay, if there were subscribers bringing in a fairly decent amount of money, I would consider it. However, when I was working freelance work, I tried very hard to get donations, subscription type services running and the community despite being demanding, were not very good at contributing much in return with regards to money - I suspect FA is better at this (my user base was only at best 5000 active users a month on one of my projects), but probably not enough to afford servers and a decent salary at the same time, consistently. Considering that I have to think of my life, my partner's life, my future; Because I am capable, there are better opportunities for my work elsewhere that I can exploit, these secondary dependencies is often what drives people to use safer routes.

People's livelihoods are also at stake here, which only exasperates the situation and burdens the weight carried by developers on this project, however a common theme of what I am seeing is that nobody seems to be considering the livelihoods of those who work on this project, if the situation were improved so people could work on this full time without fear of bad future, I think FA would prosper greatly. However, I can't really advise about how to do that, because I have never managed to do this on my own projects.

Going off track in my post for a moment: In my professional opinion, I would also point out that people that don't have better avenues to exploit than FA would probably not be a good fit for a website that has to deal scalability problems, something that other furry art sites don't have to deal with because they really don't have the same userbase/traffic. If you pay attention to other furry art sites, you will note that the majority of them operate off a single webserver. For those that are going to mention this... Learning on the job works if you have some sort of training, otherwise you're going to end up with some major catastrophes in the process and one of the problems right now with FA is the fact it is having catastrophes.


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## Soleron (Dec 15, 2013)

So people want to make a living via FA and they rely on FA being up all of the time... but they're not prepared to pay any of their revenue made via FA TO FA itself?

Youtube takes some of the advert revenue on videos. Kickstarter takes 5% of the raised costs. Ebay charges fees on auctioned items. Why doesn't FA take a few percent of commission revenue in exchange for guaranteed uptime and fulltime maintenence staff?


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## Mali-Kyte (Dec 15, 2013)

Lotix said:


> That is actually often meant to prevent theft and the commissioner was better off posting the lower resolution to protect their purchase. A reason I give my commissioners both sizes is so that there is a file to upload online and share with others but the nicer size to be privately enjoyed or shared as a reference when commissioning others. If resized properly, the quality shouldn't be too noticeable but significantly less detailed and smaller, depending on the original size the artists started with of course. If it wasn't meant to prevent theft, it's due to the artist not knowing how to upload the higher resolution. A lot of people don't know about that and im pretty sure it's not meant to be known, as it could be taken advantage of. Larger image sizes could be offered besides the standard we have now, especially if we're saving storage room by not double posting images.
> 
> I would say that if the artist goes to leave or delete, then the commissioner should then get transferred the image to their gallery instead, if desired. OR if you can have different gallery sub areas, like a "commissioned" gallery and a normal gallery which you would upload personal work to. This would also be less confusing for people and you wouldn't have to put a million "I DIDN'T DRAW THIS" all over the place.
> 
> ...



Unfortunately none of that will ever be done, I have been on FA since 2006 and it's been nothing but empty promises. Only reason I'm still here is because no one will follow me to weasyl where guess wht? They have most of those things already and are adding new features often.


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## Dchybrid (Dec 15, 2013)

Soleron said:


> So people want to make a living via FA and they rely on FA being up all of the time... but they're not prepared to pay any of their revenue made via FA TO FA itself?
> 
> Youtube takes some of the advert revenue on videos. Kickstarter takes 5% of the raised costs. Ebay charges fees on auctioned items. Why doesn't FA take a few percent of commission revenue in exchange for guaranteed uptime and fulltime maintenence staff?



I understand what you are saying but it would NOT fly. Artist would be hit twice in most cases. paying for upkeep for fa then paypal fees.  let's not even mention how most furry artist viciously undercharge themselves.  I'm all for a subscription service but charging artist is a bad idea.  DA doesn't have to do it, granted DA has far more resources than than FA but I still think doing something like this would set a bad example.


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## Soleron (Dec 15, 2013)

Dchybrid said:


> I understand what you are saying but it would NOT fly. Artist would be hit twice in most cases. paying for upkeep for fa then paypal fees.  let's not even mention how most furry artist viciously undercharge themselves.  I'm all for a subscription service but charging artist is a bad idea.  DA doesn't have to do it, granted DA has far more resources than than FA but I still think doing something like this would set a bad example.



Being hit twice is how the rest of the world does it. Hit by retailer/listing fee and credit card processing fee. In exchange for, guess what, guaranteed listing uptime and credit card uptime. It's the cost of doing business that somehow doesn't apply to furries.

DA does do it btw, if you want to list using their commission widget. Which then guarantees you access to support etc.


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## Dchybrid (Dec 15, 2013)

Soleron said:


> Being hit twice is how the rest of the world does it. Hit by retailer/listing fee and credit card processing fee. In exchange for, guess what, guaranteed listing uptime and credit card uptime. It's the cost of doing business that somehow doesn't apply to furries.
> 
> DA does do it btw, if you want to list using their commission widget. Which then guarantees you access to support etc.



I dun think you can guarantee up time though even if fa was charging a transaction fee. I want to see FA grow and be better because I do love the site but that doesn't mean it's immune to criticism.  I just don't think that kind of system would be effective and cause more trouble than it's worth.

ok I didn't know about the widget but I'd be confident in wagering you're not forced into it


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## marmelmm (Dec 15, 2013)

'Nother thing to consider is the example of http://www.playmouse.com/ , which, at the time, was THE place to go to see adult furry art (since Yerf, the main alternative, was clean art only and VCL was pretty much moribund). They attempted to set up a paywall section with exclusive content for subscribers, and the users abandoned the site in droves, heading for a new upstart site called FurAffinity.  Nowadays, Playmouse, when the site is up, is lucky to see one or two pieces of new art a month, mostly from longtime users with a sentimental attachment for the place...  

-MMM-


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## rjbartrop (Dec 15, 2013)

Making everyone pay probably isn't going to fly,  but some sort of premium option might not be a bad idea.  If not exclusive content, what about extra features?  Of course, the one feature I really care about at this point is just having the thing running.


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## Shiekra Tora (Dec 15, 2013)

Soleron said:


> DA does do it btw, if you want to list using their commission widget. Which then guarantees you access to support etc.



So based on that statement, you're saying that if we want access to proper Site Support (trouble tickets, etc) then we should have to pay for it?

Yea ok.

I'm sorry, but based on the lack of updates from the donation page and the obvious fact that the money people are sending in is only doing temporary fixes when the real problem comes with the site coding, I'd sooner go to another site before giving them any money.

Also don't tell me that they don't want to hire on a full staff when you look at other threads and see benhenderson (sorry if I botched the name) coming up with a rough draft of FA in his spare time that looks better then the site does now.

If you are having your site staffed by voulenteers, that doesn't excuse them from the basic principle of "Make sure the person doing the job is able to do so PROPERLY." I've done voulenteer work off and on in various capacities since 2007 both online and off and if it got to a point where I wasn't able to give it my all anymore for whatever reason, I stepped back. If people aren't doing their jobs, they need to be able to do the same or 'Neer has to replace them and look out for the betterment of FA rather then his own friends/clique (which I've said before the fandom has a ton of problems caused by friends/cliques and the immature high school behavior that accompanies it.)


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## PheagleAdler (Dec 15, 2013)

yes, that is not an update and should not be treated as such. that was lazy and they should have said something like "we didn't have time to get to it yesterday" or "the weather prevented us from replacing the drives" etc. Instead, we're just left here in the dark. No updates for over 24 hours.

I really appreciate what progress they are making/have made, but having the site down for this long is NOT acceptable.


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## PheagleAdler (Dec 15, 2013)

rjbartrop said:


> Making everyone pay probably isn't going to fly,  but some sort of premium option might not be a bad idea.  If not exclusive content, what about extra features?  Of course, the one feature I really care about at this point is just having the thing running.



Premium users don't have the site going down on them? That would be a nice premium feature.


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## Shaon the Kozo (Dec 15, 2013)

Soleron said:


> So people want to make a living via FA and they  rely on FA being up all of the time... but they're not prepared to pay  any of their revenue made via FA TO FA itself?


I would be 100% willing to donate or pay a $5 monthly subscription for extra features if I knew it would help FA. Hear me out for a second before you say they can't get better with no money. FA was getting a fair amount of donations until around half a year ago, according to records. Even with donations, FA has not kept any of its promises. The new UI is a joke because it's been promised for at least three years. It took them more than four years to fix the commission tab, for gods' sakes. I would donate once FA gave me some solid proof that they were going to do something. I know in a way it's a catch 22, because FA can't get better without donations but many are unwilling until there is some progress. However, with FA's awful track record, no one wants to put money into the site unless it makes a difference. At this point, FA really only has itself to blame. FA is even only up and running because the users anyway, because that hard drive donation a year or so ago. So we CAN pull together, it's just that we need some reason or proof to help. 



rjbartrop said:


> Making everyone pay probably isn't going to fly,  but some sort of premium option might not be a bad idea.  If not exclusive content, what about extra features?  Of course, the one feature I really care about at this point is just having the thing running.



Completely agreed with this.


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## Soleron (Dec 15, 2013)

Shiekra Tora said:


> So based on that statement, you're saying that if we want access to proper Site Support (trouble tickets, etc) then we should have to pay for it?



If you don't need commercial-level service i.e. _your income depends on it_, don't pay for it. If you do need commercial-level service, why do you expect it without paying?



> Also don't tell me that they don't want to hire on a full staff when you look at other threads and see benhenderson (sorry if I botched the name) coming up with a rough draft of FA in his spare time that looks better then the site does now.



Could said draft be rolled out to replace FA live, with everything transferred over, and scaled to all of the servers and traffic they have, without loss of features?

Because that's the hard part, not just having a good idea or making it look pretty in mockup.


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## BlitheDragon (Dec 15, 2013)

PheagleAdler said:


> yes, that is not an update and should not be treated as such. that was lazy and they should have said something like "we didn't have time to get to it yesterday" or "the weather prevented us from replacing the drives" etc. Instead, we're just left here in the dark. No updates for over 24 hours.
> 
> I really appreciate what progress they are making/have made, but having the site down for this long is NOT acceptable.



How long _has_ the site been down for now? I have a terrible sense of time...


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## coyoteOdin (Dec 15, 2013)

Interested in the question - how long the FA will be in "read only"? For almost a week has passed ...
_(*current mood: ANGRY*)_


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## teil (Dec 15, 2013)

*bangs on keyboard* UPDATE PLEASE!


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## Shiekra Tora (Dec 15, 2013)

Soleron said:


> Could said draft be rolled out to replace FA live, with everything transferred over, and scaled to all of the servers and traffic they have, without loss of features?
> 
> Because that's the hard part, not just having a good idea or making it look pretty in mockup.



What I was trying to get across is that I can't remember any changes to the layout or any real MAJOR improvements to the site (not hardware improvements) since I've been here. If a rough draft can be bulit of a new code/layout can be done in a few days, why hasn't it been done over the last 4-5 years?


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## PheagleAdler (Dec 15, 2013)

BlitheDragon said:


> How long _has_ the site been down for now? I have a terrible sense of time...



5 1/2 days...as per THIS submission: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12261020/

The site went down on December 10th @ 1:31 AM eastern.


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## Soleron (Dec 15, 2013)

Shiekra Tora said:


> If a rough draft can be bulit of a new code/layout can be done in a few days, why hasn't it been done over the last 4-5 years?



It can't be done in a few days. The part of FA you see that runs the front page is like the tip of the iceberg. The real work and bugs is in handling the number of concurrent users and files to be processed.

Also, designing the draft is the fun/creative part. You need someone willing to stick through the next 3+ months fulltime coding and testing. And that's just to get the same features as now.

As to why it hasn't been done in 4-5 years, it's because no one has been working on anything fulltime, and because the suggestions pile up until people want the new thing to be packed with features. Then said dev gives up on the impossible task of meeting those expectations, instead of focusing on something functional.


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## Shiekra Tora (Dec 15, 2013)

Soleron said:


> It can't be done in a few days. The part of FA you see that runs the front page is like the tip of the iceberg. The real work and bugs is in handling the number of concurrent users and files to be processed.



I'm not saying it CAN be done in a few days.

You're missing what I'm trying to say here. With all the money being thrown at the site since the donation page was first listed (which was over 3 years ago,) why has there been NO significant changes to the site other then hardware (which when the problem is with the coding, won't do a damn thing other then put a band-aid on it until it gets worse?)

Interestingly enough, that's pretty much the basis for my argument against doing any type of kickstarter/fundraiser right there.


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## coyoteOdin (Dec 15, 2013)

How long will this outrage???! 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 December has been!! I HAVE ALREADY REALLY ANGRY!!!!!


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## teil (Dec 15, 2013)

I'm fine with it running a bit slow here and there... but when it just crashes like this? There's got to be something wrong that they're ignoring/neglecting. The least they can do is update regularly.


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## Soleron (Dec 15, 2013)

Shiekra Tora said:


> I'm not saying it CAN be done in a few days.
> 
> You're missing what I'm trying to say here. With all the money being thrown at the site since the donation page was first listed (which was over 3 years ago,) why has there been NO significant changes to the site other then hardware (which when the problem is with the coding, won't do a damn thing other then put a band-aid on it until it gets worse?)



I edited to say why the part time approach hasn't worked.

As to why they haven't hired a real web-dev fulltime to do it, I have no idea. That's the only solution I feel would work. Also, a complete rewrite is stupid and has sunk even major corporations time after time. Replace one system at a time, making sure it's functional after each change.


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## rjbartrop (Dec 15, 2013)

PheagleAdler said:


> Premium users don't have the site going down on them? That would be a nice premium feature.



Yes, that would be nice, but I was mostly acknowledging that the reasons people come to this site have little to do with bells and whistles that are unlikely to happen in the first place.


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## coyoteOdin (Dec 15, 2013)

*How long will this outrage???!*


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## Serperior (Dec 15, 2013)

coyoteOdin said:


> How long will this outrage???! 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 December has been!! I HAVE ALREADY REALLY ANGRY!!!!!



chill, no one here can answer you. They are just as clueless.  
Ð Ð°Ð·Ð²Ðµ Ð¤ÑƒÑ€Ð½ÑÐ¹ÑˆÐ½ Ð½Ðµ Ñ€Ð°Ð±Ð¾Ñ‚Ð°ÐµÑ‚? )


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## marmelmm (Dec 15, 2013)

coyoteOdin said:


> *How long will this outrage???!*




_At this stage in the deliberations Alfred, Junior, age seventeen, lolled
into the room. He tossed his hat at a chair with which it failed to
connect. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked ugly. He
confronted his mother and began to speak in one of those voices which
had it been a face one could have instinctively slapped. 'How long am I
going to be made a laughing-stock out of?' he demanded. 'How long, I ask
you?'

'If you ask me,' put in his sister, 'I'd say as long as a suffering
world allows you to live.'_

-Thorne Smith, "Night Life Of The Gods" 

In other words, siddown and shaddap.  

-MMM-


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## Jardenon (Dec 15, 2013)

I think this will "outrage" as long as the admins wish to stay on their Christmas vacation. It's the holidays after all...


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## teil (Dec 15, 2013)

Admins! Time to smell the coffee! Wake up and get this ship floating again, pleasssseeee~


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## Northern-Crosshair (Dec 15, 2013)

rjbartrop said:


> Making everyone pay probably isn't going to fly,  but some sort of premium option might not be a bad idea.  If not exclusive content, what about extra features?  Of course, the one feature I really care about at this point is just having the thing running.





rjbartrop said:


> Yes, that would be nice, but I was mostly acknowledging that the reasons people come to this site have little to do with bells and whistles that are unlikely to happen in the first place.



Aside from the reliability issues, FA is really good as-is as far as user experience is concerned. I don't need a bunch of eye candy and I don't think a lot of other people have such a desire either.

Pay for premium features would be a great thing to have. Something like $5 per month or $50 per year is a good price point as seem from sites like fark.com.

What could some of those premium features be?
No waiting 60 seconds between submissions.
Gallery folders
Larger allowed image size

Perhaps have a $10 per month super premium account with the following perks.
Even larger allowed image size
Notes folders.
Email forwarding of Notes
Able to add private comments, only visible to the user, to your watchers or otherwise organize watchers/watching.


Just a few ideas, feel free to add to the list.


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## dorianfen (Dec 15, 2013)

While I understand that things may be hectic and website issues happen, we have had no update since Friday, and since we were told (weather permitting) that they would try to have the issue resolved yesterday, I wonder when the next update will be. This kind of behaviour from any of the site staff in my opinion is completely unacceptable, even if the site runs purely on donations. The site has a HUGE userbase, and the site staff should at least understand that while some people have been angry and unreasonable, others of us have been patient, biding our time and keeping our mouths shut, just waiting for updates, but even those of us who have been quiet are starting to get impatient. The lack of update all weekend has been frustrating to say the least. Even just giving us a quick update on what is currently going on, you don't even need to promise us that the site will be back up on X day or in X amount of time, just don't keep us in the dark.

As for most of the site staff not being active on the forums? (correct me if I'm wrong). This needs to change, as the forums are how most of us have been getting information on the outage, as it seems to take a very long time for anything to pop up as an announcement on the read only version of the site. If you are going to be doing work on a website, you should have a way to keep some sort of line of communication open to at least give information when outages do happen, to at least give the userbase something to chew on as far as information goes.

I will continue to be patient, as this site is the only fur-related site I frequent, and the only place where I advertise and sell art. Not that I haven't thought of going elsewhere, but I have already established myself on FA, and prefer to stay there, but honestly my patience is being tested with this outage/lack of information, as I am sure everyone else who sells arts feels the same way.

We shouldn't have to beg for updates.

-Dfen


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## PheagleAdler (Dec 15, 2013)

Northern-Crosshair said:


> Aside from the reliability issues, FA is really good as-is as far as user experience is concerned. I don't need a bunch of eye candy and I don't think a lot of other people have such a desire either.
> 
> Pay for premium features would be a great thing to have. Something like $5 per month or $50 per year is a good price point as seem from sites like fark.com.
> 
> ...



Image size wouldn't really work at this point because you can just reupload to circumvent the limit. And besides that, some files are best reuploaded to allow the larger size. Maybe the file has details that you would miss when the site resizes it, or maybe it's just a really long or really wide file.


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## Mentova (Dec 15, 2013)

Locking this, a new update is coming.


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