# Discussion of Where we're going and how we're getting there.



## blueroo (Jan 7, 2007)

This thread is here so that you can discuss Where we're going and how we're  getting there. The original post on this issue can be found at http://www.furaffinityforums.net/showthread.php?tid=5628. We want to hear what you have to say, so please let us know!


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## Calorath (Jan 7, 2007)

On behalf of everyone's that donated and everyone else that uses this site reguarly, I'm looking forward to seeing progress and improvement!

Godspeed.

8)


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## blueroo (Jan 15, 2007)

ShadowFur said:
			
		

> i don't have any problem loading the images. especially if it type the url in my browser. its just the cod is soo slow. so the pages take forever to load. your just like actually worse thamn Microsoft. bloated coding.



Given that you've never seen the code, I'm surprised you're so sure about that. The truth is, the code could be better but it is not our bottleneck right now.


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## yak (Jan 15, 2007)

ShadowFur said:
			
		

> i don't have any problem loading the images. especially if it type the url in my browser. its just the cod is soo slow. so the pages take forever to load. your just like actually worse thamn Microsoft. bloated coding.


How can you say that, when you haven't even seen the code? ;D


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## nobuyuki (Jan 15, 2007)

darn you, obscurity!  Perhaps we should get someone who's been saying this code is bloated all along (and who's SEEN it) to come and dash this argument to pieces... but I think they're banned from posting anyway :v


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## blueroo (Jan 15, 2007)

nobuyuki said:
			
		

> darn you, obscurity!  Perhaps we should get someone who's been saying this code is bloated all along (and who's SEEN it) to come and dash this argument to pieces... but I think they're banned from posting anyway :v



I hate to nitpick, but "code is bloated" is somewhat vague and meaningless. Running a server isn't witchcraft. It's a fairly scientific pursuit. There's data to be had and measured, and there are specific tangible reasons for performance issues.


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## shy (Jan 15, 2007)

I love everything about FA and I trust every change you make is going to either benefit me or be something I can live with.


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## yak (Jan 15, 2007)

nobuyuki said:
			
		

> darn you, obscurity!  Perhaps we should get someone who's been saying this code is bloated all along (and who's SEEN it) to come and dash this argument to pieces... but I think they're banned from posting anyway :v


Hehe, nobu.. I see what you mean 

Anyway, nobody's saying that the code isn't bloated. Just that at the moment, this is not the primary bottleneck. Fix the code all you want - and you will not fix the current problem, which is caused by something as simple as the constant, persistent 100% load in the I/O. FA can't run any faster if the drives cannot give you more data then they already do.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 16, 2007)

So yeah how are those drivers going since there has been no new news about that wonderful server people spent money on?


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## nullenigma (Jan 16, 2007)

Good luck guys, I know this sounds horrible, but the attitude of "Well you don't KNOW how we make our stuff work, so stop complaining!" really might put a damper on people who might want to donate money to your cause.   I personally feel like it would be like tossing cash down a well at this point with some of the stuff that's been happening.


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## blueroo (Jan 16, 2007)

nullenigma said:
			
		

> Good luck guys, I know this sounds horrible, but the attitude of "Well you don't KNOW how we make our stuff work, so stop complaining!" really might put a damper on people who might want to donate money to your cause.   I personally feel like it would be like tossing cash down a well at this point with some of the stuff that's been happening.



I want to bring more transparency to our technical operations. I really do. Communications failures lead to misinformation, rumors, and nervous users and those are not what we want to see. This is a big target on the radar but there are some bigger targets that we need to address first.

To our credit, things are getting better. We have made real improvements in server performance in the past two weeks, today's event notwithstanding, and we haven't emptied our trick bag yet. Unwieldy 502s have been mostly tamed and 500s are gone. The staff is gearing up to address violations, complaints, and deletions more quickly. I hope that these efforts will go some way towards building some good will with the community. In the end, this isn't our cause. It's the community's cause.


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## Litre (Jan 16, 2007)

So that means the coding is the second leading cause of FA's problem, hmmmmm?


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## nullenigma (Jan 16, 2007)

blueroo said:
			
		

> I want to bring more transparency to our technical operations. I really do. Communications failures lead to misinformation, rumors, and nervous users and those are not what we want to see. This is a big target on the radar but there are some bigger targets that we need to address first.
> 
> To our credit, things are getting better. We have made real improvements in server performance in the past two weeks, today's event notwithstanding, and we haven't emptied our trick bag yet. Unwieldy 502s have been mostly tamed and 500s are gone. The staff is gearing up to address violations, complaints, and deletions more quickly. I hope that these efforts will go some way towards building some good will with the community. In the end, this isn't our cause. It's the community's cause.



I also want to see more transparency with the technical operations, but your post itself almost contradicts itself.Â Â I don't trust a 'bag of tricks' or 'taming errors' I guess.Â Â I know you're trying to create a playful upbeat mood regarding these recent problems, but you might need to address these issues in a serious and frank tone from time to time.  Try to sound more like a technical team than an illusionist plying their slight-of-hand.

In short, I'd believe the part about "this isn't our cause. It's the community's cause." if so much time and effort wasn't spent on sanitizing the admin team's image.Â Â  The admin messages for problems on the mainsite are usually misleading at best, and sometimes naked lies (Ie, regarding why some deletion features were removed)

This isn't a personal attack on you, and I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me, thank you for donating your time and effort towards this site


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## wut (Jan 16, 2007)

Arshes Nei said:
			
		

> So yeah how are those drivers going since there has been no new news about that wonderful server people spent money on?


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## blueroo (Jan 16, 2007)

A week and a half ago, we were hitting the disks so hard that seek times were frequently over 100ms. At peak hours, between 15 and 50 processes would be waiting for disk IO. The VM responded to all this pressure by paging to disk, which only made things worse. The end result would be a system that was mostly idle waiting for CPU.


```
startvmstat - Sat Jan  6 01:29:51 EST 2007
 procs      memory      page                   disk   faults      cpu
 r b w     avm    fre  flt  re  pi  po  fr  sr tw0   in   sy  cs us sy id
 1 11 0 3976632 116172 1719  14   8   1 1815 896   0  313 2004 1411 10  4 86
 1 9 0 3967864 121380 5287 161  55   0 8102   0 103 1480 9934 3350 18  3 79
14 7 2 3975980 118732 4651  10  23  32 2873 738473  88 1215 5699 2523  8 24 68
 1 6 3 3945824 135508 2875 359  18   0 7734   0 256 1225 6882 3008 15  4 81
 0 8 0 3952132 129612 5987 142  41  10 5051  45  91 1452 10023 3286 20  4 75
 1 9 1 3960052 127628 3278   5   9  22 635 736839 132 1154 4129 2278  4 18 78
 2 10 0 3961092 124796 7411 251  41   0 9674   0 175 1966 9299 4348 19  5 76
 1 56 1 3981020 107684 6170  51  49  13 4377  51 106 1130 17732 6160 24  6 71
 1 12 0 3996404 101944 6358  59  40  33 6537 740040  98  764 12031 3397 16 29 55
 0 29 1 3982284 104724 6075  93  17  45 9007 97092 274 1189 29516 11190 24 15 61
 0 263 0 3992824 101572 3931 321  14  29 3399 59644  98  921 4926 2290  8  6 87
 0 15 0 3990104 101824 7614 283  26  33 9338 59816 110  984 11005 2880 15  7 78
 1 9 0 4003836  89952 5850  43   8  36 2957 59664 212  867 3252 2221  9  5 85
 9 7 0 4003836 111032   88   0   0   7 4730 1070901   3 1015  121 1232  0 50 50
 1 11 0 3998740 104932 33254  90   8  54 8008 60693 190 1706 20850 4270 26 13 61
 1 11 0 3992108 109284 12077 273   5   6 7893 67231 199 1336 8433 3225 14  7 80
 0 12 0 3977292 118848 8886  30  16   0 8278   0 149 1295 8282 3132 17  4 80
 2 17 0 4015408  78708 24720  17  49  25 7322  71 122 1528 16966 4382 28  8 64
```

In the time since, we have scoured the system looking for ways to relieve the pressure on disk IO. We've eliminated atime writes to disk, cut down on the number of logs we write, and disabled some cron jobs which would scour the disk. Once we started getting more reasonable performance from the disks, we started tuning the number of workers and the connections they handle on our reverse proxy and static content service. The result is that we've found a good balance between overwhelming the disks and maintaining reasonable responsiveness on the site. It isn't perfect, and we are looking at other options such as caching PHP opcode to reduce some reads from disk, and adjusting MySQL to improve cache usage. However, the server is responding well to the changes.

The system, as of today, is running at a much more reasonable load as you can see below. Seek times are hanging out between 20ms and 45ms for most of the time. I'm still not happy that there are some blocked processes at any given time, but we'll take what we can get for now.


```
procs      memory      page                   disk   faults      cpu
 r b w     avm    fre  flt  re  pi  po  fr  sr tw0   in   sy  cs us sy id
 0 2 0 2667436 162864 5423   1   0   0 5771   0  76 1885 13159 4106 11  4 86
 0 4 0 2673932 156780 6359   4   0   0 7353   0  83 1972 12645 4142 11  3 86
 0 2 1 2674120 155552 2469   0   0   0 2465   0  76 1889 12602 4113  6  4 90
 5 5 1 2684340 147748 6495   0   0   0 5481   0  81 1815 15235 4000 13  4 83
 0 3 0 2679748 148332 1001   0   0   0 1956   0 214 1914 11378 4215  6  4 90
 0 4 0 2679840 146340 3562   0   0   0 3797   0 231 1865 13937 4379  9  5 87
 0 3 0 2681668 144640 5496   0   0   0 6853   0  84 2065 20667 4745 15  5 80
```


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## blueroo (Jan 16, 2007)

wut said:
			
		

> Arshes Nei said:
> 
> 
> 
> > So yeah how are those drivers going since there has been no new news about that wonderful server people spent money on?



Drivers are a go. We're waiting for the on-site admin to find time to get disks partitioned and the server in the rack. At that point, we can start configuring and burning the new server in. This process may be delayed because some of the technical staff will be at Further Confusion.

* To "burn" a server is to run it through a simple set of tests and verify that everything is working as we expect it.


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## Firehazard (Jan 17, 2007)

Far be it from be to be the thread's token ass-kisser, but I never realized we hadn't migrated to the new server yet and, honestly, I'm shocked and impressed that it's back up to speed without any hardware upgrades.

As for Project Ferrox, naturally I'm as excited as anyone about it.  For what it's worth, I think the site is already better designed than deviantART in a lot of ways (interface-wise at least), and I'm eager to see what you guys can come up with next.

One question: When the search went down, somebody said it was to decrease server load.  Will that be going back up as soon as the new server is up and running, or do we still have to wait for Ferrox to be done?


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## RestrainedRaptor (Jan 17, 2007)

Firehazard said:
			
		

> As for Project Ferrox, naturally I'm as excited as anyone about it.  For what it's worth, I think the site is already better designed than deviantART in a lot of ways (interface-wise at least), and I'm eager to see what you guys can come up with next.



What do you think makes FA so much better designed than deviantArt? I don't think the design is consistent at all on FA pages...


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## Firehazard (Jan 17, 2007)

RestrainedRaptor said:
			
		

> What do you think makes FA so much better designed than deviantArt? I don't think the design is consistent at all on FA pages...



Right.  Here's my list in a nutshell...

*Submission process:* Quick and easy.  Two pages and the truth, baby!  Thumbnail provided to confirm proper upload before you even have to enter anything else.

*Categorization:* Separate menus for medium and subject matter.  Always hated dA's forcing me to pick the medium first and not having all subjects listed under all media.  Includes separate category for "cell shading" so I don't have to chose between digital and traditional for my hand-inked stuff.  Tag system will be a huge improvement, of course, when it's done, but even what we've got trumps the competition.

*User controls (Submit, Settings, Journal, etc.):* Up front, easy to find.  Sheezy does this fine too and deviantART was good right up until v5 threw all reason out the window.  I actually had to ASK where my Submit command went when they changed it.

*Control panel:* More or less intuitive to anyone familiar with forums' user CPs.  Easy to find everything.  (There are things I know I can change in dA where I have no idea where to go for it.)

*Emotes and formatting:* Easy to get to.  Another category where we tie with Sheezy.  dA makes you use HTML, and doesn't mention anywhere that it's usable except in the FAQ; and its emotes are non-clickable and housed away in a poorly-organized pop-up window.

*Message center:* Thumnails come free with delivery.  Shouts are included.

*Browsing:* Unique mouseover box lets you read more info without having to click.  Handy for images that use obnoxiously vague preview images, as well as music/text submissions.

*Design:* Simple.  No background images, just HTML-generated lines and spaces, so the page looks right even if images take forever to download.  A bit dull, but light blue is a good color at least.  Better than greenish-gray or stark white.

Now that that's over with, I may as well point out my suggestions as to how you could make these features even better...

*Message center:* Group submissions by creator maybe, and shouts could still do with their own letter on the alert strip.

*Emotes and formatting:* Switch to a bigger set of smaller emotes.  Formatting buttons and emotes are currently absent from some places, and in fact BBcode doesn't even work in Personal Notes (despite the QUOTE tags being inserted automatically).  I believe you're already working on this stuff.  Maybe create an Ikonboard-style set of pop-ups for the URL and QUOTE buttons.

*Browsing:* I suggested a replacement for the popups here, although it wouldn't work everywhere (such as the home page).  Could also include upload date and 

*Location of links:* I don't like how the controls shift from the left panel to the top right when you go into the message center or control panel.  Maybe keep it on the top right and use that extra space for something else.

*User info:* The commission info page was a good call, but it's too rigid.  There needs to be a way to create custom categories rather than be forced to either fill in predefined slots, or end up with half-empty lines like "Penciled: $".  Also I totally support user ID pics.

*User login:* This is another wild suggestion but I'll throw it out there anyway: Replace the link and separate login page with space to enter login info right on the home page, and use an AJAX system to log in without reloading the page, like Newgrounds does.  AJAX, actually, could probably be used to speed up stuff elsewhere too, but I'm too tired to come up with anything in particular.

Like that teal deer post?


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## rcruskin2 (Jan 17, 2007)

One thing I'd personally like to see, and I hope we are already seeing it, is that the admins and moderators take the work more seriously.

I realize you all do this on a volunteer basis, and I want to thank you for it. But some problems this system had in 2006 could have been avoided by some testing before implementing the new technology/program/whatever. I would like to see that done more.


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## RestrainedRaptor (Jan 17, 2007)

Firehazard, yeah, thanks for that. =) I guess I'm used to DA but all your points are valid. People are complaining about the new submission process and they will hopefully simplify it, and many other things you mentioned are going to be improved soon.

Yup, ajax could be used in several places to speed things up and make things quicker for the user, mainly comments and favourites like DA does.


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## yak (Jan 17, 2007)

RestrainedRaptor said:
			
		

> Yup, ajax could be used in several places to speed things up and make things quicker for the user, mainly comments and favourites like DA does.


It has been considered for a veeery long time now, a year or something like it - just that there was never enough time to do it, however  unbelievable that may sound.  FA will make heavy use of Ajax and a bunch of DHTML widgets and thingies in the future, just let us get that server running so that we will finally have time to spend on improving things rather then constantly fixing them.


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## Firehazard (Jan 18, 2007)

Lucky for your coders AJAX is incredibly simple.  Or so my comp-sci professor who is going to teach it to us later this semester says.  I haven't looked much into it yet, myself.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 18, 2007)

ShadowFur said:
			
		

> blueroo said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Why don't you learn to read previous posts instead of arguing like you know what you're talking about, because you don't.

The current server is at capacity, that's why they got a NEW one.

The code is not perfect but it's not really the real cause at this point, it's actually a hardware issue too.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 18, 2007)

ShadowFur said:
			
		

> if the code was not so bloated i doubt the hardware would not be tapped out by now..



No, EVERY site no matter how efficient the code hits a peak on their server because of limits. This is why you have more than one server. Unfortunately FA didn't want to/couldn't pay for more rackspace to house more servers to help with the problem. It's running off ONE server.

Try running Deviantart or LJ off one server, it would be a laughing stock no matter what code they use.


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## R5K (Jan 18, 2007)

ShadowFur said:
			
		

> i bet you it is the code. i can direct link to an image and it loads instantly and i load the website. takes forever and 502 errors. i do not get 502 errors on images. of couse its not your lousy code. bye FA hope you enjoy driving alot of the community into the ground.


Since images are directly processed by the server software and have no need to be interpreted by a preprocessor there's no valid argument in your post. You can't compare an interpreted file against a non-interpreted one. The only reasonable comparison would be against another script (one that you wouldn't call "bloated").

[size=xx-small](OMG my first post... look what you did to me)[/size]


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 18, 2007)

ShadowFur said:
			
		

> their calling the IO pegged if it really was that image wouldn't load so fast now would it? works perfect every time to with a ctrl-F5 refresh that clears the cache then loads it from the server again.



You don't need a script for an image, it just loads the image from where it is stored. Not a valid argument.

You need to compare a script against a script for you to validate your argument.


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## R5K (Jan 18, 2007)

ShadowFur said:
			
		

> their calling the IO pegged if it really was that image wouldn't load so fast now would it? works perfect every time to with a ctrl-F5 refresh that clears the cache then loads it from the server again.


Maybe I'm never online when things go nuts, but from what I have seen (and derived from it) the major time sink comes from asynchronous accesses; right at the moment the http://www.furaffinity.net/browse/ script tells me _Page generated in 47.086 seconds [ 0.6% PHP, 99.4% SQL ] ( 2 queries)_. If you say there is no problem in accessing a straight file from the disk, that fits perfectly because this file is probable not opened at that moment (and if it is, not by too many operations... dunno how they configered their nginx). Database files are a completely different thing, no wonder there are pending (I/O) operations.

I'd never say their code is not bloated, because I never saw it. But the code is not the problem, the pending IO is.

Edit 1: Of course I meant "accessing a file straight from disk"... damned insomnia.



Edit 2:


			
				ShadowFur said:
			
		

> [size=xx-small]i think you didn't read my last post it never said anything about script. it said IO. gawd no wonder why i hate going to meets all you damn furs are stuck up and drama driven. you are calling me stupid and dumb over here, you don't even know me. you don't even know what i do for a living. I own a rural high speed ISP. one of the largest 15 rural ISPs in the world. i might as well stop wasting my time on you so called furrys. always complaining about something and 99% of the time you do nothing about what is wrong about your life that your complaining all the time about and is completely fixable. furrys are almost all drama machines and sex addicts and thats about it. note for the idots that reply to this i did not say all furrys.[/size]


[size=xx-small]Oh exploitable... This is delicious copypasta, I must fukken save it :lol:[/size]


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## Calorath (Jan 19, 2007)

nrr said:
			
		

> Everyone still knows the answer.


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## wut (Jan 19, 2007)

**


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## blueroo (Jan 20, 2007)

Shadowfur,

Being a professional systems administrator, I've learned to never assume anything about a computer I've never seen. There is always bound to be behavior that I've never seen before, and making assumptions is always the fastest way to make myself look incredibly stupid. Being that you help run an ISP, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.That is why I immediately began profiling the FA server when I joined the team. I have weeks worth of data at this point, and I can say with high confidence that the system is IO (followed by memory) bound during peak.

Because our proxy server (nginx) serves images directly from disk without passing it to apache, it returns relatively quickly. If the query must be passed to the backend apache server, it typically has to wait for the database to access the disk. If there is heavy system paging, the larger memory size apache processes may have to wait for pages from disk. Serving dynamic pages is simply much heavier and involved than serving up static images. Even if nginx was having trouble serving up images, it would never send a 502. 502 is a response it sends if the backend server misbehaves or acts unexpectedly. I hope that clears things up for you.


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## lolcox (Jan 20, 2007)

blueroo said:
			
		

> Shadowfur,
> 
> Being a professional systems administrator, I've learned to never assume anything about a computer I've never seen. There is always bound to be behavior that I've never seen before, and making assumptions is always the fastest way to make myself look incredibly stupid. Being that you help run an ISP, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.That is why I immediately began profiling the FA server when I joined the team. I have weeks worth of data at this point, and I can say with high confidence that the system is IO (followed by memory) bound during peak.
> 
> Because our proxy server (nginx) serves images directly from disk without passing it to apache, it returns relatively quickly. If the query must be passed to the backend apache server, it typically has to wait for the database to access the disk. If there is heavy system paging, the larger memory size apache processes may have to wait for pages from disk. Serving dynamic pages is simply much heavier and involved than serving up static images. Even if nginx was having trouble serving up images, it would never send a 502. 502 is a response it sends if the backend server misbehaves or acts unexpectedly. I hope that clears things up for you.



A translation for the rest of us:

"Rub-a-dub-dub, Roofle, 0wnd!, scrub."


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## Toumal (Jan 20, 2007)

I/O, I/O!
It makes the system slow!
So use some cache to make it flash!
I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O!


Seriously though, replicating the db over to another server (orcas.yiffstar.com) in a one-way replication setup has effectively doubled Yiffstar's serving capability. And that even though I do DB-writes with pretty much every served page (page hit counter... session handling... DOS checks...)

So, yeah, a replicated mirror site is definitely a cool way to ease the burden. I wouldn't do two-way replication because it breaks so easily unless you're REALLY careful with your application, but one-way is simple: Just make sure all your DB writes go directly to the master database, and all your reads use the local one. As an added benefit you get a complete backup - if your main server is destroyed in a <insert ridiculous catastrophe>, your mirror location will be happily running along.
Heck, you can even check if the main db is alive before connecting to it, and disable all write operations if that is not the case - look at yiffstar.com's current situation for an example, since I'm experiencing severe network troubles on the main server right now.


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## Calorath (Jan 20, 2007)

Why did nrr's post get deleted from this thread? I thought it was rather informative. It wasn't rude, it wasn't breaking any of the rules (as far as I could tell) and now it's gone?

Perhaps it's me, but it seems that the admins are selectively.... withdrawing things from this forum. That's rather.... dishonest.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 20, 2007)

I sense personal vendettas :/


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## blueroo (Jan 20, 2007)

I go to con and this happens. I'm looking in to where nrr's post went folks. I may not agree with him, but his post should not have been deleted. Sorry.


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## Toumal (Jan 21, 2007)

He knew too much.


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## Nequ (Jan 23, 2007)

A. Hell.
B. Handbasket.


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## lolcox (Jan 23, 2007)

Nequ said:
			
		

> A. Hell.
> B. Handbasket.


[size=x-large]QFT.[/size]


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## Litre (Jan 23, 2007)

lolcox said:
			
		

> Nequ said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



QTF! Again!


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## verix (Jan 30, 2007)

nobuyuki said:
			
		

> darn you, obscurity!  Perhaps we should get someone who's been saying this code is bloated all along (and who's SEEN it) to come and dash this argument to pieces... but I think they're banned from posting anyway :v


I meet the following requirements!

Not banned
I have seen the code.
I have seen the FA code, as written by the infamous Jheryn. Oh god it is so bloated and ridiculous, you have no idea. I'm pretty sure that Crypto and company applied a bunch of bandages since I've seen it, though.

There is someone who can back me up on this, but uh, he's banned. :v


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 31, 2007)

I've seen the code too, so yeah. :/


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## yak (Jan 31, 2007)

So did i, but i miss the point . 
Besides, what you previously had is pretty much useless now, since the original was rewritten 90% over the past few months of poor performance (at least there was something good in that).


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## uncia2000 (Jan 31, 2007)

If only the database was as "easy" to "fix"... _*dodges thrown items*_. It's all _"relatively speaking"_ ain't it, yak...?

*nods*. Lots of work already done on the code and system tuning to keep that going (thanks to all, tech-side), but undoubtedly does require a fresh start from the ground up.


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## foxystallion (Jan 31, 2007)

RestrainedRaptor said:
			
		

> Firehazard said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



To me one important reason FA is better is because the censorship is far less arbitrary and capricious.  Uncia2000 was actually willing to explain what was deemed a no-no when he pulled one of my submissions (bare human skin female breasts in a furry transformation image),  unlike the dA censors who send you a form letter that describes a laundry list of things that your submission doesn't violate in any way, and then they refuse to state what you did wrong when you make an inquiry through their channels.  Personally, I'd love to see dA replaced by another competitor, and the owners go bankrupt.  (Yes, I am royally pissed at dA, but I have non-furry friends there, like the Apophysis fractile art group.) 

Website style is a lot less important to me than openness and honesty about these matters.  Without this openness (which FA does a pretty good job on),  dA is just a quasi-fascist fiefdom,  not a community like FA.  Being a private company, dA  has every right to be a quasi-fascist fiefdom, but they will get neither my respect nor allegiance, unlike FA.  Efficient code and good design are desirable,  but not as important to me as this.


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## RestrainedRaptor (Jan 31, 2007)

Yeah, I know those DA problems have been a real drag and the whole community is getting very frustrated. Still, I'm a tame artist and I don't think I need to fear deletion =)

Of course, I was never suggesting that FA become more like DA in any of those ways! I just say that the site design is great and most of the features and tasks (apart from the new submission process, bleh!) are quick and easy to use.

And I'd be delighted to suggest some designs for FA... I do good work with web and interface design, if there is any need for me =)


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