i've definitely been annoyed by frequent reminder spam and even unfollowed or blocked people who did it a lot (tho that block feature really needs an update.....), so i support cracking down on spam. but, as an artist, i'm concerned that separating the things that literally pay our bills so that the general populous doesn't SEE any of it...will severely hurt us.

i don't know exactly how you'd go about doing this, but i think if it's a filter that a person can toggle if they're not in the mood to see the sales, that's cool. but making it a default or completely separate area/page could make it so folks rarely see it at all. i know a lot of times people have found things they really love purely on accident

also, the bits about "outright banning them" and not "cutting these off right away" is super alarming to me that this has been thought about and might happen in the future? i'm not sure how true or accurate this is, but the wording concerns me so i wanted to put it out there as a creator who gets almost all their income from the traffic here

A dedicated spot that allows people to easily browse what you want to see will mean people will be able to find items for sale more. It also means that users will be vastly de-incentivized to spam reminders non-stop. Fur Affinity was always first and foremost an art site. It became something more over time, but we want to foster that.

The real data is that reminders never gain traction. Most users tune them out, and from we very rarely see reminders get more than 20-30 views. They're really not as effective as some people think they are. But that's also never been the intent of the site. We want you to promote your work, that you're accepting commissions or have a YCH, but FA was not quite meant to be "and then I kept posting the same image over and over".

Also, the action we're taking is against the worst offenders. Are you uploading 10-20 reminders a day? If not, you have nothing to worry about.

How about just a toggle switch, where you can choose to see or not see ych reminders etc, as some people get inspired to buy an ych by accident, without ever been looking to buy and ych. so making a dedicated space will be functional, but i fear will not reach optimal audience without bothering the ones who dont want to be bothered by ych's

Filtration on that level will take some time, as that's part of the tag and block concept, but requires a lot more work long term. We're evaluating options and looking to do right by both sides of this coin.

Which is why I chose to upload reminders on a very, very scarce period of time with the amount of times allowed in question. (going by the Code of Conduct, which I'm guessing will change again once this update comes out.)

I understand and support not banning, and also am grateful with being stricter.

Full bans are rare in these cases, and reserved for the worst offenders.

Will this just be on the front page or in our individual submissions inbox? I currently use a filter to literally blank them out because I'm just tired of what seems like a third of what I get just being more and more reminders of ych and auctions. Also, can there be a way to put stream based submissions elsewhere too?

When I end up getting anywhere from 300-700 submissions a day and close to 70% of them are YCHs, auctions/adopts and reminders for them that I'll never buy because I like unique subjects...yeah, there's a very clear problem.

Another thing that's an issue, but nowhere near as bad of one - streaming announcements.

And that's why we're working on addressing it. We want FA to be more art-focused, but also to work to give those looking to sell better tools to do it.

I don't mind seeing YCH submissions, sometimes they are interesting.

What I dislike a LOT is seeing the same ones for the 100th time. It's the excessive reposting that is the biggest issue for me.

I think what FA needs is a dedicated Advertising submission type. You can give each account a quota, only X advertising submissions per day/hour and that will automate the majority of the problem away. Then the only enforcement needed is when people post advertising without the type/tag, easier than manually trying to monitor it. It could let users filter as well and let you put them in their own section on the front page.

It will require code changes of course but I don't think there is an easy fix for this otherwise.

I agree that FA has its business side. I also agree there are too many who abuse the privilege. I know journals already have a stream filter. Will there be a YCH button for it soon ™?

Thank you, Dragoneer

Kind of bizarre users like : brokenvocaloid: are still around after getting suspended several dozen times for deleting and reposting the same 50-100 YCHs every other day.

We're always reviewing things. There's things going on behind the scenes. =3

I'm sorry, but all I could think of was the old Monty Python skit about spam...

V.

i guess you are as annoyed as i am with that lol

Just as a suggestion: I think for me as a commissioner, being able to select which artists I want to see reminders for would be tremendously useful. Even if reminders/etc are their own separate thing from general uploads, I'd prefer to have a checkbox or something on an artist's profile where I can select "show me reminders/etc from this user." It would kind of help filter out the "noise," as it were

I'd love to see category tagging become mandatory. Perhaps add "YCH", "Stream anouncement", "WIP", "Finished art", "Photography", "audio", "video", "story", "journal", etc, buttons to the submission upload page. Default it to none selected, and don't let the submission go through unless one of them is selected. Then let us toggle the categories we wish to see with settings on our notification page. That way, we can leave streams, YCHs, or even journals turned off, but could easily toggle and of them back on as needed. We could even turn off "finished art", "writing" or "music", and leave "journals" on, if that's all we wanted to see - all right from our recent notifications and submissions pages.

Unfortunately, I can't think of an automated way to see just the initial announcement of a new YCH, but never ever any of the countless reminders. Just the initial announcement is enough. Anything beyond that is extremely annoying spam. For streams, I'd turn those off completely, and bury the button that toggles it in the deepest pits of annoying hell.

I'd be extremely happy if people would just tag their art properly so I could find it with a search. I often stumble upon pictures that are several years old that I never saw, because they were never tagged, yet they contain the exact topics I normally search for. At the very least, any species depicted in the art should be tagged. And also, the original artist's username should always be a required tag, if uploading commissioned, requested or gifted art.

Maybe, while submitting, the upload page could have radio buttons for, "I'm the artist", or, "this is a commission, request or gift for me." Then, if you click the "for me" option, it would require an artist's name to be filled in. The page could refuse to submit, unless the user picked an option, and filled in a name if it wasn't theirs. An "original artist prefers to remain anonymous" option would probably be needed for some uploads, but it would be clear that art was from someone else at least.

These are all just ideas floating around in my head. I don't know how much, if any, are actually doable without a lot or work.

Re: Reminder notifications--
Maybe a thing like kickstarter has when you view a project page- there's a button you can click to remind you about that particular project. If something *similar* was implemented on FA, then if you were viewing a YCH/commission opening/auction post (or any other thing that has a time deadline, and ideally would work for both image posts and journals) you could opt in to get a reminder notification about that post, and maybe set WHEN you want to be reminded about it, so that it's not on the artist to provide a hardcoded deadline, and you could time the reminder to a day/time useful to *you*, such as when you get paid, for example (users would need to have their personal time zones set accurately in their settings, of course). And if you view a post but aren't worried about getting a reminder? You can keep browsing as usual.

I agree about tagging, and marking artwork as "I am the artist"/"Made for me" as well as "collaboration", which would give multiple credit options (I am an artist/Artist 1/Artist 2/etc, perhaps specifying roles (pencils/ink/color/lettering/writing/editing, etc.))

Re: Tagging/Categories/Accessibility Text--
It would be cool if existing untagged posts (tag field(s) null?) would show up with a personal notification reminding the uploader to add tags. AND, maybe users could opt-in on a feature that would allow logged-in viewers to add tags, alt text, and/or transcriptions & translations to their submissions (with pending approval by the uploader), similar to the way webcomics were using a plugin for a while to enable readers to help out with updating info like that, for accessibility purposes. When there are SO MANY files to update, sometimes help is appreciated, and sometimes crowdsourcing tags can provide a more complete list of applicable terms (makes me think of e621). Trusted users might be given clearance (by FA, like pseudo-mod powers) to tag/categorize/etc. images for accounts that are otherwise inaccessible or unmonitored (dearly departed users, abandoned accounts).

I realize those aren't necessarily easy things to add to the site, depending, but your reply sparked more ideas! XD

It's the best thing that would help this website out. There's too much of this stuff happening on the front page. And I'm glad you're finally taking notice. Hope you take care of it.

Yeah, categories are the best way of handling this.

I've believed for a long time that the best way to run a web site is to not have any quality standards and let people upload whatever they want, assuming there is ample storage space. However, good search and filter tools are a must, so people can actually find the stuff they want. Sites that try to curate content and strictly enforce quality standards (like the old Yerf) tend to die off.

Thanks for the updates and hardwork to make the site easier to use and add nifty functions <3

I'm very happy that FA has considered and heard the proposals that we have said on social media. This not only helps FA as a site to be more enjoyable for everyone, but also it also helps new artists get their well-deserved time under the spotlight.

Too many people use “twitter style” tactics to get attention with massive spam. It seems people use the submit button as if it were the retweet one. That culture of over saturation seems to be invading FA.

I personally consider FA as one of the last good bastions of the fandom, because all the toxic people who prey for easy bucks and attention go to twitter. Of course, FA isn't perfect but it's one of the only places left where artists can interact with the community without tyrannical algorithms.

I really appreciate this decision, but I would also like to talk about the search filter changes. Due to the new filter many old galleries literally disappeared. That can make people believe that many galleries were nuked and/or artists left. That can make abandon the platform and that's terrible!

To bring new people to FA we also have keep and care for veteran artists while also giving fledging artists good opportunities to get front page attention. By displacing all spam from YCH/Remainders/Adopts and other spam, we give new artists that chance, without punishing old artists.

Thanks for your efforts!

We're listening and going over feedback. I understand we may not have responded as fast as something things, but a lot of it comes down to money, funding, and other issues. Sometimes we plan on X, but then Y creeps up and we have to contend with that.

Let me just say that my 2022 goal is is to "shed the sins of our past" and be more pro-active in making changes. Progress DOES take time, but we're working on a few things behind the scenes and making some long term plans.

I'm going to also input on this. With the new search changed to in the last 5 years as default without an announcement, I had some folk approach me two days ago asking if my art was suppressed in search since they couldn't find it searching. Then I realized the change and informed the user that the art was too old for the default search change, and they'd have to adjust search for my old art to appear.

Oh wow, I know I've been under my rock for a while, and I didn't even realize the search update was a thing. I wonder if my stuff is affected by it o_o I will have to look up the site update journal discussing this, I suppose, to see how I can tell and what I might have to do to make old art visible in the current search. Hmm.

In search you can now see that it has 24 hr 72 hr, 30days, 90 days, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, and All time. Your art that is old will appear in searches that are set to "All Time".

Yeah, I JUST saw that (did a test search before looking for the journal) and was coming back to say I figured it out, when I noticed you replied! XD

At least that's not *so* bad, it doesn't require me to update anything on the old posts(necessarily). I can understand that setting the default search to 5 years is probably a lot less strain on the servers than constantly pulling results for All Time, though it does minimize the likelihood of my old arts turning up in casual searches, for sure. I guess that means I need to make new art XD

The search engine changes are easy to overcome. Users can set it to behave exactly as it did before the changes, and it remembers the settings now. I no longer need to click on "by date", and "last 90 days", every time I do a search, as I used to. If I ever need to search for something older, I can still click on "advanced" to temporarily override my defaults.

Exciting!!! I am looking forward to the bump/reminder separation from submissions!!

Why not program something that checks the art if it already been uploaded? Wouldn't that save you a lot of time instead of spending 15 hours a week looking through submissions?

Because that's a bit resource intensive, and those who want to get around only have to chance a single pixel on an image to get circumvent. That's not to say it's not effective, but... let's just say there's a few things in the pipe.

Why not program in an MD5? Surely something is better than nothing.

Yup I honestly have no use for reminders at all but like 1/3rd of my inbox is all these reminders and basically spam. So yeah separating them from the regular subs in my list would be nice to have.

What about patreon reminders? There was a user I had to stop following becuase they straight up stopped uploading pics to FA and only uploaded like... a zoomed in 10% corner of the piece with the rest covered by blocked out black boxes with links to their patreon in it. Will those users be getting some warnings or bans if need be?

...they straight up stopped uploading pics to FA and only uploaded like... a zoomed in 10% corner of the piece with the rest covered by blocked out black boxes...
*looks down at an upcoming Upload Policy update*
Gotcha covered, boss. =3

https://media.giphy.com/media/111eb.....0YLu/giphy.gif

I've unwatched several users over the same thing.

I don't mind users mentioning that they also have a Patreon account, but if they stop posting any art to this site, including commissioned art, and only use it for advertising their Patreon, it's extremely annoying. People don't visit art sites to see Patreon ads trying to lure them to another site!

Imagine visiting an actual art museum, and seeing Patreon ads or NFT ads where the art would normally be displayed.

Hey~ It's really great to see that you are trying to make this website better. But as an artist I am deeply concerned that such feature with separate section will significantly decrease sales. And if artists won't have opportunity to feed themselves with art they might just drop doing this, which will affect the amount of free stuff everyone adore so much. Most of the people probably won't open that sales tab when they are not directly looking to buy something. Meanwhile right now they can just see some nice ych while browsing feed on the way home from work and buy it

I appreciate a lot though that spammers finally got some punishment. I think if you'll be able to remove all spammers from the feed (by more strict punishment system and more moderators may be?), there won't be any problems with excessive amount of reminders

And as an artist I can assure you that reminders are extremely helpful, to both sales and finding new audience, even though there are some people who hates it. Just wanna give you the alternative view from artist's perspective and my own experience

Anyway I hope you will be able to come up with the best solution for all of us✌

i think it would help if you make it impossible to post more than 3 submissions rated "reminder" per day. like the site will have a limit and user won't be able to post more at all. also in my idea reminders will have their own frame (or something) that will differ them from other submissions in browse so you can simly see who posted reminder as usual submission to break the rule

i mean if people just won't be able to break rules the site will be cleaner and it won't be needed to make another place for reminders

i think it's not good for artists if their reminders will be posted to other place where nobody besides interested buyers will see it. because sometimes people just browsing artworks and don't think about buying something, but see a interesting ych and decide to buy it

I super hope the feature is an actual full separate sales section completely separated from art submissions. It would make browsing for commissions easier, and browsing artworks easier. I'm curious and still looking forward to it all either way.

Curious to see what you mentioned about how you will be doing reminders. If it were a separate zone, I could see a button you can press on the sale you posted "Reminder (# left)". Heh, so that reminds me that e6 has a limited amount people can post at a time to prevent spam, now that I think about it. Thinking to self, does any other site do that? I know weasyl only shaws the latest 3 uploads, but only on front page so gallery dumping is still a thing there.

(Whispers: I wouldn't mind a limiter in general on uploads so that folks can't gallery dump. I feel 10 artworks in one day would be my personal upper limit that I look at in a dumping before fast scrolling past. I never counted, though. About 1.5 to 2 fa notice rows in my notifs and then I start fast scrolling. Also I think that something like that would help mitigate spambots when they break through a tad and post really bad things since it'd limit their spam post capabilities.

do it again & we'll all spank your purple dragon butt

Good~ XD
Perhaps later there should be an option to migrate submissions too, since I seem to see a number of people changing accounts because of it's age, or stupid name they don't wanna associate with, or something, but possibly resubmitting everything that was submitted in the old account,

Perhaps a submission migration between accounts, with a confirmation of sort would be nice, if that's possible anyway lol

Perhaps maybe there could be a notification for stuff like YCHs, Commissions, Auctions, etc apart from the new submissions notification?
This could help artists advertise their stuff and help people who are looking for open sales like this. XP

I hope it works EXACTLY like the "select streams" button in journals! VERY easy!

On the topic of spam, I have had accounts (who I had never seen or interacted with) message me trying to sell their art to me (and presumably messaging many other people as well). Any thoughts on how this might be properly handled on my end or yours? Currently, my only resort is blocking.

Toss me a DM with the info and I can take a look.

There is still some tag issues being mixed up between TY and Tony tigers in the FA tag database, it shows both of them, but not separately. The only keywords i used were TY,Tiger,muscle. And it shows not just tony the tiger, but TY from krome studios as well.

Have you used -[keyword] for the thing you don't want brought up?

Like when I search certain things like commissions I can

commission -adopt -ych

And then no post with the adopt or YCH tag will appear. Also you will probably need to keep in mind that fa search does no recognize two letter tags like "TY" in keywords. (As such I cannot search up my character Ig by his name and always have to search "Uluri purple rabbit" to bring him up.

Is there any plan on dealing with users using Posty birb to flood the submissions page?

That's the point of this journal?

I mean, it's a form of spamming, but if not, then ignore me lol.

Even I almost do YCH (but I didn't do the reminder) so totally agree with Dragoneer. Those reminder so annoying and so much spamming.

I would like to suggest about for report button like Facebook? That will let user report the artist who spamming post on reminder. if they get report a lot so they will get ban for temporary or have some penalties like can't do anything in the page for a week / month.

the reminders can be annoying, but I just clear them from my Inbox, it's no big deal.
What does this have to do with stream announcements?
I just had someone pretty much halt the stream I was doing because of this.
As far as I can tell, this isn't even a thing yet, so what's the big deal?