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Important: Forum Closure, FA Discord Coming Soon

Dragoneer

Dragoneer

Site Developer
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ssaannttoo said:
But I think you made something great here, something that isn’t so easily repeatable. If this is the end, thank you for making, maintaining, and supporting this site, it has meant so much to me while it was here and honestly made my life a better place. Thank you.
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The forums are personal to me. In fact, I started them. When FA was taken off line in 2005 I made the forums as an alternate home, while working with Alkora to bring the site back up. I have a lot of vested interest in them, and it's not a decision I made lightly, but it's one I had to recognize was needed. Managing a chat platform is much easier in real time as you can have a lot of volunteer mods and staff to track things, plus flagging. With discord mods you don't have to worry about mods having access to personal information. Further, forums take both dev time and moderation resources away from the main site.

I get it's frustrating, but the main focus was always on FA itself, and improving the site is our main goal.
 
ben909

ben909

vaporeon character != mushroom characters
Dragoneer said:
FA will be FA? We're not changing the main site in any way, nor do we have intention on opening a subreddit.

I understand this is frustrating but our goals are to focus on the main site and make vast improvements. Just handling the automated spam that hits the forum alone can be a lot (and costly, too, as we subscribe to an automated service that removes most of forum spam).
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hard to trust that
 
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Deleted member 160950

Guest
CeriseVixelle said:
People are pissed, that's fair, but at least we're getting a heads-up. They could have just yanked the FAF down, leaving a message saying, sorry it wasn't working out, bye. Start sending out some DMs, ask your friends for their socials, emails etc. there really isn't any need to loose touch with anyone over this, FAF was just another method of communication after all.
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Well you can guarantee that you will not ever be seeing me on Discord because like I have already said multiple times, I have zero intention of even getting Discord.
 
ssaannttoo

ssaannttoo

Joy Boi
Dragoneer said:
The forums are personal to me, as I started them. When FA died back in 2005 we made the forums as an alternate home while I worked with Alkora to bring the site back up, so I have a lot of vested interest in them. It's not a decision I made lightly, but it's one I had to recognize was needed.

Managing a chat platform is much easier in real time as you can have a lot of volunteer mods and staff to track things, plus flagging. The forums take both dev time and moderation resources away from the main site.

I get it's frustrating, but the main focus was always on FA itself, and improving the site is our main goal.
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Because you are the owner and I know you have a lovely support team and I assume y’all went through all of the thought processes already. But is there. Chance something will change that will keep the forums up? Such as more volunteer mods or other kinds of resources that will keep the forums around? I mainly ask to see if there is a chance to wriggle in. I’ve spent.. lots of hours on this site lmao. I can’t loose all of my Flamingo jokes!
 
D

Deleted member 160950

Guest
Dragoneer said:
The forums are personal to me, as I started them. When FA died back in 2005 we made the forums as an alternate home while I worked with Alkora to bring the site back up, so I have a lot of vested interest in them. It's not a decision I made lightly, but it's one I had to recognize was needed.

Managing a chat platform is much easier in real time as you can have a lot of volunteer mods and staff to track things, plus flagging. The forums take both dev time and moderation resources away from the main site.

I get it's frustrating, but the main focus was always on FA itself, and improving the site is our main goal.
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Well, I am never going to be getting Discord, so you won't be seeing me on Discord ever.
 
ben909

ben909

vaporeon character != mushroom characters
this place is good for people who are not social enough to use discord, or often even to interact in real life, a common thing for this community, if FAF dies, there will be few places left for them, as the main site is not up for this type of interaction without posting images, faf is truely an alternative to big social networks for many of us, something that won't be recreated elsewhere
 
metatherat

metatherat

Really ratty rat
Frankly, I don't see how a discord server can possibly serve the function of the forums. The benefit of the forum system is the topicality of the threads, which imo is impossible to replicate on a discord server. Either you end up making a frankly daunting amount of channels in an effort to replicate the forum's topical organization, or you end up with a smaller amount of channels where the comments cover so many topics that it is impossible to stay on topic unless the userbase gets much smaller.

I will definitely be on the new Discord server if one is founded, but I really doubt I will be nearly as active there. The closure of the forums would be a serious loss to the community, in my opinion.
 
Dragoneer

Dragoneer

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FoxytheWolf32 said:
Well you can guarantee that you will not ever be seeing me on Discord because like I have already said multiple times, I have zero intention of even getting Discord.
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We get it. You're not planning to use Discord. No decision we make will be able to work for all users in all instances, and we get that's frustrating, but every other post saying "I'm not getting Discord." is not helpful.
 
Guifrog

Guifrog

Blue frog
LexiTehGallade said:
I've registered to the forums only recently, and I only just made my first forum post. I got an overwhelming amount of response, so I don't know where this completely fabricated notion of forum "decline" came from. Forums are far more organised and well suited for processes like commissioning than a noisy discord server. Oh,and you said "most places" don't use forums, but I don't think we should be trying to be like "most places." That's why we're here in the first place.
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I heard they did the same thing for the Brazilian furry forum, alledged the very same reasons, but I cannot say whether they used a free platform (RIP Invisionboard/Zetaboards/Tapatalk) or paid to maintain it. Twas seemingly very slow paced at the time it closed, whereas this one forum is way livelier than any forum-based fan community I've ever participated in

Cannot comment about the budget, I'm afraid. But I don't think forum decline is the argument I'll be able to buy
 
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Deleted member 160950

Guest
Well I am gonna miss the forums, as Fur Affinity Forums is how I became a fully fledged furry, once the forums die, I'll most likely end up losing touch with the furry community.
 
Dragoneer

Dragoneer

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Administrator
Guifrog said:
I heard they did the same thing for the Brazilian furry forum, alledged the very same reasons, but I cannot say whether they used a free platform (RIP Invisionboard/Zetaboards/Tapatalk) or paid to maintain it. Twas seemingly very slow paced at the time it closed, whereas this one forum is way livelier than any forum-based fan community I've ever participated in
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FAF gets maybe between 300-350 active user a day. That's it. Ten years ago that was ten times that. FA gets hundreds of thousands of users a day by comparison, over a few million per month. If FAF were more active, had the numbers, maybe things would be different, but we can't divvy up resources for a 300K daily users -vs- 300.

But these are the numbers. They're not good numbers. The forums have always been vastly smaller, but we have to recognize that we have limitations on resources, and we have to make priorities, and sometimes that means hard decisions.

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ben909

ben909

vaporeon character != mushroom characters
i have been on 2 servers that have tried to mimic faf stuff, and they always decline with time, they cannot get new members as easly as faf can, and a public server is too crowded for the level of interaction, directing people from a public one to private thread like ones is doomed as well, especially with the format of the selling pages

the games threads might have a chance, but only if each game was its own server, something likely hard to manage
 
Lutro

Lutro

Writer
FoxytheWolf32 said:
Yet again, I don't have Discord, nor do I ever plan on getting Discord.
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Well, it is a free program, and if you elect not to get it, that's your prerogative. I didn't elect to create a separate forum account here for a while, but I did. I pointed out several disadvantages to Discord myself, but I don't understand the reticence to ever getting an account ever. It's no more 'exposed' in terms of public availability than this forum is, if that's your concern. You also need not have it running 24/7 if "I'll get hooked on always checking my unread messages" is a concern -- you can mute any and all notifications and browse it just as often as you browsed the forum.

I do understand the frustrations of "having to install another program" and all that jazz. I really do. But "well I'm not gonna ever install it and miss out on the content I enjoyed from these forums without ever adapting" isn't going to solve any problems, either.
 
LexiTehGallade

LexiTehGallade

Active Member
Another objection I have with the idea of replacing the forum with a discord server is that moderation power will be taken from FA staff. Sure, they can "Own" their server and add "Administrators" but Discord staff will always loom like a shadow over the server, they own the server, they will have unregulated access to all messages and "Private" DMs. Discord has less accountability than FurAffinity does because FurAffinity is not a giant faceless corporate entity, they have a much smaller userbase. Not to mention that spam will be a worse problem with Discord, as spambots that sneak in will be able to message members based on the members own DM preference, which is set to allow public DMs by default. I believe that this will actually expose more members to being vulnerable to spam.
 
Dragoneer

Dragoneer

Site Developer
Site Director
Administrator
Lutro said:
Well, it is a free program, and if you elect not to get it, that's your prerogative. I didn't elect to create a separate forum account here for a while, but I did. I pointed out several disadvantages to Discord myself, but I don't understand the reticence to ever getting an account ever. It's no more 'exposed' in terms of public availability than this forum is, if that's your concern. You also need not have it running 24/7 if "I'll get hooked on always checking my unread messages" is a concern -- you can mute any and all notifications and browse it just as often as you browsed the forum.

I do understand the frustrations of "having to install another program" and all that jazz. I really do. But "well I'm not gonna ever install it and miss out on the content I enjoyed from these forums without ever adapting" isn't going to solve any problems, either.
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An FA Discord has been an oft requested for some time. Not at the top-top of the list, but it's been requested a bit.

No one platform is going to work for all cases.
 
ssaannttoo

ssaannttoo

Joy Boi
Dragoneer said:
An FA Discord has been an oft requested for some time. Not at the top-top of the list, but it's been requested a bit.

No one platform is going to work for all cases.
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Quick question. The forums will still be accessable, but no new posts can be made? So old posts can still be viewed right?
 
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