Main Site my thoughts on the site's current direction

[ReVolt621]

Wouldn't it make more sense to rewrite large portions of the website rather than attempting to incorporate new features into the existing codebase?
I'm convinced that after 15 years of development, furaffinity will have massive amounts of technical debt.

A database transfer to a newer, better-suited database, a new frontend, and a better architecture could also help reduce the site's reliance on Cloudflare while also making it easier to add, improve, and change features.

 

[quoting_mungo]

No offense, but who do you propose should do this work? FA has like... 1-3 devs, I believe; I don't know how Dragoneer buying the site back from IMVU would have effected that number but it almost certainly didn't increase it. Backend changes to make the codebase less gnarly are being done continuously, but dropping everything to re-develop the site isn't a realistic option.

The database changes alone would mean days if not week(s) of downtime (like, I am 99% sure a number was dropped on the forum some time back and as I recall it was in that general ballpark). We're talking about 50 million submissions (minus removed submissions, which I don't know to what extent they might still have any database entries), no less than 100k users (there's currently 35k users online; saying that's 1/3 of even the active the userbase is hella lowballing it), probably a couple hundred million comments, plus favorites (I wouldn't be surprised if that gets at least close to a billion - that'd be an average of 20 favorites per submission-ever, and that's... not that much given the numbers more popular artists get - I have all of 500 watchers and average around 10 or so per submission based on some really quick and dirty math), notes, tickets (with responses), and so on. Basically, it's a metric fuckload of database entries.

With the Internet culture (including the less savory bits, like "DDOS LOL") we have today there's no getting around the need for a service like Cloudflare for a site of FA's size, and to the best of my knowledge anything competitive functionality-wise is significantly more expensive.

Like, absolutely rebuilding things from scratch, having a better designed database, etc. would lead to a better version of the website existing. New technologies are available, best practices have been improved, the site likely wasn't originally built to be scalable to its current size, and so on. But actually doing it is not feasible. If nothing else so because the existing codebase isn't going to just... sit there and not have issues crop up that require dev attention while work is being done on a hypothetical new version. Having that new version would be nice. Getting there is most likely all but impossible as things currently stand.

 

[ReVolt621]

I've dealt with similar issues at work before, and the most straightforward solution would be to "hire" (find volunteers) a second development team to design a new back- and front-end for the website using a small portion of the existing database as dummy data. Then, once the new site is ready, does a hot migration over a few weeks where the existing data is slowly copied over, then at some point has both sites up and as a final point in development switches over completely to minimize downtime.

FurAffinity only having 1-3 Developers seems very low. shouldn't it be higher priority to try and get more developers on board then

 

[Deleted member 162282]

Wouldn't it make more sense to rewrite large portions of the website rather than attempting to incorporate new features into the existing codebase?
I'm convinced that after 15 years of development, furaffinity will have massive amounts of technical debt.

A database transfer to a newer, better-suited database, a new frontend, and a better architecture could also help reduce the site's reliance on Cloudflare while also making it easier to add, improve, and change features.

Why didn't Intel make strides before AMD spanked them? Why does Wacom charge so much for their devices? Why did Adobe cease their perpetual licenses? At the end of the day, is there a realistic alternative to Furaffinity? The Furaffinity devs can do as they like regardless of user input, simply due to the fact of; where else are you going to go? Furaffinity has the most traffic of all the furry sites by an order of magnitude, the only way you're going to be see any real change is if one of the alternative site somehow becomes competitive.

 

[quoting_mungo]

Why didn't Intel make strides before AMD spanked them? Why does Wacom charge so much for their devices? Why did Adobe cease their perpetual licenses? At the end of the day, is there a realistic alternative to Furaffinity? The Furaffinity devs can do as they like regardless of user input, simply due to the fact of; where else are you going to go? Furaffinity has the most traffic of all the furry sites by an order of magnitude, the only way you're going to be see any real change is if one of the alternative site somehow becomes competitive.

That’s incredibly uncharitable of you. FA is running on a very limited budget, to the point of not always supporting itself in a given month. Please tell me when that was the case for any of the corporations you mention. There’s a list of features they want to add and/or improve, but only so much money and manhours available to put into it, and sometimes urgent circumstances require those resources to be spent elsewhere for a time. (Like working on mitigating and preventing future repeats of the juvenile attacks a short while ago where bots/trolls were uploading photographic gore and CSEM.) Or a quick feature that will take a very small amount of work is slipped ahead in queue.

Nobody is sitting on their hands, as you seem to imply. More traffic by an order of magnitude isn’t an unadulterated blessing - scaling is one of the biggest challenges with just about any system dealing with data.

 

[Deleted member 162282]

That’s incredibly uncharitable of you. FA is running on a very limited budget, to the point of not always supporting itself in a given month. Please tell me when that was the case for any of the corporations you mention. There’s a list of features they want to add and/or improve, but only so much money and manhours available to put into it, and sometimes urgent circumstances require those resources to be spent elsewhere for a time. (Like working on mitigating and preventing future repeats of the juvenile attacks a short while ago where bots/trolls were uploading photographic gore and CSEM.) Or a quick feature that will take a very small amount of work is slipped ahead in queue.

Nobody is sitting on their hands, as you seem to imply. More traffic by an order of magnitude isn’t an unadulterated blessing - scaling is one of the biggest challenges with just about any system dealing with data.

So stating an obvious fact is uncharitable? Competition breeds innovation and as I said, the devs can do as they please. Also, where did i say the devs were "sitting on their hands?" I don't like people putting words into my mouth.

 

[Deleted member 160111]

It's funny, but even evolution does not destroy the old base, for the sake of a new one - more efficient. Add-ons and changes on the old base save resources. In addition, it has been said here more than once how confusing and untidy the FA code.

 

[quoting_mungo]

So stating an obvious fact is uncharitable? Competition breeds innovation and as I said, the devs can do as they please. Also, where did i say the devs were "sitting on their hands?" I don't like people putting words into my mouth.

Comparing a fandom website that only barely bears its own weight to solidly profitable businesses is uncharitable, yes. Between that and “The Furaffinity devs can do as they like regardless of user input, simply due to the fact of; where else are you going to go?” your language definitely comes off as suggesting that FA is being held back by sloth and/or indifference. If that’s not what you meant, fair enough, but that’s how it reads to me, at least.

What innovation are you hoping to see, and how do you figure “competition” would expedite it?

 

[Deleted member 162282]

Comparing a fandom website that only barely bears its own weight to solidly profitable businesses is uncharitable, yes. Between that and “The Furaffinity devs can do as they like regardless of user input, simply due to the fact of; where else are you going to go?” your language definitely comes off as suggesting that FA is being held back by sloth and/or indifference. If that’s not what you meant, fair enough, but that’s how it reads to me, at least.

What innovation are you hoping to see, and how do you figure “competition” would expedite

Yes, you're right, the largest furry site on the planet cannot handle it's own weight I agree. You're really working hard to have a point here, most of what you are arguing against I never said nor stated, you did. In a way I was trying to defend them, my point being whether you love them or hate them, it's their website, so too bad, but you keep trying to suggest I'm attacking them. Or at least that's how it reads to me!

 

[ReVolt621]

That’s incredibly uncharitable of you. FA is running on a very limited budget, to the point of not always supporting itself in a given month. Please tell me when that was the case for any of the corporations you mention. There’s a list of features they want to add and/or improve, but only so much money and manhours available to put into it, and sometimes urgent circumstances require those resources to be spent elsewhere for a time. (Like working on mitigating and preventing future repeats of the juvenile attacks a short while ago where bots/trolls were uploading photographic gore and CSEM.) Or a quick feature that will take a very small amount of work is slipped ahead in queue.

Nobody is sitting on their hands, as you seem to imply. More traffic by an order of magnitude isn’t an unadulterated blessing - scaling is one of the biggest challenges with just about any system dealing with data.

I'm quite sure that by reallocating and by getting help from volunteers FurAffinity should be able to implement the changes necessary.
A cleaner codebase benefits everyone since it makes the site easier to maintain, which frees up more time for new features and changes, helps reduce bugs and issues, and makes it easier to adapt new technologies into the sites backend.

 

[quoting_mungo]

Yes, you're right, the largest furry site on the planet cannot handle it's own weight I agree.

Financially, yes, it has months where Dragoneer has to add his own money to keep the site up. I think the last time he mentioned as much was in the last week, so that’s current information. Again, size comes with drawbacks as well as benefits.

In a way I was trying to defend them, my point being whether you love them or hate them, it's their website, so too bad, but you keep trying to suggest I'm attacking them. Or at least that's how it reads to me!

So you were not suggesting FA has been letting itself stagnate (and/or profiteering off of its market position) because of a lack of serious competition? Then why bring up Intel, Wacom, and Adobe at all? I’m absolutely suggesting that you’ve been disparaging the site, and I stand by that.

Like, I’m not here to pick a fight. If you say your intent all along was to say something like “Fur Affinity is a private entity and will do what they feel is best,” fine. You do you.

 

[Deleted member 162282]

Financially, yes, it has months where Dragoneer has to add his own money to keep the site up. I think the last time he mentioned as much was in the last week, so that’s current information. Again, size comes with drawbacks as well as benefits.


So you were not suggesting FA has been letting itself stagnate (and/or profiteering off of its market position) because of a lack of serious competition? Then why bring up Intel, Wacom, and Adobe at all? I’m absolutely suggesting that you’ve been disparaging the site, and I stand by that.

Like, I’m not here to pick a fight. If you say your intent all along was to say something like “Fur Affinity is a private entity and will do what they feel is best,” fine. You do you.

I have literally elaborated my position to the point a child could understand, once again you are ignoring what I said and making claims that are simply untrue, I am not continuing this conversation with you, because you are arguing against your own words, not mine. In the future debate what I say, not what you feel I said.

 

[RamblingRenegade]

I mean I belong to a few games where they fix what isn't broken and add new stuff before fixing what needs to be fixed, I figured that was the norm

 

[GuffinDoesArt]

I think advertising an interest in volunteers would help the website a ton. There's already been a recent post where someone brought up a CSS fix for the new update and Dragoneer showed interest in incorporating that fix into the website. If there's an interest in volunteers, even just a peek under the hood to some people would help fix or improve the website a lot faster.

I do agree though, without more people trying their hand at fixing parts of the website, and with the lack of transparency at times, it can sometimes feel like the dev team isn't doing as much as they could be.

 

[ReVolt621]

Asking for volunteers would likely dramatically improve the site. If only there was a way to suggest that idea somewhere.

 

[luffy]

Problem with volunteer devs is that (lol, I know, I know, don't start) our system is old and it's hard to set up permissions and privacy the way we need to for a volunteer. We have someone who works on the primary site and someone who works on integrations, to my understanding (very broad stroke of what they do). We've looked into additional, but it's hard to advertise for it when the permission structure is not set up for adding in lower-level access, and FA can't afford to hire another.

We have had some volunteer resumes tossed at us and we definitely don't ignore them. It's just a sensitive permissions issue.

 

[RamblingRenegade]

you want to see a broken game that they don't care about and fix what doesn't need fixed/ added new stuff instead of fixing what needs to be fixed and clearly don't listen to their customers, play Howrse

 

[ReVolt621]

Problem with volunteer devs is that (lol, I know, I know, don't start) our system is old and it's hard to set up permissions and privacy the way we need to for a volunteer. We have someone who works on the primary site and someone who works on integrations, to my understanding (very broad stroke of what they do). We've looked into additional, but it's hard to advertise for it when the permission structure is not set up for adding in lower-level access, and FA can't afford to hire another.

We have had some volunteer resumes tossed at us and we definitely don't ignore them. It's just a sensitive permissions issue.

Why would volunteers need a permission system of any kind? code changes can be managed via pull-requests like in most open- and closed-source applications.

 

[luffy]

Why would volunteers need a permission system of any kind? code changes can be managed via pull-requests like in most open- and closed-source applications.

I'm not a dev, I just know enough to give a high level answer that probably doesn't make sense to devs.

 

[GuffinDoesArt]

any chance we could get a response from a dev then?

 

[luffy]

All due respect, it's not owed to talk to a dev, but I'll toss this into their channel to see if they can.

 

[drages]

I don't understand how this website struggles for years about money when some artists just gets 1000$s from commissions.
and I just can't accept when every other furry websites got very good video support but FA just got "banners" in 2023.
Maybe FA should die to resurrect as it cannot evolve enough for years.

 

[CreachureComforts]

I don't understand how this website struggles for years about money when some artists just gets 1000$s from commissions.
and I just can't accept when every other furry websites got very good video support but FA just got "banners" in 2023.
Maybe FA should die to resurrect as it cannot evolve enough for years.

What do those artists have to do with the site's hosting costs?

 

[drages]

What do those artists have to do with the site's hosting costs?

If you get commissioners with promoting yourself with this site, you should help it too. FA got most of the furry artists for years and got huge community. When you compare the numbers, even the next big furry place cannot compete with FA about that. So, you get money from that community. Even FA would take %5 from every commissions, I can't imagine what we would have now.

 

[TyraWadman]

If you get commissioners with promoting yourself with this site, you should help it too. FA got most of the furry artists for years and got huge community. When you compare the numbers, even the next big furry place cannot compete with FA about that. So, you get money from that community. Even FA would take %5 from every commissions, I can't imagine what we would have now.

Should, being the keyword.

People disable ads too and that hinders the sites growth.

Fa doesn't collect a percentage because (probably personal choice and) all transactions are done through third party companies that don't allow nsfw transactions.