Suggestions: Small Things that make a great Difference

[CyberMark]

I have been enjoying FA (an Im using the new theme template) for quiet a while but there are a few implementations that I think would make the experience so much better.

Please have in mind that I am no mod, or a programmer, and I am totally not qualified to make accurate propositions and that my thinking might be flawed, if anything I just want to spark some conversation about features that could be implemented on the main site and how (possibly) could it be made.

If you find anything of this flawed please let me know!

1.Implementation of "forum like" posting: Editing text and else is so much easier and nice on the forums, I know that the source might be different, but there must be way right?

2.Easier Submission Management: I like the idea of folders, so far (at least) the folders are doing their job which is helping to sort your art and letting people find stuff they are interested in much easier, though trying to get em all to stay on a single folder or knowing which is where from the management section is really tedious as there is no way to know in what folder is each submission making it just annoying to sort things out and overall it feels a harder shore than it should, as you're almost playing a guessing memory game of which submissions to place where.

3. Curated Submissions: This is something I would really love to see in the community, there are so many different artists and some just spam their art completely blocking any new artist who might have posted a single piece, leaving their 5 second exposure just being taken away and making newcomers feel like their art isn't worth it. I feel like having a submission form to let admins know which submission deserves some extra love. Say maybe there could be community curators who send artworks to the admins who might make em featured if they see it as worth. Of course this would come with issues since it might be abused by some and making it completely impossible for admins to check every single submission sent to them, so maybe either have some honor system, or some sorting where if a single submission is voted to be featured enough it could be featured (the stat might be invisible so users dont abuse it), maybe it could be depending on view count/faves.

4.Forums Syncing with main account: I hate missing out on the forums since I gotta login into another website and check there instead of just checking my FA page and seeing that i got some answers, I know this one would be one of the hardest to pull off, but would make keeping an eye on forum posts much easier, besides making the forum more appealing to those who have an FA but dont check the forums much, and those who just check the forums.

5.Better Sorting System: This one is the most simple (I think), just add a time to what you're searching, for example, you could check who is the most faved or popular piece of all time on the website of either categories that are already established or you could see what is popular of today, a week, a month, etc...
This could possibly be implemented in both, while browsing and while searching keywords.

That's it!

If you think there is anything else to add to the site let me know! Lets start a conversation!

Thanks for the attention!

 

[jayhusky]

4.Forums Syncing with main account: I hate missing out on the forums since I gotta login into another website and check there instead of just checking my FA page and seeing that i got some answers, I know this one would be one of the hardest to pull off, but would make keeping an eye on forum posts much easier, besides making the forum more appealing to those who have an FA but dont check the forums much, and those who just check the forums.

This is unlikely to ever happen, as given FA's codebase is in need of a massive overhaul, accounts are kept separate on a security standpoint.
If one is compromised the other should be safe, etc.

I know there are big websites out there which implemented merged accounts etc, but FA would realistically (and from a dev standpoint) be somewhat less secure in terms of bots/attacks etc.

 

[CyberMark]

This is unlikely to ever happen, as given FA's codebase is in need of a massive overhaul, accounts are kept separate on a security standpoint.
If one is compromised the other should be safe, etc.

I know there are big websites out there which implemented merged accounts etc, but FA would realistically (and from a dev standpoint) be somewhat less secure in terms of bots/attacks etc.

Ah I see, I had heard about some security breach years prior but I didn't know what it was all about (was starting on the fandom and didn't care too much about it at the time). I see what you're saying though. At-least I wasn't too far off when I said that it would be the hardest thing to pull off. XD

They should really take into consideration putting up some sort of premium membership or something like donations and gather up to pay some programmers to work on an overhaul, I personally know a team that do great websites, though I don't know if they do anything like this.

Besides that,what do you think about all the other suggestions? I do feel they might be more plausible.

 

[jayhusky]

Yeah, while FA has taken reasonable steps to try and secure access to the site and its accounts, it isn't fool proof and sadly the core bundle of code is still a 12 year old mess, so things are, for the want of a better term, fragile. So combining in the forums and mainsite together would not be the most advantageous of moves for FA.
Not to mention that there are many accounts registered here on the forums by one person that also are registered on the mainsite by someone else and would cause name collisions.

FA has previously entertained donations, but since it's sale to/takeover by IMVU, it no longer takes them.
Also an overhaul (called Phoenix) has been in the works for some time, but development news is sketchy at this time. There are a team of programmers here willing to help (I'm one of them) and we try to help any way we can. I wrote a clone of FA about 4 years ago to show it could be done.

Regarding your other suggestions;

1) Editing is a thing already, you can edit comments (with a certain time window, and they show as "edited" once you make an edit, This is so you cannot change the context of a comment some six months down the line.) Shouts cannot be edited and journals have always been able to be edited. So not entirely sure about this one.

2) Yes!, it would be great to be able to "click" a folder, and the submissions within that folder become highlighted, so you can see which is which, either that or a folder is assigned a colour and then the submission gains a background of that colour to identify it. I like this one.

3) Curated submissions could work, but would need a team to judge on merit, it would enable artist exposure and help increase the visibility of some profiles, but would also need to be considerate of other professions (Music, 3D, Text etc). So viable, but needs careful planning.

4) We've already covered that one.

5)Better sorting as you describe could be a thing, but ultimately would need careful planning to avoid any potential issues with over exposing certain art or controversial pieces/users etc. I would put it alongside number 3, viable, but requires planning.

 

[CyberMark]

Oh I didn't know that FA was owned by IMVU, that explains the abundance of Ads of IMVU.

1)Ahh I see, the editing of a comment I know already, is just that I dont know how to name this where you change the color and size of what you write, plus adding images. I mean like the ones you use in the forum, Ill attach a picture, I think it describes it better.

2) That is a neat idea, I had more in mind that if you where managing your submissions you could simply see the submission name and then something along the the lines as "In Folder: example". I think It might be even easier to implement and a quick fix to this meanwhile something better is put in place.

3) I think they have something similar in place where if you search for a term some newer pieces will appear above older pieces with high popularity, which gives much needed exposure to smaller artists, but curated submissions would be a nice thing to see in the community, specially since I have seen really talented artist just be thrown to the side. Of course curated Music and literature and else would be also great as those do need a lot more exposure. To avoid controversy maybe only SFW art could make it in featured? I dont know, as I said I am no expert in this and I am just throwing ideas.

5) Yea, I never thought it that way, maybe the curation and this sorting could go hand in hand, this is better to be left to an expert in the field.

Anyway, looking forward to this overhaul called Phoenix!

Do you have some things you would add/change in the FA site(program wise)? If so what are they? It would be really nice to hear someone with much more experience in the field haves to say.

 

[jayhusky]

With regard to 1) Image inserts themselves are not supported on FA by selection of the coding team. But there is a tool which adds a small-ish control panel to the Journals/Profile info pages to allow for modification of text.
I've included a link to it. greasyfork.org: FA Additional BBCode Helper

2) That actually sounds like a decent implementation!


Phoenix, as it stands, is still "undergoing development", I don't know of its progress at the moment, but the last I heard it was reasonable. However perhaps @Dragoneer could shed some light on it?

For me, there are a fair few things I would add/change but most of those I have actually managed to implement either by suggestion to the site staff or by external scripts which tweak the site itself.

 

[CyberMark]

Thanks I'll look into project Phoenix later on!

1) Really isn't working for me and I think it should be something that could be easily implemented and should be standard as default considering the limited ways you can customize your user page.
1a) I tried running "Grease monkey" and ran the script through it, I wondered if it had to do with me or the script so I tried to implement a YouTube script and it did work, so either I am using the wrong scriptwriter (GreaseMonkey), have incompatible browser (FireFox) or the script is damaged/outdated. Or you know... I could be doing something wrong....

2) I am glad it was a good suggestion!

"For me, there are a fair few things I would add/change but most of those I have actually managed to implement either by suggestion to the site staff or by external scripts which tweak the site itself."

Could I know which are this external scripts you talk about? Anything more specific?

 

[CyberMark]

There are two other suggestions I forgot to talk about.

1)Scheduled upload: You sometimes don't have the time to go into FA and manually upload everything you got every day, yet you want to keep your watchers entertained and engaged and keep getting awareness for new watchers, the thing is that sometimes you just create a lot of content one or two days and you got a bunch of art and wanna spread it throughout the week instead of posting it all in a single day and flooding people's inbox and spamming the "recent" page.

What could be done is a script that when you upload lets you choose a time and date of submission as an option when you are posting any submission, so you don't really have to be there actively posting every day, instead you can schedule.

Benefits would be less flood of content by single creators in the recent page, more even exposure throughout time.

I always see Artist submit like 20 pieces of work in a single day, you don't know what to see and some good stuff gets lost in the flood of content leaving other artists that post less completely naked.

2)Mass posting: I know this is a scary topic, and I bet that is why it isn't implemented, people could easily abuse this and spam a bunch of stuff fairly easily, but if some limitations are placed into it it could be possibly beneficial for any sort of artist, specially if they are just starting on the site and have a backlog of art posted somewhere else.

Say that you cant multi-post unless you schedule the post at-least 5 hours of difference from each other, otherwise you have to post every single one like we currently do. At least I think that would be the easiest fix, or something along those lines.

 

[Dragoneer]

This is unlikely to ever happen, as given FA's codebase is in need of a massive overhaul, accounts are kept separate on a security standpoint. If one is compromised the other should be safe, etc.

It's less of an issue with Fur Affinity and more of an issue with the forums being third party. If our forums were completely integrated into FA that'd be one thing, bit as we rely on third party software, if something happens to Xen it could potentially be used as an attack vector on FA as well. It's definitely up there on my list of wants.

3. Curated Submissions: This is something I would really love to see in the community, there are so many different artists and some just spam their art completely blocking any new artist who might have posted a single piece, leaving their 5 second exposure just being taken away and making newcomers feel like their art isn't worth it. I feel like having a submission form to let admins know which submission deserves some extra love. Say maybe there could be community curators who send artworks to the admins who might make em featured if they see it as worth. Of course this would come with issues since it might be abused by some and making it completely impossible for admins to check every single submission sent to them, so maybe either have some honor system, or some sorting where if a single submission is voted to be featured enough it could be featured (the stat might be invisible so users dont abuse it), maybe it could be depending on view count/faves.

Hrmm. I really like this idea, and there's a few ways to do this. I've actually touched on this issue somewhat behind-the-scenes, and it's definitely on my priority list, especially as a tool to help find new artists. The hardest part is figure out what criteria you want, as curated list tend to be done manually, and you have to factor in all the "What if somebody just makes lists to troll bad artists?" factor.

It's something that WILL be visited, but I don't know when.

4.Forums Syncing with main account: I hate missing out on the forums since I gotta login into another website and check there instead of just checking my FA page and seeing that i got some answers, I know this one would be one of the hardest to pull off, but would make keeping an eye on forum posts much easier, besides making the forum more appealing to those who have an FA but dont check the forums much, and those who just check the forums.

As I posted above, it's something we can technically do, but it comes with a lot of caveats and coding requirements to really make work, and right now we're focusing the coding on the main site to make improvements.

 

[scythemouse]

FA already has decent attention for new art, certainly more than FN does. Freshly uploaded art comes on the main page when you enter the URL purely, rather than a side page, and *popular* is not the first option.

The only "small thing" I can think of is maybe support for transparent PNGs for avatars. My avatar on FA is supposed to be transparent, and it came out in better quality than it did as a GIF.

 

[Dragoneer]

FA already has decent attention for new art, certainly more than FN does. Freshly uploaded art comes on the main page when you enter the URL purely, rather than a side page, and *popular* is not the first option.

The only "small thing" I can think of is maybe support for transparent PNGs for avatars. My avatar on FA is supposed to be transparent, and it came out in better quality than it did as a GIF.

I have ideas to improve the support further than we already do, too. One of the things I'm trying to figure out is a good way we can encourage users to find "up and coming" artists who've really got great work but may not have the attention or watchers they deserve. Doing so in a system that's reasonably fair to everyone is a difficult task, but it's one I want to explore.

 

[jayhusky]

It's less of an issue with Fur Affinity and more of an issue with the forums being third party. If our forums were completely integrated into FA that'd be one thing, bit as we rely on third party software, if something happens to Xen it could potentially be used as an attack vector on FA as well. It's definitely up there on my list of wants.
......

.....
As I posted above, it's something we can technically do, but it comes with a lot of caveats and coding requirements to really make work, and right now we're focusing the coding on the main site to make improvements.

Ok, fair enough, its technically doable, but it in complete fairness, I was given the "Security standpoint" answer when I asked the same question some 8 years ago.
I just relied on information I had been given previously.

I mean, yes I would love to see joined accounts, but at the same time, I'm also content with two separate ones.

The only "small thing" I can think of is maybe support for transparent PNGs for avatars. My avatar on FA is supposed to be transparent, and it came out in better quality than it did as a GIF.

There is actually a rather strange bug and workaround with transparent PNG's for avatars.

You can save your file as a transparent PNG, then reopen it and save as GIF, thereby saving with transparency, and then upload to FA, it keeps the transparency in the file and doesn't replace it with white/black.

I used that method on my account on the site, and it worked a treat for me.

 

[quoting_mungo]

You can save your file as a transparent PNG, then reopen it and save as GIF, thereby saving with transparency, and then upload to FA, it keeps the transparency in the file and doesn't replace it with white/black.

Mind that GIFs still have different constraints than PNGs in regards to things like color depth and alpha channels. How well it works will depend on the image and what matte color you select when converting any partially transparent pixels to solidly colored when resaving.

I did something similar with the avatar I use on Userpage of darkzander -- Fur Affinity [dot] net and I know I spent some time tidying up edges on that one.

 

[CyberMark]

Hrmm. I really like this idea, and there's a few ways to do this. I've actually touched on this issue somewhat behind-the-scenes, and it's definitely on my priority list, especially as a tool to help find new artists. The hardest part is figure out what criteria you want, as curated list tend to be done manually, and you have to factor in all the "What if somebody just makes lists to troll bad artists?" factor.
.

This is why I think there should be a voting system from already curated curators, and those curators send the votes to the admins to be reviewed. At least that is the easiest way to filter out any unwanted attention and ruling out any issues on the system.

Also curators could recommend artists/art to their watchers on a basis so even if a an artists deosn't get picked to be featured, it could still be featured as by curators. (kinda like how steam does it?)