Segmented Fandom

[inaki]

So something I was thinking about while driving between offices today. I think I've figured out why no one site or group has managed to capture the entire furry fandom. FA has come close, by trying to be broad, but they've managed to include almost everyone on a mediocre level.

The point is, its not possible for a single website to encompass All That Is Furry(tm). Because Furry can't be quantified as a single group any more. Its a co-op of several smaller groups, each with its own needs, contributions, and overlaps with the other group.

The only way to please everyone is to be in several places at once. And.. I think we can pull that off.

First, you have the professional 2D visual artists. These are the folks that went to art school, and who look to make a living off visual design. Technically stunning works of art that rival whats in real world galleries right now. These folks should have both an online medium to showcase their work and access to real world resources, starting with critiques and guidance, moving to printing and framing services, commission managers, originals sales, and finally working into getting the artist into real world galleries and shows, and getting their art into shops and such.

This is covered by Artspots.

Next, the more community aspect of things. Folks who are just in it for the fun of doing art and scribbles and passing ideas back and forth, commenting and collaborating. Things like faving and paint chat systems are important here, communication forums and showing related work, community building.

This is covered by Jaxpad.

Those two only cover 2D still art, though, and there are many mediums in the fandom to be covered. The next on my list is Photography. This can range from the professional photo shoots done at conventions, to folks experimenting with their cameras for the first time. Photos of events, costumes, showing off construction, etc. Allowing for prints of said photos is of course a must.

This will be covered by the yet unnamed photography site.

Something to be remembered, is that while not all of the fandom is interested in the sexual aspects, a good deal is. This isn't something to be forgotten or buried or hushed away. Great art can still be adult in nature, and sexuality can be a form of creativity. This section is of course not for everyone, so warning pages making sure the viewer truly knows what they're getting into isn't unreasonable, but beyond that, fetish and kink should be explored the same as artistic style. It should be sex-positive, and have an amalgamation of of Artspots handling the professional adult art, and Jaxpad handling the community aspect. A merging of the two for adult art.

This is covered by Yiffit.

Now we've still only covered visual arts, and even then, only still art. Many writers in the fandom feel they are the forgotten second children, and in most cases they're right. Authors aren't given the support their equally talented craft deserves. Why not just have the art sites handle this, you ask? Simple. An engine designed for showing off visual art is horrid for textual art. Its a mockery of the Authors, and is like asking visual artists to produce everything they do, then force the user to watch through a screen door. No, writing deserves to be in the forefront, but it needs its own unique engine designed around displaying the talent it hosts to its finest. It needs to feel like a good book. Community development is of course still there, along with display layout, font management, possibly even embedded illustration within the story, pulled from the artists elsewhere in the cluster. Writing critiques and collaboration tools, support for multi-part novellas and group works. Tagging, and recommendation of similar stories.

This will be covered by the as yet unnamed writing site.

As the fandom grows, we've begun delving into new mediums. Music has been created, and is rapidly growing. Several full time bands hail to the fandom now. In addition, we've begun diving into animation and video. Even game development has taken place. This is a rather broad area, but it can all be summed up as Multimedia. Youtube is a good model for this, though its just a starting point. Being able to share videos of events, animation and filming work, musical composition, even Flash games. Once again with community collaboration and reviews and critiques of work, sharing related media, even allowing for multi-part events.

This will be covered, possibly by LT3M, possibly under another name.

Furries love to communicate. They love to keep up on current events within the fandom, and that needs to be addressed as well. A central place to find everything going on, from local events to news. They also love to chat with eachother. A chat network needs to be completely open and impartial, taking in all types, and putting in reasonable management for channel owners.

This is covered by Furryne.ws and Anthrochat.


I know there are more sections of Fandom to cover, and I certainly would like input and thoughts on all of this. The whole system must be properly secure, offer a unified login across everything. Cross communication is also needed, being able to transfer items between sites at will, allowing for overlap and collaboration between the various communities, allowing them to remain themselves, while working together.. Things like writers and artists collaborating to create comics and illustrated stories. Animators, writers and musicians working together to create full feature movies.

The requirements of several sites are large, and can't be run by one person, of course. It'd require a team of folks for each site, from coders and designers to moderators, administrators, etc. Each group working with the others to provide unity between the sites.

Pull the best together, and we can do some cool stuff. =D

Anyway. Thats it. Discuss! I open this idea to any and all discussion, ideas to add to it, what things won't work and why, how to fix them. This idea is not set in stone. Its a starting point. Get to it!

Comments

[tixen.livejournal.com]

So how would you unify all of these different sites into a whole? The way Furverts and Yiffit used to be "different sites, but linked together" caused confusion at least on my behalf- when I ran a search on one, I got results from the other, and when opening said results, the color scheme of the site, and banners changed to a different site! What's up with that?

How are you planning on unifying these completely different sites to display their individual content in one place? Is this a planned development?

[squnq.livejournal.com]

I recall this concept of yours being brought up over a year ago; I'm still opposed to it as I feel competition fosters more progress than cooperation does, but the concept of a unified login across multiple sites is positive.

[xvsharrax.livejournal.com]

Until a security leak, and oh! Then you're screwed everywhere!

[rogue-richek.livejournal.com]

First thoughts? Bad idea. The reason those other sites work is because they are separate and have their own culture. What you are suggesting would force all of those cultures together in a way that just wouldn't work. The fandom stays together as an amalgam of cultures in a way that is best described as "tentative." The fandom is a powder keg because the separate cultures, on a deep level, hate other parts of the fandom.

Do you really want that in your site?

one word

[nrr.livejournal.com]

lol

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

The fandom is a powder keg because the separate cultures, on a deep level, haven't got the maturity to just shrug and do their theing regardless of what other folks are doing. I'm really not convinced it's a 'hate' thing.

Anyhow, in this case we're talking about all the branches of creativity coming together. My big idea, the one I talked with Inaki about, was that this could bridge those branches so we could see some awesome stuff come out of it. The writers and the artists come together to make comic that don't suck. (Note that most furry webcomics have the same person writing as drawing... and it shows, badly.) The artists and musicians come together to make original animations (and not just junk set to whatever pop music is floating about.) You know, this sort of collaboration isn't happening yet, but FA is the only place thus far where it can really start to. I'm not sure how keen I am on having a zillion "separate sites" instead of simply having departments of one site with a very flexible way of representing them all, but I can see pros and cons to both methods.

[wagtehdog.livejournal.com]

I read this and think of all the gaming 'network sites' that try to cover everything and ended up being just meh, where the indexing/ranking sites started getting popular. Especially true of the IGN conglomosite and the Planet sites back in the day. And.... well, they sucked.

Not saying "bad idea, don't bother" but it's certainly going to be an undertaking, to say the least.

[itrasbiel.livejournal.com]

I have kind of a basic issue with the idea of having a group of sites and then stringing them all together. I mean, unrelated sites, okay, whatever. But if you link them together by sharing users/logins or give the ability to navigate easily between the various sites, or any of the dozens of interlinking features people will want once you've established some sort of connection between the sites, then it seems like what you have is essentially one big site with different wallpaper for each section. And at that point... why have different sites?

[itrasbiel.livejournal.com]

Although, as an addendum, I'd like to say that the scope of the sites is what makes or breaks this, for me.

A dozen or so larger sites, each hosting a different media type (art here, writing here, music here, etc) seems like such a dumb idea, for the reasons above. It sounds more like "let's take general art site, hack it up into chunks, and then call it a unified network!" than anything, um, useful. AFFN did this exact same thing (chop up its database into 20-some parts and separate all the content) and oh my god it is so annoying, and, uh, that's kind of what this sounds like to me.

MEANWHILE, if you have, like, a little mini-artsite structure, set up so anyone can host their own mini-artsite and plug it into the network, give a little blurb re: content accepted and community desired, etc etc. You'd end up with a lot of egotistical jerks creating GOOD ART ONLY clubs or NO PORN THAT WE DON'T LIKE clubs, but hey, that's the furry fandom.

The differences between sites would be elevated (in my mind) if there was no 'design standard' people aimed for-- with a dozen large sites, you have to have a fairly consistant layout across the sites, because people who would be interested in posting to several of the sites probably would not enjoy having to deal with totally different schemes for each site. But with a lot more smaller sites, totally different schemes would (potentially) become expected and more tolerated. And not just layout stuff, either-- if there was a good extensible metadata system, you could have a pretty significant difference between sites and if you don't like one site, just post to a different one.

BLAH BLAH BLAH. HERE ARE MY THOUGHTS.

[astolpho.livejournal.com]

So are you just looking to cover the length and breadth of furry creative output here or are you wanting to assemble a network of power tools for the furry scene on the whole? If it's the second, I might also suggest sites that do things like allow you to network with other people by location (like frappr or the ifpl, but that works within the framework that you're building here), alerts for upcoming events and meets that are local to you, customizable user profile pages (I don't want to say think myspace, but think myspace or pounced), and a customizable user frontend similar to google's personalized homepage that allows users to pick and choose widgets that are updated with the latest content from the entire network of websites according to what they're most interested in.

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

Widgets are already covered, and are so flexible. It would be possible on the "hub site" so to speak to have a page where you add widgets from your writing site, your art site, your journal, and arrange them the way you want. As far as upcoming events and stuff, that also is in the works, combined with google maps API. (I was involved in something similar for KQED.)

This is not an easy task.

[hkr.livejournal.com]

What fandom exists that is centralized and not fragmented? Why does furry have to be one big happy family?

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

It's not, and probably won't be. But that's why Inaki is talking about this structure. :)

[squnq.livejournal.com]

I also feel that even if this project is successful, trying to do everything under one banner will result in the job being mediocre at best. No matter what you do, someone will come along and offer one service which focuses better on one fandom segment, and that service will get more traffic. YNA did a good job of providing "everything" and had good administration, yet it still didn't go anywhere.

[antimon.livejournal.com]

One area not covered at all is performance and costume creation, a bigger area then even music and multimedia, and one common thread for all you mentioned is Live Journal, which should be somehow intertwined. It's a daunting undertaking and i wonder what it's benefits were, when users are confronted with too many options they get confused and shy away all too often. I'm not sure what the issue with having separate sites, remaining separate for their designated area's is.

Though I must say it would be great to have one user name and pasword for everything, I wish i could create one registration and use my anthrochat login to access a link on FA that requires an account, It would be nice of fluffyfox was the same fluffyfox across all networks, and the music fluffyfox isn't a different person then the writing fluffyfox.

[antimon.livejournal.com]

Persoanlly I'd just be happy with one really good, really complete, really updated Indexing site that listed what all the different sites were cus I haven't even heard of some the the ones mentioned here.

I mean i just heard of the belfry web commit archive like 3 months ago...

I don't even know where to look for furry stuff some times.

We don't even have a current listing of all the fur cons out there as they change so rapidly, I'd love to see a map and a calender which lists each con and links to their website

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Unified site bad. It'd never happen and there'd be politics and wahwahwah..
OpenID good. Single login to all the sites means no complaining about "direct img link plz, don't want to make another login that will just get hacked ala FA" or forgotten after using it once..

Also lots of people running a single site? Look at FA..

[hellebore.livejournal.com]

what would furry music sound like? are the lyrics about being a dragon or someshit?

[squnq.livejournal.com]

It's typically either:

1) Synth crap made on outdated hardware or made to sound like it was made on outdated hardware
2) Acoustic guitar music about emotions using animal behaviours or encounters as metaphors for human experiences
3) Regular mediocre music which has nothing to do with furry whatsoever but is labelled as "furry" by the artist so their furry friends who would otherwise be totally disinterested will actually give it a listen.

Read: "crap".

[deskitty.livejournal.com]

What problem is your proposal trying to address? I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from.

If you're looking to combine everything ... There are lots of different sites because the furry fandom is a very diverse group of individuals, all with varying tastes and requirements. The sites you're pointing out don't even attempt to solve the same problems, so I don't see how combining them would be anything but counter-productive for everyone involved.

The best are the best precisely because they are all distinct. They focus on one problem, one set of requirements, and address that to the best of their ability. They do one thing, and do it well, rather than trying to do N things and giving none of them the necessary focus.

If you're just looking for single-sign-on, my suggestion would be to start petitioning for the use of OpenID (http://openid.net/) -- it was created (by our very own LiveJournal, in fact) to address this very problem. Sites can still be distinct from each other, but can "reach over" to other sites to authenticate users.

[toribelliachi.livejournal.com]

Hey! Now this is my area!

I personally think that this is a largely good idea. Currently the fandom is overly fragmented and there are some sites that could probably be built from the ground up. I especially like the unified login system, much like one I've been trying to create myself across all my websites (I haven't done that well, then again I'm not much of a programmer) and I was also going to suggest the OpenID system. Although I think in this case it would be a lot better to create a unique multi-site login to handle more complex data such as avatars.

Although it has already been said, the sites can be competing whilst still cooperating. For example, when building the Petronas Twin Towers, two seperate firms were called to build each tower. They were competing, yet had the same goal and would ultimately need to work together.

I would expect all of the sites to use similar systems of operation and design. So as not to get confused when moving from one site to another.

And another good idea would be a filtering system; used in combination with the global "hub" mentioned in a comment above. There users could log in to see submissions and news ported from ALL the sites, with configurable filters to sift out unwanted genres. (eg Art from: Yiffit NO, Artspots YES, etc.)

And of course there should be a way to cross post things with ease. Like a "Post to: Yiffit, Artspots, etc" checkbox affair on submission and journal posting pages.

I think it could work. Just have it run like any large corporation with a few guys looking over all the sites, a few guys heading each individual site, and everyone else below them.

And I'd even help myself if ya ever need it!

~ Tori Belliachi

[baphijmm.livejournal.com]

Authors used to have YiffStar, until they tried something similar to this. :/ (Also a large portion of their membership seems rather asinine to me, but I'm highly opinionated when it comes to people.)

[vanst.livejournal.com]

I've looked at YS a few times, and as an amature writer? I can't fucking stand it. While it successfully displays writing in a format fit for viewing, it's too drenched in "HI WE'RE FURRIES MURR MURR YIFF YIFF" to be of any serious use. Sure, xXxFoxieYiffFluffTailxXx can post their poorly-edited MUCK logs there or whatever, but that's not what I want from a writing site. Not only that, the layout is awkward to navigate, there's no option I could find to sort a specific author's work by category, the "Home" page seems to focus more on visual art than it does on writing, the "Recent Writing" page has little more than groups of keywords to help you figure out if you want to read something when there could be a short blurb about the contents of the story or a snippet from the first few paragraphs that could tell you if the author has any concept whatsoever of the mechanics of the english language...

It's a fucking trainwreck. I hate to say it, but FA pulls off more in the realm of writing than YS does and its support for writing is an afterthought at best.

[heavymuffins.livejournal.com]

It's like communism


It looks amazing on paper.


but these are FURRIES you're talking about.


I'm gonna call murphy's law on ANY attempts to unify so many sites like that.

I just don't think it'll work =\

[loranskunky.livejournal.com]

I'll agree to that.

What ever you pick isn't going to be liked by everyone. Best you can do is "I think this is the best idea" and present it.

Long time ago, I had a teacher say "If you do something that 100 percent of the people like, you're doing something wrong."

[vanst.livejournal.com]

Well, at least you don't have small ideas, but I honestly don't think it will work with One Grand Unified Site. Mostly because of reasons outlined by other people, like professionals that happen to be in the fandom and draw porn not wanting potential employers to find said porn.

This isn't saying this is a bad idea, just that it needs more tweaking. The idea of a "One login, multiple sites" system makes sense to me as a way to link the sites together, and linking to the clean galleries from the porn but not the other way around would be nice. The only connection should be login information, IMO, to cut down on the number of "Well we'd give you a job but can you explain THIS *ker-Furry Porn!* to our satisfaction?" accidents.

And then there's the idea for a writing-specific site. As long as the name isn't too tacky, I may find myself lacking clothing when it goes live.

[synchra.livejournal.com]

then where do i sit?

O.o

I am a 3D/2D artist who does it as a profession but I am not good enough for artspots.

I AM LOST IN INTERSPACCEE!

[synchra.livejournal.com]

also.. majored in "Animation and Visual Effects" aka "Digital Visual Media" and have a Bachelor of Applied Science Degree in it.

[scale.livejournal.com]

First the critiques: I think this overview is missing a very important thing.

ArtSpots, JaxPad and Yffit are very nice sites but you are overestimating their current coverage, especially since FA is far from being the junk bin of the fandom. It is a junk bin only if you look at the average quality of its content, but average is hardly a good measure of usefulness. FA fills the role of the research workshop, being the only gallery at the moment where you can explore anything and mix up your ideas without being distracted by concerns of ratings or quality standard.

The importance of a workshop almost totally free of rules should not be underestimated to the point of considering the whole fandom covered by the other archives - it is not, it will never be. I am both on JaxPad and Yiffit and yet I regularly make elaborated pictures which would not be allowed on either.

This said I find the whole concept to be too much modeled after the needs of the pro artists and the passive fans. For them competition is good, but what is the point of hard competition in a fandom? Don't forget that it's not the pros or the passive fans but the "artsy fans" which made the furry fandom a succesful community - the people who draw mostly for the sake of it, are not formally trained in arts, are more interested in depicting weird or unusual ideas than in making a beautyful picture, and benefit from the presence of other like-minded fans which are very focused on a specific subject (horses, or pencil pictures, or even some fetish, etc.). I have the creepy feeling that they would be scared away or cut away from this sort of unification. And with them, gone will be furry art's youth.

Also consider the fandom's notoriously bad record of poor site management. Who will get to choose the admins of such a system? What will happen when some admin begins to push his own agenda about contents or art styles or whatever? We _know_ it is gonna happen sooner or later.

Also I know a few people who would not like having the same identity when accessing different sites.

On the other hand I have not only critiques. Something like that might be necessary to bring furry art beyond a certain degree of complexity it seems stuck with. Things like professional format comics, real illustrated books, games, etc., are all unfeasible at the moment as there is surprisingly little collaboration between the best artists compared to other fandoms. And artists themselves are often too shy and uncollaborative.

If more collaboration between artists can be encouraged by such a project then it might be interesting, but that's about the only positive thing I see in the idea, as opposed to many negative effects. More complex art is the only thing the fandom really needs.

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

And with them, gone will be furry art's youth.

Gotta happen eventually. :)

Also consider the fandom's notoriously bad record of poor site management. Who will get to choose the admins of such a system?

The systems with the most competent admins will be the ones that stick around, just by not screwing up repeatedly. The trick is to treat this stuff professionally.

What will happen when some admin begins to push his own agenda about contents or art styles or whatever? We _know_ it is gonna happen sooner or later.

Then people will stop using the system. It's a losing situation to do that. Or start out with a set of standards, like ArtSpots. JaxPad exists for those who want to have fun. ArtSpots is for those who are interested in illustration. The reviewing process has nothing to do with art, purely drawing skill. That's the only fair way I could think of how to do things since I hated how Yerf was based on 'what the admins liked.' There are people _I_ like who didn't make it onto ArtSpots. There are folks who do abstract work who I would _LOVE_ to have on my wall, but need to work on their drawing skill. I wish you would reapply, as I think you have some great ideas (I really like your idea on plantigrade hooves, for example.) But, that's something I have to live with based on the core set of rules set up. I think that sort of integrity is important.

There are people who don't believe drawing is a skill that can be learned by anyone like any other trade. ArtSpots is probably not for them. We agree that art is subjective and can't be judged. We aren't judging art. People will also imagine what they want based on their own perception, like we "re-evaluated" their application, when the cold truth is just that they improved their drawing skill, no re-evaluation involved, just hard work on their part. Thinking we care about style. Other things I have to live with. Oh well, if anything rules will get loosened in the long run.

Also I know a few people who would not like having the same identity when accessing different sites.

Easy solution, create different accounts.

Something like that might be necessary to bring furry art beyond a certain degree of complexity it seems stuck with. Things like professional format comics, real illustrated books, games, etc., are all unfeasible at the moment as there is surprisingly little collaboration between the best artists compared to other fandoms. And artists themselves are often too shy and uncollaborative.

That's the idea. Again, it's hard to describe this without people actually seeing it. Once the writing site goes up, things will become a lot more apparent, and I will certainly be more vocal then.

[take-walker.livejournal.com]

Make a writing site that isn't Yiffstar, and I'll be there.

[inaliwhitewolf.livejournal.com]

Amen, hun. ;)

[ashmcairo.livejournal.com]

Wow. It took me this long to find this post :)

That's for the plug for <a href="http://furryne.ws>furryne.ws</a> and I do like the idea of a network of sites as long as we can all learn off of and help each others sites progress further. Also, thanks for the idea of a writing site to start. Now to get my little group to talk about it and find out or make a CMS to start that.

[inaki.livejournal.com]

Actually the writing site is already in progress. =D

[the-brad.livejournal.com]

Openid(.net) is a fantastic way to have a loose network of common user accounts.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I think I like the fandom as it is - a loose confederation of city-states, trading with each other, and occasionally warring . . .

No group currently in existence has the ability to address all of these needs simultaneously. You might be able to do it with a formal non-profit organization, but that's no panacea - it just offers a structure into which you'd have to plug several separately-operated sites, held together by a core group with excellent management skills.