Weasyl?

[dat sexy fox from zootopia]

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum.

Anyone here use Weasyl? I have some questions about it...

1. I hear the forums aren't active at all. Is this true?

2. How much activity on the main site is there when compared to FA?

3. Do they allow all forms of media or just visual art?

4. Any rules I should know about? They allow pron, etc.?

[Endless/Nameless]

Im much more partial to real weasels, myself. 

Edited April 13, 2016 by Endless/Nameless

[Zytan]

I occasionally visit it, it is quite quiet but very oriented around one another's art as opposed to who murrs to who.  It's worth checking out but don't expect more than ten threads to get a post each day.  As far as I'm aware anything art related is accepted, but it is a PG forum (perhaps they allow it if there's NSFW in the thread title?  Ask about it there).

Edited April 13, 2016 by Zytan

[Ratmomma]

16 hours ago, dat sexy fox from zootopia said:

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum.

Anyone here use Weasyl? I have some questions about it...

1. I hear the forums aren't active at all. Is this true?

2. How much activity on the main site is there when compared to FA?

3. Do they allow all forms of media or just visual art?

4. Any rules I should know about? They allow pron, etc.?

I just about live on Weasyl.

1. They're not inactive, they're just slow.

2. FA is unfortunately still considered the 'furry hub', so by comparison upload and commenting rate is slower (just like SF and IB are). Quality content is easier to find, however. Quality control is excellent, and I don't have the same issue I had on FA of running into low quality uploads (screenies, character generated images from place like dolldivine, blurry, hazy, can't tell what I'm looking at photos, game screenies, etc)

3. Visual, photography, multi, audio, literary, and it doesn't have to be furry at all.

4. Standard rules I do believe, but you should be a responsible adult and have a look at them anyway. What you particularly need to pay attention to is the Rating system, as this trips up a lot of FA users that cross post and/or use the site exclusively. There's more meat to it, but basics are:

• General: all audiences, no sexual content or themes or suggestion, no sexualized anatomy (must remain Barbie doll like), cartoon violence (like tom and jerry), implied booze, cigarettes chill
• Moderate: 13+, mild sexual suggestion, content, themes, can have mildly defined sexual anatomy (like groin bulge but absolutely no nudity or prominent definition), can have a compositional focus on sexual anatomy, mild use of booze, cigarettes, weed/bongs, can have violence that's not gory or pervasive, can have mildly disturbing content
• Mature: 18+ this is for nudity, well defined sexual anatomy, focus on said anatomy, as long as it's not sexual it's aiiight, same sexual content guidelines as Moderate, drugs are chill, extreme violence and disturbing content is allowed
• Explicit: 18+ this is reserved for any and all content which contains sexually explicit material, such as: sexual arousal/erections, toys and devices, sexual fluids, intercourse/acts, etc.

Cub porn is NOT allowed on the site, you may NOT upload photos which showcase any sex acts, toys, gore (unless it's theatrical makeup effects), photos of things you happen to own and want to show off to billy and betty furrfriend, etc (all that is covered in the community guidelines), tag your work properly (minimum of 2 appropriate tags required per submission)

ANYTHING ELSE I CAN THINK OF......NOPE MY BRAIN CHECKED OUT have a nice day <3

[dat sexy fox from zootopia]

7 hours ago, Ratmomma said:

I just about live on Weasyl.

1. They're not inactive, they're just slow.

2. FA is unfortunately still considered the 'furry hub', so by comparison upload and commenting rate is slower (just like SF and IB are). Quality content is easier to find, however. Quality control is excellent, and I don't have the same issue I had on FA of running into low quality uploads (screenies, character generated images from place like dolldivine, blurry, hazy, can't tell what I'm looking at photos, game screenies, etc)

3. Visual, photography, multi, audio, literary, and it doesn't have to be furry at all.

4. Standard rules I do believe, but you should be a responsible adult and have a look at them anyway. What you particularly need to pay attention to is the Rating system, as this trips up a lot of FA users that cross post and/or use the site exclusively. There's more meat to it, but basics are:

• General: all audiences, no sexual content or themes or suggestion, no sexualized anatomy (must remain Barbie doll like), cartoon violence (like tom and jerry), implied booze, cigarettes chill
• Moderate: 13+, mild sexual suggestion, content, themes, can have mildly defined sexual anatomy (like groin bulge but absolutely no nudity or prominent definition), can have a compositional focus on sexual anatomy, mild use of booze, cigarettes, weed/bongs, can have violence that's not gory or pervasive, can have mildly disturbing content
• Mature: 18+ this is for nudity, well defined sexual anatomy, focus on said anatomy, as long as it's not sexual it's aiiight, same sexual content guidelines as Moderate, drugs are chill, extreme violence and disturbing content is allowed
• Explicit: 18+ this is reserved for any and all content which contains sexually explicit material, such as: sexual arousal/erections, toys and devices, sexual fluids, intercourse/acts, etc.

Cub porn is NOT allowed on the site, you may NOT upload photos which showcase any sex acts, toys, gore (unless it's theatrical makeup effects), photos of things you happen to own and want to show off to billy and betty furrfriend, etc (all that is covered in the community guidelines), tag your work properly (minimum of 2 appropriate tags required per submission)

ANYTHING ELSE I CAN THINK OF......NOPE MY BRAIN CHECKED OUT have a nice day <3

I thought of another question for you (or anyone else who cares):

Are there "group" pages, like there are on FA? For example, pages based on location, like California Furries, or pages based on... er... "fetishes", like... "BBW" Furries, idk. Or is it only single personal accounts?

[FlynnCoyote]

4 hours ago, dat sexy fox from zootopia said:

I thought of another question for you (or anyone else who cares):

Are there "group" pages, like there are on FA? For example, pages based on location, like California Furries, or pages based on... er... "fetishes", like... "BBW" Furries, idk. Or is it only single personal accounts?

Last I heard groups was something they were working on. I don't think it's been implemented yet.

[DrDingo]

I use Weasyl instead of FA because FA annoys me with its bad interface and awful community.

Plus the people who run Weasyl aren't psychopaths

[Saxon]

10 minutes ago, DrDingo said:

I use Weasyl instead of FA because FA annoys me with its bad interface and awful community.

Plus the people who run Weasyl aren't psychopaths

Your profile there is pretty cool. 

[dat sexy fox from zootopia]

8 hours ago, DrDingo said:

bad interface

Tbh, I'm so used to the FA interface, it's one of the first "art" sites I saw... I don't get the hatred for it. Also, I like reading people's journals (when they aren't all bawwwfest), and it took me 5 minutes to find the journals page on Weasyl. It's like they know that nobody wants to read that personal shit.

[Saxon]

50 minutes ago, dat sexy fox from zootopia said:

Tbh, I'm so used to the FA interface, it's one of the first "art" sites I saw... I don't get the hatred for it. Also, I like reading people's journals (when they aren't all bawwwfest), and it took me 5 minutes to find the journals page on Weasyl. It's like they know that nobody wants to read that personal shit.

Literally half of my journals, lol. 

[Toshabi]

WEASYL WAS DOOMED THE MOMENT THEY REFUSED TO CALL THEMSELVES A FURRY SITE AND STILL FOOLISHLY BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE, INDEED, A GENERAL ART SITE.

[Xaende]

I've always been underwhelmed by that site. Toshabi touched on part of the problem, as its true purpose isn't clear. Also, while the code may be technically superior to FA, Weasyl comes across as less straightforward and more of a hassle to use.

[Ratmomma]

On 4/14/2016 at 9:57 PM, dat sexy fox from zootopia said:

I thought of another question for you (or anyone else who cares):

Are there "group" pages, like there are on FA? For example, pages based on location, like California Furries, or pages based on... er... "fetishes", like... "BBW" Furries, idk. Or is it only single personal accounts?

Not currently, no. Right now it's restricted to personal accounts, but I can certainly ask about it since you know... I kinda have an account :'D

[Ratmomma]

6 hours ago, Toshabi said:

WEASYL WAS DOOMED THE MOMENT THEY REFUSED TO CALL THEMSELVES A FURRY SITE AND STILL FOOLISHLY BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE, INDEED, A GENERAL ART SITE.

Furries are the dominant population, yes, but I like the fact that it differentiated itself as accepting non-furry media. Contrary to the current majority of the uploads in my gallery, I'm honestly not a furry artist. I dislike FA for multiple reasons, IB outright doesn't allow non-furry media if I understand them correctly, and I could be wrong on that as I don't frequent the site and I might be confusing that with the odd photography rule they have, I'm unclear with SF's stance, and I dislike DA for similar reasons to that of my dislike for FA.

When I joined Weasyl, it made me very happy to see that both furry and non-furry media were welcomed with open arms. As I said, my gallery doesn't currently reflect the fact that I'm not a furry artist, but the everything is welcomed fact is something that was important to me then and remains as such now. I honestly don't know of other sites that aren't furry that even come near competing with DA. The only ones I'm aware of, excluding relic Sheezyart, are Toyhou.se, Pixiv, and Art Station (I found that one in particular to have a rather snooty air about them).

[GreenReaper]

On 16/04/2016 at 5:47 AM, Ratmomma said:

IB outright doesn't allow non-furry media if I understand them correctly, and I could be wrong on that as I don't frequent the site and I might be confusing that with the odd photography rule they have

Inkbunny's purpose is furry art/stories/etc, but we're fine with a reasonable amount of non-furry art as well - you just can't have humans in sexual situations or showing genitals/arousal. This is primarily to avoid all the silly laws around the world regarding depictions of "people" (and there are many); keeping the focus on furry art is a secondary motivation.

When it comes to photos, there are also legal issues… but the main thing is that staff don't wish to pay to host lots of photos of people/animals/other people's fursuits, or run such a site - so we only permit photography of art and craft made by/for you, or as a background to another piece of art. I have lots of fursuit photos myself, but I keep them on Flickr, which honestly works far better as a photo dump because it's designed for it.

[Toshabi]

On 4/16/2016 at 9:47 PM, Ratmomma said:

Furries are the dominant population, yes, but I like the fact that it differentiated itself as accepting non-furry media. Contrary to the current majority of the uploads in my gallery, I'm honestly not a furry artist. I dislike FA for multiple reasons, IB outright doesn't allow non-furry media if I understand them correctly, and I could be wrong on that as I don't frequent the site and I might be confusing that with the odd photography rule they have, I'm unclear with SF's stance, and I dislike DA for similar reasons to that of my dislike for FA.

When I joined Weasyl, it made me very happy to see that both furry and non-furry media were welcomed with open arms. As I said, my gallery doesn't currently reflect the fact that I'm not a furry artist, but the everything is welcomed fact is something that was important to me then and remains as such now. I honestly don't know of other sites that aren't furry that even come near competing with DA. The only ones I'm aware of, excluding relic Sheezyart, are Toyhou.se, Pixiv, and Art Station (I found that one in particular to have a rather snooty air about them).

Every furry websites accepts general art. I'm not really sure if I can even say Weasyl's defining feature is this "acceptance of the general arts" because of how insignificant it really is without proper advertisement in these venues as well as the fact that most, if not all, the staff on Weasyl are furries. I know there was a cry to try to get advertisement and recruitment for general art and what not, but nothing was really done. With a furry mascott, furry website name, furry staff, and the majority of your submissions to your site being furry with pretty weird tastes, what can you do?

 

If only they put in more effort into trying to reach out to more general resources than listening to the shitty tumblrite furry crowd, spending weeks and bending over quicker than a dollar whore being offered a $20 to focus on "Gender-neutral termz for genitals", then maybe, just maybe, I'd say there was hope for weasyl. 

 

Pretty sure a lot of artists are well fed up with how overpopulated and flooded with Homestuck/MLP stock art and are looking for alternatives. Weasyl could've been that alternative, but no effort was really made other than "Welp, we have a tweetur ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".

 

 

Weasyl was a very very VERY appealing website when it was first created and it still is somewhat, but I don't really think they have any idea what they want to hustle for, and the community is nothing more than FA's more obnoxious little brother. Either or, have your Weasyl homepage. Other than having owners that are the furry equivalent to the Clinton's scandal wise, I'm not sure what's the difference. 

 

 

 

 

 

Any general artist coming into this front door is gonna turn tail and run away like a little girl screaming "FURFAGS FURFAGS".

[willow]

On 4/16/2016 at 11:47 PM, Ratmomma said:

Furries are the dominant population, yes, but I like the fact that it differentiated itself as accepting non-furry media.

FA also accepts non-furry media. it's arguably not as popular, but I've yet to see a human artist shunned because they draw humans. and unlike Weasyl, FA's a legitimate furry art site and no one would ever mistake it for anything different (unless they're just that oblivious). which is kind of part of the problem. on first glance, and if I hypothetically knew nothing about Weasyl, I'd probably assume it was a furry art site because 90% of the art is furry. most of the staff are furries or have some affiliation with the fandom. and they pull the vast majority of their userbase from furry sites.

honestly speaking, Weasyl's marketing team fucked it up because if they really cared about being a non-furry art site, they probably should have marketed on sites other than FurAffinity.........because that's what Nabyn* did, and while Nabyn is still in beta and way more pretentious, I can at least tell it's a general art site

*okay to clarify, Nabyn is an art site that launched around the same time as Weasyl. only they marketed themselves on deviantArt for the most part

Edited April 18, 2016 by willow

[Onnes]

Part of Weasyl's problem is that development has been absolutely glacial since it launched. If you end up primarily competing with FA, which Weasyl did by only advertising to furries, then website quality and features are a major way to distinguish yourself. Weasyl has had so many opportunities due to the constant FA scandals, but it's never been able to capitalize on them and provide an experience that is qualitatively better than FA.

[willow]

2 minutes ago, Onnes said:

Part of Weasyl's problem is that development has been absolutely glacial since it launched. If you end up primarily competing with FA, which Weasyl did by only advertising to furries, then website quality and features are a major way to distinguish yourself. Weasyl has had so many opportunities due to the constant FA scandals, but it's never been able to capitalize on them and provide an experience that is qualitatively better than FA.

honestly I think the main thing Weasyl was relying on was the fact that it's UI already looked a lot better than FA's by comparison and they they had a bunch of cool features which also worked better than FA

[GreenReaper]

To run a successful multi-user art gallery, you need a good reason for two cohesive groups of people to spend time there rather than elsewhere - content creators and consumers. The best reason for viewers is unique content that you like. The best reason for creators is consumers. In both cases, it helps if the topic is sufficiently focused.

Unique features can be a draw for creators… but as Onnes notes, technical superiority is rarely the main factor. Being pushed out of where you are is arguably the best motivation. That's how FA grew, from SheezyArt and y!Gallery - the former is now defunct, the latter had issues but hung on. And it's how IB grew, too, at least to start with.

For SoFurry, it's that it's been the best archive for furry writers for over a decade, ever since it started up as Yiffstar. Before that, Mia's Index (not even an archive) and GotFox were probably the best around, and both were essentially selective archives based on the site owner's picks. Since its launch, there have been competitors - most notably FurRag, but its designer later moved to work on SoFurry (linking IB because SF is down right now). It's still "the place to be" for many (most?) furry writers.

For Inkbunny - well, the prints and especially digital downloads were key draws in its first year; but the cub exodus from FA at the end launched it a lot further. The stats show 250% growth in submissions rate and +favs in a matter of months; uploads have doubled since, while the audience grew three to four more times, leading to healthy view/+fav ratios. If the exodus hadn't happened, Inkbunny might well be where Weasyl is now. And speaking of…

Weasyl has been technically better than FA in some ways. Collections were innovative, if implemented in a finicky way that made commissioners wary to upload. But it had its share of problems, and as Toshabi notes, it's not distinguished itself from furry sites to actually attract many non-furs. They also have similar content policies to FA, but with more staff with more time to be picky about them - so there's little reason to move beyond "I don't like FA because [X]". In general it's on a slow decline whenever FA isn't down. That many people upload without truly being there is a problem; it makes it harder for those who are there to get attention, so they drift away - browse journals for a bit to see.

Furry Network has promise, but it needs to provide unique features or market itself to a specific under-served community. It's attracted a lot of uploads, but see above for the dangers of a submission-count mentality. Uploads without a coherent audience means little beyond a monthly bill from Amazon Web Services (they're in the cloud!). The best bet may be business services, but it could be a hard and non-profitable slog acting as escrow agent for $5 YCHs. They may also run into the same troubles F-list had processing payments.

There are other third-tier sites out there such as Furiffic and Nabyn but they're probably not going to go anywhere without a unique selling proposition of their own (and Nabyn bizarrely shot itself in the foot creating a separate beta site which competes with the old one).

It might seem obvious, but you also have to stay online. This has been a problem for many sites, past and present, due to funding, maladministration, and leadership transitions - Yerf is the obvious example, but ArtSpots also died because the founder got demotivated and didn't want to hand it over to anyone else.

Sorry, this turned into an essay, but any furry site really has to be considered in context with those it competes with. We didn't even get into DA which has its own influence and is a big venue for the clean furry art world (and an obvious competitor for a significant portion of Weasyl's audience).

[Deskai]

On 4/18/2016 at 1:25 AM, GreenReaper said:

Furry Network has promise, but it needs to provide unique features or market itself to a specific under-served community. It's attracted a lot of uploads, but see above for the dangers of a submission-count mentality. Uploads without a coherent audience means little beyond a monthly bill from Amazon Web Services (they're in the cloud!). The best bet may be business services, but it could be a hard and non-profitable slog acting as escrow agent for $5 YCHs. They may also run into the same troubles F-list had processing payments.

I would like to add, that Furry Network seems to not know what it wants to be, it appearance and how it runs comes off as a Furry Social Network (ha) site instead of an actual Furry Gallery site.

On SoFurry as said, its heavy on the writers. Much of its updates to the site is for those that write or RP, but the RP section of the problem tend to come up when me being a SoFurry Ambassador have to tell new users "Please do not use art that isnt your own, even if you just here on this site to Role Play". When FA have problems they bank on people coming to SoFurry but I have said in the past "SoFurry is that one town, that people don't go to unless its really dire" as some artist would rather post to their Tumblr before making a SoFurry account and posting there.

[RTDragon]

On 4/16/2016 at 0:47 AM, Ratmomma said:

Furries are the dominant population, yes, but I like the fact that it differentiated itself as accepting non-furry media. Contrary to the current majority of the uploads in my gallery, I'm honestly not a furry artist. I dislike FA for multiple reasons, IB outright doesn't allow non-furry media if I understand them correctly, and I could be wrong on that as I don't frequent the site and I might be confusing that with the odd photography rule they have, I'm unclear with SF's stance, and I dislike DA for similar reasons to that of my dislike for FA.

When I joined Weasyl, it made me very happy to see that both furry and non-furry media were welcomed with open arms. As I said, my gallery doesn't currently reflect the fact that I'm not a furry artist, but the everything is welcomed fact is something that was important to me then and remains as such now. I honestly don't know of other sites that aren't furry that even come near competing with DA. The only ones I'm aware of, excluding relic Sheezyart, are Toyhou.se, Pixiv, and Art Station (I found that one in particular to have a rather snooty air about them).

About Artstation that's actually a professional site so you really can't compare that considering the artwork in there is professional quality. Considering that's like years of work.

[Wax]

Is eversleep the OP of this thread?