Let's Make Some More Noise Around Here

So Weasyl is a website that I feel is better than others, and we all have our own reasons for giving it a try. But one thing I've noticed when trying sites like this, or SoFurry, or FurryNetwork, etc...the actual interaction seems low, which is a bummer because the site itself is a good step up from where most of us are likely coming from but it just seems so quiet. It'd be really great if there were some kind of, I don't know, "push" to really promote more interaction on the alternative furry websites. I'm not just saying that there needs to be more drama, I just mean like more comments, more discussions, more shouts between users, that kind of thing. It seems like all the alternatives are slower in that regard and it'd be great to see one or more of them become the "place to be," so to speak.

An acquaintance of mine suggested that in some cases, the issue is that some of the interfaces of the other websites kind of discourage heavier interaction and I kind of see what he means, sometimes it just seems like more of a chore to simply say "That's a cute skunk" due to the set up. In the case of Weasyl, I don't think that's as big of an issue, it's not as needlessly clunky as some of the other furry websites. I just don't know how to suggest and effective way of getting people talking and participating.

And admittedly, as a very unknown artist, I'm interested to see things liven up as in a community where almost all the views and commissions go to the same few folks, it seems harder to break through in other domains when there's so little interpersonal activity.

I dunno, perhaps is just me, but does anyone else agree? I want to see these alternative sites get a bit noisier. I don't want to turn it into another cesspool of trolls and idiots as if the internet doesn't have enough of them, I just basically want to see people more actively enjoying each other's company around here. Be great if there were some kind of campaign to get Weasyl and other furry sites more active in that way.

I saw this the day you made it. I didn't weigh in because I wanted to wait for other responses before I gave my piece and could hopefully put them into my own perspective. But the silence in here kind of feeds into the original point I had in mind so I'll just be forward about it...
Cynical as it may be and I mean no disrespect to the staff who put in a lot of time here. But I think Weasyl has grown as much as it's going to on it's own. This place has been around since what? 2013? 2012? I think? Correct me if I'm wrong. And yet, it's the butt of a lot of jokes in terms of relevance for artists. This place is a ghost town.

Bad timing? Stiff competition? Poor handling? Not enough big artists? Who knows. But something is against Weasyl and impeding any meaningful growth.

I try to be more active than usual because I feel the same way you do. I don't expect anything to change though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by XoPachi

I saw this the day you made it. I didn't weigh in because I wanted to wait for other responses before I gave my piece and could hopefully put them into my own perspective. But the silence in here kind of feeds into the original point I had in mind so I'll just be forward about it...
Cynical as it may be and I mean no disrespect to the staff who put in a lot of time here. But I think Weasyl has grown as much as it's going to on it's own. This place has been around since what? 2013? 2012? I think? Correct me if I'm wrong. And yet, it's the butt of a lot of jokes in terms of relevance for artists. This place is a ghost town.

Bad timing? Stiff competition? Poor handling? Not enough big artists? Who knows. But something is against Weasyl and impeding any meaningful growth.

I try to be more active than usual because I feel the same way you do. I don't expect anything to change though.

---

I admit I myself don't contribute to the activity as much as I could, much of that being that my tastes in furry art are very rarely touched upon so I don't have a lot of comments and faves to give out (digital dogs gets pretty boring after a while). But I was thinking the same thing, the days of silence on this thread was pretty indicative of the problem. There's not a lot I can add without just simply repeating myself. Until the furry masses decide to make a home out of an alternative site, it's just going to be the status quo.

I agree with you. I was going to reply to this thread earlier today, but it was really late at night.

I absolutely adore this site and I mean no disrespect with anything I'm pointing out. I'd love to see Weasyl and other sites like FurryNetwork and Furiffic liven up a bit more. I hate saying this, but I can't see that happening unless the current hub of the furry fandom collapses and I don't think that will happen anytime soon. The majority of the furry audience is on the fandom's hub site, and I don't believe the status quo will see any significant changes until the audience there is forced to move. The years of drama have proved it will take the hub collapsing for the audience to pack up and move permanently, and bring the income and exposure to an alternate site.

The audience that is here could be silent for a number of reasons: most artists using this site as a side gallery, possible elitism in what the audience wants, favoritism towards already well-established names, and maybe some other reasons I can't think of. I certainly think Weasyl being a side gallery is part of the problem. I do notice favoritism from the community as well and it shows by how difficult it is for unknown artists to become known; the inability to find an audience here is part of why I opened up an account on the fandom's current hub site.

I think that's part of it, the main site where everyone else is kind of "established" all the big artists and now people kind of just stick with them and never venture out, much. Rather than trying to be social, they just kind of consume the art they're familiar with and don't explore much. It's been a problem all over the internet honestly, I dislike how we've developed filters specifically to direct people to popular content, it specifically discourages the growth of new conversations, ideas, content, etc. The age of algorithms, it's killing creativity and encouraging small mindedness. But, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

But on kind of an unrelated point...with regard to the ultra popular users, they get so caught up in the popularity and business side of it that I seriously wonder if they even care about anthro characters anymore. I feel like you really only get the real unique characters and personalities and development from the unknowns. I can't entirely blame them, I've been in the fandom long enough that almost all of the "magic" has been lost, I don't see cute little characters anymore, I just see very human people drawing the same digital dogs over and over and over again. Which just brings me back to how great it would be to see more interaction and more penetration from new artists with new ideas.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WhimsicalSquirrel

I think that's part of it, the main site where everyone else is kind of "established" all the big artists and now people kind of just stick with them and never venture out, much. Rather than trying to be social, they just kind of consume the art they're familiar with and don't explore much. It's been a problem all over the internet honestly, I dislike how we've developed filters specifically to direct people to popular content, it specifically discourages the growth of new conversations, ideas, content, etc. The age of algorithms, it's killing creativity and encouraging small mindedness. But, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

---

Yeah, it is a problem pretty much everywhere. I don't like popular filters on art sites either, all that come up are the same names and makes it even harder for unknown artists to be discovered. Although deviantART executed it horribly, they have an undiscovered page and I'd like to see that idea get picked up by other art sites. There was a suggestion for something like that here on Weasyl, but the discussion came to a standstill and no decision was made. Considering how dead the forums have been lately, I can't see the discussion going very far if I were to make a new thread about it.

Quote:

---

But on kind of an unrelated point...with regard to the ultra popular users, they get so caught up in the popularity and business side of it that I seriously wonder if they even care about anthro characters anymore. I feel like you really only get the real unique characters and personalities and development from the unknowns. I can't entirely blame them, I've been in the fandom long enough that almost all of the "magic" has been lost, I don't see cute little characters anymore, I just see very human people drawing the same digital dogs over and over and over again. Which just brings me back to how great it would be to see more interaction and more penetration from new artists with new ideas.

---

Yeah, I see that side of things too. Most popular artists are just shitting out what they know will attract more fans, some making their pandering more obvious than others. It's even worse in the original species scene, and those that have Patreons but Patreon is a whole different discussion that has already happened here some time ago. I tend to follow smaller artists because I like supporting the underdogs, and the fresh ideas they have.

*makes noise* In all seriousness though, I do also feel that Weasyl deserves a more flourishing community, since it is so far my favorite art website. (Some things have made me very cross with DeviantArt and I am not so interested in Furaffinity.)

I agree with GlaringFeline that an undiscovered page would be quite a joy to have, or something similar. I would be interested in browsing through it and feeling like I support some unknown people by following/commenting/favoriting some of their stuff.

Overall though, I feel as if Weasyl feels rather.. "underground" (if this is a faulty term, I apologize), so it would maybe need something that launches it more into the open, more mainstream art community or media. No need to glorify it, just make it seen. Maybe like some contests, or some "share" category, or maybe just some "artweek" event, where someone from the Weasyl staff hosts a little slideshow on Youtube that features some lesser known, but respectable artists/artwork.

But I dunno, I am simply brainstorming right now, so don't mind me.

Yep, this place is pretty quiet. Seems particularly apparent to me after retiring as staff and not having that daily Weasyl contact. Software fixes to help promote unknown artists would be helpful, but they take a while to roll out -- Weasyl has some great programmers on board, but they're volunteer and few in number, and when I signed off there were still numerous things on the backlog, including improvements to moderation tools and the like.

So maybe promoting activity would be easiest done, at least for now, via other means. Maybe just create an atmosphere of activity by posting some occasional non-business staff announcements, like holiday greetings?

The big thing is that almost all the people who are fed up with FurAffinity fled to Tumblr. Which is in every possible respect a horrible substitute for a traditional gallery site. It's bad for the people who post and bad for the people who go there to look at stuff. But for whatever reason it has become popular, and popularity is self-perpetuating especially when it comes to sites dedicated to communicating with people (which is another thing Tumblr is terrible at; you can't really talk to anyone so much as talk at them — even Twitter, the king of the minimalists, has gotten better at this).

A lot of people joined up, I think, out of "protest," y'all know how it goes...but the problem is that you eventually stop being pissed off and go back to whatever your habit was. Hell, to be frank about it, over on FA I've repeatedly pointed out to them that for a bunch of people who complain about that place so much and how terrible it is, they sure haven't made the effort to make an apparently better site the "place to be." I don't necessarily think it's bad to have a smaller, more intimate place, we just need to get those people to liven up. I watch wrestling and, like an idiot, attempt to talk about it on the internet. The place where I do it often features the same several participants but they ARE very active. It's almost like having a weekly round table discussion (A very annoying one because they're all basically Comic Book Guy but still, it's active).

I'm not sure what to suggest other than maybe the staff itself visibly encouraging discussions among the users. On my FA page, I specifically tried to encourage discussion about sexuality and kinks (not in a "Ooh, so sexy" way but in a more psychological "Why does this do it for you?" or "Here's why this image is effective" way), but getting people to actually talk, YOUNG people especially, my lovely peers who grew up in an age where conversations were limited to 140 characters, can be like pulling teeth. But maybe the staff could post something here and there to promote random discussion. Probably nothing too heated, like politics.

For the sake of getting some lesser artists off the ground they could maybe do some kind of "weekly staff picks" thing where they just show off a drawing they like or want to spotlight for one reason or another that might be from somebody whose not especially well known. Or maybe they could do some kind of monthly or weekly contest regarding art and try not to pick the same winner twice (otherwise we all know it'd be he same few people).

Not that I'm claiming any of those are great ideas. Just thinking on the fly, here.