FurBid-SF

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FurBid

FurBid-SF is an active online venue for people to sell and purchase Science Fiction, Fantasy and anthropomorphic items such as artwork, comic books, clothing, and fursuits. It has been through many changes, but has survived to be the most known and stable site of its kind.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Aatheus's period

In late 1999, a young college student, Aatheus, built a tiny online auction service as part of an experiment. Using the quite buggy EveryAuction 1.01 program, he designed FurBid, the first all-furry online auction site of its kind. The original purpose was to create a working server environment. His decision to build it around furry was more a matter of taste than it was an attempt to fill a gap in the community. The creation itself was relatively uneventful and on November 8, 1999 FurBid officially opened.

Shortly after opening it was seen by The Dragon De Monsyne at Transform.to, who offered Aatheus hosting space.[1] On November 18, 1999 FurBid was moved to its new host (furrybid.transform.to), where it remained until January 27, 2001 when it was moved to Ezzi Net at the suggestion of Gushi.

During that time FurBid suffered from many internal problems, including great deal of downtime caused by outside sources. Some of the many problems faced included script glitches, hard drive problems, a December 26, 2000 DoS prompted by Somethingawful listing FurBid in its "Awful Site of the Day", and file corruption.

Perhaps the most significant problem was the announcement by Aatheus on December 9, 2000 of the acquisition of furbid.com and loss of the domain to Ragscoon of FurSale who stole it out from under Aatheus due to personal issues between the two and offered to sell it to him on January 20, 2001 for the price of $500.00. This event led to a long time rivalry between FurBid and FurSale.[citation needed]

Another significant issue was a complete crash in the summer of 2003 which brought the system down for over a month.

[edit] Ayukawataur's period

At Further Confusion 2003, Aatheus mentioned to Ayukawataur his desire to find another administrator to take over FurBid. During this time she was experimenting with the EveryAuction software on her own pet project (the-abcb cafe). Her initial response was quite negative, claiming "You could not pay me enough to take over that kludge".

Aatheus continued his search amongst others he felt would be qualified until he again returned to Ayukawataur just shortly before Further Confusion 2004. They agreed to discuss the issue and at the con he revealed to her in private that he had not found an admin to take over and as such FurBid would be shut down in the summer when he left to pursue more college. She agreed to consider the problem.

After a lunch and gallery browsing meeting in Carmel by the Sea in Northern California, Ayukawataur agreed to take over the administration of FurBid. In February of 2004 she was appointed as Assistant Administrator. Despite her title she was acting the role of Admin. and was using the name Assistant Admin to give the community time to adjust to her presence.

This was not without its share of problems as many members of the community disagreed with her appointment. The drama which took place lasted quite some time and was mostly built around her being involved with a prominent furry artist Kacey Miyagami and claims that a conflict of interest would develop. This has not occurred.

It was revealed she was the administrator in late May of 2004, shortly after the revamp of the Discussion Board with a database driven system. Other projects she worked on during that time were a creation of a FAQ, tightening of rules and the ToS, a mascot contest, and a radical departure from the previous stances on bestiality and pedophilia.

In May of 2005 she retired the old EveryAuction system and replaced it with a modern and more efficient mySQL server which she dubbed FurBid-SF.[2][3] The SF representing ScienceFiction/Fantasy in an attempt to expand the awareness of FurBid users to other genres.[4]
The opening of FurBid-SF was also not entirely smooth. There were numerous rewrites which took place over the period of many months after launch. To better streamline the code she drafted the skills of Ch'marr and Gushi.[5][6] During this time she also moved the server from its residence at Ezzi Net to be one of the early systems in Gushi's Colo in Jersey.

Part of her plan included the first successful implementation of associated fees for any of the furry auction houses.

On November 13, 2007, Ayukawataur announced appointing Gushi as a new Assistant Administrator. His duties include primarily programming and debugging.

[edit] Fees

There was a great deal of controversy when Ayukawataur announced that FurBid-SF was including paid features. Though minor, many claimed it was unfair, or that she was nothing more than a money hungry tyrant. Over time these claims have subsided and the fee structure has become an accepted function by the majority of the community.

The purpose of these fees was to provide a symbiotic relationship with those who wished to provide support with FurBid-SF's substantial bill. As a reward for this support a user could have better placement or better visibility. It also provided better accounting records for the IRS than just having donations.

According to the Administaur, the basic functions of FurBid-SF, which include listing, bidding, and buying, shall forever remain free to all users. It is only the additional items which will ever have an associated investment.

For a detailed breakdown of the minor charges which are associated with FurBid-SF, refer to http://www.furbid.ws/cgi-bin/auction/fees.pl

The Administaur of FurBid-SF has constantly fought with PayPal for the right to allow her community to use it for paying their FurBid-SF fees. To date she has been unsuccessful in convincing them that paying for an auction service is not the same as purchasing adult oriented items.

[edit] Mascots

Breeze Skunktaur
Breeze Skunktaur

Toward the end of 2001, Aatheus proposed a contest for a Furbid Mascot. The idea was well received, generating five major participants and a total of 501 votes. On January 1, 2002 Aatheus tallied all the votes and gave us all a list of things. The winner was Caribou with her creation Sheckles the Bat with a total of 161 votes. Runner up was Kacey Maltzman with her character Breeze the Spotted Skunktaur with 122 votes. Flinthoof created Jake and earned 102 votes, Iron Badger submitted Fiona with 61 votes and Silverwyvern created Tyler bringing in 55 votes.[7]

Shortly after Sheckles fell to the wayside due many previous commitments of his creator, and in Sheckles' place Kacey created some images that were used on official Furbid merchandise.[8]

On June 17, 2004, Ayukawataur reopened the idea of a mascot for FurBid-SF, or, to be more precise, as FurBid-SF is a community, a group of mascots. Of the many mascot ideas submitted, five were selected by community vote on August 15, 2004. Breeze returned, this time to take the greatest portion of votes (62.04%), followed by Rachele, Faria, Keesa, and Seru.[9]

Although the mascots were originally intended to maintain a presence on FurBid-SF itself and to provide a measure of community spirit, the only work using them so far has been by Kacey Miyagami.

Breeze currently graces the Discussion Board banner and the FurBid-SF main banner.

[edit] Conventions

FurBid-SF has no convention presence. The Administaur prefers FurBid-SF gain new members through word of mouth.

At Anthrocon 2004, Jurann, the administrator of FurBuy, approached Ayukawataur with an offer of $50,000 (initially $1,000) "for the rights and ownership to Furbid" to shut down FurBid-SF.[10] [11] She declined, claiming that it was the right of the community to decide which service they wanted to use.

[edit] Bans

The Administaur has constantly rejected pressure by a small portion of the community to ban non-synthetic animal fur from FurBid-SF.[12][13] Some have also requested a ban on imitation animal fur, arguing that it encourages those who do not know the difference to use real fur.

Only four persons have been permanently banned from using FurBid-SF. [14] Of these four, only Mozdoc has had his ban lifted and then reinstated.[15][16]

[edit] References

  1. ↑ FurBid News Page
  2. ↑ Downtime, Thursday 28th - friday 29th
  3. ↑ FurBid-SF Migration Begins by Ayukawataur
  4. ↑ Is furbid now not strictly furry?
  5. ↑ Another FurBid-SF Update
  6. ↑ FurBid-SF back up
  7. ↑ [1] FurBid Mascot Contest Guidelines
  8. ↑ Cafe Press Breeze Page
  9. ↑ [2] Official Mascot Results
  10. ↑ Con Report. July 13, 2004 LiveJournal post by Jurann. Retrieved September 8, 2006.
  11. ↑ The Anthrocon Report. July 13, 2004 FurBid-SF Discussion Board post by Ayukawataur. Retrieved September 8, 2006. May require login.
  12. ↑ Keep Real Fur Off Of Furbid petition
  13. ↑ Livejournal Post
  14. ↑ bans=bans+1 LiveJournal post by Ayukawataur.
  15. ↑ mr. mozdoc LiveJournal post by Ayukawataur.
  16. ↑ mozdoc reloaded LiveJournal post by Ayukawataur.
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