Yerf

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Yerf

Yerf was probably furry fandom's best known exclusively non-adult art archive. Formerly known as the Squeeky Clean Furry Archive, it presented itself as the benchmark in its class for the last ten years, due in part to the rising skill level required for admission.

Lengthy server downtime over 2005-6 and competition from newer archives has resulted in loss of popularity among both viewers and artists; it is yet to be seen whether or not this will be permanent. The site was the best place to find the early works of many well-known artists.

[edit] History

SCFA

[edit] SCFA

Yerf was founded in 1996 by Rat as the Squeeky Clean Furry Archive, and hosted on his site, Rat.org. At that time it was little more than an FTP server, although it developed later.

At one point, a large proportion of the art uploaded to the SCFA was strongly influenced by Sonic the Hedgehog. Eventually, people got sick of so much derivative artwork, and Sonic-based material was banned, to the complaints of some of those who had been uploading it.

By 1998, Rat wanted the site to have its own domain (previously it was at rat.org/yerf). Rat chose Yerf because, being a generic term, the name could stay the same no matter what direction the site took. At that time it was generally accepted to mean "a noise foxes made", and yerf.com was not taken, so Rat registered it.

Yerf

[edit] Yerf

The name change to Yerf and the re-branding occurred in 1998. When Rat moved to California, he was no longer able to keep his server up, and so it moved to Tugrik's purrsia.com server in late September 1998.

On 10 July 1998, Rat handed over front end administration of the site[1] to Scotty Arsenault - it had previously been run in part by Jedd Marten. In late 2001 Scotty handed administration and the server over to Dingo.

Over time, the quality standards got stricter, and artists who were previously members were grandfathered in, which became a regular cause of complaint for those who either felt that artwork by the grandfathered artists was inadequate, or (more often) people who had been rejected who looked to this art as an excuse to complain about double standards. Another complaint was the speed of application processing, due in part to the time required to review and the limited pool of reviewers.

[edit] The crash

On 27 December 2004, Yerf's hard disk signaled a failure.[2] Initial hopes for a quick fix were soon dashed[3], and eventually it became clear that all of the data had been lost,[4] although over $2500 was raised in donations. Worse, the hard disk contained the only copy of the Yerf archive software.

[edit] The restoration

On August 2005, Yerf was in the process of being rebuilt around a new core, the Squeeky Clean Art Archive. Members were allowed to post images on the community LiveJournal instead. The forums were also re-opened. The intention was to re-post the artwork once the core was back up, as some users had saved copies of the site before the crash.

On 11 November 2005, most of the art from the original archive was reposted in a "read only" database, displaying first artist names, then thumbnail pages in each artist's directory of the art arranged chronologically, and then finally the image. Final page layouts and structure were to be determined while work continued on the new gallery software. A wiki page coordinating the process of restoring the few artists, images, and descriptions which were lost in the crash was put online at the same time.

On 24 November 2005 (American Thanksgiving) the new gallery software's code-base was placed online on a development resource site, and coders of all stripes were sought for further development. Design goals for the new site software were to preserve the clean page layouts and simple navigation of the original layout, avoiding the design excesses of other larger archive sites. One focus of interest was the creation of a strong, speedy peer review system to address previous criticisms of Yerf as being slow to respond to requests for new users.

On 20 January 2006, the site was declared officially open, if not complete. Old artists gained access to the site over the following week.

[edit] The second crash

In July 2006, Yerf went down again, came back up the same month, then back down again. No known hardware issues exist, with software suspected of being the culprit. People continued to wait in hope of even seeing Yerf up again, but the foundation that made Yerf so great in the past had started to crack, with several artists also demanding[5] that their accounts and galleries be taken down[6], even if Yerf comes back up.

On October 16, 2006, Yerf became operational once again. On March 2, 2007, it went down, with a statement from Dingo that it might be 'the end'.[7]

[edit] Archival project

On August 4, 2007, Seurat of ArtSpots announced the start of the Yerf Historical Archive project, the purpose of which is to create a browsable archive of Yerf (from 1996 to 2004) for posterity.[8] Yerf artists were invited to contact the ArtSpots administration, as the new Yerf archive will not feature any artists who do not give permission for their art to be included.[9]

[edit] Art policy

As indicated by the name, the SCFA was always distinguished by a strong PG focus. Around the time it was re-branded as Yerf, new policies were introduced concerning the quality of artwork. At first, a large proportion of artists might still have qualified to enter, but the bar has been raised over time to a point where even reasonably good artists might face several rejections before being allowed in, if they managed it at all. The long, usually six-month, mandatory wait period to reapply heightened this controversy considerably; some unsuccessful applicants believed this was sometimes applied as a form of punishment for failing to complete an application correctly.

This led to claims of elitism, which were (to an extent) ignored, as the majority of community members supported at least some level of quality filtering. Complaints about the speed of the review process were also frequent, due to the difficulty of getting qualified reviewers who could spare the time and effort to review submissions.

[edit] Controversy

Although a user called RobinLion warned people[citation needed] not to donate any money after the initial crash, as Yerf would "most likely never come back,"[citation needed] and the money would instead "be spent on everything but Yerf,"[citation needed] over $2500 was raised in donations. Just a few dollars were spent on a new hard-disk,[citation needed] the rest disappeared in the current owners pocket.[citation needed]

Volunteers who brought Yerf back up several times never received anything from their efforts, nor was the money ever refunded.[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ↑ big changes coming to yerf.com. July 10, 1998 post by Rat to alt.lifestyle.furry.
  2. ↑ Failed Hard Drive. December 27, 2004 post by Dingofox to Yerf LiveJournal community.
  3. ↑ Whuh-oh!. January 4, 2005 post by Dingofox to Yerf LiveJournal community.
  4. ↑ From Bad To Worse. January 25, 2005 post by Dingofox to Yerf LiveJournal community.
  5. ↑ Calling it quits. October 8, 2006 post by Tiina Purin to Yerf LiveJournal community.
  6. ↑ Quitting Yerf. October 8, 2006 post by Thornwolf to her LiveJournal
  7. ↑ Yerf goes offline; may be 'the end' - WikiFur News (March 3, 2007)
  8. ↑ Yerf Historical Archive project. August 4, 2007 post by Seurat to Yerf LiveJournal community.
  9. ↑ http://yerf.artspots.com

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Yerf"
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