Yiffy.net

From WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia.

Jump to: navigation, search

Yiffy.net is an adult furry online community featuring forums, live chat, an index of yiffy links, and a large and growing out-of-character area for discussion of conventions, meets and more besides.


Contents

[edit] History

[edit] 2002 – Inception

Yiffy.net – or Yiffy.info as it was then known - was founded in the summer of 2002 by Sniper Fox, with the aim of being a “100% user-maintained portal site for everything in the yiffy part of the furry fandom”, and was the first all-furry forum in existence. The site was run on phpBB 2RC-4 software off of Sniper Fox’s home PC and by February of the following year the site membership had risen to fifty registered users and things were starting to take off.


[edit] 2003 – Take Off!

In April 2003, Sniper Fox switched the site over to Chatterbox Forum, a much more visually appealing software than its predecessor that also had guestbooks on the user profiles, and within a couple of months site membership quickly hit double figures. From that point onwards, growth was exponential and the site started to thrive. With over 50 links to furry and furry-related websites, including furry artists and fur-suiters amongst others, Yiffy.info / Yiffy.net was succeeding in its founders goal of making it not only a good furry portal site but also a popular and oft-visited forum for role-playing and Sniper Fox was continually looking to further and improve the site, making it bigger and better.

In October of that year, Sniper Fox opened up a Yiffy.net store that sold site-branded merchandise, with all profits being put right back into the site. In that same month, membership also hit 500 users, a huge number for a site in what was still very much a developing fandom, and by the end of the year there were over 900 members – Yiffy.net was growing fast.


[edit] 2004 – Hitting the Big Time

Then, in January 2004, the site changed software again, moving to the much more advanced and moddable phpBB and breaking the 1,000 user mark, with over 200 visiting every single day and up to 50 members online at any given time. The site now had a live chat programme to go with its forums (or “furums” as they were called), user-selectable themes, polls, a “shout-box” and a gallery for user-submitted pictures. Also on the site were “Yiffy dollars” that were earned by posting and could be used to purchase profile effects such as having one’s username highlighted in a colour of the users choice, changing usernames, expanding forum signatures and so on; related to this there was also an on-site lottery where members could buy tickets, using their Yiffy dollars, in the hope of winning the jackpot.

By the summer of 2004 had double its number of users since the beginning of the year and had a staggering 80,000 posts in around 1,700 topics and there was also a new addition to the site’s moderation team – Micah Coon, now one of the three site administrators. However, not everything was going well – the site had always been user-supported but a combination of a lack of donations or store purchases and a lack of income through the site’s single banner advert meant that the site was struggling to keep going financially. This, coupled with the fact that the site’s Paypal account had been frozen due to Paypal finally realising that Yiffy.net was an adult site (something that the site’s administrators did not realise was an issue) meant that things were tough for Yiffy.net. In September, Magdalena and Tatyana joined the moderator team to help with the running of the site and later, in December, both Sinergy and Arundel joined them as well. Five new moderators in a year showed just how fast Yiffy.net was growing.


[edit] 2005 – Peak Before a Fall

Half a year later and the site had fully recovered and now had 3,700 users and 150,000 posts in nearly 4,000 threads. After also upgrading to version 2.0.11 of phpBB, which introduced various new features, Sniper Fox also added Flash games to the site – over 100 simple arcade games with high scores, announcements of scoreboard leaders and medals to the highest scorers; something that proved to be a strain on the server’s resources but very popular with a lot of the site’s members.

Over the course of 2005 things continued to move onwards and upwards for Yiffy.net, new games were added and unpopular ones removed, the site changed servers twice to accommodate the continuing growth, Silver Griffin joined the moderator team in August and in November of that year Yiffy.net climbed to the top of Google’s search results for “Yiffy”. In three years Sniper Fox and his hard-working moderators had helped to turn Yiffy.net from a small board with just a handful of members to the largest and most well-known all-yiffy community on the web, with close to 5,000 members and 200,000 posts.


[edit] 2006 – The Beginning of the End?

The beginning of 2006 saw yet another server move as the site continued to grow and prove to be too big a strain on the previous server, and also the addition of a voice-chat to Yiffy.net. The site’s moderator team also continued to grow, with two further members – Martin and Lunara Copperhair - being promoted to help with the running of the thousands strong website that now had up to 827 users accessing it every day. By June, Martin had to step down from his post due to a lack of available time to spend working on the site and was replaced by Talija and Jinn, the former something of a surprise promotion to many – she was a long-standing member but not one known for her calm temperament.

In July ’06, the biggest and most significant event in Yiffy.net’s six year history occurred – Sniper Fox stood down as head administrator and owner of the site, for personal reasons. The reins were handed over to Micah Coon, back with the moderator team after a while out, and Taryn. The news was received by the site’s members with very mixed feelings – a lot of people felt that Yiffy.net had been stagnating of late and that a new leader was what the place needed to take it forward; but on the other hand, Micah Coon had a fairly colourful history with the site to say the least and there were a number of users who left the site as soon as the news broke. Micah quickly stamped his authority on the site, removing a few bans that he felt had been given by the previous site owner for personal reasons rather than any breach of the rules, and also sacked two moderators – Chazz Wolf and Zantari – who had been largely inactive for some time. This new appointment did, however, bring an end to the fighting between members of Yiffy.net and the only other site able to be called a rival – Furgasmic.com, run until its recent closure by Rhianna Ravenclaw, herself an active member of Yiffy.net. A few days later, another moderator joined the team, someone else who would a few months later go on to become a site admin – LadyDarkSphynx. Not long after this change in ownership, Talija stepped down as a moderator and left the site, due to personal differences with Micah Coon and the way the site was now being run.

By the end of the year, Yiffy.net switched from phpBB to SMF and replaced the resource-intensive Flash Chat with the much more streamlined and simpler x7 Chat, moved to a new server, installed TigerPaw as the site’s Technical Administrator, and one of the greatest sources of contention and conflict the site’s had came into place – the ban on leetspeak and netspeak. Under the new rules, using such acronyms as lol, rofl, bbs or wtf could earn users a warning at first, then a day-long ban and then gradually longer bans with each offense. The move to SMF was another source of disquiet amongst the members of Yiffy.net – it may have been cheaper to run, less of a drain on resources, easier to use and a lot more stable and bug-free than its predecessor software but many on the site felt that it was a step backwards for such a famous site and that Yiffy.net had lost some of its individuality by adopting a format that was so prevalent throughout the web, especially on first-timer forums.

On the whole, 2006 was not a good year for Yiffy.net – activity levels were dropping to lower than any in the previous two years, post rates were also low and there was a growing sense of discontent amongst the members of the site, something that would continue into 2007...


[edit] 2007 - Under New Management

2007 for Yiffy.net started with several changes in staff – Taryn had earlier stepped down from his position and left the site entirely due to time constraints, with LadyDarkSphynx being promoted in his wake in what was initially an interim position but later became permanent; and Alex Cross and Vulpes Proeliator were promoted to the moderator team to replace the three moderators who had left in the latter half of the preceding year.

At the end of February and partially on the insistence of outward-bound moderator Sinergy/Cynergi, Micah Coon asked Talija back to the site, promoting her to the position of administrator. Within days and after considerable discussion between Micah and Talija, indeed it had been something she had demanded as a condition of her coming back to the site, the unpopular Netspeak Rule was relaxed considerably. The use of such acronyms and abbreviations in excess was still discouraged but members would no longer be in trouble for a simple “lol” or “brb”, though the stress was very much that such terms were fine in out-of-character areas of the forums and chat but still had no place in role-plays and in-character discussion. The site’s rules were also re-posted, having been absent from the boards for some time, and extensively re-written by the new addition to the admin team, along with a separate set of rules for the x7 Chat.

The summer of 2007 saw the start of the staff of Yiffy.net opening up to their members – in a bid to dispel the inevitable rumours that surrounded anyone’s suspension, all suspensions and bans were publically posted by the admin, detailing who, why and how long. There was also a crack-down on underage users, initiated by Alex Cross and heavily supported by the whole team. Now, anyone with even a whiff of suspicion could be asked to provide proof of age to the staff, with a reasonable notice period, and a thread was set-up to detail what was accepted, the easiest way to submit it and, importantly, which parts needed to be obscured so as to protect the submitter’s identity. Furthermore, anyone serving a suspension of greater than a week was also required to prove their age before they would be allowed back. During the same period, there was also much cause for concern after Yiffy.net was one of several large furry sites targeted by Anonymous raiders of 4chan (among others). Quick thinking and keen observation by the site’s staff prevented any issues and successfully avoided the attack. Later in that year, and after a number of clashes with the rest of the Yiffy.net staff, Alex Cross would step down from his position and leave the site to spend more time on his own, budding website.


[edit] 2008 – On The Mend

So far 2008 has seen considerable change at Yiffy.net. Both Jinn and Silver Griffin have left the moderator team and site as a whole to spend more time on real life concerns, while Ranix, Azhtek and Steph Ravenblood were promoted to moderator to replace the three recent leavers. This influx of new blood and a determination amongst the existing staff to drag the site out of its stagnation has resulted in almost constant work on the site in terms of improvements.

Firstly, Yiffy.net switched from the somewhat unpopular SMF to adopt vBulletin in late January, which was a move that caused some confusion and concern at the time but has since smoothed out for the most part. And, after months of discussion and hard work, the staff unveiled a new section on the site – Yiffy.net Social. This new area was to be centred around more social, out of character aspects of furry life, such as meets and conventions, as well as more diverse non-RP discussion and sections for artists of every variety to post and talk about their works. There was also the less significant but still popular introduction of a much wider variety of visual themes for the site.

The site's administrators have also continued their work to open the site up more to the members and created a forum purely for members to give their feedback and suggestions on what they'd like done with the site or what they don't like about existing features.

Further changes currently in progress include RP nights in the site's chat, whereby users can play tabletop role-playing games online with other furs on the site. Numerous other changes are in the pipeline, with the site's staff working hard to help restore the once proud site to its former glory and re-establish it as the first name in furry communities.

There have thus far been no gigantic reversal in the site’s fortunes but membership and activity are steadily on the rise and the feedback that the staff have received on their recent changes has been promising. It’s slow-going for now but things are definitely on the up at Yiffy.net.


[edit] Users

Yiffy.net is currently home to approximately 1,300 furs (including alternate accounts,) with over 500 regularly active accounts and up to 50 users logged on at any one time but at its peak of activity had over 5,000 accounts registered well in excess of 200,000 posts. The site generally has a ratio of around 4 male furs to every 1 female fur.


[edit] Controversy

[edit] Underage users

Yiffy.net operates a fairly aggressive policy towards keeping minors out of the site. As well as the Terms of Agreement users face when registering, members are age-checked if there is any suspicion of them being too young to be there, and the moderation team will also often request proof of age from any member who causes trouble and receives a suspension.[citation needed] If they are unable to provide such, then their IPs are banned from the site until they can show themselves to be of the necessary age to view adult material in their locale, a fairly effective way of preventing them from re-registering with a different account. This is seen in some quarters as being unfair but the fact remains that, as a site with adult content, Yiffy.net has both a moral and legal obligation to prevent underage persons from accessing their site.


[edit] Leetspeak/Netspeak

After Micah Coon took over the site from Sniper Fox in summer of 2006, he introduced a fairly hard-line policy on any and all usage of netspeak and leetspeak. Under this new ruling, any use of it whatsoever would result in a warning for a first offence, a one-day suspension for the second and then incrementally increasing lengths of suspension thereafter. This practice was hugely unpopular and saw a number of long-serving members in trouble for the seemingly minor offence of saying “BRB” in the site’s chat rooms.

While discussing the issue with the soon to be returning Talija, Micah agreed to relent on his stance and the ruling was relaxed so that certain, more common terms would be allowed. This has since been relaxed further and the current ruling on leet/netspeak now stands as below -

  • Abbreviating small words (i.e. "you" becomes "u", "your" and "you're" become "ur", "to" and "too" become "2", etc) are still outright banned. Users, however, will be warned once before facing suspension.
  • Use of terms such as "LOL", "BRB", and "WB" are now allowed in moderation. Casual use will not result in any disciplinary action. Flagrant abuse of it (i.e. Using "LOL" twice every sentence), will.

In summation, the emphasis is on moderation in its usage and since the relaxing of the rule there have been no incidents of users being suspended for using net/leetspeak.


[edit] The Cull of ’08

In February of 2008 Yiffy.net’s main administrator, Micah Coon, conducted a purge of the thousands of inactive accounts on the site, removing all the profiles of users who had left but not deleted their profiles, registered accounts but never activated them, and forgotten or abandoned alt character accounts.

To assist those members who had inactive alt accounts that they wished to keep, and also members who had registered primarily for the chat and had not posted in the forums recently enough for their account to be marked as active, a thread was set up by one of the site’s admin with the specific intention of giving users a place to post and hence make their accounts active.

Unfortunately, however, the whole process was rushed and in hindsight the period of notice was simply insufficient for something of this magnitude and many users who had been away on vacation or just taking a short break from the site did not see the announcement or “Don’t Delete Me!” thread. As a result, a number of members were somewhat irritated to find out that their accounts had been amongst those deleted in the purge. The sites administrators have since apologised for this mistake and will be making sure that the site’s members are in future given considerably more notice of anything of this ilk.


[edit] Donations

As a non-profit site, Yiffy.net is sustained purely by donations and out of the pockets of its staff. In the past, donations have been very few and very far between and even the introduction of a shop with Yiffy.net merchandise failed to prise badly needed cash from the wallets of the site’s members. Hence, despite the site having spent most of its years with a membership large enough to make it so that a few cents from every member would be enough to keep the site running for a whole year, Yiffy.net has faced closure numerous times over its history. Each time it’s narrowly avoided this, once by being moved onto Sniper Fox’s own computer as a temporary server but most other times by a considerable act of generosity from a very few members or staff. This has been less of an issue, more recently – the site’s technical admin is also the operator of its host server and as a site member he understands of the problems with obtaining funds and is hence more forgiving than previous hosts if the site is late in paying their server rent. Furthermore, a recent donation drive saw staggering generosity on the part of a couple of staff members and a few members; between less than ten people, enough money was raised to support the site for half a year. The recent move to vBulletin was also funded by the minority, with only Talija and TigerPaw contributing to the cost of the licence.


[edit] References



[edit] External links

Image:Puzzlepiece32.png This internet entry is a stub - can you improve it?
Retrieved from "http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Yiffy.net"
Personal tools
.