Fac Needs An Entry At The Wikipedia

[Brianhjh]

Hello, I'm FAC's local wikiwhore.


I was browsing in Wikipedia and I searched for "art submission site" curiously and I found that there were two featured articles about Gaia and Deviant Art. Fanart Central was just listed as one of the links...

The Deviant Art article was especially well updated (Jarko incident showed up hours later). I think Wikipedia needs an article about our beloved website, FAC. I'd write it myself, but I don't know enough history, background, nor site statistics to make it work. Can someone, take up the task?
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[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brianhjh/emesprani151.gif[/img] "Sarah's future makes me sad." - Benk

[cstdenis]

Yes it does, but I'm not the one to write such a thing. Fallen or kate would be good choices being long time members, or Raymei who has actually interviewed me about the site.

For starters here is an email somebody sent me for the about page which may be of use.

Fanart Central is a place where everyone can post their artowrk or
stories. The main theme here is fanwork but many people do original
work and stories. It is a great place to find advice from peers on how
to improve your work or to gain confidance in yourself as an artist.
It is suggested that you only offer advice and not critisism because
everyone has to start somewhere and everyone can always learn
something new. No copying or stealing of artwork is allowed but many
base their work off of others, thus putting their own hand to things
in an effort to increase their talent.
-WolfsAllure
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You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.

[Brianhjh]

That's a pretty good feedback ^^
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[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brianhjh/emesprani151.gif[/img] "Sarah's future makes me sad." - Benk

[fallenangel]

criticism = advice. Same thing. I know they probably meant non-constructive criticism (ie flaming), but the word itself means the same as advice and is pretty much used everywhere as a positive thing. Seeing that may make some people uneasy about whether crits are welcome or if it's only an ass kissing site. (it leans more towards the latter, but no need to advertise that fact ) Minor point, fine as is. But when on the same page as places like DA, might as well look as serious as possible

I could write it, but I'd probably end up including things that really shouldn't be included. Or at least not in that manner. Just fill me in on the very beginning where I wasn't here (started as a South Park site, right? I only saw you mention that once, never saw Raymei's interview ), and I'll give it a shot n' post it here.
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"I care about people as much as I care about lawn furniture" - Dexter/Michael C. Hall

[Brianhjh]

Include an in-depth history of the OS movement.
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[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brianhjh/emesprani151.gif[/img] "Sarah's future makes me sad." - Benk

[cstdenis]

Raymei's interview would be a good component of it.

Its late tho so the early days writeup will have to wait 'till tomorrow.
_________________
You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.

[cstdenis]

Before FAC I was involved in a southpark community. This community was very fanart and fanfiction oriented. The fanfiction mostly was posted on fanfiction.net however there was no such place to post fan art (At least that I was aware of. mm or da may have existed, I dont know). So I decided to make one in mid 2001. I dont recall the exact date, but the oldest picture still around (#65) was submitted 2001-09-06 13:02:17.

However, around the time I completed the site (Which at the time had much fewer features than now) that paticular community died. I got a few signups from it, but nobody ever became an active member. After the lack of success with this, I decided to change the site to be a general fanart renaming it from SP Fanart to Fanart Central.

Some of FAC's earliest members came from a game fanart forum. From there it grew mostly from search engines and word of mouth.

Fac had forums from the start. Initially they were Discus forums because that is what was used in the South Park community FAC origionated from. However those forums were rather limited and had problems so at some point I moved over to these forums you are reading now.

Early on, I tried to make a chatroom for FAC. However due to the small number of members and the fact that rarely would there be multiple people on the site at the same time it was a pretty bad failure.

Later on, another chatroom was created. This time is was more successful because it had a bot. The bot provided games for people to play and displayed who was in the room on the website. The time of this chatroom is when I Choose FAC's first site helpers Fallen and Kate who started out as chatroom ops. Dispite a variety of problems with trolls, technicial problems, and some annoying and stupid visitors, the chatroom stuck around for quite a while. Eventually, due to lack of interested and approprate people to moderate it and increasing problems the chatroom eventually was closed down.

I will stop here with the history and let Fallen and/or Kate take over from here now that I've hit they point where they became active.

A few stats before I end it.
* 18-Jan-2004 FAC got its domain name
* FAC currently gets
* * between 500,000 and 700,000 page views a day
* * around 20,000 visitors a day
* * 3 to 3.5 million hits a day
* FAC uses 1-2TB of traffic a month and uses 5 or 6 Mbps of bandwidth during the day.
* FAC is spread across 3 servers at the moment. More will need to be added soon.
* Today, FAC has about 180,000 pictures, and is growing at 6-700 a day
* FAC has 31,000 artists and is growing by about 80 a day
_________________
You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.

[Raymei]

Ooh, I knew there was a reason to save this T_T (they never did put the article in SPRAWL T.T kept pushing back the "art issue" )


Just in case ya need anything from here (it's quite old by now, tho)
[quote]
[b]First off, what can you tell us about FAC in general?  What is it for?[/b]

It's a place for people to post their fanart, & for people to view & comment on fanart.
It is also a place to post, read, & comment on fanfiction. & is just generally an online community.

[b]What sort of people generally post artwork on FAC?[/b]

There seems to be a wide variety, however it seems to be mostly American anime fans. The population also seems to be mostly female from the profile info
about 68% female (taking the "other" into consideration)

[b]  What is the most common type of art submitted?  Are they mostly replicas of stuff you've seen before, or is there a fair amount of originality & creativity?[/b]

There is a very large amount of original art submitted. A lot of fan characters & such.
but also a lot of stuff form mainstream anime that's dubbed on TV in North America.

[b]  What is your overall impression of this artwork submitted?  & your impression of most of the users?[/b]

There is a large range of quality in artwork submitted from doodles on lined paper (now no longer permitted with quality guidelines in place) to amazing sketches &
CG & cell style animation of the quality of real animation cells

As for the community, It seems to be a big mixture like you would get in any community. We have obsessed fangirls, dedicated otaku, the occasional troll, the usual kinda people.

[b] When did you start up FAC? 
Why?[/b]

I don't recall the exact date I started, but the oldest picture still up is dated 2001-09-06 13:02:17  & is #65.

today, there are
40976 pics. 200-300 more a day.

It was originally started for a South Park community I was involved in at the time. This community had a large fanart & fanfiction component & I realized that the fanfiction people had fanfiction.net, but there was no such site for fanart. So I created Fanart Central (initially named SP Fanart). Although a few people from the community did sign up, it never caught on, & that community ended up dieing. So I made it more general & others discovered the site. years later, this is what its become.

[b] As the webmaster of the site, there's a lot of programming & such to be done. 
where & when did you learn HTML & everything needed to run FAC?[/b]

I am self taught.

I started with CTGameinfo.com game news site in I think '97. I knew no html, or web programming or anything & learned as I went.

The first few versions of it were very horrible, but as I learned more they improved.

When that site got I bigger, needed a database driven site to manage is all because static html pages were causing a problem.

after much research I found PHPNuke content management system, & leaned PHP by modifying that for my needs.

By the time I started Fanart Central I know HTML, PHP, & databases very well & was easily able to program most of it

[b]  What sort of problems (technical/moral/etc) problems have you encountered on FAC since it started up?[/b]

Running a site this large is difficult. I had a very hard time finding affordable servers that could h&le the half terabyte (& growing) of traffic this site produces every month.

The current traffic during busy hours is a very heavy load on the server making the site slow. I'm working hard to try to optimize everything & get every bit of processing power out of the current server since I can't afford a better one.

There are always little bugs & technical problems appearing when I add features, even when I test them, people find ways of doing stuff I never thought of that causes problems. But I manage to keep it all running with very little downtime.

Art thieves are another problem that I never expected & didn't really know what to do about when it first happened. Now I have an abuse team to take care of investigating & deleting stolen work.

[b]  Who are the abuse team?  Not so much their names as their duties, purpose, & association to FAC (how they were recruited)[/b]

As with all other staff, I pick people who are active within the community & show responsible behavior.

[b]  FAC has a fairly unusual feature that most art sites don't.  The Wall Of Shame; what's the story behind this?[/b]

When I first started to get stolen art reports, I didn't really know what to do about it. There are technical problems that make it hard to ban some people.

I decided that since they were stealing art to be popular & have people think they are skilled, public humiliation would be the best way to deal with the problem.

[b] What are the type of people that seem to be stealing art?  What are their (known) motives?[/b]

It seems to be people who are envious of the skill of good artists & want the attention that bring a skilled artist gets.

The other kind is obsessed fangirls (maybe some guys too, Ive never checked demographics on art thieves) who just like to post pics of their favorite characters. This usually results in vidcaps & stuff like "I didn't draw this, but I wanted to post it anyway".

The approval panel eliminates all the second group, & the image board also helps with that--giving them a proper place to post that kinda stuff.

[b]  Why was the approval panel started up? [/b]

I started getting reports about things that I was unsure whether they should be allowed. People redrawing a scene from an anime for example is considered stealing by some.

So I asked the community what they wanted to be allowed in the forums, & after a long discussion, wrote up a specific set of rules & setup the site to require users to accept the rules before posting any new art.

However, people still were posting stuff that the community as a whole (or at least those who bothered to express their opinion) decided on. I assume most people were just scrolling down & clicking agree without reading them.

So after some input from the community, I setup an approval panel & requires all new images be approved. This also was done to try to keep the category system more organized & make sure images were properly rated for offensive content--though most people have been ok about that.

I was reluctant to setup an approval panel because I knew with the volume of art this site gets it would be a lot of work--work that I don't have time to deal with. But since I got members of the community willing to do it, I implemented it.

It seems to mostly work ok, though I get the occasional complaint, most people seems to accept & like it.

[b]  What are a few of the drawbacks or complaints from the AP system?[/b]

People are very impatient. The few (sometimes several) hours it takes stuff to get approved is too long for some people. They want immediate gratification. 

I also get the occasional complaint about image rejection reasons, epically since I implemented the quality control.

[b]  Do you think that the Quality will improve FAC in the long run, or do you think this might turn off some of the present or potential members?[/b]

I HOPE it will improve it by removing the lowest quality stuff.

It doesn't judge skill so much as remove lined paper (which is mostly just doodles) & very poor stuff (stick figures for example)

I know a few people have left because of it, but I think most people will just only submit their best work now, instead of every little doodle they do in MS Paint or in class.

I hope that this will improve the overall quality of what is submitted to the site, making it a better experience for those browsing the sites art.
[b]
  FAC has become fairly popular over the past year or so.  Are you surprised that it's gotten as big as it has?[/b]

I was very surprised when it started to grow fast. It was a very small fanart community for over a year, then over a few months it grew several times its size. One of my goals with this site was to build an online community, but considering how hard that is, I never expected this kind of success.

[b]  what do you expect for FAC in the future?  what do you hope to see?[/b]

I attribute a some of my success to google. Its spider is constantly indexing the site & lots of people find it through there.
I expect it to continue growing at its current rate, & hope that I can manage to keep it alive. hard if server costs increase more than advertising money. But I manage to save money by making a lot of work for myself (searching for the best deal, trying to get every bit of power out of the server)

There are lots of features I want to add in the future.
Oekaki, tied into the image submission system.
Other fan works - flash, games/etc., Maybe even music videos.
Better manga/doujin/comic support
More tools for stuff like resizing images.
Improved fanfiction support.

& I'm always open to suggestions from members of the community.
oh, & A paint chat

[b]Is there anything you'd like to say to people who may be unfamiliar with the popularity of fanart & artists of today?[/b]

Anything that is popular may have fanart or fanfiction. There are even web comics or flash animations sites that I occasionally site fanart of.

Fanart & fanfiction is a good start for those interested in becoming professional animators. Many Japanese animators started out making Doujinshi. GAINAX is a good example of that. They were a group or otaku who started out as doujin artists & made their own studio & now they make some of the best anime there is.
[b]
Thanks a lot, Denis![/b]
[/quote]

[Brianhjh]

Wow, Raymei does the interview and the good chunks of it are about how to vanquish and punish art thieves O.o
_________________
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brianhjh/emesprani151.gif[/img] "Sarah's future makes me sad." - Benk

[Raymei]

it was way-back when.
One of the things I thought really distinguished FAC from other art sites was it's anti-art theft

[cstdenis]

Not as edited as I would hope if that was going to be submitted.

If it is used in the wiki it will need to be edited for me spelling/punctionation and updated.
_________________
You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.

[Raymei]

uh...that's not the "article" that's the interview, Denis lol

I just kind of skimmed the topic and thought someone was going to write another one and thought they might want to use this as raw information XD

[cstdenis]

The article would be good here if you still have it around.
_________________
You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.

[fallenangel]

Ok, well, not counting any of the new info posted + the very beginning info, I got up to when OS first started going downhill. But packing has taken all my time. However, I will have a lot of free time sitting in a hotel over the next week, so I'll try to work on it then and will post it as soon as I have internet access again, if no one else has written one by then.
_________________
"I care about people as much as I care about lawn furniture" - Dexter/Michael C. Hall

[Brianhjh]

Bump (internet)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Bumping)
Look up BUMP and bump in Wiktionary, the free dictionaryTo bump a thread on an internet discussion forum is to post a reply in order to raise the thread's profile by returning it to the top of the list of active threads. This is also called thread necromancy or gravedigging.

Typically, a thread may be bumped after it has received no replies in several days, or when other (and for the bumper less significant) threads have knocked it off the front page.

Thread bumping is commonly considered a breach of netiquette and some moderated forums forbid it. Users may get around that by making a trivial reply rather than just the word "bump."

Another way frequently used to get around it is by posting a reply containing the word "bump" in it, such as *Is wandering the forum when he bumps into this thread*.

BUMP is sometimes used as a backronym for "Bring Up My Post".






Serioiusly, what happened to the article?


_________________
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brianhjh/emesprani151.gif[/img] "Sarah's future makes me sad." - Benk

[fallenangel]

Someone else will have to do it. Been so busy getting everything ready for monday. :wacko:
_________________
"I care about people as much as I care about lawn furniture" - Dexter/Michael C. Hall

[Raymei]

I deleted the article when I quit SPRAWL @.@;;;
I actually thought I deleted the interview too and only looked on a whim.

Like Fallen, I've got a lot of projects going on right now (notice I'm not on FAC much these days?)

[PhunkYMunkY]

Yah you need to come back more often Ray If only for a few minutes? *whimper*

..Anywho..

How about Brian asks us questions and we'll answer him as deeply as we can 'cause I can't think of where to start. Then Brian, being the spearhead here, can organise and post it. Or a mod can post it but.. yeah.. Brian can edit it.

[Brianhjh]

I'm 16 :mellow:


I don't think I have the writing skills.
_________________
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brianhjh/emesprani151.gif[/img] "Sarah's future makes me sad." - Benk

[PhunkYMunkY]

Strata or I can, then.

Question away.