| floof |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|11:55 pm] |
Some of you may recall Ferrox, the doomed project that was meant to be a rewrite of that one furry art site. For various reasons, I eventually gave up and left. But I've had the same ideas for years, and I still enjoy trying to build useful products, so I decided to try this again.
Thus I've created floof, my third attempt to build an art site. (floof is the name of the code, not the site. I don't have a name for the site yet. I'm deliberately keeping 'floof' lowercase everywhere to emphasize this distinction.) This time, I'm not constrained by trying to rewrite existing software for an existing userbase and an existing administration. I can do whatever I want. Maybe I'll finish it; maybe I won't. It's also not explicitly targeted at furries, although that's where all the artists I know happen to be already.
I have some co-conspirators. Ootachi, who is half responsible for getting this started. Kalu, who is overflowing with Web 2.0 ideas, Koinu, who is trying to figure out how to make identity and relationships span sites. Of course, we're all also busy with our own work and school and other hacking—maybe we'll finish, maybe we won't.
You may notice I'm explicitly making no promises!
We have, as of the commit I just made, something that passes for a functional art site. You can create an account, log in, upload art, watch/unwatch people, and see the stuff you're watching. Everything else is polish, really. Lots and.. lots of polish.
My core goal is a little hard to explain, as it's a very fine distinction.
Imageboards (4chan, fchan) and other anon-posting places (e421) focus on the public. The uploader doesn't matter. The artist barely matters. It's just a big pool of art, and viewers filter it one way or another. They're the image equivalent of big forums; what you say/post is more important than who you are.
Dedicated places with accounts and user pages (DA, FA, LJ and its image host thing) focus on the private. There are all these notions of relationships between specific people. What you watch is just a list of other users. Rather than a big pool, you start out with a bunch of little isolated pools and try to combine them. They're closer to social networking sites; it's all about who you are and the relationships you have with others, and the art forks off of all that.
I'd like to see a conceptual compromise here, where the people can still have their networking, but the content is communal. I should be able to get suggested art based on what my friends like, not who they watch. I should be able to create my own folders of other people's art for my own reference later. If PurpleKecleon draws me some gift art, it should be trivially easy for me to show it in a little mini-gallery on my userpage and let people browse all my gift art at once. And I should be able to do this without having to upload it again or tell people where to find the "real" upload or mix it in with whatever content I produce.
I still want to do the same things I've wanted before:
- Tagging on crack: let anyone tag anything, organize everything by tags, let me hide everything with a certain tag, let me watch an artist but only get art with a certain tag.
- Better organization: let the same art be associated with several users, let me tell the app that sketch/lineart of the same piece or parts of a series are related, let me sort anyone's art into my own personal "favorites" folders based on tags I've assigned.
- Sane self-moderation: give everyone ignore lists instead of block lists that apply to everything all over the site. Don't interfere in isolated incidents that users can resolve themselves.
- Suggestion engine. Mmmm.
- Equal support for any type of art—but only art. Stories and music and video should be first-class citizens, but floods of screenshots and vanity photos shouldn't be allowed.
- Most importantly, it needs to pay for itself. Surviving on donations isn't going to cut it. The most obvious solution is paid accounts, which I'd like to have available at launch with some minimal perks, followed by more as I come up with them. There's also the possibility of prints sometime down the road, and I'm interested in finding a way to make commissioning a richer experience and skimming a bit off the top of its cost.
Then there's identity and all the mess it can imply. Koinu's baby, but I like it too. Let anyone watch anyone from another site, let anyone comment across sites, let anyone shuffle their art across sites. You don't like the administration? Are they banning your obscure fetish? Do you have an undying urge to upload photos of your Sailor Moon figurine collection, and the site you're on won't allow it? Click a button and move; everyone's watches and collections of your art should still work. This is how the Web ought to be, and we want to take a crack at building it.
Speaking of administration: I like to think I've watched the existing circus enough to avoid pulling the same shenanigans. I value freedom of speech, which is actually why I pondered out loud about it earlier this month. How should dickery be handled? This is an interesting question that deserves more thought than "how angry am I right now?"
In the same vein, I think administrative action should be accountable. Everything should be logged and available publicly. I'm very tired of the cloak-and-dagger act. Users shouldn't have to go digging through half-a-dozen different media to find out why someone was banned, who did it, who else they've been banning, how long it is, why a feature was disabled, what's going on with the site, etc., etc.
I suppose in general I'm an advocate of running a private space like it were (the ideal) public government, with possible minor concessions made for practicality—as opposed to just doing what I want and making openness and accountability afterthoughts. I'm kind of a hippie. If that weren't obvious.
I'm aware that there's another project, BlueTaboo, with similar goals. I haven't made any attempt to join with them for various reasons, and I haven't even revealed to them directly that I've started my own project despite that I know the people in charge. It'll be... interesting to see what happens from here.
As I said, I'm explicitly making no promises. This is a hobby of mine. I do it because I enjoy writing code, I enjoy solving problems, and I enjoy creating useful products. If it's not enjoyable, I have plenty of other things I could work on. So, please, if you're interested, come enjoy it with me. (Especially if you have ideas for a name or mascot or that sort of thing. :V) Otherwise we'll be building what sounds good to us, throwing it to the masses, and hoping someone likes it.
I will likely not post anything further anywhere that's affiliated with FA. If you want to keep up, you can friend me on LJ or add my 'floof' entries to any RSS reader.
I may put up a live beta sooner or later like I did with the veekun beta. The problem is that the database schema is likely to change regularly for floof, whereas veekun is currently just reading static data. Either way, it's easier to announce progress now, so if anyone cares to hear it I will try to provide progress reports.
There's a bug tracker, but it's not very populated at the moment. Hoping to fix that soon, and then publicize it.
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but there's a lot rattling around in my head! Comment, dammit. |
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