Furries are pretty creative. Where conventional companies will pay advertising companies, we find new way to promote our products and selves to others. Independent artists in the fandom have to use less conventional means of promotion. Two such staples that have become popular in the fandom over the past year are "Your Character Here" auctions and "Repost a Link" schemes. However, with their increased popularity, users began to criticize abuse of these methods and expressed annoyance at their side effects.

On November 21, after a link-reposting "giveaway" promising the winner $1,111 had saturated the site, Fur Affinity staff decided that what once started as a small advertising scheme had entered the realm of the intolerable, calling the methodology "Spam to Win". They also re-addressed an issue where artists would repost YCH auction template pictures, annoying watches and browsers alike.

In this Flayrah exclusive we will focus on the new journal rules, explain their implications to average furs and furry organizations, and how these type of prize giveaways could evolve under these new regulations and maintain a level of effectiveness.

Furry icons on social media sites went dark on April 5, 2019, following a tweet from Dogbomb that he would be passing on soon. Known for his German Shepherd fursona, Tony Barrett had modelled his character in honor of Rodger, a canine companion he'd lost, who had been with him for 14 years.

Dogbomb's wardrobe consisted of a Hawaiian-style lei, which is why some of the recent icons have been placing the flowery necklace against a black background, a design put forth by The Forgess, pictured here.

It stands out as a beacon, as Tony had been in his life.

Update 4/8: Fixed statement where Lei art was falsely credited to Trinity. Thanks to BlindWolf8 for the correction.

Nearly five days have passed since Fur Affinity entered read-only mode, and despite ongoing staff efforts, the interruption has led many users to mull alternatives.

The unheralded change, initiated in an attempt to resolve slowdowns during peak hours, caused consternation among artists, many of whom rely on the site for their income:

The problem is, this was unplanned downtime. […] If it was planned […] people would have had time to get things together. Such as commissioners, contests, bids, etc. and where to get in contact or if the bids/auctions are postponed while the site is down.

[…] at first I was worried that I wouldn't be able to make any money for christmas, but now I'm starting to worry that FA will be down so long that I won't be able to make enough for rent. […] it's so very disheartening when it was supposed to be a nice holiday season...

Operations team lead yak began an attempt to clear backlogged database transactions on Monday afternoon "as fast as the RAID10 array of 15k drives allow". A day later, FA status forum poster Raptros reported that the database would be transferred to a different server.

Staff then reported "waiting on two new hard drives to come in" to replace failed hardware, which they did on Friday afternoon. Advertisers were given ten extra days in compensation.

Update (15 Dec): An announcement posted on Sunday morning:

The last of the data is importing, and we'll be standing by to finish the upgrades. ETA should be tonight.

Update 2 (16 Dec): Oversized notification tables were cited by FA coder net-cat as both the source of delays and a reason for the slowdowns:

[The current method of notification handling] is not scalable and quickly becomes unsustainable for sites with 10^5 and 10^6 users.

Staff have rewritten queries, tweaked database settings, and intend to prune notifications older than 90 days soon after the site returns.

Update 3 (17 Dec): Fur Affinity came online for a few minutes before stalling and returning to read-only mode, "unable to handle a flood of users while rebuilding the RAID arrays". The site returned eight hours later, with mass notification clearing options disabled.

Users flooded social networks to complain about the disruption and compare alternate sites; primarily Inkbunny, SoFurry and Weasyl. On FA's forums, a 20-page thread was locked after discussion degenerated; it was soon replaced, while fans clamoured for software upgrades.

A copy of My Little Pony-themed erotica magazine Hoof Beat created by "popular furry artists" has been bid up to four figures at auction, with one day to go.

Two regular FurBuy users ran the price up to $826 over two days before new bidders joined in.

Another copy was recently sold for $150 on eBay, where the creators are listed as Sunshy, Wind Driven, Leche, Flanks and Don't Ask Spike.

The 58-page 10 5/8"x7 3/4" softcover colour work, produced in a print run of 200, was originally sold for $25 at Anthrocon 2012 via the Club Stripes table.

Three comics are included, plus a number of pin-ups.

The demand has caused other fans to put their copies up on FurBuy, with one selling for $305.