∞Dragoneer

Admin badge has a hammer on it. The ban hammer?

Yes. =3

Hope it's not Sechs' hammer...

Now you should have a pic of 'Neer wielding such a weapon. And the badge pinned to his lapel. =p

Well, there is already (at least) one picture of him using such a weapon. http://www.furaffinity.net/full/4454275/

Aha. I am amused now! Thanks for the link. =D

You're welcome =)

Also this FYIhttp://www.furaffinity.net/view/2047083/

Throw in a sickle.

Please for god's sake throw in a sickle.

fucking win

I'm betting so.

the hammer of justice!

Cool!

Do want

Cool its like a ranking

Ooooh, shiny.

nice :3

Now you can feel like a flight attendant too!

Where will they appear?

Above your profile, to the right of your user information (name, join date, etc).

Ah, sounds like a good idea. The pilot feel to them is a bit strange for them but I suppose it doesn't matter too much. x3

Shiiiiiiinyyyyyyyyyyyy!

bombird should get a special "ribbon maker drunkbird" ribbon where its a bird being drunk

or something silly like that

Maybe lil' frosty beermug in the middle. =D

The top one either looks like chocolate or crap. :'<

i think its supposed to be "bronze"

fuuuuuuuuuck.

Still, looks cool.

Nifty, still doin the grabbag thing too?

Yes, but it's gonna be early 2011. Gotta get a few things compiled together first!

Still working out issues with subscription donations as well? I'd be all over that once it started.

I haven't tried it, recently. I'll check it out a bit more this week.

so what does each one mean

omg.. i so want one of those *.=.*

Amazing icons, heh
but now i dare to ask o.o are image codes now allowed in journals?

5

4


3


2

1


inb4 only mods can do this.

Pretty cool; guessing the type of badge is the rank?

does it come with a real life version, too when you earn one of those?^^

That would all kinds of awesome, but probably too expensive... But, dang, I'd want one!

:) Do previous donators get them, or should we make a second donation?

If you donated via Paypal or Alertpay, yes. Unfortunately, Amazon's system was anonymous for the most part, and never provided us with payment information, etc.

We still have donation logs, and will go back and tally up what we can.

Can't help but think this is going to cause some issues involving elitism.

Supporters don't have to accept them. And it's our way of saying thanks for supporting the site.

Well that's great for showing thanks to people who help out in someway, but something is telling me that there is going to be that select few people who get one of these badges and go "Oh this means I get special privileges!!" I know that's not the intent with these, but there's at least one person out there who's probably thinking that right now.

There's always going to be one person, just like there's always going to be that one guy who talks to Artist X, maybe gets a picture and suddenly tells everybody they're friends and buddies. Those people exist.

No reason to deny everybody else over such a small minority. And if it gives people a reason to go out of their way to support the community to get one? The site benefits.

I'm not saying take it away, just speaking out loud about a little kink in the overall scheme of this plan. I just hope you guys have it covered as well as humanly possible.

Does paying for adspace count?
lol
*wantwant*
;_;

8D
SEE THE JOY IN MY EYES. IT IS JOYFUL!

awesome! do you get an upgraded one on how much you donate/help?

Yes. Bronze is fairly easy to get get, and they go up by levels. Bronze will be snaggable by helping the community, volunteering at FAU or making a basic donation. We may award ribbons of higher levels to people who go out of their way as well.

oooh cool! i'll have to help out somehow :B

We don't want the ribbons to be JUST about donating, but rewarding those who assist the site.

varying degrees of want

I've not settled on amounts, or the requirements yet. And past donators will get medals. It will take some time to sift through /years/ of donation logs, but I've got all the information floating around.

I know it's meant in jest, but don't you think representing adminitrators by a banhammer might perpetuate the negative view towards admins?

No, not really. No way that police carrying guns perpetuates a symbol of them in a negative light, or judges with a gavel. It's sort of the "nature" of things.

Eh, I could argue with the police example, but I get your point; makes sense.

True, but you don't look at police and go "EEK! A GUN!".

It's a weird example, I guess. Over the top, but...

but not all cops carry guns ;) and even so they dont have a gun on there badge.

speak for yourself, maybe??

Especially when they do plenty of actual banning.

except that police carrying guns do exactly that.

imagine if police badges had a gun on them

You do realize how quickly this will be on everyones pages, right?

Check mine. I will remove it if you wish. Just pointing out that it's easy, and people will do it.

Doesn't display. It's not an :img: =3

Hey. I tried four others codes so I was being creative.

Nevermind. Image tags are disabled on profile info.
Could've sworn they were open..

Otherwise, they look damn snazzy! Props to bombird!

so....shineyyyyyyy! @w@ *stares*

so, besides the donations and FAU, how can one help out?

Offering suggestions that decide are good and implement, helping fix an exploit, generally being supporting and helpful to other members of the site and getting notice (e.g. you like helping out users, offering good advice, tips, etc. and making their FA stay a welcome one...)

Awww, but I want to buy my status! ^_~

I dunno if I'm a good advice giver, but I was in the Anti Drama Lama Movement for a while so I must have doone something right <.<
or do you mean technical advice, cause there I'm stumped @.w.@

The ADLM caused a few more issues than it did resolve them, unfortunately. Good intentions on their part, but...

yeah, I heard about it, I quit some time before it happened

A few more? Replace that with "a LOT".

hmm its a pity still to donate with alert pay

i dont can have it

So set up an Alert Pay account! It's really not that hard. :> I set up an Alert Pay account for the sole purpose of donating to FA when I could afford to.

it doesnt work for me cuz i dont have a credit card and im a europe its difficult and takes soooo long

alert pay sucks .-.

spaaarkly

The medals are very shiny, Look great!

I want the one that flips

For a minute I thought you could buy these to support the site or something.

Will they be that size?

Not fetching for a badge or anything, but what are some ways we can help the site without donating cash? I end up with some downtime throughout the week and I'd love to help in some way shape or form.

Admin Ribbon really needs the sickle. The hammer is already there.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

What is the level of donations for what level of badge?

How much do you donate to get each of them?

That is pretty cool.

Pretttyyy!

They look great.

Professor Crux wants the shiny silver one.

hahahahaha

why do they have wings?

pretty...

so...the last one is for you Mr Neer? |3

Those look cool. So, any badge for FA:U staff? ;)

Maybe later. To start, we have these... but we can roll out new ones over time. =3

Figured as much when you said first batch. I'm just being a wise-ass, and asking for the sake of asking, and what not.

ACHIEVEMENT GET~

It's comically self-aggrandizing that the admin one has a crown.

and what I assume to be a "ban-hammer"

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/...../#cid:15325054

Yes.

It's a shame that there isn't anything more positive for them to put on there instead of that.

Still, at least we can admire these shiny new badges & doff our caps and tug our forelocks to their majesties while we wait for the security holes to be fixed.

I'm enjoying this bread while I am at the circus!

it's a shame the admins don't do anything positive

They're being fixed. There's many projects going on at once, and yak is focusing on security issues first.

He wasn't focusing on security issues first before, since a new feature (with a security hole in it) was introduced instead. I guess this is a policy u-turn then.

My assumptions are not blind. It's well known that you consider fixing such basic exploits as CSRF to be low priority because you believe in security through obscurity.

Okay I will reword.

Not all CSRF exploits are basic, but some of the ones that can be used against FA are pretty basic.

Sure. Of course you could sort exploits into bins in many different ways, but I would say the most basic CSRF exploits involve the sending of a HTTP request with no user specific information, an example would be the faving/unfaving of submissions; then there are CSRF exploits that involve HTTP requests where the URL is a bit harder to fake, because it varies with the specific user, but can still be done if an outsider figures out the system, such as the recent comment hiding exploit. And of course there is always the possibility of CSRF being used in conjunction with other methods, but then it isn't really CSRF anymore.

I'm not claiming that just because CSRF is relatively easy to exploit, it must be easy to fix. From my admittedly limited understanding it would probably require an entire rewrite of the way FA handles user sessions. But these things have been known about for quite a while now. At some point it does become reasonable to wonder if any fix is in the works at all.

I liked.

Please tell me there are more ways than working at cons us poor furs can't goto?

I like the donation one

when can we buy hats

When we unleash our Fapconomy update.

I hate hats.

I hate the admin ribbon. Why? Because it goes AD(PICTURE)MIN.
Why can't it be under the little emblem? D:

cutting off mid-word is pretty common in ribbons on these sort of insignias

seriously, that's the worst thing you can see in these?

Well nothings wrong with them. It just makes me die a little inside when I see the word split in two, and an uneven amount of letters on each side. :C

I wonder what i'll get.

So we're Furcadia now?

Oh, Dragoneer. I don't think this was such a good idea, especially based on the current... opposition to the management policies and donations. But, your call.

They all look rly rly nice. =3

Have you decided who gets which as far as the first four? =3

Just a thought but would having an achievement system that gives smaller ribbons be a possibility?

And by achievements I mean like getting a certain number of pageviews, favourites, watchers etc.

Bring on the unwarranted self importance!

+1

What about those who have previously donated to the site (IE myself, 2x $5)?

same here actually

it's seriously stupid as hell to have a "banhammer" in the admin badge when you really ought to be moving away from banning people indiscriminately

also if i see anyone with one of these on their page i'm going to mock them relentlessly

Its like they are starting to use it like some popular fad, like its the cool new thing to ban people...

i thought it was

at least that's the impression I got from this website

apple is good enough

Those look so cool. Why does the one for the Admins look like something that would come out of 40K.

"For the Emperor, purge the heretics!"

Really good idea, Neer. :)

if i would not be in a need for money
i would actually donate a lot
great idea :3

Admittedly, it's something of a gimmicky type thing - but it's a nice type of gimmicky type thing

Wicked Awesome, and shiny! =3

I WATCHED LIL MAT MAKE THESE

i am going to accquire them all like a pokemon game

*dances on you*

I really REALLY hope this doesn't mean there are going to be premium accounts on FA...
I hope you're just keeping it at badges...

We're looking into a few things, but making FA a pay site... not exactly one of them. More like offering services people would be interested in getting that tie into FA (like web hosting).

so basically, making FA a pay site by offering premium services. gotcha. cool.

Pay for the service, not for FA.

Wouldn't even consider making FA a pay site or offering premium services on FA until the site's coding was fixed.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Charging for services. You're planning on doing that. Cool. Can't wait for FA to be another shitty tiered site. Let me ask: Will one of these premium services be a system for posting stories that isn't complete shit?

Also, look, in the hope that it induces you to reconsider, I'm going to say this in as snotty and dismissive a way as possible: Given FA's history, why the fuck would I or anybody trust Fur Affinity Dot Net with their webhosting needs?

It's a fair assumption, and I can just hope we can prove over time we are changing and focusing in improving the services entirely.

Second, the web hosting is not going to be directly handled by FA, but by somebody who does it professionally for a living for a Fortune 500 company.

what you ought to do is stop banning people

Wait what? What does banning people have to do with premium features?

I see nothing wrong with adding "premium" features for a fee. It's not affecting the standard user, so why would you care? Unless you think that FA should just hand out free hosting to everybody...

As for the badges: Meh. It's going to eventually lead to drama. So is comment hiding. It's FA. What else is new?

it was a non sequitur

>file under 'feature request'
>'forget' for 6 months to a year

lmao

>not exactly
>not until

So what happened to you saying FA would never ever become a paysite?

Not in the sense of a site like DeviantArt or anything. At most, small perks to add services that tie into the site, but not pay for FA directly.

how is this even a viable plan for offsetting costs?

well now that's just classy lookin.

All of a sudden, I really want to play Contra.

Donating to FA is like, maybe also included.

D: Want

This was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw those.

Cause if there weren't furries who had a feeling of self righteousness before......

I can't help but feel that this is a bad idea

Oh, but didn't you know, donating to FA makes you better then other people, you get a shint badge to show how much better you are...

yeah, which just kinda... makes me not want to donate. I can't really explain it. The idea of some sort of merit for it just kinda looses the sense of donating, don't it? You're more like.. purchasing credit, not donating. I just get a bad feeling about these badges. Soon it will lead to more badges for different things I think..

Yeah, and if someone does something wrong I fear they will shove the badge in peoples faces as an excuse to get away with shit. "But look, I donated!"

any time "rank" gets involved in a free site like this, it's never good =/

True, that likely seems to be the trend that will follow when they introduce this. But I suppose all things considered, unless the amount they donated was a substantial amount, I don't think its enough to warrant self ignorance.

"But look, I donated!"

"Yeah, you donated 5 dollars cheapskate"

Well, maybe if I was new to furry I'd feel the same, but if everything I've seen go on in the furry fandom holds true (like I know it will), furries have a knack for dropping hundreds and hundreds of dollars (sometimes thousands) on furry related paraphernalia or status. Its only a matter of time before a furry drops a huge load of cash on to FA and then rides that cash cow all the way into whatever dirty deed he then feels like pulling, it will be his excuse, it will be his gloat, it will be his free pass from having to answer to any sort of rules.
Just watch it happen, because it will, and then remember this prediction.

This is exactly what will happen. So rather than make any bets, I'm just going to paypal you my $14 now and save me some headache. :v

Very Awesome! =D

This kinda looks like a rehash of the pins from RainFurrest 2008.

Definitely a bad idea to implement these, given the people here are so self-absorbed.

There should be pins for people who act bad on FA as well, sort of like an...

"Asshat pin" - expires in 30 days, given on terms of rule breaking
"Banned pin" - Obvious

Is there going to be a pin for sticking ones nose into the business of others?

There should be a pin for crying wolf, then you could have one too.

Odd, I've never cried wolf, therefore I'd never have such a pin.

Oh denil, its not just a river in egypt, its a bat shit furry.

Have we ever heard of humility?

Anyway, we should make those for real. :)

This is actually a great idea to help reel in some donations. I actually want to give money now =3

Those are spankin'!

Nice ^^

haha my first thought?

"oh gawd furries are going to see its shiney and want want want"

i suppose a good way to reel in the donations and such but i cant help with this there is going to be A LOT of elitism going on which always among the furries brings about drama.

There needs to be a "Fuck you, I don't wanna do anything! But i want a ribbon' ribbon. The asshat fucktard ribbon...

You already have one!

It's invisible!

Not for me! For the inevitible time when people start whining they want one of those for doing nothing... o.o

This is an interesting idea, but the images look too large to me. If it were a little icon next to the username or something, it'd be a lot less intrusive and wouldn't be in your face so much. Although I do like that you would give people the option to put it on their profile or not.. Personally I would not want a huge sticker on my profile like that.

My only beef with the badges is that they're really quite large. The idea of having badges is fine! At this point though, I'd be far more interested in seeing a smaller 16px-high badge on profiles.

Oh haha, I hadn't seen the reply above me.

Admin one would look better with a little Fender face or paw than a ban hammer. :P

But admins are so skilled in the ways of the banhammer, why take the hammer away? It shows just how good they are with it :P

Maybe it isn't on the pin because they're so busy with it? *dodges the hammer*

I'm sure they keep spares somewhere, how could they use it so often if there was only one?

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE

I kinda like the looks of these badges, except for the fact that its probably going to increase the levels of arrogance in some by thinking that just cause they donated 5 bucks means they are 'special'.

Not saying I have problems with this, I only hope that people don't get it into their heads that cause they donated and got a shiny badge means they have the rights to boast about it when it seriously isn't really grounds to boast since anyone can donate 5 bucks to a site.

Great work, Bombird! It'll be interesting to see how they look when they're implemented.

Wow thats some great work :D Nice badge to brand on yer userpage for sure :D Might just try and get ahold of it :P

If you're concerned about some people possibly using these to sort of rub in people's faces, one thing that could potentially diminish the act would be to introduce other "awards" for lesser things. I imagine they would be smaller, possibly made to look like a medal or something, so that multiple ones could be displayed all on one "line". They'd be for things almost anyone could do, like getting a certain number of watchers or receiving a certain number of favorites or comments, stuff like that. (Those were just off the top of my head; with a bit of thought, I'm sure you guys could come up with any number of other criteria.) For such simple things like that, they could even be automated so that they don't consume undue amounts of the admins' time.

The idea is to reduce the uniqueness of having one of the ribbons in this journal in order to hopefully reduce their ability to feed into ego stroking and drama; they'd basically go from something only "special" individuals have to being more like the collector's edition of a video game.

Hah when I saw the gold one I thought "40,000". In the name of the ferrox emperor.

Either way 'neer I always wondered about these when reading about donating, because I do want to donate when I have some spare since this site's been my most visited site on the net by far, would these badges appear in your profile info or below your avatar or something? They look awesome.

At first I thought this was a bad idea.

Then I read that you can get the badges just for helping out as well as donating.

So I decided it is a terrible idea.

Oh well, at least there will finally be an outlet for admin favouritism that doesn't involve discriminate use of the banhammer

I WILL DONATE MY LIFE SAVINGS....about £2.44

how about volunteering for 22 hours at FAU3???!?

So the thing that makes Admins important is the good ol' banhammer, eh? At least consider some of the other things they do and add some symbol of that in there, like an All-Seeing Eye for their watching things, or some kind of symbol for their coding prowess (if they have any). ...And isn't it the Golden Banhammer?

On another note, the way these werre made makes me think of Gaia Online from way back...

Admins don't code.

Which is why I added "If they have any" in parentheses.

Regardless, even if they do have any, the admin team and the development team are two different groups. This is standard practice because they serve different functions.

What if these lessen my desire to help?

The Admin badge looks so much like a Guard Unit insignia that really, it needs a sheath... I mean, a sheaf of wheat.

Good to see all that drama!
But seriously, the transparency is totally lost on the glow of Platinum and Admin badges.
I have to fix that.

Oh, I see what you mean now. Maybe just remove the glow? Or can it be done to an animated PNG? Not sure if PNGs can even animate. I should know this, but I don't.

it's in the png spec but many browsers don't support it

Actually it isn't.

APNG is an unofficial extension first proposed by Mozilla. The PNG Group has not decided to accept animation in the PNG specification (they explicitly rejected making APNG part of the spec in 2007).

The PNG Group is more open to the idea of a new animated format based on PNG (such as MNG) but to date hasn't endorsed any.

told

OMG SHINIES. *donates the equivalent of Ft. Knox*

Thanks for going over old donation logs (ponders whether he used Amazon payments in the past)...

aint this how communism started
???

Why are so many people freaking out over this? Stop acting like babies throwing tantrums just because you don't like it. It's a great idea and I can't wait to see it implemented.

Speaking of, Dragoneer, do you have an estimation of when these will go live? :)

I noticed you plan on using CCBill for processing donations. I clicked a scam email and someone created an account on another one of the sites that they do processing for, and so I called and had them refund the fraudulent charge. The tech said that they knew the email scam was going around.

However, in CCBill's Terms, it says they can choose to block my info being used on their sites after doing a refund for fraud, and I noticed the next time I created an alt account on the site I was using (because the site itself never answered my emails), that CCBill denied my info and the site automatically processed through a backup source.

I called CCBill today and they said my info was ok, despite my explaining the situation.

When will donations open again, and if CCBill denies my card upon my attempt at donating, and calling them a second time with that information doesn't resolve the issue, is there another way I could donate? I understand that arranging another processor would be a huge endeavor.

I've actually confirmed it after talking with them at length over the phone. I cannot use CCBill for any purpose anymore because they will never unblock my card.


My only option is to be issued a new card entirely.

CCBill seems to have a vast amount of complaints, but I respect your decision.

At the moment we're reconsidering other options to CCBill at this time.

Thank you very much, I hope things work out!

hey how does one become a volunteer for FA?