Sage Nadia

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Sage Nadia , pronounced Sah-Geh Nah-Dee-Ah, is the moniker used by the former administrator, now owner, of the fchan imageboard. Due to an ongoing misunderstanding regarding her name, she currently goes simply as Nadia(ナディア).[1] Her avatar is a Scorpiontaur hybrid.

She is a lesbian who openly dislikes porn, and is known for her no-nonsense, abrasive, direct and very iron handed method of administration, and for her respect for most artists, furry or not, and her disrespect for everyone else.[citation needed]

Sage[edit]

According to Nadia, the term Sage in her original handle has nothing to do with the herb, or with being wise.

It is actually derived from the imageboard term Sage, which is normally typed into the e-mail field in an imageboard's "e-mail" or "link" fields and is used by posted to prevent a thread from being bumped to the front page of the imageboard (it comes from the Japanese term 下げる, pronounced sah-geh-roo, which means "to lower").

Sage Nadia=Ayukawataur?[edit]

Screenshot taken by Kindrift

It has been suggested by some that Sage Nadia is also the administrator of FurBid, Ayukawataur. This was allegedly proven by Vivisector.org moderator Kindrift, who released an image comparing Nadia's IP in posts made in the Vivisector forums (all of which were deleted once this very issue was raised) to IP data discovered in the WikiFur IRC channel pertaining to Ayukawataur.

Kindrift has claimed that the image was not edited in any way beyond the necessary highlighting. In either case, neither Nadia or Ayukawataur have commented as to the validity of this accusation.

Nadia, fchan and the ideal image board[edit]

Initially, Nadia started out as a poster on fchan; when then-administrator Sage Freehaven was forced to give up control of fchan due to being unable to have regular Internet access in June of 2005, Freehaven named Xenofur and a volunteering Nadia as his administrative replacements (Xenofur was already a moderator at the time after having helped Freehaven fix one of its major server crashes).

After Freehaven was able to regain some semblance of Internet access a few months later, he contacted Nadia and told her that he was no longer sure when he would have full-time Internet access, and if he did get full-time Internet access back, it would likely be at the cost of the amount of free time he'd have to moderate fchan. It was at that point that he handed full administrative control of fchan over to Sage Nadia. Since then, Freehaven has regained full-time Internet access, and expressed little-to-no interest in rejoining the moderation team of fchan in any capacity. He has gone on record as stating that this is, in part, because he would not wish to be associated with the reputation the site or the moderation team garnered in his absence.

Nadia as fchan administrator[edit]

Once Nadia was named the full-time administrator of fchan, she began to change the board to fit a very specific vision; To try to create a *chan-style board that could survive as a respected and useful part of the community. During her administration, the DNP grew by leaps and bounds. As of this writing, the fchan DNP lists over 221 individual artists and 15 websites, one of which is only partially present, resulting in a larger appearance than it actually has.

Her initial plan upon taking control of fchan was to initiate a series of events which would cause the community to implode upon itself. This plan lasted less than a month, when she came to the conclusion that if fchan died, it would only be replaced by many more clones (ironically enough, most of the furry-based imageboards that have cropped up since Nadia gained control of fchan were created specifically because fchan didn't die). As long as she had fchan, she would be able to shape the future of how an imageboard could be effective and eventually accepted within the community as a whole.

She then created a threefold plan to ensure this would happen:

Domination[edit]

Step one was to dominate the boards -- to create a hatred of the users toward her while elevating the users' love for her assistant Xenofur. This included popularizing the DNP and making it openly available to any and all artists who wished to be placed on it. In this manner, she was also able to target who in the community would be least likely to accept the system and learn what changes were needed to build a better imageboard. One of her major changes was the removal of user rights to post non-constructive criticism, a decision which led to the banning of many "trolls".

Retirement[edit]

Step two was to disappear from the community eye -- as part of this step, Nadia retired from active adminship. In doing so, she passed the job of Administrator over to her assistant, Xenofur. For a brief time, she remained on as an adviser/ninja-moderator, but remained hidden from public view. She eventually removed herself from the public eye almost entirely, remaining active on fchan only in an advisory capacity to Xenofur. She thus was allowed to stay in fchan's administrative IRC channel. Additionally, due to the low reliability of the fchan server and the low availability of persons with the knowledge and ability to bring it back up in emergency cases, Xenofur allowed her to retain root login, on the condition she only acts in cases of functional failure to threat to the server. He never informed Raven or any other member of this fact, due to his knowledge of Raven's inability to accept anything else than absolutely clear ranks and power levels. The userbase of fchan was not informed as the persons with server admin access for development and maintenance reasons were not generally made public, unless they chose so.

Return[edit]

Step three was to return the board to the initial model. On December 16, 2007 Nadia seized control of the fchan server, locking everyone (including the owner of the server) out at the root level. The next morning she returned Xenofur's access and returned access to the server owner a week later. The delay here being caused by the owner looking at the situation with indifference. The events leading up to her decision to initiate step three have been speculated on, due to a statement of an underinformed close acquaintance of Raven. Site administrator Xenofur claimed in February 2008 that things happened as follows:

   
Sage Nadia
Due to a specific event in summer 2007, Xenofur decided that Raven was unable to deal with the specific power structures unique to fchan, this concerning not only the position of Nadia, but also the relation between mods and admins. He did however not take the necessary actions, kept his conclusions secret from Raven and let him retain his position. Half a year passed in which things went on with Raven doing the bulk of the administrative decisions and Xenofur swallowing most of his objections. After that time however he was talked into performing a certain act. However, afterwards he realized that the reasoning leading to that act were, as far as he was concerned, completely flawed and not consistent with the way fchan should be administrated. As such he decided to remove Raven from his admin position, however opted due to emotional stress to drop offline for a week. This left Nadia online as the only person with the access and knowledge to ensure security of the server. In that week she and Raven talked about the topic at hand and Raven made a remark that she interpreted as being a threat to the server. According to the conditions agreed on with Xenofur a year before, she changed the root password of the server to prevent any tampering.

When Xenofur came back online she immediately gave the new root password to him, as well as instructions on how to change it. Due to work stress and wanting to talk things through with the other mods he opted to leave things as they are for the moment. In a lengthy talk Raven and Xenofur came to the agreement that it would be best for Raven to leave the administration team. Two other mods followed him, as they'd only been on the team due to being friends of his.

It is of note that in the time from her retirement until the moment when she changed the root password, she had not done a single administrative talk or decision. Currently Nadia is not listed on fchan's front page under the "Contact" section, due to the fact that all administrative decisions are still only being done by Xenofur, while she restricts her actions to advising him and the mods. Due to being dismissed by Xenofur Raven is also unlisted, leaving only Xenofur as the remaining Administrator.

   
Sage Nadia

Despite these claims, things have changed four months later without an update on the frontpage. (Due to laziness on Xenofur's part.) Nadia recently posted on the site's discussion board, using the red "administrator" text for her name, declaring that incest threads were now temporarily forbidden to be posted, due to the drama and rule circumvention springing up around them. [1][2]

Nadia's viewpoint[edit]

Nadia made the following comment early on in her adminship of fchan:

   
Sage Nadia
Being a full time artist is more work than even being an intern in an ER. It is harder and more competitive than just about any other work you may find - Sage Nadia
   
Sage Nadia

Recently, in the discussion section for this article, Nadia finally revealed the meaning behind this statement:

   
Sage Nadia
First off, it was "Full Time Artist" not "Furry Artist".

Second, I said "More Work" not "More Stressful".

Being I have spent a great deal of time dealing with peoples of both professions, I have somewhat of an insight into this.

Being an intern means you are still learning. You may hold a life in your hands, but you are still being watched over by and coached by full doctors and surgeons. They are there to help you learn. They will step in and take over if you make a mistake, or even if they see you are about to make a mistake. That is the key difference. You draw a paycheck and have people to help you. People who know what they are doing and have a vested interest in seeing you succeed.

The art field is similar, but in many ways different. Some artists, professionals, go to college and universities to learn. Just as those who wish to be doctors, they learn a series of basics. Color theory, composition, life drawing, and such which are all required to have a fully rounded artist. These are taught by people who are often artists themselves as well.

Unlike the doctor path in life, being an artist means that when you leave college, if you even went, you are dumped out on the streets with a BFA, which the world is flooded with, and you have nobody to help you, shelter you, give you a paycheck, correct your mistakes, or stop you before you make them. You are, in effect, on your own.

You have a choice. Get a job, which means you are no longer a full time artist, or make it on your own. Something which few out there ever manage to do. They instead often end up living in their mother or grandmothers basement, trying to figure out why the latest work they did is drawing praise from all of their friends, but no gallery or even private buyer wants it. No one around them can help them. Because, most of them are not artists and have no clue. And if they are, they do not want to give away their secrets. Every sale to another artist means one less for them, which means the difference between steak, Hamburger Helper, or ramen for a month.

Even if you have good friendly help and other artists willing to work with you, the higher up you go, the more skilled you get, the less you have in people with the same skill who can be of assistance. But you now get the added stress of working to stay ahead, to not get stale, and keep people interested in works which are growing steadily more expensive every day. Not forgetting to mention, of course, that there are thousands, if not more, people just like you who would love nothing more than to see them finally fail and have to go work at a burger joint, and who make it their life work to do it for the lulz.

Finally, my favorite point.

People need medical care. It is a secure job, and you will always have someone sick, hurt, or dying.

Art is a luxury. They do not need it.

   
Sage Nadia
  1. Talk:Sage_Nadia#Citation_regarding_Sage_Nadia_to_Nadia