Yerf (art archive)

Yerf was probably the furry fandom's best known exclusively non-adult art archive of its time. Formerly known as the Squeeky Clean Furry Archive, it presented itself as the benchmark in its class for the last ten years, due in part to the rising skill level required for admission.

The site was a good place to find the early works of many well-known artists.

Lengthy downtime over 2005-6 and competition from newer archives resulted in loss of popularity among both viewers and artists. As of early 2009, the domain yerf.com redirected to the Yerf Historical Archive, hosted by ArtSpots; it stopped redirecting in late 2009. When ArtSpots closed at the start of 2012, the archive was passed to GreenReaper.

Art policy
As indicated by the name, the SCFA was always distinguished by a strong PG focus. Around the time it was re-branded as Yerf, new policies were introduced concerning the quality of artwork.

At first, a large proportion of artists might still have qualified to enter, but the bar has been raised over time to a point where even reasonably good artists might face several rejections before being allowed in, if they managed it at all.

The long, usually six-month, mandatory wait period to reapply heightened this controversy considerably; some unsuccessful applicants believed this was sometimes applied as a form of punishment for failing to complete an application correctly.

This led to claims of elitism, which were (to an extent) ignored, as the majority of community members supported at least some level of quality filtering. Complaints about the speed of the review process were also frequent, due to the difficulty of getting qualified reviewers who could spare the time and effort to review submissions.

Controversy
Although a user called RobinLion warned people not to donate any money after the initial crash, as Yerf would "most likely never come back," and the money would instead "be spent on everything but Yerf," thousands of dollars were raised in donations.

Reports vary on whether the amount was closer to $2500 or $6000, and whether the money was spent on the site.

Volunteers who brought Yerf back up several times never received anything from their efforts, nor was the money ever refunded.