Yerf (art archive)

2005-11-17T01:15:30Z

63.205.89.130:

__NOTOC__[[Image:Yerf.png|right|Yerf]]
'''Yerf''' (formerly known as the '''Squeeky Clean Furry Archive''') is probably the world's best known non-adult [[furry]] [[:Category:Art archives|art archive]]. As of November 2005 it is down as a result of a disk crash in late December 2004.

*'''Addresses''':
**'''Website''': http://yerf.com/
**'''LiveJournal''': http://livejournal.com/communities/yerf/
**'''[[Wikipedia:IRC|IRC]]''': irc://irc.anthrochat.net/Yerf
**'''Forums''': http://forums.yerf.com/
*'''Administrators''': [[Dingo]], [[Rat (person)|Rat]], [[Scotty Arsenault]], [[Jedd Marten]]
*'''Operational dates''':
**'''Yerf I''' and '''Forums''': April 1, 1996 - December 27, 2004
**'''Forums''': November 10, 2005 - Present
**'''Yerf II''' reaches Beta status (http://204.152.189.132/archives/): November 11, 2005

== History ==

[[Image:SCFA.png|right|SCFA]]
=== SCFA ===

Yerf was initially founded as the ''Squeeky Clean Furry Archive'' by [[Rat (person)|Rat]], and hosted on his site, Rat.org. At that time it was little more than an ftp server, although it developed later.

At one point, a large proportion of the art uploaded to the SCFA was strongly influenced by [[Wikipedia:Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic the Hedgehog]]. Eventually, people got sick of so much derivative artwork, and Sonic-based material was banned, to the complaints of some of those who had been uploading it.

At some point, Rat wanted the site to have it's own domain (previously it was at rat.org/yerf). Rat chose Yerf because, being a generic term, no matter what direction the site took, the name could stay the same. At that time it was generally accepted to mean "a noise foxes made", and yerf.com was not taken, so Rat registered it.

[[Image:Yerf_old.png|right|Yerf]]
=== Yerf ===

The name change to Yerf occured in 1998 - but that is all it was, a name change.
Over time, the quality standards got stricter, and artists who were previously members of the SCFA were [[Wikipedia:Grandfather clause|grandfathered]] in, which became a regular cause of complaint for those who either felt that artwork by the grandfathered artists was inadequate, or (more often) people who had been rejected who looked to this art as an excuse to complain about double standards. When Rat moved to California, he was no longer able to keep his server up, and so it moved to [[Tugrik]]'s purrsia.com server.

On 10 July 1998, Rat [http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.lifestyle.furry/browse_frm/thread/60e8064c8c378d26 handed over] front end administration of the site to [[Scotty Arsenault]] - it had previously been run in part by [[Jedd Marten]]. At some point after that, Scotty handed it over in turn to [[Dingo]].

=== The Crash ===

On 27 December 2004, Yerf's hard disk [http://www.livejournal.com/community/yerf/42523.html signalled a failure]. [http://www.livejournal.com/community/yerf/2005/01/04/ Initial hopes] for a quick fix were soon dashed, and eventually it became clear that all of the data had been [http://www.livejournal.com/community/yerf/55386.html lost], although over $2500 was raised in donations. Worse, the hard disk contained the only copy of the Yerf archive software.

As of August 2005, Yerf is being rebuilt around a new core, the '''Squeeky Clean Art Archive'''. For now, members are allowed to post images on the community LiveJournal instead. The forums have also been re-opened. Once the core is back up, it should be possible to re-post the artwork, as some users had saved copies of the site before the crash. Design goals for this software are to preserve the clean page layouts and simple navigation of the original layout, avoiding the design excesses of other larger archive sites.

As of [[11 November]] [[2005]], most of the art from the original archive was reposted in a "read only" database, displaying artist names, then thumbnail pages in each artist's directory, of the art arrainged chronologically, and then finally the image. final page layouts and structure are TBD while work continues on the new gallery software.

[[Image:Censor_PG.png|right]]

== Art policy ==

As indicated by the name, the SCFA was always distinguished by a strong [[PG]] focus. Around the time it was relaunched 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 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.
[[Category:Art archives]]

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Yerf (art archive)