VCL
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| VCL | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author(s) | Founder: Brian W. Antoine
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| Website | |
| Status | Read-only |
| Launch date | November 30, 1995 |
| Genre | Multimedia archive |
| Rating(s) |  |
The VCL, previously short for the Velan Central Library, popularly known as the Vixen Controlled Library, was an archive of pictures and stories centered around anthropomorphic characters.
History[edit]
The site was founded by Brian W. Antoine as the Velan Central Library - initially, just his private art archive as an FTP site, named after Velar, a location from The Family nas Kan stories. Around 1999, a mirror run by the Ctrl-C computer club opened at the University of Linköping in Sweden, to which the vast majority of traffic was sent.
In January 2005, the Swedish mirror had to be taken down at short notice due to concerns over "objectionable content". Distribution was temporarily continued using a combination of the existing U.S. mirror and Coral cache network, but two more U.S. sites were created a month later. As of September 2011, the Swedish server run by Snout no longer hosts the VCL Forums. The Nas-Kan and Orcas mirrors run by Brian and Keiko also appear to be down as of June 2014.
The VCL used to be the world's largest furry art site, with around 40 images uploaded per day in January 2004, or 15,000 a year;[1] as of 2014, while the site was still maintained,[2] there were just a handful of daily uploads.
The VCL had a wiki, which was lost due to a crash without backups and rebuilt sometime in May-early July 2008.[3][4] It was later overrun by spam[5] and taken down entirely some time in 2013-14.
VCL's account creation information has been offline since circa late 2013.[6][7]
As of 9 October 2023, us.vclart.net is no longer reachable. An archive of the art files - not including artist descriptions or dates - exists at vixencontrolled.net.
Structure[edit]
The archive's structure was dynamic (by Web 1.0 standards), with pages in index format with sub-indices and directories. The new art page could be listed by order of the date they were uploaded, or alphabetically, with each page holding a limit of thirty image thumbnails per page. Indices were updated every half-hour or so. The individual directories of the artists were similarly arranged.
To help browse new additions by the site's thousands of artists, VCL users could use the the VCL Sieve. The Sieve was a filtration system which allowed browsers of the site to pick-and-choose those artists they wanted to see and those they did not. The act of filtering on VCL was referred to as "skulling". The term reflected the site's block button, a small graphic image of a skull over a black semi-circle.
It contained over 320,000 images as of July 2008.[8] A significant portion of the VCL's content was of an adult nature, and its quality varied widely. VCL content rules forbade fan art from being added to VCL.[9]
Funding[edit]
VCL was supported by donations and by Ch'marr. Those who donate receive a button.
VCL began displaying ads through Project Wonderful in July 2008.[10]
References[edit]
- ↑ VCL New Artwork 570 in 14 days (as of 14 January 2004)
- ↑ It moved! I saw it move! - Ch'marr, VCL forums (6 June 2014)
- ↑ VCL Wiki before crash (1 May 2008)
- ↑ VCL Wiki after crash (9 July 2008)
- ↑ Recent Changes - VCL Wiki (24 May 2013)
- ↑ Apply -VCL Wiki page, latest online version, archived November 3, 2013. VCL homepage "Join" link has pointed to us.vclart.net/wiki/Apply since then (and before). Retrieved July 13, 2018.
- ↑ VCL file not found page (was Apply -VCL Wiki) archived July 6, 2014. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
- ↑ VCL Artist List - 4663 artist/authors, 320221 images, 5380 other files as of July 23, 2008.
- ↑ Content Rules - VCLWiki archived 2010 June 11 at archive.org's Wayback Machine. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
- ↑ Project Wonderful - advertise on VCL - Furry Art! Retrieved July 23, 2008.
See also[edit]
- VCL Horrors (purged)
- VCL Horrors Wiki (deleted)
External links[edit]
- VCL on Livejournal (abandoned)
- VCL on Livejournal (staff, abandoned)
- VCL on Twitter (no activity since 2014)
LiveJournal communities[edit]
- VCL Pick of the Day (abandoned)
- The Weird, Wild, & Wonderful of VCL (abandoned)