Could I just do it? Not right now. My programing experience is python scripts and embedded systems and I have no knowledge of anything sysadmin or infrastructure.
People are always complaining about whats around and we have lots of smart techy people here, so why not?
furaffinity, DeviantArt, weasyl, SoFurry, InkBunnny… A more art and commission focused site as opposed to a forum (this), or micro-blog (Mastodon, twitter).
Each one has its own issues I’ve seen discussed.
FA, moderation, photography, and more recently a very ambiguous moderation change. Every few years they change something and people flee, but its where the most people are so most come back.
DA: AI scraping, art theft
weasyl: dead looking, no comments from developers for a few years now.
SF: old/awkward
IB: That’s where all the cub artists went.
I’m sure there are more, but this is what I remember off the top of my head.
Any thoughts on itaku.ee? I’ve recently started seeing some links there but I don’t know enough about how those sites work to judge it.
I think if I were to design a gallery site I’d probably base some aspect of it around the Fediverse instead of trying to create my own walled garden. People clearly enjoy posting on Mastodon/Twitter about their new art etc, so I would try to integrate any chat spaces onto the Fediverse directly to keep people from needing to duplicate their posts to many places at once.
I’m not sure how the logistics would work but I would also prefer to see the hard work of e621 not go to waste. Some sort of integration with it or even e621 adding more social features would be ideal to me. Any other site’s tags are just bad, and you’ll often run into things you don’t want to see.
for itaku, I couldn’t really find anything about who runs it. Their about page only refers to themselves, not even any admin or dev accounts on the site. Their roadmap and plan look decent enough, but without knowing anything about the background or philosophy its hard to know.
I think twitter is popular because of the ease of posting. Another complaint about FA is difficulty to post, especially many at once. I don’t post anything, so I can’t comment to that. As for fediverse, yes integration would be a bonus. Whether a fediverse site, or something that talks to it would have to be determined. A stand alone site has more capabilites to grow with certain features that would add value, such as an integrated escrow system for commissions, ability for subscriptions and direct payments. With the fediverse you have all the connections and integrations that are already there and should be able to integrate with them. You also have the plus and minus of dispersed moderation and communities.
In my idea, a good api would allow plugins and tools for the community to build integrations.