User:Stratadrake/Fanart Central

Fanart Central is an online art community which allows artists to exhibit their works, as well as discuss the works of other artists through comments and forums. Commonly abbreviated by its members as FAC, the site is designed to accommodate fanart (the site ranks first on a Google query for "fanart"); however, original art by its members is also welcome.

History
Fanart Central was originally conceived as a fanart site for a South Park fan community in the year 2001, and was initially named "SP Fanart", founded by "Cstdenis" (His screen name, as his real name is not knownunknown by most members), the owner and webmaster of the site. Later, as the particular fan community dispersed, the site's theme was changed to general fanart, and its name changed to "Fanart Central". Fanart Central registered its domain name on January 18, 2004.

On May 19 2006, Fanart Central went offline for a short period, during which time a new version of the site's layout was revealed and unveiled. However, there were a number of technical problems during transition, and despite several new features, it was criticized for its color scheme too closely resembling deviantART.

Layout
Intended as a public fanart gallery, Fanart Central is structured to accommodate the various types or sources of fanart; most of its category heirarchy is divided up into sections for various anime, manga, cartoons, movies, video games, and so on. By comparison, while original art is also welcome, there are fewer categories accommodating it, mostly limited to fantasy or anthropomorphic ("furry") themed submissions, and a miscellaneous section for all other original art.

Approval process
Because of early and continuing problems with users uploading copyrighted content (such as official artwork or screenshots), as well as adult content not appropriately labelled and warned as such, starting in February 2004, Fanart Central required that all user submissions to the site be prescreened by site staff before being made available for public viewing. A group of staff members was assigned to oversee the task, and was deemed the "Approval Panel", or AP. This prescreening process caused a delay between when a picture is submitted and when it is made available for viewing (estimated at an average of eight hours), and was initially met with mixed reaction by FAC members.

Content policy
As a general public gallery, Fanart Central accepts a wide variety of content, provided that the artwork is an original creation by the artist submitting it (i.e., does not violate copyright). The site uses a content advisory and filtering system to allow viewers to filter out potentially offensive content (such as violence, nudity, or sexual content including hentai, yaoi, or yuri) by adjusting the settings when viewing a gallery.

Originally, the site imposed no rules on offensive content depicted in a submission beyond requiring that each submission be appropriately labelled for its content, however, since July 2006, a new rule banning explicit sexual content (similar to the policies already in place on deviantART or SheezyArt) in a submission was enacted, in combination with the launching of a sister site, Hentai Foundry (restricted to visitors age 18 or older) to handle such content. The announcement received a mixed reaction, despite clarification that the new rule applied solely to sexual content.

Other restrictions
In addition to its prescreening process by the site AP, Fanart Central also institutes a limit of three submissions per day, as a measure to encourage users to voluntarily decide which of their art they wish to select for exhibition in their FAC user gallery. As with the Approval Panel, this was also initially met with mixed reaction from FAC site and forum members.

Forums
Online forums have been a part of Fanart Central's design from its inception, as a channel for open discussion among its members. The forums encompass a variety of themes including suggestions for site improvement and bug reports, artistic discussion, current events, and entertainment; as well as community events such as user-run art contests, requests for drawings by other artists, and also role-playing.

Until July 18, 2005, Fanart Central's forums included a section called Unmoderated, intended for adult-oriented conversation (i.e. equivalent to the MPAA's R or NC17 ratings), or other volatile or controversial discussion. However, due to legal concerns arising from such content, the section was shut down and all content removed. A message summarizing the closure was kept in the Unmoderated subforum until October 2005, after which the Unmoderated section was removed completely.

There was also a section deemed "Spam", for miscellaneous discussion, however it was shut down along with the Unmoderated section for similar reasons as well as because of a controversy between a group of members and site administration; however, however, it was later replaced with a section called "Random" fitting a similar purpose but with an enforced limit on what level of content may be discussed.

Funding
Fanart Central derives most of its funding through the use of advertisements, which include Google-sponsored ads and banners to popups and sponsored links scattered throughout a page -- the latter of which has generated an occasional complaint by members.

As of February 12, 2006 Fanart Central unveiled various merchandise for sale via Spreadshirt, although there have been no announced plans to expand the product line or whether FAC will allow members to offer their own art for sale as well.