I think a good compromise would be to make social updates either attached to a "friends" feature where only your friends see them, or at least make it option for users who want to turn them off.

I mean, I think multiple characters are great. I don't have to log out when I'm switching between my alternate profiles! Which is good because I use multiple accounts on every other site and it makes keeping up on them 2x the hassle.

I think being able to promote stuff is great, but currently the way it's implemented is useless. The only thing it does is put up a little notification on your profile with no preview that no one is going to see or click on. Like I mentioned above, take all this social stuff, condense the social activity posts so they aren't as repetitive, and put it in some kind of dashboard that users can access through one or two clicks at most on the top bar. Give everyone a Tumblr style feed where they can see what their friends have reblogged or "promoted" and what they're watching and commenting on and stuff, instead of putting it all over userpages.

There's already a lot of social sites yes - Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr all exist, it's furry art sites that are in rare supply (well...good ones, anyway). Although I think including social stuff could be a great idea. I just don't know if userpages are the place for it. Like it's cool to see a social feed of stuff your friends are doing, but I don't know if it should be just anyone who can see all of your activity because it's a privacy concern.

Maybe keep the social aspect, but separate it from the userpages. Have a "dashboard" for it where you can see what your friends are promoting and commenting on and who they're watching like a tumblr feed that's personal to you. And instead of it being everyone you watch, make it the people you're friends with? that's how I'd do it. And I wouldn't bury it behind three clicks (menu > what's new > activity history), I'd put a link to it in the header bar.

Well it depends on you're showing favorites or not. If favorites are public then they're basically your promotes, sort of; maybe instead of a favorites gallery it should be a "promotes" gallery? I dunno.

In general, currently there are too many clicks to get to different things. There's an extra click to go to your profile, check new art, and do other stuff because of the dropdown menu icon. There's an extra click to see a user's favorites. Lots of things that feel ineffecient.

Here's one possible layout that keeps the whole social activity feed idea.

I still personally would prefer to not have the activity feed. I don't think most users care very much about seeing who you've followed recently especially if it's an artist's page and for many people the whole idea of everyone being able to track everywhere they've commented and everything they're interacting with is a bit too much of an intrusion, or if nothing else, most users don't really get anything out of seeing social updates on pages - they care about the content. But this is just a suggestion and my take on it.

I really think that currently, though, with the page being mostly focused on social updates, it's just too alien for most people who are considering this site as an alternative to other art sites

Well in the comment right above this... Status updates are almost useless because your watchers will never see them unless they go to your profile, and if you're browsing, they'll probably be buried under several "you followed x" notifications or some new art you've posted. There's no actual journals system where you can see a journal posted on the front of a user's page or look at their past journals. And since the comments section doesn't have comments that are nested properly and formatted I can imagine big conversations or posts with a lot of comments the comments section would be very confusing

I agree, that's a big problem with Weasyl. I don't know how people find content on Weasyl also, their search system is so bad. Sofurry kind of too, but sofurry is a lot better.

Actual journals are SO important. You have to go to an obscure tab you average user won't notice or think of much under "what's new" to see the "posts" thing and it takes three clicks to get there, and they're buried in amongst all the other social activity updates... It should take one click and the notifications for journals should be set apart and easy to see, like FA. Right now this site feels very impersonal because of the lack of journals, page shouts, faves, etc...like everyone is very disconnected.

I wanted add some things to this suggestion

• I made the profile text on the side a bit smaller. I think the font is a little too big currently, and in general on the site
• The icons in the "following" and "follower" section are smaller. I think they should be smaller and more of them can be fit in that area
• Most people don't have art that fits elegantly into a profile banner as wide as the current profile banner, and the dark gradient ruins the current banner anyway unless you scroll up, so why even have it if you have to scroll up? I think having a banner image that is a little less wide makes sense. You can also make it so you can scroll up and make it taller in the layout I suggested here if you like
• If you want to keep the social activity feed, I would suggest moving it to the sidebar in my suggested layout underneath profile info and above the "following" and "follower" icons. Also, collapse all the "aaros followed x" "aaros followed y" "aaros followed z" social updates into one: "aaros followed x, y, and z." I made a separate suggestion for this, but I wanted to add it here too; also I think it would be good if users could disable having everyone see all their activity if they want to.

Yeah.. I was bein a bit too lazy to bother adding gallery/faves to the picture, but that's where they're meant to be x)

Although it would be super ideal if the user page is sort of modular, like you can decide if you want to have gallery on top, or a featured submission, if you want a social activity widget on your userpage, so you can pick and choose what different elements show up on your page