No one person can tell the full story, let alone in a few days. Hopefully those who try in recent days will be collected.
This story focuses on FA as his legacy, and that's fair enough, being quite an achievement; as someone on IB said:
…while FurAffinity itself may not be the most flashy or well-built website, it always felt like home […] like a community.
We must remember that Dragoneer himself was not, as far as I am aware, a programmer - he was a system administrator - and thus he was not in a position to directly address any deficiencies in FA's codebase, nor to formally evaluate prospective contributors. This doubtless impacted the site, but may also have helped in the long run because he was forced to recruit a team for that purpose. He was also a furry artist (NSFW work), and this may have influenced many of his decisions - as could those he relied on around him. Frankly, few can appreciate the pressures of the job.
Some will perhaps suggest he might not have been the right fur for the job - just the one who happened to be in the right place at the right time. The thing to ask, of course, is would you a) have done any better, and b) chosen to spend the best part of two decades of your life/funds doing it?
I think he was trying to do what he thought was right to keep FA online, with viable staffing, sufficient hardware, funding, etc. And it has stayed up, most of the time, despite criticisms about certain ideals it left behind on the way. A lot of other sites fell by the wayside in that time.
No one person can tell the full story, let alone in a few days. Hopefully those who try in recent days will be collected.
This story focuses on FA as his legacy, and that's fair enough, being quite an achievement; as someone on IB said:
We must remember that Dragoneer himself was not, as far as I am aware, a programmer - he was a system administrator - and thus he was not in a position to directly address any deficiencies in FA's codebase, nor to formally evaluate prospective contributors. This doubtless impacted the site, but may also have helped in the long run because he was forced to recruit a team for that purpose. He was also a furry artist (NSFW work), and this may have influenced many of his decisions - as could those he relied on around him. Frankly, few can appreciate the pressures of the job.
Some will perhaps suggest he might not have been the right fur for the job - just the one who happened to be in the right place at the right time. The thing to ask, of course, is would you a) have done any better, and b) chosen to spend the best part of two decades of your life/funds doing it?
I think he was trying to do what he thought was right to keep FA online, with viable staffing, sufficient hardware, funding, etc. And it has stayed up, most of the time, despite criticisms about certain ideals it left behind on the way. A lot of other sites fell by the wayside in that time.
Regardless of how he made his calls, they had a significant impact - and some feel many of them damaged the fandom. But you also have heartfelt stories about how he helped out fellow site-runners in need. Many are just shocked - sure, he'd spoken of health issues, but nobody expected this. I was surprised, too; he was only two years older than me. Perhaps linked to his work, decades ago - more likely just bad luck and no NHS.
We had differences, but they were 'business, not personal' - at least, that's how I saw it, and I hope he did, too. Sad, and too soon.