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I'm writing this short bit to clear up a couple common misconceptions about YiffNet, and give a sharing of differences between two channels: #furry and #yiff, which are two of the largest channels on the network.
Firstly, YiffNet (http://www.yiff.net/) is an
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network geared towards furry interests. The word "yiff" in and of itself has several meanings, one of which is "sex", the other is "enthusiastic fox sound". Basically, while the common usage of the word is "sex", YiffNet is an exception. YiffNet's origin came from the original administrator's desire to have a name for the network which was to mean "enthusiastic greeting", so he chose the term "yiff" which at the time meant that. Since then, the word's meaning has changed towards its most common present-day usage, which is "sex". However, the network name has remained the same, so YiffNet does not mean "SexNet", to summarize.
Secondly, a lot of people have a misconception of what channel is the main channel on YiffNet. There are typically three channels which newcomers to IRC/furrydom/YiffNet in general go to: #furry, #yiff and #lobby. I'll summarize each channel's intended purpose here:
 | #furry - This is the main channel of YiffNet and always has been, for going on six years now. This channel is a "central meeting place" for people with topics ranging from furrydom, politics, tech-talk, and general fluffy vapid roleplay. Nothing is discouraged unless a good enough percentage of people present seem offended, but no R/X-rated content is permitted. |
| #yiff - #yiff (http://yiff.n3.net/) was basically the original "anything goes" sexual content channel on YiffNet and has been around since circa 1997 or so. It originally had quite a fair bit of such content, and was a "free" (admin-less) channel. Currently it is "owned" and "administered" by a small group of people. In the four days (about 14 hours a day) I spent in the channel watching its activities, I never saw any such explicit sexual content. This channel is not the channel you will want to go into as a newcomer to this network. |
| #lobby - FurNation is a website which contains hundreds of artist
web pages. The owner of the site used to host a chat room on it which had a channel called #lobby as its "main channel". When the owner of the site decided to discontinue IRC services, he brought the channel to YiffNet. Currently the channel is still here, and tends to be a channel which new, inexperienced IRC users join. #furry is the "official" main channel for this, however. |
To settle a curiosity of mine, I decided to join #yiff for a period of several days to see if, indeed, the
behavior of the channel was more friendly and/or more interesting than #furry because of the permitted explicit content. #furry sometimes gets a bad reputation for treating new users harshly and/or being intolerant.
My discovery was that #yiff is actually by far amongst the most intolerant, hostile places a (new) user could spend time in on YiffNet. If people think #furry is bad, I will be telling them to try #yiff for a few days to see what "bad" really is in that regard. It's proof-positive that an administrative structure with limited ops and a charter does not work well on IRC.
I can't say anything about specific people, because I do not know the administrators personally. From what I saw about half of them were quite level-headed and neutral, which is how a channel admin
(administrator) should be. The remainder behaved egotistically, and broke the rules of their own charter more often than channel users did. Intolerance of cluelessness is fine, but telling someone what they can't argue about, then arguing about it yourself, doesn't make you look very good.
Such an administrative structure is also unnecessary. #yiff has more takeover attempts, floods and abusive users than #furry does simply because it has limited ops and an admin structure. #furry has not been taken over or mass-deopped in a long, long time, far longer than #yiff.
As for #lobby, I can't comment. I haven't joined that one yet.
So my advice: if you're a newcomer to YiffNet, stick with #furry. You'll learn a lot more and have more fun that way.
Any comments or questions - Email me.
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