deviantART Politics

And another thing.

2006-07-25T08:44:00.000-04:00

http://spyed.deviantart.com/journal/9482537/

At least you're giving us the ignore and delete features you told us about a while ago, spyed. But seriously, it sounds just like the help desk got upset because they had too many tickets, and decided to moan at you until you said 'FINE, let's let them solve their own problems'. Now, this could work out pretty crappily. Let's draw up some hypothetical situations here, shall we?

An art ripper posts a few stolen drawings on his page. General deviant X comes walking down Devious Lane, and sees a piece of art that belongs to someone else. He politely notifies Ripper of his faults, and how to remove them. Ripper gets all touchy like every good ripper, and blocks Deviant X from his page. Deviant X either does one of two things:

file a help desk report, which is what the staff expects to happen
or
rally up his friends to launch a freaking war against the ripper, complete with off-site taunts to his Myspace, other forums he visits, and other things.

Now, what do you think the staff would say in the second one? I'm willing to bet that they'd lay back and yawn 'sorry, it's off site, and it's also apparantly personal. We'll take away the drawing, but you have to solve the conflict yourself', and a blocking war ensues.

Seriously, if it's too much work, give up on the "having two people makes communication easy!" ideal and just recruit another ten staffers to man the help desk. It may seem like work to you, but it will affect the community positively.

Loosening up the noose

2006-07-25T08:27:00.000-04:00

http://spyed.deviantart.com/journal/9479277/

It was an interesting read - I'll give you that. The staff's been a bit harsh with punishment, so I'm actually glad to see a change in the way things are done. But the late Subversive-imaginati's got a point, and I personally don't see it as a reason to ban. It's kinda hypocritical - saying you'll be more lenient, and then ban someone for criticizing you. Nobody tell the staff about me, then.

But back to the journal. "Creativity is at stake. I realize that, our team realizes that, and we take that topic quite seriously." is an interesting line. It's the timeless art vs. community argument, where both are just as important and the offset of one affects the other. Unless he's talking mostly about ripped fanart and less-than-tasteful nudes, I'm not sure how 'creativity' comes into place. It'll be, however, interesting to see what goes on with this.

And, this little number:

"I'm not even going to read what I just wrote

That's a big step for me. I'm just going to post it. That's it. It's even a nice metaphor for the overall entry!"

This doesn't help my faith in the staff at ALL. Especially the fact that he points out that it's a metaphor. He's closing his eyes, holding his breath, and stepping into the unknown. All hell could break out there, and he'd be screwed more than he was when he 'terminated' jark. Or, devious life could be improved greatly, and he'd be loved and worshipped. He's taking a big risk here - which I admire - but putting half of deviantART at stake - which I don't. I'm hoping, of course, for it to at least break even, but I'm not even sure how probable that is.

Then again, Subversive-imaginiti's got a point. No matter what you do, there'll always be complainers, and you've gotta learn to tune them out. If they don't like it, send them somewhere else.

The more I think about this, the more it seems like a publicity stunt to get the staff loved more.

Review of the v5 preview.

2006-07-20T16:59:00.000-04:00

Before anyone talks: I know I'm reviewing a preview. They can change things, but the major points I'm going to go over are most likely static.

I've kept quiet for a while, seeing as there hasn't been anything worthy of posting. There were a few things that irked me, but nothing significant enough. Finally, around an hour ago, Spyed gave me some material.

http://news.deviantart.com/article/21237/

Go read that if you haven't.

Well, we've got a set release date finally - August 7. That was the day they released v4, too - can't say about the earlier ones. But it's good to finally have something set in stone.

As for the big change - the look and feel of the site. I gotta say, I loved the original preview. It looked beautiful - it was a change, but it was welcomed. And people in the forums cried and cried. I'm not much for change, but I really liked this. And the journals were emo that dA would be less gray and grayer and more colorful. Then, about a month ago, the staff reacted and made it just as gray as it is now.

Great.

Something that worried me right away was the ability to search the forums. We've got just enough thread necromancy to suit dA. We don't need more. This will be hellish, old debates about abortion from 2003 being revived to thousands of posts. Wrong move, dA.

The new News system, however, is oddly appealing. It's something new that deviantART hasn't really focused on.. ever. And it's good to see they're putting their energy in new places instead of giving us more bugs in the search.

The new Today, er, todAy, page is available in the v5 preview. I don't like it for an assortment of trivial reasons.

"Big thumbs" for everybody is a bold move. To be honest, that was all that pulled me to get a subscription, except maybe the enhanced Message Center. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with as perks.

"Embed tags for mid sized thumbs (the 300 pixel ones) - hot link art where embed tags are supported! Available only for works that are deviantMOBILE enabled." Oh god. This isn't very large an issue, but I guarantee at least ten deviants will get into a huge, huge fight over this.

"Moods; my favorite new feature!" Spyed, buddy, I gotta say we're very, very different people. I detest this. Maybe I'm just all emo because people won't be subject to sarcasm anymore, but something about this seems horrible.

My overall reaction: Eh. It's got some good stuff, some bad stuff, and some stuff that's going to cause riots. It'll be interesting to see how the community reacts, although now it's just 'oh looks great!'. I'll be back on August 7 - if not before - to offer my opinions on everything.

Firefox "goodness"

2006-06-20T10:12:00.000-04:00

http://forum.deviantart.com/devart/adstatus/656085/

Oh man, they're in for it now.

No clue what I'm talking about? Ever go into the Complaints forum? Half the time, there's a thread with some pissed-off dude going on about how he hates the fact that the world of Firefox is being forced on him, a lowly IE user. (I'd say Opera or Safari, but nobody really uses those anymore.) And when people give him reasons to switch, he still claims to not care and be happy with his little Explorer. Sure - do whatever you want.

You see, people advertise what they like. Or at least they should, in my opinion. And a good amount of the people with sites use Firefox, so of course they're gonna advertise. IE people (as well as the other browsers) either don't have much authority in the internet world or don't spend it properly.

Haha, I just imagined an IE ad campaign. "Hey everyone, switch to IE! We've got.. uh.. hold on, i'll think of something."And if that were to actually launch, it'd be pretty funny.

But yeah. Two big portions of deviantART are in for a world of trouble. The admins are gonna be harassed by the nonfoxes for advertising their browser of choice. The un-Firefox people are probably gonna get banned or something for bothering the admins, which could lead to people proclaiming "OMFG BROWSER RACISM, DEVART IS EVIL". Me? I'm gonna sit back and enjoy the happenings.

Good luck, admins. You'll need it.

devART Horrors

2006-06-15T11:32:00.000-04:00

GAH. I hate them.

If you've never heard of them, they're a livejournal group bent on making fun of every crappy post on deviantART. And they cause more flamewars than the Jark/Spyed thing did. Yes, it's that bad.

You see, upon first glance it seems sort of harmless. It's all "This picture doesn't look like this character!" and such. But hours later, you hear about it on the forums or the Today page. And people are absolutely devastated about it.

Now, who's to blame here? EVERYONE, but mostly the LJ group. It's a cycle:

1. Deviations get posted on devart_horrors.
2. Deviant finds out. If he is cool, he ignores it. If not, go to step 3.
3. Deviant recruits everybody he knows to flame devart_horrors, posting about their evils on every bare scrap of journal and comment. Hundreds of people get personal attacks on both sides, which leads to a massive flamewar.
4. Either admins break it up, or it dies out after a month or two, but a grudge is still held. The lightest point in the offended's direction results in another huge flamewar.

NOBODY WINS. All that comes out of it is amusement for a handful of people running the site. Meanwhile, hundreds of deviants get upset because someone didn't like their art. Everyone else (the spectators, or maybe bystanders would be a better word here) gets fed up with them and rants about 'em in Complaints or something.

This is evidence enough that devart_horrors is essentially Satan. Come on, guys. You've had your fun. Now quit ruining the site for everyone else.

Cleaning up Suggestions

2006-06-12T12:19:00.000-04:00

The Suggestions forum is one of the most unorganized parts of the site. And everyone contributes to the chaos - not just the admins or the deviants in this case. Everyone is to blame.

I went to the forum and screenshotted one page-width of the site. There were 24 posts. My goal is to find out how many of them are worth reading.

It's long, but it's got a message that can help us all. Show your idiot friends and help clean up the Suggestions forum.

The first one goes over the recent removal of the pages of banned people. It's the same argument that has gone on for a few months. Old.

The second suggests something that's coming in dAv5.

The third wants a highly-unneccesary subforum - Television under Entertainment. Look, if they do that, they'll need ones for movies and plays and stuff. And then everything's disorganized, which leads to flamewars over where a certain thread should go.

The next one has someone freaking out about the diference between anime and 'western cartoons'. It's been done before.

Number five is a good one - requesting a login box on the full-screen ad page. It might've been done before, but it's an idea that'd probably benefit everyone.

Six is an old one. Some guy wants music on the site. Hey, everyone does. Even I did back when I joined. But I soon learned the truth - the site can't handle it. While music IS art - they're in no way denying that - there's no room on the site. Bandwidth: Crash! Lawsuits over silly copyright issues: Happen! Chaos: Everywhere! It'd be hell if we had music. Stick to Dmusic and Purevolume.

Seven's okay. They want Fireworks brushes. I'm not sure how many people'll use the category, but hey - it can't be any less than the Font gallery. I'd put this in the keeper section.

Eight wants the option for easy managing of friends. But it's important to note that the friends management options do nothing for you unless you have OCD.

Nine wants a little 'you already +fav'd this' button. I'm pretty sure there's already a feature recently added that tells you. By recently, I mean yesterday or the day before. Which is when this was posted.

Ten I wasn't really able to understand. I think he wants an archive of messages. That'd be redundant and useless and site-exploding. No to you, sir.

Eleven is worthwhile, even if it's mostly bolded. This guy wants to be able to view all deviations with 'advanced critique welcome' selected. This would REALLY help out those crazy comment revolution people.

Twelve wants quilts. Sure, have quilts. That makes four good threads.

Thirteen similarly wants an assemblage category. Like seven and twelve, why not?

Fourteen is an idea that just came out of nowhere. They're all 'deviantART you should give us scholarships'. And his definition of scholarship is a check for 200 bucks, which is probably all the site makes anyway. Not that I'm saying we need more ads.

Fifteen wants to make the site more like SheezyArt, or even worse - Myspace. Ugly CSS is good for personal websites and Myspaces, but I'm pretty sure nobody wants hot pink all crowdin' up their art.

Sixteen wants an old feature back - rating. This was abused and pointless, according to the first poster, and is therefore is a bad suggestion.

Seventeen I didn't understand. It's a lot of rambling about scraps and webcams and stuff. It's not a good idea.

Eighteen is some guy who needs to know how to use the internet.

Nineteen is a good idea that has been suggested dozens of times but still doesn't exist - favorite disabling. Add it to the list!

Twenty was in the FAQ. Right-click disabling is ineffective. Ever hear of print screen?

The deviant in thread 21 wants some weird contest thing that barely affects deviantART and more the runners of the contest. So let's ignore this.

22 wants the forum to be more like PHPBB. He sucks.

Twenty-three I don't understand at all. Someone help me.

24 is a stupid thing. Let's shoot down each point individually!

1. No. THat's spam, and if you can't afford to take three minutes out of your life to show a friend the site, you don't deserve to be here yourself.

2. No. That exists already.

3. No. THat's Myspacesque.

In all, we've got six out of twenty-four threads that are worth posting. The rest of them were redundant, stupid, or incomprehendable. That's a sign that something's wrong:

- the community is full of idiots
or
- the admins are lazy and don't lock enough threads/ban enough people

And I would say that I'm perhaps being a bit elitist in that statement except for the fact that most of the wrong ones can be avoided by READING THE THREADS AT THE TOP or USING COMMON SENSE.

how to submit a suggestion:

1. Come up with an idea.
2. Say your idea to a friend who is not drunk and/or high. If he thinks it's okay, go.
3. Read the stickied threads. If your idea's in there, don't post it.
4. If you passed those tests, post away.

By following simple instructions, we can make this place a lot better.

Nazi-bashers

2006-06-01T11:46:00.000-04:00

I haven’t had many good things to say during the short time this thing has existed, but I’m gonna change that now. Upon reading this week’s Community Development update, I was reminded of the thing I love most about deviantART’s policies: absolute freedom.

They’re open to everyone. Not an artist? Not a problem. Have fun with the community. From a country three people have heard of? Yeah, that’s cool with them. Oh, you’re a racist/fascist/nazi? All right, just don’t take action and you can stay.

See, if I were the leader of a huge community like this, I would immediately start banning people I don’t like. I’ve gotta hand it to the early admins who enforced this, as well as lolly for carrying it out.

The people with the petitions lolly talks about need to stop, but I see where they’re coming from. I can’t really blame them, since I’d want those people out if I were at the top. But three things are wrong:

The admins have been able to put up with it, they should too
They’re not doing anything wrong – in fact, the petitioners are for spamming every interactive aspect of the site with their Petition Online crap
Online petitions aren’t valuble at all (for more on this, read this excellent livejournal entry)

This was still a rant of sorts, but it was geared toward part of the community rather than the admins. In closing, why the hell haven’t these people been IP banned?

(oh no i'm defending nazis don't ban me)

Better than viral media, it's MN@ comments!

2006-05-23T19:44:00.000-04:00

http://comments.deviantart.com/2/20912/262777870

In.

TEARS.

LAUGHING.

The MN@.

2006-05-18T08:03:00.000-04:00

The MN@.
When dAmn first came out, I immediately took a shining to it. It was amazing to be talking with people I recognized and people I'd never known before then in real time without the aid of an instant messenger. Though some of my.. colleagues and I weren't so happy about the administration, we were assured that since it was still in beta, there were hundreds of changes coming.

Some time later in 2004, or in early 2005 - I don't quite remember - the MN@ was launched under the code name 'dAmn Army'. It consisted of a lot of familar faces: some were previous admins there, some were just in #devart a lot. But it was pretty good. They interacted with the users in both official and unofficial chats, they were really great in #help, the were just awesome overall. They even staged events in mid-2005. Who remembers that big Thumbshare-like event? Or the official trivia game? Hey, even that birthday thing. Of course, that was after the big Jark/Spyed controversy, and a lot of MN@s quit before that, but the ones who stayed in did a pretty great job with that.

I just noticed something. MN@ is probably the most disposable job on dA. People join it in September, and they're out by early November. We get new waves of MN@s every six or eight weeks. There's something wrong here.

The MN@ just hasn't been the same for too long. In their beginning they were all 'oh hey look at all these cool things to do we're setting up for you'. And now they're just boredly sitting around #Clowntown and #devart waiting for something to do.

"Oh, but they have events," you say. "You can't forget about the featured chats!" Sure I can. They're a cheap way to get publicity and make people think you're workin' hard as always. Here's the requirements for setting one of those up:

1. Have an @ before your name, or some other sort of symbol more respected than = and those below it. If not, make sure you have a familiar name.
2. Go to the Today page and scroll to the 'popular deviants' category. Look for one with some sort of one of said respectable symbols - admins are preferred, but seniors work.
3. Send a note saying the following:

Hello, deviant! You seem to be a role model on deviantART for these reasons:

- Your art is well-known and you have a loyal fanbase
- You help people in deviantART
- You are an administrator

I was wondering if you would like to come to #FeaturedChat on Sunday, (date) at (inconvenient time) and answer questions for about an hour.

Love,

4. Make a news article about it, and encourage the selected deviant to make a journal about it.5. Wait until Sunday rolls around, get half the dA staff to yell it in #devart and join #FeaturedChat. They won't do anything, but if you don't want to work you can have them promote and demote people accordingly.

That's it. People in unofficial chats even hold their own featured chats as a way to get publicity. That's just what the MN@ wants - everyone to say "oh they're working!".

And this seems to have been on the uprise lately. I feel sorry for the first guy at devCAST - each Saturday and Wednesday he has to say the same line. "There's a featured chat coming up with (deviant) on (day) at (time). They want you to get in the room early and type your questions in advance."

I think I'd connect this to the recent rejoining of chix0r as head staffer. Since then, there have been at least one of these every week. It's starting to drive me crazy.

Actually, something abuot chix0r has always bothered me. Maybe it's her irratable disposition when being in #devart, maybe it's her little fanclub following her everywhere, maybe it's because she kicked me as a small child deviant.

There's one point I had in mind at the start of writing this article, but I haven't gotten to write it yet, so I'll do so here. In early 2005, when the MN@ came out, I had figured I wanted to try to get a job with one when I was old enough for the role. For the past week or so, I was reflecting on that and disagreed with it. After writing this, I'm starting to have third thoughts. The MN@ in a pretty terrible position - they're not doing anything. I see why people keep quitting - it's so monotonous. Maybe if someone with a little power (unknown deviants rarely have their ideas supported by the staff, no matter how good they are. disagree? read the suggestions forum.) brings up an idea to have the chat admins do something other than watch over #devart and #help, and occasionally #featuredchat, dAmn'll be a happier place.

COME ON, MN@. ALL WE WANT IS A LITTLE VARIETY.

Advertising update

2006-05-12T19:40:00.000-04:00

Read http://forum.deviantart.com/community/complaints/629901/13782552, to which I respond, "Oh".

I'm still waiting for answers on the forum ads, though. Maybe the news ones as well.

Ads.

2006-05-11T00:16:00.000-04:00

Look at that, deviantART's got popups.

With the steady increase of ads, we can only assume this is not a great time for deviantART. Didn't lolly just say he "thinks this community is looking better than it has in years"? Yeah, I'm thinking the administration's tearing their hair out behind the scenes.

But back to the ads. Remember a few months ago when that guy named spot showed us his new full-page ads? But it's okay - he assured us it's just for the people who don't have accounts. And there was a little dispute, but nothing too big. The good thing was that he told us what was going on.

Actually, let's back up a bit. Way back.

Who remembers when there was only one banner ad on deviantART? Just one at the top? THOSE WERE THE DAYS. Yeah, we had ads. But they were acceptable. They've gotta make money somehow, and nobody's shoving them in our faces.

Then came the deviantART notices. I can't remember if these were announced or not, but it wasn't too bad a change. And they were advertising devious things, like subscriptions and print accounts. It was acceptable.

Then the news ads. Maybe I'm the only one irked by them, but I really hate how the first fifteen lines of these articles are pushed to the left by some girl in a hat and sunglasses. For the longest time, it was the same ad hundreds of times.

Next, deviantART figured since people were cool with the news ads, they took the same concept to the forums. Big, ugly Google Adsense blocks started appearing at the right of every first post, which drove people insane. I remember liquisoft's post on one of many threads on the subject - in it, he talked about how advertisements were meant to attract people to the stuff being advertised, and how these Google ads weren't doing their jobs since not only are they in such a terrible position, the ads are based entirely on the content of the page. So I could write a thread on cats and there'd be three or four text links yelling about cat food and pharmaceuticals to the side. I hate dA for putting them there, but I highly doubt they'll be up for very long. They won't be making money off them.

Now, back to the subject I started off with - popups. I've gotten some myself, and people I talk to have as well. Forum whores have passed it off as spyware, but I've encountered about fifty people having the problem. Either there's a huge adware epidemic we haven't heard about, or deviantART's trying to secretly gain more revenue. This is an even worse idea than the forum ads - not only are they largely unneccesary, they're forcing themselves in our faces.

I sent a note to spot three or four days ago outlining all these points, and explaining that I just want to know what's happening. What crisis is deviantART going through, and what can we do to help? And why don't they tell us instead of 'stealthil'y shoving ads everywhere we look?