dA in ruins?

[SilentFyre]

(Added here because Xepher pointed me in the right direction. Thanks. :P)

If any of you are at deviantART and you haven't been following this, it is just crazy. I'll see what links I can scrape up for everyone here.

From what I understand, Scott Jaroff aka Jark, has been laid off of the deviantART staff. For those of you non DA'ers, Scott was a co-founder of DA. From comments he has made, it seems as if he had no choice in the matter. He clearly states they had cut off his dA email without his consent.

dA shows that they can and will delete commetns fi it suits their needs. They clearly state that they would never allow deletion of alteration of comments, but they have. Screenshots prove this:

Original: http://www.t52.org/deleted_but_archived_for_life.jpg
Afterwods: I can't find the screen for it, but it is now a 404 error.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/21139764/ Has been following the resignations from dA staff. I've counted over 8 and really don't want to get the real number. It is a sad thing indeed.

People all over dA are uniting together and saying, "This is bull." Many are on hiatus until August 7, dA's 5th birthday. The goal is to grind dA to a halt. Many deviants do not wish for deviantART to become more commercial than community. I honestly don't either.

dA has give so much to me no one would believe. When I started on deviantART in 2003 I believe, I sucked at art. deviantART gave me the motivation to learn how to draw correctly and try new things. If not for deviantART I might have never progressed. As soon as you know someone is actually seeing your art and can comment and help on it, then you know you've got to get to work. I wont say I am the best artist out there, because I surely am not, but I will state I have gotten better. After two years of being on dA, I have moved up from sketches in a sketchbook that follow no proportional las, to digital images, paintings and other traditional mediums.

the community of dA has offered so much to me as well. I have gained such everlasting friends as Sary, who I got to come here and apply. Aeyoqen from deviantART and I still correspond through MSN messenger and are deeply unnerved by all that is happening to dA.

If dA goes down the tubes I cannot say I will stay with them. I have my own site for a reason and can update it as much as dA if I lose dA. As of now, I am planning new features for the site because frankly, this is just getting annoying with everything that is happening on deviantART. The greatest loss will be the people, and I can't bring the people to my personal site.

I know this was a little crazy of a post. I expected it to be better but I am being rushed to clean the house. Unexpected guests. >.<

[tickyhead]

http://probingthetruth.blogspot.com/2005/08/subject-truth-about-deviantart.html
either this is a very, VERY sick joke, or it's worse than we thought. All I can say is HOLY CRAP this is F#$%ed up. Poor Jark, poor DA.

I figure this'll go two ways:
1) Spyed will sell his soul and become an evil demonic net dictator and Jark, after much training under waterfalls and such, will return to defeat Syped. They will fight long and hard, and spyed will eventually fall. Jark will then reinstate peace among the masses, and all will be returned to blissful paradise.
OR....
2) everyone will leave DA for one reason or another, except for the noobs who will drag DA down into the depths of net-hell with their crappy art and overuse of "omfglfmaowtfbbq liek uoy sutipd fga!!!!11". Jark will then move on to create an even better art community that all who supported him will flock to, and all will be returned to blissful paradise.

....yes, I do read a lot of fantasy stories, why?

[SilentFyre]

Either way I am totally with Jark. If I have to move communities, so be it. I want a community not a corporation. Spyed is making too much money off of us as artists and that is just morally wrong.

I just don't want DA to fall in the hands of Spyed. I want Jark to win or dA to fail. Simple as that. :/

[tickyhead]

Agreed. Spyed is a lying, decietful, greedy human being, and I'd rather that great site die than see it in his hands.

What's ironic is that I'm a loner on DA....

[SilentFyre]

Being a loner doesn't mean you don't know right from wrong. Sometimes I disappear from dA for large periods of time while I'm doing other stuff, btu it always cheers me up to come back to a few messages in my inbox. ^^

[Xepher]

I don't know too much about the DA situation... mostly secondhand reports and such, but it seems like a clear-cut case of greed to me. Someone decided "hey, we can make money here!" and all other concerns were forgotten. The other art site I used to love was Yerf.com which has now been down for the better half of a year. This is despite Dingo (the admin there) getting around $3000 dollars in donations for a "new server" and many offers of help with acutal coding and such. He just hasn't done it.

On the old forum, where Fyre originally posted this, I mentioned "plans." Truth is, it's not much more than an idea at this point, but for a while now, I've really wanted to run an art community site. Xepher.net gets a lot of applications from artists, but a lot of those have to be denied because the artist knows little to nothing of web design, and can't actually present their works without the website actually detracting from them.

I think that I could pretty easily code a system that would take the best features from yerf and DA. It would take a decent investment of my free time to do so. The question, as always, is would it be worth it? Would enough people be interested, especially given the number of art sites already out there. Honestly, I think I'd probably target it towards the furry market, filling the gap left by yerf, as that genre has a lot less selection. DA already has alternatives like sheezyart and such, whereas yerf's runner up is probably VCL, but... well my problem with VCL is they let anyone in, and have no standards for artwork. Thus, around half the "art" there is just very badly drawn porn. Eventually, if the furry specific one worked out, I'd want to try doing a more general site, and take on DA and such directly. I just don't think that one starting from scratch could compete in that league for a while.

I'm not looking for an elietist community, but I think there should be some minimum standards. I'm thinking about trying to work on an invite system, similar to how gmail was started up. Xepher.net isn't even a unifed site, yet the community here is pretty strong. Because of this, I think an art site that's entirely focused on the community would take of like a rocket. But there's no sure way to know but try... I'm just reluctant to spend that much free time writing such a system until I start finding some other interested people. I've already got the code for uploading, indexing, and auto thumbnailing written, and I could probably borrow a lot of code from xepher.net for things like authentication. In other words, no real challenges in the coding, just time to make it all work nicely together.

Thoughts and suggestions?

[SilentFyre]

Honestly Xepher, I would join your community anyday. I trust you to not think of money before the people's needs. I mean, heck, you give me and so many others free hosting just because you can. I still can't thank you enough for that.

As for how it is set up. I think an invite only to begin with is a great idea. I have a few artists from dA that I would hate to lost contact with and have great art. Aeyoqen is an awesome artist and has been thinking about hosting, especially lately because of what has happened to dA. I have pointed her in your direction and if you start up an art community, I think she would be one of the ones that would love to join. I can give you a pretty safe bet that Sary, my friend from dA that I brought over here, would join your community as well. I'm sure I could round up a few more if you wanted me to, but these are just the two I'm sure would greatly consider your offer.

However, having invite only might subtract a bit from the community. If it was open only to those who were invited, would this include comments? (This is assuming there is of course the comment feature.) What I mean by open for comments is asking would you have to be signed up to submit a comment. Elfwood doesn't require you to sign up to leave a comment, and in some ways this is a neat feature. It wouldn't overload the server with accounts for people just to comment and appreciate the art.

Another thing. When you say it is an art community, what types of art would be allowed? Are you going to allow photography, sculpture and literature in as well? I'm not saying this as if I think these aren't art forms, but some sites don't do submissions of this type.

As I come up with questions and ideas, I wil post them. At the moment I need to go find something to eat before my dentist appointment.

[Lei]

The basic problem here is the fact that Jark gave his fellow co-founders (although Angelo wasn't originally one O_o) a lot of freedom. I don't know why he would give anyone else the ability to kick him out of the staff team, but he did. And Spyed didn't even consult the most other administrators. (They were shocked too, for the most part) Matteo was the other co-founder. Everyone forgets about him a lot :

 Both have their sides of the story, and both have given up a lot for Deviantart. Scott worked on it behind the scenes and in the front lines. He's responded to questions and concerns quickly and efficiently, not to mention he was so stressed out he was and currently is on medication for the stressed induced the the website.

  Spyed has maxed out his credit card for deviantart. I really wish I could support both sides of the stories better, but that's about the only good thing I've heard about him lately

 I'm on Jark's side, personally. He's given his all for this, and they just booted him out. Spyed has said that
1) he can't say too much due to legal issues (his journal entry)
2) that jark's loss of position has almost nothing to do with the company, among other things (journal entry)
3) and as shown here that a certain "tip off" or what not has nothing to do with what happened to JArk..

 It might be the pop talking, but it seems like he's just contradicted imself with every statment.

[Gwyn]

If I have to move communities, so be it. I want a community not a corporation.

We're hosted on one ;p

[Xepher]

Fyre... to answer your questions:


As to what is "art" or at least what would be allowed. I think that, for a web gallery, we're really talking 2d images... that is to say, jpegs, pngs, gifs. No flash animations, no movies, no writings... I don't think I'd be opposed to someone posting a photo of a sculpture they made, same way I don't have a problem with scans of paintings. But I feel DA took a wrong turn when they started letting poems and such be posted as "art." I myself am a writer, many times more than I am an artist, but I have places I go for writing, and places I go for art. Lack of focus dooms most projects. I started Xepher.net with almost no focus at all, and I've been fighting ever since to narrow it down, as I've done so, it's grown tremendously. If I were to try a project like this art site, I'd try and do it correctly from the start, applying all I've learned about building and running a community here with XN.

I feel that the hosting for actual art would be "invite only" but commenting would be allowed for visitors. Whether or not they have to register a "visitor" account to post remains undecided. Mainly this would be for security concerns, because when you don't make people log in, you very quickly garner lots of spam in your comments. Just ask anyone with an open Moveable Type install about comment spam... it actually took down the whole server here a few months ago, before I put safeties in place for such things. The safeties just protect the server resources though, they don't block the spam.

Also, please realize that when I say "invite only" that doesn't mean a direct invite from me neccessarily, but like the gmail model, users will be able to invite their friends. And while they may, in fact, prevent some talented "outsiders" from joining, there's no rule that they can't make friends with a current member and then get an invite. In a sense, it'd be kinda like applications here. If you hang out in the community and start making friends, then it's really easy to get in. This just takes the impetus away from a formalized application process, and puts it directly in the hands of the community.

I actually have a rather complex social model designed for this, one that I've been thinking through over the years that should allow for all sorts of useful stuff. Specifically, because every member would be invited by another, there is a "hiearchy" of responsibility, but also of relationships. This, in a sense, makes for virtual neighborhoods and such... not that such a concept would be a very visible part of the site. Most viewers wouldn't really notice it even... but behind the scenes it allows for some very interesting methods for quality control, dispute resolution, and general jackass prevention. Part of what's sinking DA and Yerf, is that so much responsiblity is falling onto just a few individuals. I mean, Dingo is on a whole assortment of medications for various mental issues now, and according to Lei's post, one of the DA guys is on medication for web-induced stress as well. They're trying to hold the reins to a horse that's gone wild, and they're snapping because of it. Yes, they could (and I think DA does) just appoint a bunch of "admins" to go around and try and manage things, but then you end up trying to manage all the issues between the various admins. Instead of one wild horse, now you've got a team! If, however, you let the community self-select "admins" to speak for them on issues and to keep others in line, the horses are no longer fighting the rider, but are running free... but still a strong community (a herd?) though.

There's a lot of specifics I need to work out for the social model behind it, and the more I think about it, the more I realize I just might be able to do a general site from the get-go... letting the furry and other sub-communities be part as much (or as little) as they want. That would be the real beauty of this social/neighborhood model. At one point I had though about trying to move Xepher.net over to such a model, but I realize that, while some of us really are part of a community here, the majority of sites/users here just do their own thing in their own social circles. Trying to convert this place as it is now to something new would be grossly unfair to most of the people here. A new site though... *ponders* yes, an art site would be the perfect sort of community to use this model in.

For those curious for more details on the social model, I eventually gonna write up a short essay (whitepaper?) on it. For now though, picture it as a blending of absolute democracy, representation, and responsibility. People you invite in are, to some degree, your responsibility. Therefore if someone just sells invites, or brings in a bunch of jackasses, they themselves might be kicked out. Various sub-communities (neighborhoods) will have elected leaders... but those leaders can always be replaced by vote if they're not doing a good job. Anyone will be able to petition for a vote on nearly any issue... from banning a certain member, altering rules, to kicking someone out of office or asking for a changes in features/code. Nearly everything would be run by the community. With any luck, all I'd have to do is keep the server actually running, and maybe make some code changes here and there. I would never have to deal with adding or kicking people, resolving arguments, changing rules, deleting offensive posts, etc.

For anyone that's read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow, you know what Whuffie is... for those who haven't, think of it as karmic currency, or "quantified respect." It's very, very simple. Basically, you give a thumbs up to people you like/respect, and a thumbs down to those you don't. I haven't figured out the exact math... it may be a 1-5 thing or something in the end, but the basics principal is the same. Respect also chains... That is, being respected by someone who is themselves highly respected counts for more than the respect of a bum. Think of it in real life... If Donald Trump calls you a friend, that counts quite a bit compared to the beggar on the street calling you friend. But likewise, for trump... if he hangs out with bums, it's going to hurt is reputation and respect a bit. Not as much as it helps the bum though. In this sense, Whuffie is always being generated. It may hurt your standing a bit to give it to others, but if they're deserving, it's worth more, and once they rise in their status, it will eventually help you to be "friends" with them.


I know a lot of this sounds complicated, but almost all the complication is "optional" or behind the scenes. From the point of view of an actual user, the only real thing they're going to see is the Whuffie scores and the +/- buttons to sort of "rate" people. Just imagine how useful that would be in the average forum though... If you could just "bzzt" a jackass, and so could everyone else. A few stupid posts and by that time tomorrow, the jerk's standing is so low he's not even allowed to post anymore. And yes, I have "safeties" worked in so people can't just team up and abuse such things. Checks and balances throughout.


Okay, this is getting a bit long, so I'm gonna cut it here. Like I said, I'll try and write up a full explanation when I get time, but I am curious to hear your thoughts on what I've presented so far.

[SilentFyre]

First off, right on that you feel it shoudl be completely art. I don't think writing was highly respected on devaintART. DeviantART, to me, was a place for artwork, not literature. Also, dA never really made it easy to figure out what the writing was about. Sure, they categorized it, but precious gems are rarely found in an abandoned mine.

So far, I am really liking what you have in mind for this community. It looks as if you are taking your time and thinking through it carefully, making sure every end fits together. I respect that and can wait until you can gather all of your thoughts into a full explanation.

Honestly, when you said open invites like gmail, I was thinking open invites like gmail. I wasn't thinking applications to you, I shot straight to being invited by a current member. I have been on a Ragnarok Online server that did this, and they followed the same chain of reactions. You were responsible for who you invited. That was that. It even saved it to where you could view who you had invited. They made it to where you could only invite one person a week, and then after a certain period of time, you could invite like 3 a week. I don't remember the actual statistics. People risked being banned themselves for whom they invited. I don't know about you guys, but if I had to try so hard to get myself an invite, I would be careful about who I invited to join the community for risk of being kicked out.

Checks and Balances all the way. I hear you there. These Whuffie scores sounds like an interesting idea as well. If I were in this community, I would be glad to be able to immediately show what kind of person someone is to newcomers. Say a person visited other artists pages and left helpful comments as much as they could. I would give these people a happy thumbs up. People however who made a mistake in the community can easily be spotted by their ratings and hopefully that will make them more aware of their actions.

I'm starting to confuse myself so I believe I will end it there. To sum it up: I like what you are thinking and look forward to your future plans.

[Databits]

Honestly, when you said open invites like gmail, I was thinking open invites like gmail. I wasn't thinking applications to you, I shot straight to being invited by a current member. I have been on a Ragnarok Online server that did this, and they followed the same chain of reactions. You were responsible for who you invited. That was that. It even saved it to where you could view who you had invited. They made it to where you could only invite one person a week, and then after a certain period of time, you could invite like 3 a week. I don't remember the actual statistics. People risked being banned themselves for whom they invited. I don't know about you guys, but if I had to try so hard to get myself an invite, I would be careful about who I invited to join the community for risk of being kicked out.

Sounds just like vRO, or Valhalla Online. That's the server I was on the dev team for. Too bad I never got to get out some of my quests before the server was shut down. I had a quest in the works that was actually something other than the typical "scavenger hunt" method that other developers were making. The quest was going to add a new account global variable for alignment, then I was going to make use of it throughout many other things throughout the world.


As for this art site. It sounds good! I wouldn't be part of the production part of the commnuity (because my art skills have gone down the toilet since I haven't used them in over 5 years), but I'd sure register as a member to browse and make comments.

[SilentFyre]

Sounds just like vRO, or Valhalla Online. That's the server I was on the dev team for. Too bad I never got to get out some of my quests before the server was shut down. I had a quest in the works that was actually something other than the typical "scavenger hunt" method that other developers were making. The quest was going to add a new account global variable for alignment, then I was going to make use of it throughout many other things throughout the world..

Yes, It was indeed vRO. I was having a blank moment and totally forgot the name of the server.

If I have to move communities, so be it. I want a community not a corporation.

We're hosted on one ;p

I know and am very proud fo that fact. That's why I would join up with Xepher any day.

[Lei]

If I have to move communities, so be it. I want a community not a corporation.

We're hosted on one ;p

I know and am very proud fo that fact. That's why I would join up with Xepher any day.

Amen!

 Sounds like a great idea. I think visitors should sign up to comment, just to keep some of the spammers away, and so we could apply the whuffie system to them too; it's always good to know if you can respect this person's judgement. Also, although this might get (more) complicated, but what if you had to sign up for a visitor account first, and then the invitation would be sent to the account which, when activated, unlocked certain features if you agreed.

 Or that might be a little over the top. I don't know. I'm shying away from the majority of this coding stuff ^^

[Xepher]

Also, although this might get (more) complicated, but what if you had to sign up for a visitor account first, and then the invitation would be sent to the account which, when activated, unlocked certain features if you agreed.

 Or that might be a little over the top. I don't know. I'm shying away from the majority of this coding stuff ^^

Actually, that's how I figured it would work. You definitely don't want to just give artist accounts to someone who's never even taken the time to give comments to other people. I don't do that with X.N because here I'm granting actual machine accounts. For an art site, everything would be web only, and so I can manage user accounts in any way I design the system to do. I won't have to try and integrate all sorts of stuff behind the scenes like I do now, so "upgrading" an account to artist would be easy as pie.