DeviantArt Going Down the Toilet? (Opinion)

sad to see these comments all over the place lately, but it won't change a thing posting that comment here really? but if you needed to vent so be it. hehe

I was there today and spotted some killer wallpapers but you just have to let your eyes be drawn to the thumbnails and what appeals to your taste will pull you in for the zoom and download...

my opinion

Mark Smitra: HWat I find sad is someone to comming to another web site just to say how you don't like this or that web site.

I believe on free speach, but hey, let's think a bit more before creating a thread like this. For sure, is much easier to criticize then to do.

What do you think you will gain on making it?

I know Jark for over 2 years and I know how hard he and his crew works on that site (for free).

Problems, everybody has, DeviantART cares over 500.000 files, nope I didn't typed wrong, five hundred thousand files!

What you could do is to post a more construtive thread, or maybe giving a hand to the DART folks, you will see, thay are great people!

Its ur taste, im more interested in the skinning aspect of digitalization than the aspect of "art" even though i give apeak everyonce and a while, i hang out here because in my opion this is the best skinning site, but everyone has there opinion.

I think another increase in digital "art" is software pirating u can just go to some site and download any graphics program u want, If this didn't happen there would be alot more art and a lot less "art" just my two cents

When I go to the 'problem' sections at Devart and find image-theft to be the exception, not the rule, I'll happily make that one of my most-visited sites, no matter the level of artistry there. I miss it, actually. It was a wonderful resource that I simply can't, in good concience, use.

Sadly, posts like this look like site-bashing to them and they don't take the argument seriously. I made an almost identical post on their site several months ago, and the management's concern was that I hadn't been an active enough deviant to warrant complaining (I hadn't "led by example"). Unfortunately, what I was complaining about was what was preventing me from taking a more active role.

The artists whose works and likenesses are being illegally distributed don't have the obligation to police Devart's database to protect themselves, nor do I have the time to volunteer to do it for them. One would assume that Devart, themselves should have the responsibility to police their own content, considering their status as a for-profit, incorporated entity; profiting, if indirectly or inconsistantly, from said material.

I have a feeling they will be more interested in better stewardship soon, if they have any sense of self-preservation.

Okay, yes, I did need to "vent". But, ask yourself (as you did), "Why would someone post a gripe about another web site here?". Because, I have posted such a comment on their site (as have others), and they (with an attitude too, as far as I'm concerned) defend the "anything goes" mentality with fervor. Or, they gripe that they don't have the staffing to enfore things. There are threads related to some of the content on other boards as well, and guess what? Those threads are on *those* boards because the individual's complaints/comments have either fallen on deaf ears at DA, or they've been shot down. Personally, I'm convinced that their attitude is simply one of quantity not quality. If they aggressively started shooting down bandwidth wasting uploads, while a lot of work at first, the task would get easier with time. Yes, they might less content, but they'd attract more people who want to post and download quality content. I've read Frogboy's comments here about how tough WC is on wallpaper submissions. Good for him, and good for the site. I may not find 2,000 new uploads a day here in the wallpaper category, but at least I know I'm not going to find some moron picking his nose and calling it "art".

TreeTog is correct, DA is BIG, and does a fantastic job. I have found through the years that if one has an issue, to deal with site itself. Thanks to all for your fine work.

Mike

Mike, pretty much, that's my point. They're big, with a lot of their size (Treetog mentioned over 500,000 files) being worthless junk, and I think the junk to quality ratio is increasing daily. I'm not saying that any of the DA staff aren't good people personally. I'm just saying that in my opinion they should be a lot more critical of what's accepted on the site.

DeviantART IS big.

It also caters for and provides content for a different group of people....only 'parts' of which share similar 'content/interest' with Skinning sites such as Wincustomize.com and the user/s here.

What jark and the guys do at DA is done quite well, whether you can always agree with content choice or not.

It's one thing to find fault with a site and/or its management and post sentiments of dissatisfaction, quite another to try to see if something can be 'done' to enhance/improve your willingness to partake in what's offered.

'Fixing' a site's woes [if that is what is warranted] is much better done from within than without...

Although 'free speech' has been the almighty validator of much ill-will and angry dissent, it's only result is to engender feelings of splintering or segregation and division between the many sites with similar ideals/content/goals within our 'macro community'...

/me goes back to work for the UN....

Mark, you know the old saying about 'Art being in the eye of the beholder' (or something like that!), this is such a case.
Agreed, I find some of it less than appealing and a very small percentage bloody offensive, but some of the work is really classy.
As you headed this thread "opinion", don't forget, they're like butts ..... we all have one.

It is big for the single reason that jark et al have explicitely taken the stance not to moderate, ergo anything goes.

Though it's bad conduct to discuss about site X's misdemeanors on site Y, I can see why you say it here. Had you done that over there, you'd have been flamed into oblivion or just washed of the board by countless other threads.

In a way, I agree with everything being said here. To start, DA has become a bit slow over time and the layout has become harder to read, but it's still a good site. DA does have a lot to be proud of. It's not everyday you can make a website as sucessfull as they are, catering to the enourmous amount of people. People like different things. While I can't say I agree with every post at DA, I can say that everything thats accepted is in one way or another, Art. The way you make it sound is that Photography or Poetry is not Art. On the contrary, I am a poet and a photographer, and having a site I can submit that work to is great. But you must understand what you think is garbage, is someone else's masterpiece. I certainly believe that your perception of art revolves around Graphic Design (Pixeling) only. Art is so much more these days. DA represents all digial 'Cultural Art'...Which makes them unique. Unfortunately, you have to have an eye for more than one type of art.

It's a matter of choice. As it has been said, some sites have chosen not to moderate submissions, and therefore, anything goes. As desktop customizations gain in popularity, the amount of uploaded crap increases, even here. You should see the amount of submissions we reject. The difference is that we moderate wallpapers for quality and all submissions for content (we don't accept offensive material), while some other sites don't. There was a debate recently about white supremacist wallpapers submitted over at another site that they politically chose not to moderate.

It an administrative decision. Moderation or "free speech". We chose to moderate, others choose otherwise. The positive thing is that it gives users the choice, they can decide where to get their downloads in accordance with their own values or what they want. You don't like DA? No need to bash them, instead just go to the site that satisfies you best.

I personally stopped visiting DA a long time ago. But that's my own choice and I would never think of forcing it on anyone.

As others have said, photography is also art, and IMO, some people post these pictures that look bland to show others their photography skills and to receive feedback and suggestions to improve them.

I have to completely agree with Paxx.

Paxx and I agree!?!? I need to go mark this date down.

I appreciate everyone's comments. As craeonics said above, *this* kind of reasonable discussion would not have occurred on the other site.

Also, I have to respectfully disagree with Karlie. Artistic expression can take many forms, as can political commentary. (Frank Zappa comes to mind). But, there's a difference between creating expression, or voicing a political/religous belief, and just nailing something to a bulletin board. And, the latter is what I feel there is far too much of on DA. Also, I get the feeling that DA has become an open channel for every hormonally challenged teen that wants to post a picture of or for their boyfriends and girlfriends. So while I understand the many faces that art might take, I still believe DA is becoming more of a dating/teen angst/dumping ground, than it is an art site.

interesting..

my two cents for now: just because somebody made it doesn't mean it's art. it would take me a while to go into the qualities something needs to posess to actually be art, so i'll come back to this later... for now though, there's art, there's good art, there's [yes..] bad art, and there's stuff that isn't even art.

it's popular among some people, as a way of showing their vast intellect and broad-minded sensibilities, to say 'everything' is good.. or 'everything' is art. that's nonsense, of course.

i don't think that's what is going on at da though.. i think they've just decided to post it all and let god sort it out.. hehe

migellito wrote:

>i don't think that's what is going on at da
>though.. i think they've just decided to
>post it all and let god sort it out.. hehe

Exactly, Only they apparently haven't passed word on to God that he's been charged with the job.

this kind of reasonable discussion could very well have taken place on deviantART if you had approached it in a far different manner. had you posted an intelligent thread on DA then you would not have been flamed but would have had a reasonable discussion with a bit of interference here and there (cant help that).

deviantART is *NOT* concerned with quantity over quality. We choose not to moderate, as a standard policy, because we are an art community. We do, however, remove well over 300 submissions on a daily basis due to the content not being within reasonable standards. This does not mean it is removed due to it not being art but due to it not being in line with our policies.

deviantART now has 5 individuals assigned to policy violations. This means that they take the reports they receive from the community and act on those as well as browsing through various sections and removing what are blatant policy violations.

>Those threads are on *those* boards because the
>individual's complaints/comments have either
>fallen on deaf ears at DA, or they've been shot
>down.

...or the individual is *too afraid* to voice their opinion on deviantART. It generally has *nothing* to do with their complaints/comments falling on deaf ears but, more than likely, the administration making a decision not to act upon the suggestion(s).

>Personally, I'm convinced that their attitude is
>simply one of quantity not quality.

What convinced you of this?

>If they aggressively started shooting down bandwidth
>wasting uploads, while a lot of work at first, the task
>would get easier with time.

Keeping in mind that deviantART is an *ART* site, please define "bandwidth wasting uploads."

>Yes, they might less content, but they'd attract more
>people who want to post and download quality content.

We are not concerned with the amount of content that is submitted daily. If it drops a bit then it drops a bit. However, seeing as we are getting an increased number of submissions a day I would tend to believe that there are more and more people coming to the site to post content both with and without quality (in the eyes of everyone).

>I've read Frogboy's comments here about how tough WC
>is on wallpaper submissions. Good for him, and good for
>the site.

Good deal for WC. Great! They run their site how they see fit as does deviantART.

>I may not find 2,000 new uploads a day here in the
>wallpaper category, but at least I know I'm not going
>to find some moron picking his nose and calling it "art".

Of course you wont find that here. WC is *NOT* about *ART* but, rather, about *WINDOWS CUSTOMIZATION*.

Have you ever once brought up any of your concerns with the site administration?

jark wrote:

>this kind of reasonable discussion could
>very well have taken place on deviantART
>if you had approached it in a far different
>manner.

I did, and the thread was closed (by you, I believe) after about 8 comments. Nothing addressed, no discussion like you posted here, just a terse reply, and "thread closed".

>deviantART is *NOT* concerned with quantity
>over quality. We choose not to moderate,
>as a standard policy, because we are an
>art community.

I think that we basically have a difference of philosophy, and of course, it's your site, and it's successful, so naturally, you do as you see fit. However, there are museums and galleries all over the world that are considered to be part of the "art community", but that doesn't give anyone off the street carte blanche to hang anything they want on their walls. That's where we differ. Yes, DA is an "art community", and there's a lot of amazing stuff created by incredibily talented people. But not everyone's an artist because they can click "upload".

>...or the individual is *too afraid* to
>voice their opinion on deviantART.

Well, that's not me.

>It generally has *nothing* to do with their
>complaints/comments falling on deaf ears
>but, more than likely, the administration
>making a decision not to act upon the
>suggestion(s).

Right, and I *do* understand that the administration is totally within their rights to do what they want. DA is not a democracy, I understand that, but the success of any product or service depends upon listening to the audience/customer. Chances are, I'm in the minority on this issue, so the impact of me or people like me "tuning out" is likely to be of little consequence.

>>Personally, I'm convinced that their
>>attitude is simply one of quantity not
>>quality.

>What convinced you of this?

Photos of some guy's car sitting in the driveway, a photo of a girl sitting on the couch watching TV, etc. Uploaded stuff that doesn't even *pretend* to be art.

>Keeping in mind that deviantART is an *ART*
>site, please define "bandwidth wasting
>uploads."

Content like I referred to above. Who knows how much faster the site might be if the "noise" was filtered out?

>Of course you wont find that here. WC is
>*NOT* about *ART* but, rather, about
>*WINDOWS CUSTOMIZATION*.

Yes, you have a point there.

>Have you ever once brought up any of your
>concerns with the site administration?

Not directly by e-mail no, but as noted above, by way of a post, yes.

i don't know.. it's hard to judge whether something is art or not based on the content of the piece. it should be based on how it's presented.

i mean.. take your statement about a 'picture of a woman on a couch' not being art. i think reubens might have had a comment or two in response to that

the main thing, really, after it's all boiled down, which determines whether something is art or not is the effort that went into it. the depth of the attempt. did the would-be artist whisk something off in a matter of minutes with nary a thought? if so, it really doesn't matter if it 'looks cool.' it's not an artistic expression.

i guess that's one of the main requirements in art criticism.. being able to simply 'see' that depth of effort in a piece. even in a photograph, where the shutter does its work in a fraction of a second, one can visibly see whether any thought or feeling was put into the shot.

of course, in the world of wallpapers, sometimes [only sometimes] 'looks cool' is good enough.

>That's where we differ. Yes, DA is an "art community", and
>there's a lot of amazing stuff created by incredibily
>talented people. But not everyone's an artist because
>they can click "upload".

deviantART is not only a community for talented artists but for people that are learning to become artists; people who have a slight idea how to use a cool but have not perfected the use of it so that they can create their complete artistic vision. with that in mind, the reason we allow everyone to click "upload" and be considered an artist is because we realize that everyone has to learn somehow. in this case, the best way to learn is through the constructive criticism that many new artists receive from other artists on the site.


>DA is not a democracy, I understand that, but the success
>of any product or service depends upon listening to the
>audience/customer. Chances are, I'm in the minority on
>this issue, so the impact of me or people like me "tuning
>out" is likely to be of little consequence

Of course we listen to our audience/customer. The site would not be where it is today had we not done that. We continue to listen to the community and make the appropriate changes.

>Photos of some guy's car sitting in the driveway, a photo of
>a girl sitting on the couch watching TV, etc. Uploaded stuff
>that doesn't even *pretend* to be art.

We have struggled with this very issue on the staff. It is something that we continue to discuss. At this point in time we have chosen to allow these "pictures" to be submitted until we come up with a definite policy, or feature, to handle them.

>Not directly by e-mail no, but as noted above, by way of a
>post, yes.

The best way to get the attention of the staff on deviantART is to send a Note rather than use the forum.

"deviantART now has 5 individuals assigned to policy violations. This means that they take the reports they receive from the community and act on those as well as browsing through various sections and removing what are blatant policy violations."

Jark, as long as your policy is reactive, and only reactive to blatant material, you will have an active community sneaking in stolen work and likenesses unapologetically. I got hate mail from one supermodel wallpaper artist a week or two ago. He, after being banned, is back at work uploading stolen images to Devart and laughing at me. "I'm here and you are not" he said.

When the moderators stated that they were caught up, the problem sections were still saturated with stolen work and likenesses. Not cryptic work, but Britney likeness we've seen a million times, Anime openly admitted by the artist not to be their work, and newsgroup pr0n that was old five years ago.

That work is there because no one told you to remove it. That policy didn't work for P2P file sharing, and it isn't gonna work for you. You can't claim to be an online file-storage service for artists, because we have seen that even storage services are liable for distributing copyrighted material.

Don't pretend that stolen work is hard to find! They make up a sizable percentage of every page of thumbnails in some sections. If anyone else can find stolen images in less than 30 seconds, so can you guys.

Until this changes you will bleed true artists, slowly but surely, until all you are left with are people who simply don't care if what they download is stolen or not. It is already happening on a smaller scale in some sections at Devart.

I miss devart. I enjoyed the interaction and even a lot of the stuff people are complaining about here. When I look in from time to time I want to contribute so badly. Please, please, have the guts to make a stand now, 'lead by example', like you told me when I first posted about it, months ago.

I think if it were my site, I'd add a field to the submission form (I'm assuming there's not one already), that *requires* the submitter to summarize their thoughts/intent/expression about the piece of work they're uploading in a paragraph. For example: "Man mooning city hall expresses my frustration with our town government". Okay, fine - this guy is expressing an idea via an image that he cares enough about to describe his thoughts. OTOH, "My ex mowing the lawn", probably isn't worth the space it takes up. Anyway, thanks for replying. It truly was a feeling of frustration that prompted me to open this thread. I don't make a habit of trashing web sites anywhere, let alone on another board. But DA has been a regular stop of mine for a long time, and I vented. Next time, I'll vent via DA. Set up the twit filter now.

bakerstreet:

"deviantART now has 5 individuals assigned to policy violations. This means that they take the reports they receive from the community and act on those *as well as browsing through various sections and removing what are blatant policy violations*."

realitysquared, above and beyond the others, does this on a daily basis. to sit there and say that we are not actively working to rectify the problem is completely and utterly untrue.

maybe you should have a chat with realitysquared so that he can tell you just how difficult it is to find what you consider easy to find. just because we see an image that uses, say, a female model in it that does not automatically make it a stolen image. maybe the model is someone that none of us recognize. if that is the case then we have to scour the net to look for pictures of this model (this just recently happened in fact) because there is that *off chance* that the "artist" too the picture him/her-self. you would rather that we handle stolen art in a more vigilante style...delete now, ask questions later. we do not work that and never will.

you're telling me to lead by example but are apparently missing the point: i am doing that. i am actively searching sections and removing images that are stolen, when i have the evidence to support it. its not like nothing is being done like you would like everyone to believe.

I just looked in again, just to make sure things hadn't changed abruptly, and the majority of images on the first few pages wallpapers>females are stolen. That is a *fact*.

There is an artist uploading tons of circa wwII pin-up art that they readily admit isn't theirs, there are Britny pics, Olsen Twins pics, A No-one Lives Forever wallpaper that was taken straight from the site, and every page I click, further and further back shows the same type material, even back to material I reported before I left. I won't take the time to wash, rinse, and repeat in the other troubled sections. What I did find took 5 minutes.

Frankly, it won't matter when the time comes that you gave the benefit of the doubt to the artist. You will simply be accountable for benefitting from and distributing stolen copyrighted material.

If people see that No One Lives Forever wallpaper on your site, and it gives them a favorable outlook toward Devart, or generates traffic for you, then you have benefitted.

Ignorance will not be a valid legal argument when it is openly visible to everyone. If the burden of proof were on the uploader, then it would be the artist, not the theives, that you would be favoring.

I wish you the best, but I have low-expectations unless your policy changes.