Is DeviantArt broken?

[okellymx]

I just think DA is just overwhelming like most sites with a lot of users. The more users the harder it is to get noticed. I try to check out these sites to see if they can overthrow DA. But if they get popular I think the same thing will happen.
- DrawCrowd
- CGbeat
- Artstation
- Pixiv

Even though DA has its flaws its probably the most social art sharing platform I've seen.

[AffectedMind]

I've been looking for sites to cheat on DA for song long now but them of them have enough traffic on hem or are in english

Yup, same. It's hard to find site like DA, just less broken and with big traffic.

http://www.wysp.ws <--- kinda slow, traffic-wise. Maybe it just feels that way because I don't have any following to speak of?

The traffic is very, very slow. Incase you want to get more attention, you need to devote your attention to others as well. I only got feedback when I was commenting/ liking others work. If you sit and do nothing, none will find you. The site seems nice tho, I was there ^^

[Pandastrophic]

I think building a fanbase is generally hard on deviantart, there are just waaaay too many creators on that site that many artists, talented or not, CORE memebership or not don't get noticed, so I don't really think it has that much to do with the CORE membership it's just that there are too many people on there.
Also consider that you have restarted, meaning you had to build up your watchers/fanbase all over again, not many people actually check journal posts so if you've announced that you're moving to a new account on a journal then a good percentage of your watchers probably missed it.

I use DA very little now, posting some illustrations here and there, but used to use it a lot more back when I used to sell adoptables, when I started the adopts community wasn't that huge so I got a good fanbase and good income from it but now it's so competitive lol.

[Chopythes]

Yeah, deviantART used to be a blast, I don't know what happened either? I loved it when I used it regularly, but when they made almost ALL premium stuff available for everyone, I kinda didn't enjoy it as much more.
I bought the premium to get rid of ads, but I'm now running Adblock (on sites that contains flashy gifs and other annoying things) and I honestly don't see a difference between having premium and not.
The site does have its ups and down, and I've been a member for 10 years now.
I still enjoy it, but... The community is completely gone.
There was this page called "Today's Page" where they featured popular journals, threads and what not that's been going on in the place.
It was a fun place until they took it away 5 years ago. I got a lot of friends with that page.
For some odd reason they thought it was a great idea having only one option for the thread-nesting. There used to be two options. I loved having newest first on deviations and oldest first in the forums. Now I can only have one of these options and I need to update the page whenever I went to other places (and I'm one of those oddballs that loves having a gazillion of deviations in different tabs to look through later), and it kinda sucked. It took all the enjoyment away from their site.

I still have dA, but I rarely update it anymore. I feel as if people only want to be like the popular artists, getting a lot of comments and +favs, but none wants to engage in the communtiy itself.

I love the interfere within the site itself, it's easy to navigate but as I said, they have their ups and downs as do all sites.

[AffectedMind]

Also consider that you have restarted, meaning you had to build up your watchers/fanbase all over again, not many people actually check journal posts so if you've announced that you're moving to a new account on a journal then a good percentage of your watchers probably missed it.

Yes I'm aware. The only thing that truly let me down was on my first account everything stopped without any particular reason and some people experienced the same. And it wasn't only a journal, I was sending pm, didn't really worked... It's sad when you try your best and your feedback is none u_u
Maybe like I said, there's too many users and it's hard to get noticed.

when I started the adopts community wasn't that huge so I got a good fanbase and good income from it but now it's so competitive lol.

Yup. I started 5 years ago I think and it seemed easier and more friendly.

I feel as if people only want to be like the popular artists, getting a lot of comments and +favs, but none wants to engage in the communtiy itself.

Yeah, my old friends or people I know just dissapeared. They still on DA, but community seems dead :<

[UzukiCheverie]

I don't know if it's broken, but it's definitely shit lol I left DA around the same time the new major updates started streaming in. The community kept getting worse, staff kept making stupid decisions and changes that didn't make any sense for the site (Core program? WTF???), moderators weren't actually helping keep the place in check, making sure people were abiding by the rules, etc. traffic was DISMAL, chances of ever getting on the front page past that STUPID FUCKING PONY CREATOR THAT'S BEEN ON THE FRONT PAGE EVER SINCE THE DAWN OF ITS CREATION ARGHGHGH and Sakimi-chan's stuff are slimmer than winning the jackpot lottery, everything else that's on the front page is just tasteless nudity, porn, creepy fetish shit, Elsa fanart, and FNAF fanart, finding work in the commissions section was a tough deal because everyone would try and hire people for free, everything you'd pay to get on DA (no ads, customizable interface, etc.) is shit you can easily get on Tumblr for free, with higher chances of actually building an audience, people would be stealing other people's artwork by re-uploading it and the mods wouldn't do anything about it no matter how many reports people would send in . . . SO many problems, jesus lol

I haven't deactivated my account, but I've definitely abandoned it. I haven't uploaded anything there in months, I just don't see the point anymore. I've since switched to Tumblr and Instagram and I've already found better results there; everything else that's comic-related is just here lol

[Chopythes]

@UzukiCheverie
Haha, yeah, I remember that I used to be a vivid reporter when I was active within the community.
However... Taking 4 years to resolve a problem?? ... Nah, I think not.

[keii4ii]

Incase you want to get more attention, you need to devote your attention to others as well. I only got feedback when I was commenting/ liking others work. If you sit and do nothing, none will find you. The site seems nice tho, I was there ^^

I think my problem with Wysp is that it LOOKS so uninviting. Part of it is because of the simplicity, which I think is great for some people, but I want to see a stronger sense of community (which is why I really want to try Nabyn). Just looking at the site layout on Wysp discourages me from commenting XD

Sites like Tsu also have a very simplistic approach to the layout, but Tsu really focuses on sharing, which contributes to a stronger sense of community.

I might just give up and start posting everything on Twitter/FB OTL

[VermillionWorks]

I haven't been able to upload much art at my Deviantart outside of my comic pages as of late, so I guess I haven't noticed as much, but I guess it doesn't seem as lively as it used to be...

Until I see a huge reason to drop it though, or see a much better alternative, I'm probably just sticking with it as my gallery for now. I also still enjoy just doing a random art search there every now and then, that's about all I do with it though.

[AffectedMind]

I think my problem with Wysp is that it LOOKS so uninviting.

Yea I wasn't really sure about this site at the beggining, but if you won't try it you won't know. I deleted my account there, but it's because I'm hosting my works on my website. But if I find any site that will interest me (like Tsu) I will definitely try it in the near future ^^

I might just give up and start posting everything on Twitter/FB OTL

Facebook doesn't seem that much fun xD But yea, it's worth a shot I guess. I have fanpage on my own there.

[UzukiCheverie]

I think my problem with Wysp is that it LOOKS so uninviting. Part of it is because of the simplicity, which I think is great for some people, but I want to see a stronger sense of community (which is why I really want to try Nabyn). Just looking at the site layout on Wysp discourages me from commenting XD

I've seen Wysp a couple times, it seems nice. The design is a little "eeeh" so far, but I like it better than Nabyn's lol Nabyn reminds me of like, 2001 DA lol I have not tried out either site though so those are both just first impressions

[greenraptorstudios]

I perfectly feel for you. I started my new account earlier this year and have only 50 watchers, and these past few weeks nearly all have been so quiet. I honestly don't know what to tell because I don't know myself. I really feel like the only people who seem to get popular on Deviant art these days are the people who do fan art and nudity, the latter of which seems to have grown uncontrollably over the past years.

I know how you feel, I myself do work that I feel is extraordinarily good, and then I see others who do "worse work" and get super popular in a short amount of time. It feels like there is a wall that is blocking me out of everyone.

[BraveHeartTatsumaki]

I think the same, and sadly it has become a place for.... certain kind of people, like I know there are problematic people everywhere, but on DA I've seen them by far too much (people who harrases, post weird things for say the last, etc).
I've been posting so few in my DA that I've thought I should leave, it's not funny, neither you get that much attention unless 1.you're really amazingly gifted for art, or 2-you draw fanart of popular stuff. Like I stopped doing the second one, I barely get people to notice.
Besides the admin in DA if you have a problem, they don't even care in help, some time ago I had a problem of a person harrasing me and other friends, so we went DIRECTLY with the admins, we had proofs, everything, you know what they said? They sent us a copy+paste email about what to do: simply block. And nothing else, and the person came back with 20 new accounts, which the admins and mods didn't even bother in help about, we literally had to deactivate our accounts for a while so this person could forget our existence.
i don't know what happened but 4 years ago when I joined was still a nice place, when I left for college and then came back, everything changed, like HOW?!
Frankly I'm on Tsu, and by far I've gotten the double of attention in my original stuff there than on DA and people are pretty nice too. But if you know other nice places where to post art, that would be really nice, for now I'm liking a lot Tsu

[keii4ii]

It's entirely possible we're talking about two different incarnations of Nabyn; they semi-recently (August of this year, I think) launched a beta version of the site as opposed to the alpha they had, and both versions were up and running when I checked a few days ago. It's the new version that I'm interested in.

Of course, it's also possible that we just disagree. XD

[AffectedMind]

Hmm... I checked Nabyn... Why is there so much naked furries? ;_;

[somvi]

My core membership has expired recently. Will I renew? nope. I not active on there anymore as it's just too much work to maintain for very little return. I just use it for "storage" and focus my attention on other platforms now.

For whatever reason, they've more than doubled the price of membership :/ I won't doubt they would filter out non-core as dA has become more commercialized in past years so they're more interested in things that generate traffic. Fan art, ponies, sanic and boobs are some easy ways to get that, so naturally they're going to welcome that content more readily to make money off ad revenue. Pure speculation, but I feel that it's not really about art anymore...

Anyways, last time I checked, art theft was still a huge problem, users treat each other like garbage in the forums and the front page was just another numbers game stacked against new users. Although the site looks a bit nicer nowadays, the community is a mere shell of what it was.

[shazzbaa]

I don't think it's any more broken than it was before. Drama about paid members and the dA staff negligence and popular artists and art vs pornography has been going on as long as I can remember! But it didn't matter, because we had a community there that was good.

Now, a lot of those people have moved on and stopped really participating in DeviantArt -- heck, just look at the responses to this thread. The crowd we're comfortable in and click with has moved on, so DeviantArt feels dead and we start noticing all the things that are wrong.

I still use DeviantArt! I have an audience there and I do still get feedback, though it is definitely slower than it used to be. But I never paid much attention to the front page and all that, so that stuff hasn't really affected or bothered me. I'll stick around as long as there are people that make it a pleasant experience. :>
I feel like it's a matter of time before dA is irrelevant, though. It feels like it's trying to hold onto and reattract its old members moreso than make itself welcoming to new creators, and that can't last.

[AnnaLandin]

Re: the admins' lack of activity - I looked into renewing my Premium membership (or "Core", or whatever they call it these days, the little whippersnappers), and found that a.) they'd doubled the price, and b.) I couldn't pay. Like, at all. It refused to accept my payment, because the website insisted that I had already paid - which I hadn't.

I contacted them about this, and they just kinda shrugged and went "Yeah, check the FAQ." If this had been any other problem, I might have understood their lack of proper response - I was trying to give them money. o.O So weird.

Anyway, once I realised my portfolio would still be kicking around unchanged even without the Core-membership, I stopped bothering and just got on with things.

[AffectedMind]

It reminds me of those computer help centers:
A: HALP! My computer don't want to turn on.
B: Did you try to turn it on and off?
x'D

[VermillionWorks]

I contacted them about this, and they just kinda shrugged and went "Yeah, check the FAQ." If this had been any other problem, I might have understood their lack of proper response - I was trying to give them money. o.O So weird.

Yeah, I've heard DA's admins are kind of notorious for being unhelpful and kind of...jerks, that's probably the worst thing about DA to me. It took them YEARS to do something about their virus-ridden ads. I can't count how many times I got a bad virus or malware from there back in the day (I still don't trust them anymore, so I have my ab blockers on most of the time, especially when browsing through DA), before anyone who reported to them about getting a virus from their ads would get this - "Well, it's kind of your own fault for not having better virus protection".

So it's the person's fault for not expecting to get viruses from a professional site? Good lord that's stupid. It was only when they got endless complaints that they finally made announcements that they tried to fix them up and make them more stable.

....and don't get me started on the "see the FAQ because we're not about to explain anything to you....even if the answer isn't in there". That's very unprofessional to me. >.> Who cares how many times you get the same questions, just do what you're there for, will ya? Not everyone is going to think about the less than obvious FAQ section, and not every answer is there in detail.