Is DeviantArt broken?

[PotooGryphon]

It's about our inactivity, and lack of desire to communicate and help each other. I've met a lot of amazing people on DA who are my real friends now. So, let's ask ourselves, what have we done to make DA a better place?

As cold as it sounds, it's not the artist's job to fix the site/community. Artists have enough going on between creating content, building a fanbase, interacting, and personal life that worrying about fixing the site they're posting on shouldn't even be a thought.

Also the artists don't own the site. The whole deviant art community could overnight become the best ever and make the site a magical place, but then the people that own the site decide they're done, sell it, discontinue it, so on all that effort on the community's part wasted.

Sure there are little things people can do to make a site a better place (mainly not be mean or hateful) however, if the staff and the core of the site is broken than it's not going to matter what the community does.

Situations like that, it's best to find another site or make your own personal site that the artist has full control over whether it succeeds.

[chiharu_j]

I'd have to agree as well and besides when a person actually tried to interact with other people, they usually get no response at all or they get some incredibly rude and vulgar people who I wouldn't to ever to associate with.

[AngieVX]

Artists ARE the community. If we are not, then we deserve being neglected and ignored. "Creating a fanbase" is one of the the key problems. We stop seeing other artists as friends, we stop supporting other artists... and they stop supporting us. We don't care about good art, we care only about OUR art. How can we make people appreciate art if we don't do it ourselves? Also I haven't met a single hateful person on DA. Of course there might be conflicts, but it's a part of communication process. What matters is how we resolve conflicts.

[PotooGryphon]

Honestly, I don't think a single artist does that or doesn't appreciate art. Artist on artist friendship is called networking and is separate from creating a fanbase, they are peers. Other artists can be fans of one another, however, swapping support for one another becomes a sort of circle. It's more sustainable and preferable to get people outside of art interested in art, because chances are they'll like more than 1 artist and it's the very definition of growth. It's why we promote and go to conventions and such.

Artists are apart of the community but in a different capacity than casual readers or fans. They're content creators. Without artists/creators what purpose would people have to go to the site.

However, all this is getting off topic. The staff and mods for DA are the ones incharge of improving the site through better handling of enforcing rules, helping community members, discouraging art thief, and improving features to make artists want to post there.

[AngieVX]

You may call it jerking, I may call it art appreciation and friendship, depends on what motivates us, what are our reasons to click +fav, comment and feature other artists (or staying away from faving, commenting and featuring). But without friends supporting us, our art will become invisible. This happens even with much better artists than me. If no one sees our art how are we planning to get noticed? Do we want DA stuff feature us? Well, we still can draw fanart and boobs.

[Kura]

I still remember when dA was blocked in most of Canada because the ads were giving out so many viruses our main web provider had had enough and just straight out banned / block / whatevered the website. If that's not an example of broken I'm not sure what is. (that was a long time ago though, I've been on that site for around 12 years by now)

I mostly use it as a storage or portfolio for me (or other artists if I'm linking artists I like to someone) at this point. I've no interest in the community, and at this point because most artists are also posting elsewhere I don't even really care about the content anymore (because I've already seen and liked it on other platforms). It's not at all something I use in hopes of advertising my work or gaining fans. Just another online storage and portfolio. If someone happens to stumble across it cool, but I don't expect that to happen.

I got a core membership as a gift, and had it for around 2 years. It's done absolutely nothing for me except give me some widgets and let me post picture thumbnails. Which for that price is uh... not a wise investment on my behalf.

[AffectedMind]

If that's not an example of broken I'm not sure what is.

Maybe dirty footfetish group on DA?

Dirty-Feet-Realm on DeviantArt

This is true art! (sarcasm)

[BraveHeartTatsumaki]

Wanna know something sad? That's not even the worst fetish I've seen on DA...
And it's even more sad that you learn about fetishes in the world in an art community... when you should learn about those stuff... you know, in the places stablished FOR that.

[Kura]

I don't think I would call the presence of kinks a representation of a broken site... cause then pretty much every art site including tapastic would be considered broken.

[AnnaLandin]

I don't think I would call the presence of kinks a representation of a broken site... cause then pretty much every art site including tapastic would be considered broken.

Likewise. I'm not here to shame people's kinks or their wish to draw naked people.

DeviantArt's issues lie mainly in its lack of mod-responsibility, and its messy structure, and the lack of community-feeling. None of those have anything to do with what people choose to draw.

[AffectedMind]

Likewise. I'm not here to shame people's kinks or their wish to draw naked people.

Still I have a feeling there's so much stuff that doesn't belong to DA. Sometimes it reminds me of some weird amateur porn site... Like pictures taken with the phone just to show of your body. And whole gallery is filled with it.
Or penises.... and it's a print...

[Chopythes]

I once saw an erected... penis without the mature content on, reported it to the mods and they said, after 2 years: "People can upload whatever they want as long as it's not porn." They clearly didn't know that it said in the rules not to upload such things.
And I just laughed out loud and thought to myself, wow, these people surely know how to mod.

(but plain porn is just not what I want to see on the site, which I've seen plenty of times without a mature content label and mods doing nothing about it. I don't mind people uploading whatever they want, but some things CLEARLY broke the site's rules yet nothing happened.)

[mjmassey]

I joined DA in 2007 after years of having just browsed and never had much luck with it. Yeah, the OCTs and SDL were really fun and helped me build on my skills a bit, but most of the artists I grew to like left DA to either start webcomics or post on Tumblr. I myself found that it was rather unfriendly towards Traditional media--I had quite a few comments in my small comment pool that insisted my art would look better if I made it in PS. Wow, thanks.

In addition to all that's been mentioned so far, the one surprising thing is that DA's UX has stayed relatively untouched since it was first conceived. And it is clunky as hell. The process to upload one piece to your gallery is five million steps. And you still can't upload gifs without a preview image, which is such a hassle (I save a lot of my B+W stuff as gifs for the web). With all the senseless and extraneous updates made over the years, why are the interfaces still the same? There must be about 5 different ways DA could update their info architecture, basic UX and UI, etc....to create better ease of usability. This is comparison to Tumblr, where I can upload any kind of image (or video, or sound, or whatever) in two clicks or less, easy as pie.

When they did the logo redesign, they just looked desperate. I think if DA wants to stay in the game, they need to seriously evolve the look, feel, and usability of their platform. A site that hasn't changed their basic layout in over a decade? That is unfathomable to me.

[avalonmao]

I love the shade that's being thrown about dA like this is a dream come true.
It was good though. It was good

[Luie]

The problem is that dA has a very "me"-oriented community. Not every member has this mindset, that's not what we're saying.
but it's just

very obvious on a macro level

[AngieVX]

That's what I'm saying. But we can't act as a community if all we care about are ourselves. Maybe we should revise our attitude and priorities to bring back DA that we love?

[vuelonocturno85]

I've been in deviantart for almost 8 years. I've never had a lot of audience. When the groups started to appear i increaset it a bit, but I also never participated much in forums and such. I use it to have my things online so I can show it to the people I'm interested in, and the portfolio feature that's useful.
I coincide with those who say that featured deviations are always the same peolpe. Once a follower told my art had the quality to be a daily deviation and he recommended me, but nothing ever happened. I see by your comments that the situation is worse than waht I had tought.
o.o

[AffectedMind]

But we can't act as a community if all we care about are ourselves. Maybe we should revise our attitude and priorities to bring back DA that we love?

I really don't want to be rude here, but it's just the brutal truth, none will give a damn no matter how much community will change and how much we will want to change DA, the staff don't care for any of our requests. You say revise our attitude, write about that on DA forum. Like really say about the problem in the community and I bet some of them may agree but people with "bad" attitude will just flame you. My attitude is perfectly fine, I care about others and I try to help other artists as much as I can. And many here on Tapastic have the right attitude as well. We can be the "good" guys, but the "bad" guys won't change a bit. There's plenty of people like us on DA, kind and sharing and they did want to change DA, but it's impossible without staff! And staff is there just to take money I assume.

[vuelonocturno85]

It's so sad to think thah way

[AffectedMind]

Unfortunately that's how it works... Community can be wonderful, but if staff don't care, then site goes downhill.