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!

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.

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

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'...

Jafo goes back to work for the UN....

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.

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.

I have to completely agree with Paxx.

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

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

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?

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.

"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.

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.