A storm brewing at deviantART
August 7th should be a good day for deviantART as it celebrates it's fifth Birthday. For those who don't know, deviantART is the largest and most successful artistic community on the Internet, encompassing art and artistic discussion from over 1.5million* members worldwide. Scott "Jark" Jarkoff and Matt "Matteo" Stephens co-founded the site which launched in 2000. While Matteo resigned from his position, Jark has always been at the forefront of the sites development throughout it's life.
Until last Wednesday that is, when it appears Jark was forced to resign his position. Over the last few days, increasing numbers of members have learned of what has happened and the community has started to rally behind its last remaining founder. Due to a total lack of communication from deviantART regards the matter, tensions in some corners have lead to the organisation of boycott groups, some of whom now pledge to bring the site down on August 7th. Others are calling on members to only submit artwork that is predominantly yellow in colour; yellow being the colour of Jark's alias as the little yellow alien. Many members have posted their protest in journal entries on the site, including stamps of support such as that seen here to the right.
Several deviants have been banned from the community with little justification, though it's apparent these deviants were quite vocal over what had happened. One of the banned deviants did little more than set up a petition that over 3400 members have signed in support of Jark being reinstated. Some journal entries and comments are being deleted by administrators - a move causing great outcry because it's against deviantART's own policy to do so. They even went as far as to delete the journal entry of Jark's mother, who has been keeping everyone abreast of the situation.
A number of members have left in protest of the move and many of the staff have themselves resigned as a result of recent events. Hints have been dropped that deviantART has been struggling at the top for some time now due to a split over the site becoming a commercial company and straying away from being first and foremost an artistic community. Indeed, it has been revealed by one unhappy former staff member how they're given a regular paycheque for what they do; far removed from the vision of a group of pioneering volunteers running the site for the love of art. It would seem many of the staff leaving want to talk about the situation though fear legal issues arising from the fact they had all signed NDAs preventing them doing so.
I believe deviantART, the remaining staff and administration team have left it too late to make a statement regarding the situation. It would have been better to have told the membership directly on Wednesday what was happening, rather than leaving a community to slowly discover an ever growing number of small protests and angry journal entries spreading the word. Some wild accusations and conspiracy theories are flying around and speculation in general is staining the community. The best policy always is the truth and only when this truth is known will deviantART be able to move on from what is fast becoming a storm that could end up ripping a community apart.
August 7th looks set to be a very sad day indeed.
*membership figures reported by Matt Stephens as of Feb 2005, source www.codebymatt.com
Until last Wednesday that is, when it appears Jark was forced to resign his position. Over the last few days, increasing numbers of members have learned of what has happened and the community has started to rally behind its last remaining founder. Due to a total lack of communication from deviantART regards the matter, tensions in some corners have lead to the organisation of boycott groups, some of whom now pledge to bring the site down on August 7th. Others are calling on members to only submit artwork that is predominantly yellow in colour; yellow being the colour of Jark's alias as the little yellow alien. Many members have posted their protest in journal entries on the site, including stamps of support such as that seen here to the right. Several deviants have been banned from the community with little justification, though it's apparent these deviants were quite vocal over what had happened. One of the banned deviants did little more than set up a petition that over 3400 members have signed in support of Jark being reinstated. Some journal entries and comments are being deleted by administrators - a move causing great outcry because it's against deviantART's own policy to do so. They even went as far as to delete the journal entry of Jark's mother, who has been keeping everyone abreast of the situation.
A number of members have left in protest of the move and many of the staff have themselves resigned as a result of recent events. Hints have been dropped that deviantART has been struggling at the top for some time now due to a split over the site becoming a commercial company and straying away from being first and foremost an artistic community. Indeed, it has been revealed by one unhappy former staff member how they're given a regular paycheque for what they do; far removed from the vision of a group of pioneering volunteers running the site for the love of art. It would seem many of the staff leaving want to talk about the situation though fear legal issues arising from the fact they had all signed NDAs preventing them doing so.
I believe deviantART, the remaining staff and administration team have left it too late to make a statement regarding the situation. It would have been better to have told the membership directly on Wednesday what was happening, rather than leaving a community to slowly discover an ever growing number of small protests and angry journal entries spreading the word. Some wild accusations and conspiracy theories are flying around and speculation in general is staining the community. The best policy always is the truth and only when this truth is known will deviantART be able to move on from what is fast becoming a storm that could end up ripping a community apart.
August 7th looks set to be a very sad day indeed.
*membership figures reported by Matt Stephens as of Feb 2005, source www.codebymatt.com
posted by Matthew E Cornish at
15:00
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