I know there has been a lot of uproar over a lot of changes happening on DA recently. And by a lot I mean I've seen many of my own DA network posting journals, polls, comments, etc. about how they are nearly fed up with DA's shenanigans and are thus threatening to leave if DA doesn't get it's shit together. Except DA has it's shit together. It's a company that runs a huge public community on and offline. It's actually been doing this for a really long time and there is literally no way these changes or decisions were made all willy-nilly.
Timeline
Tags
Maturity Filter
Art theft issues
Core introduction (or lack thereof)
Etc.
These are the things "a lot" of people are yelling about. To be honest, I don't agree with everything DA has introduced, but the way I use DA has not actually suffered any significant negative impact since these things have happened. I've been here for 7 years. I post art on DA. I make money on DA (not a lot, but still), I was a premium member on DA and now I'm a Core member. I've even had to deal with copyright infringement and some mild harassment before.
None of these experiences have been so horribad that I've thought about leaving. In fact, my experience on DA, on the whole, could even be described as great! I've made friends, hosted a successful charity, even won a couple contests. I've managed to use DA to develop and mature my art, and my business sense within the industry. I respect the people who run DA and they have yet to give me a solid reason not to.
If you want to leave. Fine. That's your choice. You've had experiences I don't know about.
I'm posting this journal because, within the swirl of negativity being shouted from the rooftops, I wanted to add some positivity.
I'm happy on DeviantArt.
My response to this journal:
DeviantArt and Angry MobsDue to the nature of DeviantArt it is quite easy to perceive that there's "a lot of people" who are upset with any given thing, enough so that you could even believe that "everyone" believes the same thing.
I felt that perhaps the community would like me to explain how DeviantArt views these types of things.
First of all, DeviantArt, Inc. is extremely deliberate. We don't do anything accidentally. Everything that hits the community is the result of a team collaboration that usually take weeks or months to complete. And so when we make mistakes they are felt by a group here or by our whole team.
Things you should know:
First of all you must believe that our team is 100% motivated to ensure that DA is healthy, and that decisions we make turn out to be better than how things were before. Each decision is likely to affect different pockets of people, and so you will always see the group that's unhappy pool together. The happy group is happy, so they don't tend to band toget
