DeviantART: $jark fired!

Holy hell.

I think I might take some screenshots of DeviantART so I can show it to people in a few years and say 'remember that site that used to exist?'

More info here

Seems familiar.

sounds like evil sales guys won over and kicked out founders... kind of reminds me of one of the story facits of Tron.

Yeah, you have to watch out for those types (the kind that come in, build themselves up and take over as CEO and turn everyone against each other). For DA I think the founders idealism may overshadow the reality of the situation. With that many servers it must have cost a fortune to maintain. I wonder about the same situation with GDNet sometimes.. because the truth of the matter is that as you get bigger, it's hard not to become more "corporate" or you basically get crushed under the weight of your own success. Though we're not fortunate enough to employ a full time employee yet.. but hopefully we'll get there. =P

I suppose the difficulty is in not losing site of what the site is really about. I think we've been driven to remain a free repository of information for a long time now because of that.

Anyway, I read through all the emails/posts.. This will be interesting to see how it pans out. I've always had a deep respect for what DA was achieving. This may tear things apart.. but gives a great opportunity to start fresh for the founders. They do have a pretty big following to work with.

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Michael Tanczos

I don't know anything about the staff of deviantArt, only that you can find some nice wallpapers and stuff there.

None of the links in the above posts make it easier for me to understand what happened.

All I understand of it is that the wallpapers I'll find now are probably going to be more yellow than usual.

Can someone explain this to me like I'm a six year old?

Quote:

Original post by Lode Can someone explain this to me like I'm a six year old?

Hostile Corporate Takeover. This Angelo guy did some shady stuff to get himself to the top, and then got rid of the people who got him there.

Woah - talk about a rift between staff and community: screenshots from a dA staff thread.

Anyone else find internet message boards as facinating as I do? We get to watch the rise and fall of empires within a space of years rather than centuries. I find it interesting to observe how large groups react to events like this. It makes you realise how fragile seemingly invincible nations and governments really are. The powerful aren't crushed, they simply collapse in on themselves.

No offence to those caught up in all this, but I do truly find it facinating to watch. I've been through similar events in reasonably large communities half a dosen times before, though not on this scale, and not with complete detachment from it personally. I find it interesting to note that the difference in size doesn't seem to affect the group behavioural patterns, which I had suspected would be the case.

http://www.wincustomize.com/Articles.aspx?AID=82311&c=1

Another link.

wait, i need to be caught up. why did they get rid of him? like what was their (bs) reasons?

http://www.t52.org/ appears to have answers. Otherwise check out other links that have been posted.

did he do something that was wrong.. or half-wrong (enough to cause pwnage?) ive read alot of the links and have only found comments on the community's aftermath

Okay, as best as I can surmise: trouble had been brewing for some time, and upon opting to take a legal stand, he was summarily fired, sparking the meltdown. Correct?

Even in the short time that I've been there, the site has significantly changed. It can be a nice community if you find the right people, but the site is so full of angsters, anime-zealots, and furries that it just kind of drowns everything else out.

For the people here, jark (the dollar sign is not part of his name, it's an indicator that he was staff. There are other symbols for other ranks) was very similar in personality to Fruny or Washu, i.e. very helpful when actually in the forums/whatever, but completely insane otherwise.

This just indicates to me that I need to remove the last bits of artwork that I have from there, setup my own site and have some space for my friends as well, as I had planned some months ago, but eventually was convinced to stay by some very good artists there.

The site was a good idea, unfortunately it is mostly a failure. Good art does exist on the site, but 90% of it is garbage. I don't mean to say that 90% of the people on there have no technical skill, or that they have no "feeling" behind their work, I mean 90% of the stuff on DA is either rips from an anime video to make a wallpaper, 20 photos from the same angle of some person's cat, or 20 images of the same damned fractal with different settings in the fractal generator (seriously, this person was frightening). I can find value in a person's work that, though it didn't come out how the artist intended (or maybe the artist doesn't have the technical skill to reallize their image), was at least an attempt to be original.

As I've heard Angelo is around 21...

edit: could also be 24

Quote:

Original post by capn_midnight Even in the short time that I've been there, the site has significantly changed. It can be a nice community if you find the right people, but the site is so full of angsters, anime-zealots, and furries that it just kind of drowns everything else out. For the people here, jark (the dollar sign is not part of his name, it's an indicator that he was staff. There are other symbols for other ranks) was very similar in personality to Fruny or Washu, i.e. very helpful when actually in the forums/whatever, but completely insane otherwise. This just indicates to me that I need to remove the last bits of artwork that I have from there, setup my own site and have some space for my friends as well, as I had planned some months ago, but eventually was convinced to stay by some very good artists there. The site was a good idea, unfortunately it is mostly a failure. Good art does exist on the site, but 90% of it is garbage. I don't mean to say that 90% of the people on there have no technical skill, or that they have no "feeling" behind their work, I mean 90% of the stuff on DA is either rips from an anime video to make a wallpaper, 20 photos from the same angle of some person's cat, or 20 images of the same damned fractal with different settings in the fractal generator (seriously, this person was frightening). I can find value in a person's work that, though it didn't come out how the artist intended (or maybe the artist doesn't have the technical skill to reallize their image), was at least an attempt to be original.

dont forget:

chicks taking partially nude pics of themselves to both seem "sexy" and to get hits/popular
the overabundance of goth, and goth/punk/sadness. dont they see the irony in mainstream association/hugepopularity with a style about being alone, sad,morose....
honestly it was 90% popularity contest. someone even made a piece of art that was a list of how to get popular on devart. it was one of those "funny but true" things. it listed all the dirty, and stupid things people really did in order to get pageviews.

if i ever find the link again,ill post it.

what are the alternatives to deviantart? photosig?

One thing I don't understand.. is how you fire an owner. He's still part owner.. even if it's only 35% of the company that's still a significant share. With one other owner I'd wager he could gather a majority vote to request the installation of new corporate leadership at the next shareholder's meeting.

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Michael Tanczos