deviantART Uproar ~ What community on the internet can mean
I lurk over at deviantART. Every so often I post something I have created, normally photo manips or just straight photography. Its a site with a huge sense of community. I probably pop my head onto the front page once a week to see what’s going on.
Visiting the site today I saw some thing strange, almost every artwork on the front page that people had ‘favourited’ was devoted to one of the sites founders ‘jark‘. It seems that jark, one of the founders of deviantart has now been removed from the administration of the site, and not by choice. It’s caused an outrage. This is easily the biggest art site on the internet, over 14 million pieces of work, but like all community websites, its the endusers who have the end say.
It’s happening here, the site is about to celebrate its 5th year anniversary, and for an internet site, thats a long time. The users are calling boycott, post nothing or post it in yellow (the trademark colour of jark). It’s great to see users showing they want a community website, not a business.
kim said,
August 2, 2005 at 3:45 am
christ, nothing more makes me even more pissed. Jark is a ‘founding father’ of the lovely-deviance. geez, i’ve been following most of his beautiful work since a couple years back when I first found out about DA.
Wow, it’s pathetic how something like your own community (via ‘corporation’, not users) can turn on you and decide that you are not needed. It’s hard on us, the users, but it must be even HARDER for scott (jark). :(
Rob said,
August 2, 2005 at 3:30 pm
Having spent the past 3+ years on deviantART, having been on deviantART staff twice, and as a deviantART senior member, I’m pretty furious about what’s taken place there recently. I’m pretty much done with the place … I’m not going to play into whatever grand scheme is going on. It’s quite a shame…
But the community response has been astounding … I’ve really never seen people come together online like that. Unfortunately, there’s been rumours that people have been threatening some remaining administrators with physical violence over this. And while I’ve very little respect left for those who have ousted Scott (Jark), threats are a bit over the top…
Also unfortunate is that the end users don’t really have the end say… the CEO Angelo Sotira (Spyed) is pretty much skirting the issue entirely. I really don’t think he realizes how NOT soon it’s going to go away…
Q said,
August 3, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Jesus Christ~
That’s really unfair of them the *cough* board of directors *cough*
I think I’ll have to get into a mass photomanip/creative mood under the theme ‘yellow’.
After a few minutes of quick prodding aroud i found these if anyones interested.
http://justiceforjark.deviantart.com/
http://savejark.deviantart.com/
http://jark.deviantart.com/
It’s interesting to note that he’s still shown as “subcribed until: hell freezes over”
Oh, and Voice your dismay here; It would appear that it was Angelo (spyed)’s decision to remove Jark:
http://spyed.deviantart.com/
~Q out, and deviating.