Alright, we all know about the whole Jark Chaos by now. If not, refer to for good resources on finding out everything you didn't wanna know.

Now when I get confused or miffed about something. I dig. And the more I dig, the more miffed I get, and the more I must dig. Now, the past few days, I went positively psychotic with the miff-digging, and I realized "DUH, let's read Spyed's page!" And what I found frightened me.

His second to last journal entry in his "Scaling the Deviants" collection is point-blanc statement of what he wants to turn DA into. Now, I like to pick things apart. So that's what I'm going to do here. Be warned, this is LONG. But my main goal of this forum is to get everyone's opinion on what they think this means and the like. So here are the main goals of this.

1. What are your impressions from reading it?
2. Do you think this is the right way for DA to head?
3. Any other good input you might have.

I have but one request for ALL OF YOU, Admin and sporatic members alike. Please please PLEASE do not be rude to each other. I constantly see verbal wars in all these forums, and this is really not the place for it. This is an opinionated forum I'm opening here, but this does not mean argue over opinions. If you don't understand someone's opinion, ask why, don't be rude about it, please. DA is in enough of an uproar without us biting each others' heads off over something as open-ended as this.

Now, onto the show.

You can read Spyed's journal in its entirety here: [link]

But I will merely copy-paste the important bits. He's talking about revamping all of DevArt into something simpler, IE costs less money to run. And his reasoning behind it is thus:

"The main objectives are:

# Connect people who should be connected."

"Provide flexible environments that enable community leaders to provide value."

"In addition to being a technology company, deviantART also serves as what is effectively the land of a pure capitalist democracy."

"our focal point is the most loved art and artists."

"Every day that passes art rises to the top and/or falls to the bottom entirely based on either skill or entertainment value as it relates to a massive community of people who "vote" in the system. Some deviants receive more love than other deviants. And everyone works towards receiving the most love. Usually in the form of comments, favorites and +devwatches. Uh, and some deviants join the print program. hehe." (*insert me growling here*)

"In other words; the citizens of America working in American corporations produce trillions of dollars; more than any other country. And in this context the deviants of deviantART produce millions of pieces of artwork, more than any other art community." (*Insert beginnings of that "uh oh" feeling*)

"But the problem isn't quantity, it's quality. And here's how deviantART can improve it's system to encourage quality and self-improvement among it's members." IE, lets weed out the bad artists and only keep the good.

It gets better from here on in. *sarcasm*

"In the deviantART setting an empowered Community Leader would inspire the fragmented community to produce and bring to light higher quality art work."

"Today deviantART is what we call a flat community. It's theoretically as raw and fair as any social system can possibly be. How the system rewards one member over another is directly proportionate to the amount of time spent (X) times quality of submission (Y), times unique participation (Z)." Followed by him doing this entire equation, very boring, makes NO sense the way he does it, I didn't even bother reading the whole thing.

"When an artist lacks any of those three elements we often fail to bring a proportionate response level to that artist."

"In order to have true deviants of the system, we must enhance deviantART with a system to empower the leaders." ACK!!

This next bit is long, you have to read it from beginning to end to get it, and catch him in his own contradiction. This is the scary bit, so hold on.

"In the American democratic system we have CORPORATIONS. Led by a chain of command, checked by the board of directors. These systems empower leaders/entrepreneurs in the largest free market economy on earth to reward and maintain the people they lead in their pursuit of innovation and success.

And that's exactly what we need. No not corporations! We need ART GROUPS with a hierarchy structure permitting the leaders of "groups" to control who has access to publish, represent and maintain the group. We need anyone in the community with leadership skill to start a group and begin building what could be a massively popular destination for millions of visitors.

I referenced Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as "the only (community) that scales well on a social level" along with "projects that embrace its basic concepts." Why?

In a word; hierarchy. A founder group controls the operators group which controls the groups below it. These controls enable leaders to manage the members of the group and structure that group in a way which makes it most effective for the members. The ease of hierarchy in a virtual social system is the key to empowering the entrepreneurs in your community, so that the society has the tools it needs to scale it's productivity."

Did you catch it? He went on about what corporations are, then just changed "corp" to "Art group" and continued on. Hmmmmm. It gets better.

"# Applied to deviantART this means;

# A significant increase in the submission of high quality art, and a much stronger focus over time on quality and improvement as every artists reputation within a peer group becomes intimately tied to their value proposition to that peer group."

He's giving us all value measurements. . .

"Greater motivation and support. deviantART would no longer feel so big and cumbersome; the "population density" of deviantART would thin out." Back to weeding out the bad artists.

And that's about the extent of that journal entry. Lemme post my response to HIM, and then I'll do my usual ramble.

" Wait wait wait. Are you talking about making devart a place only for the popular artists?

By thinning out the community through this, you mean getting rid of the "bad" artists and keeping only those who have the most pageviews, in a sense.

And your little schpeal on the "corparations" bit. . . You gave the explanation of corporations, said it's exactly what we need, and just changed "corporation" to "art group." You're trying to instill a hierarchy in something as sporatic as art. That's impossible to do. You can't have "art groups" because there are far too many types of things out there that art pertains to. And if you think of making the "groups" as varied as you make your categories, you're in for an entire collapse!

Not to mention the fact that most of us do waaaay more than one type of art. What group would we go in, Various? Seriously, you're giving art a government. There's a difference between hierarchy and a teaching system. And the former will be the death of this site.

Alright, babble time.

There was concern about DevArt becoming a corporation. Well, from the desk of the CEO himself, there you have it. He kept comparing DevArt to IRC, and as a user of both, that's the worst comparison in the history of man. IRC is nothing but CHAT, with the ability to do direct connect for sending files. I know, it's a great place to pirate stuff. There is no form of "hierarchy" that he speaks of, really. Not the extent he wants it. There are admins, there are operators, there are the people who are members, and there are guests. There's a bunch of other scragglers in there, but for the main part, you have the channel runner, the people who make sure all goes well, the people who have been there for ages, and then the random visitor.

That doesn't change the fact that it's a CHAT! DevArt could never be as simple as that because of all the other things involved.

And what he's trying to do is make groups of people in one category. Oh, say, anime. Hmm. But what if I do anime and poetry? Pick the one I'm better at? Dooooom.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that he wants to turn the community into a corporation, give good artists high status, weed out the bad artists who don't "improve," or rather meet the standards the higher-ups would like them to, and keep only those members who can afford to be here.

People have been speculating and speculating, but there it is, right from the horse's mouth.

Rant ended. Now it's your turn.

What do YOU think?

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