"Spam Galleries" Server Misuse

*davick Jan 17, 2013

Galleries which post multiple images which are against DeviantART's Terms of Service: how do we report something so large? Especially since DeviantART doesn't have a report button for something like "server abuse" to suggest the entire gallery requires review. Some galleries look like Pseudo-Photobucket accounts. Most of them posting card scans, manga/comic scans, video/game screenshots, desktop screenshots, stolen artwork from other sites (often in poorly constructed collages), avatars (such as Gaia), or just some text scrawled in something like MS Paint to send some form of social message without any effort put forth. DeviantART seems less and less like an art community and more like a social-networking website as time goes by. I have nothing against those who make accounts on DA with no intention of posting art, but using it as image storage and sharing... Shouldn't something been done about this? Perhaps a way to report a deviant or their gallery, rather than just reporting every singly individual piece they have within it? It's exhausting on the person reporting it and the staff member who has to deal with all that crap.

Plz stay civil with each other in discussion.

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Devious Comments

*Cynical-Nerd Jan 17, 2013

You could just go to The Help Desk and report the person's whole gallery.

*davick Jan 17, 2013

I am testing the effectiveness of this now.

*Cynical-Nerd Jan 17, 2013

Alright.

=Farewell-Spring Jan 17, 2013 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

I agree with you, there should be a way to report the whole gallery instead of one by one, especially since you can't contact the help desk about it, they will tell you to use the report deviation button; I have tried before and this was their response:
" Since you are reporting a possible problem concerning deviations you should actually not be reporting this issue to deviantART Customer Service Center at all.

Claims of Copyright Infringement can only be legally filed by the actual copyright owner of the infringed work or by their legally authorized representative. Since you are not the owner or an authorized representative your notice on this matter is not considered to be legally valid and cannot be acted upon so your ticket will be marked as "Solved" in order to clear it from the queue; please contact the actual copyright owner(s) so that they can file a valid claim with us if they so choose.

While you cannot file a valid claim of copyright infringement in this particular case, as a member of deviantART you are able to use the Moderation system which can be accessed by clicking the 'Report Deviation' link found on every deviation page in order to point out to our staff that there may be permissions issues with certain deviations, but please understand that these Moderation reports will not be treated as a valid claim of infringement and will not receive the same type of response or attention.").

*davick Jan 17, 2013

I have just used the help desk to report a deviant for spam. We shall see how that goes for me.

`nokari Jan 17, 2013 Professional Interface Designer

dA's policy is to report deviations individually with the Report Deviation feature they have provided on those pages. If an entire gallery (not most deviations in a gallery, the ENTIRE gallery) is of violations, then report several of the deviations and include in the "Do you have any additional comments?" box a note about how all the other deviations in the person's gallery are violations. When a staff member looks at the group of reports you've made, they will read your note and further inspect the gallery. If it's obvious that the gallery is full of violations, they will remove them and/or ban the account. If it is not obvious (such as "stolen" art from obscure artists without you providing evidence) then they will only remove the deviations you have reported and possibly suspend the account. So what members need to do is be thorough in their reports and dA will have an easier time taking care of the issue.

Yes it may be exhausting, but there's no way to prevent violations simply by reporting, no matter which way you do it. There will always be people who violate the rules and submit things that don't belong here in some fashion. That is something all public websites deal with, regardless of their size or speed in responses to reports.

*davick Jan 17, 2013

I understand that one can never "clean" a large website up completely; I merely want something more efficient and easier. For some, the help desk is an impossible task and reporting a gallery that could contain hundreds of deviations is tiring. There are instances where reporting each piece and providing evidence for each is required. With technology as it is, I would expect some kind of reasonable solution. Even something as odd as a page to store deviations you want to report; so you may do it at your leisure from one interface and send them all at one time, with one click.

`nokari Jan 17, 2013 Professional Interface Designer

More efficiency would be to have a larger number of staff to handle a greater number of reports at the same time, but that is not a simple task. It costs a lot of money and before anyone says "hire volunteers", staff have gone over it many times that that is not legally viable for them. Volunteers is simply not an option.

As I said, you only need to report a few deviations, not hundreds. I don't know why people keep exaggerating things like that. As long as you give a good explanation of the situation in the small number of reports you make and provide decent evidence, staff will put the rest together. You cannot report a user for their gallery and expect staff to automatically get that everything is a violation without specific proof and explanations. Trying to send a single report actually makes it harder for staff because they have to do more work to connect the dots on their own. It wastes time. With multiple reports of different deviations in the same gallery by different people, the connections are easier to make. Yes it is time-consuming for you, but where you spend time it saves time for staff so they can get through more reports.

It is never a simple task for anyone or any site. Nobody can really change that. Complex sites have complex issues and variables that can't be solved by trying to lump them into a single button click. And a single gallery report option opens the door for increases in false reports as well. It would be easy for someone to look at a handful of violations and report the whole gallery when maybe 100s of them aren't violations at all. Then staff have to sit there trying to figure out WHICH are the violations or send back a message requesting more information. That can all be avoided if people take their time and only report what's necessary and thoroughly explain their reports.

*davick Jan 17, 2013

I think the general feeling for many is that the staff don't do these things at all. Recently, I have reported deviations with proof of theft and nothing was done. Those works are still on DeviantART. I am not the only person who has experienced this. It often confuses people with regards to works stolen from Pixiv or other members-only sites. Someone, only a few days ago, noted me that they thought DeviantART staff did not have access to Pixiv and that was why nothing happened to their reports.

`nokari Jan 17, 2013 Professional Interface Designer

That's a common misconception whenever people don't see immediate results or the results are different than they expect. dA has done a lot to try and educate people how to properly report and what their policies are. They put priority and weight on artists who report their own work stolen, which is where a lot of the anger about reports by third parties not being accepted comes from. They have had to become a bit more skeptical of third-party reports because in the past they were often mistaken and caused a lot of problems. Many artists had their own work removed because someone saw the art on someone else's account first and assumed the real artist was actually the thief. It gets even hairier when it involves artwork and artists outside of dA. People start to make up all kinds of theories about it when all they need to do is read dA's articles on the subject to understand.

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