Well, I haven't seen the recent notes about art being deleted (didn't Realitysquared or so say that some notes need updating anyway?), but people can just send a +helpDesk ticket if they really don't know what went on.

Not arguing with your suggestion (I'm all for better communication and easier to understand notes!), just giving side info as a "workaround".

I agree. Once I had a deviation removed for a wrong reason. It took an exchange of, like, 3 or 4 notes with the the help desk before I was able to even understand the reason it was removed ... and then at that point I was able to show that the reason was erroneous, and so the deviation was then restored to the gallery. It should ~not~ have taken so many notes to know ~why~ the deviation was removed in the first place.

I think your suggestion is especially important, in that so many policy violation reports are generated by anonymous (to the affected user) "vigilantes" who spend their spare time searching out purported policy violations instead of doing art. In my case, I'm pretty sure the deviation I just mentioned was reported by someone who disliked the political statement of the deviation, and then groped about for a reason to report it, and came up with something that was simply factually wrong (but the people at the pva desk had no way of knowing this, of course). In other words, the reporting user was shooting from the hip, in the dark, and completely missed the target.

That said, I feel that the enforcement by the pv team is on the whole quite fair, even if some of the underlying rules they are enforcing are more than a bit wonky. But there remain facts to be contended in certain types of matters, especially regarding copyright and related matters. In such cases, the flow of information is critical. It's all about checks and balances, and a sort of transparency that gives users faith in the fairness of the system.

--
Do you want to join in the glorious crusade to cleanse dA of bad digital art, crappy pencil sketches, shameless photos of naked women, and over-popular anime? If so, then by all means check this out right now: [link]

There ARE a lot of bad submissions to work through though. I have no doubt that your work being deleted was simply a case of it falling through the net, but imagine that after a day of removing hundreds of porno pictures, and then just getting fed up of it all and doing your last submission. It teeters on the edge of the rules, but it doesn't really plant itself firmly as allowed or not. You'd simply get rid of it. And as for your return notes, they probably got lost in a ton of 'omfg my pr0n was bannt' notes.

--
MARP MARP MARP

From what I've seen of the notes sent (I've never recieved one myself, but I've seen plenty of copies posted), they aren't all that tough to understand. More often than not, the deviant simply refuses to believe that they could have possibly broken policy in any way, and thus assumes that their personal interpretation of policy is more correct than the staff's, and they are being unfairly targeted, so therefore any reason given is probably invalid and not worth wasting the three seconds it would take to understand it.

That said, I'm all for more clear communication. Too many of the most important parts of dA policy are still more or less in legalese, which leads to a lot of unneccessary angst.

--
Hey, go check out my awesome writing and RPG-related generators