Once upon a time, a young boy accused me of acting impetuously, and he demanded that I explain myself. Sadly, he died of old age before I managed to formulate my response...¹



Mood: Hmmm...
Listening to: Garbage: Can't Cry These Tears
Watching: Blade Runner

My point, of course, is that I do not find it easy to come to a quick conclusion. I want to know all the facts -- or, at least, as many as possible -- before I act. Impetuous behaviour has its place, or so I'm told; it just doesn't really sit well with me...

The word that seems most fitting is "glacial"!



The History of deviantART ... according to Pete

Four and a half years ago (exactly 54 months and 4 hours, to be precise) I joined this online community, deviantART, that we all know, and that many of us love. The community that loves us; it says so, right there on the front page.

Two months after I joined, one of my poems was named "Daily Poem" -- the very first time that award had been used, in fact -- and six months after that I was given my deviousness award (and with it I earned my senior status -- although I actually didn't get that until a couple of weeks later, when something I said (in one of the forums debating evils of the vast new conspiracy surrounding the newly added subscriber's "*" symbol) jogged $jark's memory and he realised he'd forgotten to click the appropriate button. In the midst of my stating how I was quite happy with my lowly "~" and that it wasn't at all demeaning, he changed it to the "`" and promptly derailed my argument...)

A couple of weeks after that, my cat moved in...

So what?

"So what?" you're thinking.


So, while I haven't been here since the launch of this site -- I missed that by six months (and one day) -- I have been here for quite some time. I've been around since the days when it was possible to submit three deviations, one after the other, and then go to the front page and see them all still sitting there, in consecutive order, with nothing else having slipped in between them... (I know, because I've done it! The last time I attempted to submit two deviations, one after the other, there were 150 others submitted between them...)

Most of that time, I have been hanging around the forums -- and very few of the people I remember from those times are still active. (Although current events have certainly caused a few of the old names to reappear in the Senior's Forum, and elsewhere!) I've seen people come and go, I've seen people show up, make a name for themselves, and suddenly get added to the admin team (and I've not always agreed with the decision...)

For ever and ever...?

I almost left, once. I had a run-in with one of the admins². Essentially it was a misunderstanding; I sent what was supposed to be a helpful note to a couple of admins, and the guy in question obviously took it the wrong way and gave me a sarcasm-loaded roasting in reply. The more I stared at his reply, the sicker I felt -- I don't like confrontation; never have -- and the sicker I felt, the angrier I felt. I stepped away for a while, and thought about things, and then I came back and blasted him. Both barrels. I told him exactly what I thought of his whole "I'm better than you" attitude, and of his persecution complex.

And then, since I don't like confrontation, I no longer enjoyed my visits to the forums; every time I saw him laying down the law (or even just posting in general) I had to switch to something else. I visited less and less. Then I went to England for six weeks (for my grandmother's 90th birthday) and found that I'd managed quite well without my daily deviantART fix. I didn't need this place after all...

So anyway, I almost left. Nothing too flashy, no shouting, no accusations, no emptying of my gallery; I was simply going to leave a semi-cryptic journal entry and slip away into anonymity. I left contact details on the off-chance that anybody was worried by my absence -- and I stopped coming here...

And yet...

And yet, it didn't last. Here I am. I held out for perhaps a month, but this site was just too large a part of my life for me to give up on it so easily. I would even go so far as to call deviantART a lifeline for me; the forums, in particular, gave me something to focus on while my "real" life was quietly slipping down the toilet.

It was directly due to some of the discussions I got involved in here, over the years, that I am now working my way through the Bible -- and those same discussions also led to my reading Darwin's Origin of Species. Those discussions helped me to clarify my own religious beliefs, and gave me a hell of a lot of reading material to wade through.

I have made several friends here, too -- and I am not a guy who makes friends easily.

Get to the point...

"Get to the point," you are thinking. "Is there a point?" you are thinking.

The point is that, through some turbulent times (including, but not limited to, the death of my father), deviantART has been an important part of my life. And throughout the last 54 months, I have considered $jark to be the heart and soul, and leader, of deviantART.

I have generally, in the past, defended unpopular administrative decisions -- and there have been a few, over the years. Every time, a vocal minority rant and rave, cries of "conspiracy" and "censorship" ring out, echo around the forums for a few weeks, and then fade away. Each time, in the past, I have defended the admins; not because of my sad and pathetic need to be loved by those in authority (*ahem*) but because I have always been firmly on the side of fair play!

(Those few times in my life that I have acted unfairly towards somebody still rise up and haunt me, now and again...)

The need to be fair is why I've invested so much time in reading the Bible, and so on. I'm quite happy for people to think what they like, or believe what they like -- but if they're going to make bald statements which I know to be wrong, to be unfair, I'll leap to defend whichever side is being treated poorly, unfairly.

Current Events

For those of you who have been living on the moon for the last few days (and I hear the moon doesn't have a decent broadband connection) $jark was removed from his position as "heart and soul, and leader" of deviantART a week or so ago, ostensibly by $spyed. This was, of course, the topic of my last journal entry too.

I suspect it has been the topic of quite a large percentage of journal entries over the last week. I have read many, ranging from shock and horror to disgust, distaste, bewilderment, confusion, and anger. Oh yes, the community is definitely angry -- although it seems many are not entirely sure why they are angry, or even who $jark really is.

And, of course, rumour and speculation have been rife. In the delay before $spyed even commented on what had happened, various things happened -- including an entire forum thread being deleted, which is apparently not as impossible as we had been led to believe (although it turned out it had been deleted by the admin who created it in the first place) -- which rapidly led to accusations of censorship and repression, and a general mistrust in the sanctity and integrity of deviantART's database.

The quickest way to come up to speed if you have missed what has been going on:

$jark's journals for the last week or so would be a good place to start.
$spyed's response to the site's turmoil should also be read.
`bookdiva has been maintaining a comprehensive list of journals on the subject.
$MikeyLove's journal injects a little sanity into the whole mess, and also some much-needed insider perspective on what has become the main sub-issue of the whole thing...

Several administrators have resigned over the issue; in particular I found the journals of °euphoria and `brazensix to be worth reading.

And, of course, many people have an opinion. Many people have an approach they intend to follow to show their support for $jark, ranging from the subtle to the extreme.

Where are we now?

I said a little while back that "$jark was removed from his position as "heart and soul, and leader" of deviantART"; obviously this is not entirely true. He has been officially demoted from $jark to °jark, and had his administrative access cut. But to many of us, to those of us who remember the good old days, Scott Jarkoff will always be the heart and soul of this community; a leader in spirit if not in fact.

Did the Dalai Lama lose his position as leader of his people when he was driven from his rightful home? Nuh-uh...

Same thing.

So where do I stand?

I support $jark; that much is easy to answer.

But nothing is ever quite that simple. I also love this site, and this community, and I want to do my best to nurture it -- as, indeed, I've always done in my own quiet way... Certainly I shall be a little more cautious, a little more deliberate, from now on before lending my support blindly to any new move by the administration. As always, I shall do my best to be fair.

Certainly what happened to $jark was unfair! No doubt $spyed had his reasons, and perhaps he even believed he was doing what was best for deviantART. There is plenty of speculation (and a couple of leaked documents, for whatever they might be worth) suggesting otherwise...

$spyed's public response simply deflected the issue and got everybody all fired up about the "co-founder" question -- which, if anything, I see as little more than a red herring (but more on that in a moment.) Instead of confronting the issue, he basically said "never fear, simple folk, for all is not lost: this person you knew as °jark really wasn't as important as you all thought he was; plenty of competent people left to run the kingdom!"

He seems to be underestimating the esteem in which $jark was held by so many of us.

Who founded what?

Was $spyed a co-founder? The answer seems to be "well, it depends on your definition of 'co-founder'!"

Those of us who were here as early as I was knew $jark and $matteo as the two founders of deviantART. $matteo himself got demoted to °matteo quite some time ago; I'm afraid I let that slip past almost without comment, simply because I didn't know Matt too well... However, it wasn't until $spyed's infamous "Red Pill" spamming of everybody's userpage that many of us even became aware of his existence.

However, evidence would also suggest that he was here behind the scenes (active? That is still disputed) and had some part in the birth of this site. So perhaps, from his point of view, he is a co-founder.

And, as we all know, "many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

My question, though, is this: does it matter?!

Whether $spyed was a co-founder of this community or not -- whether it was his brainchild (as has been attributed to him in a few interviews with him) or not -- is not the issue. It is simply muddying the waters and quite effectively removing the focus from the true issue: the sacking of °jark, for which he still has not, in my mind, provided a reasonable response.

Most of us may never know for sure what his real reasons were -- and all the speculation in the world is still only speculation.

Where do we go from here?

Can deviantart survive in the face of °jark's removal? Possibly. Certainly any large corporation should be able to survive the removal of its founders after a shaky period of uncertainty; in that respect deviantART is little different. Of course, the site depends upon its community too -- and people are always unpredictable.

As I said, I support $jark, and I've made sure he knows it. I feel that the best thing for this community would be his return to his former position -- but I also feel that that is a matter for Scott and Angelo to resolve between themselves (by whatever means seems appropriate.) Realistically, we can but hope...

Is there anything we can do to make it happen? I don't think so.

As I see it -- and based on the worst-case scenario regarding $spyed's plans for this site (generated from reading a multitude of speculation and innuendo; after all, I really don't know the guy to judge him!) -- the only way to hurt $spyed enough to make him back down is to destroy the money-making ability of this community. And the only way to do that, I fear, is to destroy the community itself.

Which would be about as useful as throwing out the baby with the bath water...

Nope.

I support $jark, and I support deviantART; if Scott is to ever return, I want there to be something to return to.

So, I shall change my icon. (In all the time I've been here, it has only changed twice before. Once it turned green when I became a victim of ~distramutarkal's reign of terror, and once I tweaked the text to make the "Pete" more legible.) I shall go yellow to show my support. And I shall continue, in my quiet way, to do what I can to make this community a place worth fighting for...

And if, despite my best efforts, certain people in power (and the attitudes of several current admins leave a lot to be desired) manage to poison this place entirely, I shall say my goodbyes and quietly leave.

I'm not sure what more I can do...

Regards to all,
Pete.

Footnotes:

¹ No, this is not really true. How old do you think I am?

² And no, it was neither $spyed nor $jark; that would have vastly simplified my reaction to what has happened...