RatCreature's Journal

technology, why so difficult?

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:06:14 GMT

Is it possible on deviantArt to submit something that you stored in your scraps to a group, or is there some sort of conceptual block on that action making it impossible, due to the assumption that only polished stuff ought to be promoted in group galleries?

I'm asking because an XMFC group I'm watching has a gallery specifically to collect art meme responses, and I would like to submit mine, but because it's a meme and just quick doodles, I put it in my scraps rather than the regular gallery, as I do with all my drawbles/doodles and such on dA. I've poked around for a while now, but I can't seem to be able to submit them.

I don't want my many quick doodles totally swamp the art I put much more effort in, but I'd still like to participate in the more social, fun sharing of these. I mean, the group has a gallery just for art memes after all. So can this be achieved, or would I need to "trick" dA by creating a new regular gallery in which I put my memes, and then exclude them from "featured" and such for display purposes? That would be tedious work, and I rather only do that as a last resort.

And as I'm pondering ways how to best distribute fanart, here's a poll...

View Poll: So. Tumblr.

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where did my dA comments go?!

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 10:16:27 GMT

I just answered a comment from my dA inbox, but the reply never showed on the page, nor did the original comment. And all others have vanished too. Not just on that piece, but on others too. I don't get a ton of comments on dA (only fair I suppose, since I don't post that many there either), but many of my art pieces had a couple of comments and now they're all gone. I filed a support ticket, but I'm wondering whether it's just me or some general glitch, because looking at a couple of deviations from my favorites, which I was sure had comments, now don't show any either.

I hope they aren't gone permanently because with dA comments I don't get any email notifications, so I don't even have copies.

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commenting cultures

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:14:11 GMT

The discussions of the pros and cons of "kudos" on AO3 reminded me that I've wanted to post about whether others found the comment culture and discussions about them (and long critiques as well as the favorite and collection buttons) on deviantArt even more neurotic and fraught than on the typical fan archive/forum or fannishly used LJ/DW.

I mean, whenever I see discussions over this in posts on dA it's likely to be some sort of screed how these days people were only doing "fav and run" instead of how it supposedly was in some mythical ancient time when everybody wrote lengthy comments to help artists improve. (For an example, see this recent post and the comments on it, as well as the second part more about the group feature.)

First, seriously, what is it with that expression, as if it was a bad thing akin to a "hit and run" to bookmark an artwork as a favorite and give it more exposure through people browsing the favorites of artists they like to find new stuff? I know I find most art on dA like that, and more recently also through groups (that I also find by accident when an artwork I like has a group button), since neither the search function nor the categories are up to cope with the sheer number of works.

And second, all this whining about how the quality of the comments sucks and nobody was posting long comments (anymore -- it's always combined with nostalgic projections, which I can't verify, since I have used dA for a bit over two years), actually makes me even less likely to comment on the site, even though I can't quite believe the majority of users would really expect the average comment to be some sort of indepth analysis or review, rather than a quick "Awesome! I like the costume." or "Cool how the fur turned out." or something like that.

I mean, I freely admit that on dA my interaction is mostly of the "adding as favorite" type, because to me it seems a "win-win". I get a bookmark of great art I liked for myself with one click, and the artist gets a quick notification that I added it as favorite, and potentially more viewers if people who landed in my gallery also take a look at what art I liked. And that with none of the social awkwardness of commenting on strangers.

As for the complaint that even comments that are made are of the "worthless" kind, I'm not about to offer unwanted technical advice to random strangers, not to mention that more often than not I'm not actually more technically versed or knowledgeable etc. than the poster, or in the habit of doing technical art reviews, so what could I even say in a comment that would satisfy these demands? For the record, personally I'm happy to get fav'ed, and like short comments. Longer ones would be awesome of course, but I don't expect them as the norm.

Perhaps it is the huge range of users, from professional artists with many followers to the occasional inept doodle poster showing a sketch to some friends, that makes the popularity issues even more central on dA than on fanfic archives, because the displayed stats (number of views, downloads, favorites, and comments) aren't that different from fanfic archives like the AO3 that display hits, comments, and bookmarks.

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kicks deviantArt

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 21:37:14 GMT

Why won't dA let me submit my art? Argh. In their category choice pop-up no categories will load, just a stupid bouncing smiley. This used to work fine for me, why doesn't it now?

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confused by the internets

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 10:05:19 GMT

Can anyone explain this deviantArt Llama Badge thing to me? I understand that they were first introduced as some April Fools feature, so I took no real notice, but now they seem to have stuck around and mutated.

Initially I thought they were to be used like LJ's virtual gifts or something, but when I clicked on the llama icon there seems to be some Llama Badge trading game somehow connected to this new dA point system? and different badges and/or upgrades one milestone llama numbers are received? And by now I've gotten three Llama Badges (admittedly very few in what seems to be this framework since on some profiles the number of badges ranges well into the triple and quadruple digits) from people I don't recall interacting with, so I'm wondering whether people give these randomly or something? Or maybe instead of a fav'ing as feedback? Am I supposed to do anything with them in this badge trading game when I receive one?

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grumpy about the new deviantart version

Wed, 19 May 2010 21:00:04 GMT

Deviantart overhauls its layout and navigation all the time (the newest is the seventh version apparently), and as it hasn't been easy for me to get used to their navigation in the first place, I was once more confused when I saw this today.

However I could get used to the new design if it wasn't so horribly glitchy for me. The new menu isn't too bad, and I guess the scrolling view below the single image display would make it easier to browse a gallery, but that only works intermittently for me. And somehow now the smaller versions of the images look worse and often even those only half-load, i.e. I get some pixellated mess. Similarly their recently introduced message stacks don't really work. Also with the new layout they hide most of the artist's comments. Not to mention that sometimes the ad areas overlap the pictures now. (For me Adblock works to block most ads on dA, but does not always collapse the area where the ad would be, so I have background blocks overlapping images.) Mysteriously the search box vanished from some pages, and the page navigation in the search results doesn't always work...

Also, similarly to LJ's recent shenanigans, they have abandoned the "unspecified" gender option and reduced it to male/female if you pick now, rather than have unspecified still picked from previous versions.

Most of the 22,000 comments on the news announcement (mine included) aren't too thrilled either. >:(

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