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PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS PAGE TO PRESENT BIASED FACTS SUPPORTING EITHER SCOTT JARKOFF OR ANGELO SOTIRA. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and enforces a Neutral Point of View policy. We should fairly represent all sides of a dispute without implying one is correct. (See talk page for full comment) -->
deviantART is a popular Online Artistic Community . It was first launched on August 7 , 2000 through the work of Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens and Angelo Sotira who is the current CEO. deviantART aims to provide a place for any artist, photographer, or writer to exhibit and discuss his or her works. It also provides a community of like-minded individuals. The site consists of over 2 million users and over 21 million submissions (as of April 28, 2006). deviantART now displays multiple forms of art and creative expression laid out in an extensive category structure. The artwork on display ranges from Photography to Digital Art , Traditional Art , Literature and Skins For Applications . The site also has extensive downloadable resources for use within artworks such as tutorials and Stock Photography . DEVIANTART Origins The idea of a deviantART community, though inspired by other projects such as deskmod.com, screenphuck.com, customize.org and skinz.org, which were all application skin based websites, was thoroughly original in nature. The developers of deviantART, mainly the founders Scott Jarkoff (jark) and Matt Stephens (matteo), most sharing backgrounds in the application skinning community, took the concept further to make it an art community. In order to provide an easily identifiable look to the site, "Fella", a small horned character, was chosen as the official deviantART Mascot , while a stylized "dA" was used as the Logo . Throughout the existence of deviantART many individuals have been involved with the site in both a public and private capacity. These individuals have held and still hold numerous positions from administrators to volunteers serving as gallery directors and help staff. The current management and administration of deviantART is now fairly extensive, with Angela Sotira (spyed) serving as the current CEO of deviantART, Inc. Terminology The site uses unorthodox capitalization in its title (deviantART) as a way of emphasizing its Deviancy , and other aspects of the site reflect this attitude as well. As such, the following terms are used throughout the site:
Features Besides the basic features of an online artistic community, deviantART also incorporates:
Obtaining a subscription to the site unlocks enhancements to these features, as well as provide additional services, such as larger thumbails for browsing. Growth The site is in a constant state of growth, and features continue to improve and increase in number. There is a forum specifically focused on suggestions, and another for repairing known problems. In the past, a monthly magazine called devMAG was produced, but this was discontinued. deviantART's current revision (deviantART v4, or ''Fournando''), was released on August 7 , 2004 , (deviantART's fourth anniversary). Subscription deviantART maintains a subscription based service that offers extra features and privileges. Some of these subscriber-restricted features are:
Subscription is usually bought by the year, but must be renewed constantly. However, some members, predominantly the staff, attain a subscription that continues "Until Hell Freezes Over", i.e. never ends. User symbols All deviants on deviantART are referred to by their given nickname, which is preceded by a user symbol. The symbols are listed below. DEVIANTART SHOP This service was formerly known as deviantART Prints, and before that, deviantPrints. Formerly a secondary website that acts as deviantART's store, it is now totally integrated with deviantART.com. Here, any user who has bought a Prints account may sell their deviations, printed onto a variety of media. One may also sell prints without such an account, but will only receive 10% of the revenues instead of 50% of the profits. DEVIANTART SUMMIT On June 17 and June 18 , 2005 , deviantART held their first convention, the deviantART Summit, at the Palladium in Hollywood, California . The summit consisted of several exhibitions by numerous artists, including Artscene Groups old and new at approximately 200 different booths. Giant projection screens displayed artwork as it was being submitted live to deviantart.com, which receives 30,000 new images daily. The summit also hosted various art-related workshops and seminars. Leaders of deviantART hope to hold a new summit each year. CRITICISM deviantART as a corporation deviantART was originally created as a part of a larger network of music related websites called the Dmusic Network. The site flourished largely because of a team of volunteers after its launch, but was officially later incorporated. Volunteers and community members still largely comprise the site's staff. Over the years, the website has grown so much that several features available to non-subscribers have been removed. These removals have been explained as both an encouragement for members to subscribe (such as the ability to view artwork Thumbnail s in a user's message center) and due to cutbacks that had to be made to save bandwidth during the "bandwidth-crisis" that happened in deviantART's second year where providing a free service to so many users put a huge strain on the site resources. Termination of Scott Jarkoff
Problems and uproars are linked even to this apparently simple question: Who founded deviantART? According to Scott Jarkoff, Matt Stephens and himself are the only founders. According to other sources, the idea of deviantART sprouted in mid 1999 , originally a solution to the need for a skin section on a site called DMusic, run by Angelo Sotira. Jarkoff was the mastermind, and pitched the idea to Sotira, the idea of a website where users could submit and share their custom skins. Sotira approved of the idea, and Jarkoff began work. Soon Stephens became involved, when Jarkoff showed him his design ideas. Stephens suggested the site be open to all forms of visual artwork, instead of just skins. Together they brainstormed and coded, and the site opened on August 7 , 2000 . While Sotira was not a large part of the community until 2002 , his initial involvement led him to claim he was also originally the third co-founder, a claim refuted by Jarkoff and Stephens. Anyway, it is important to notice that Scott Jarkoff, aka jark, wrote in his staff bio this: "It was myself, `matteo and that founded deviantART back in the summer of 2000. At the time and I were working together on DMusic and we were trying to come up with ideas for a skinning section for all the MP3 related software. After doing some soul searching I came up with the name deviantART and the idea of branding submissions as deviations and users as deviants. `matteo joined in the fray and we chose to make deviantART a complete art site from the onset. Of course that is an extremely concise representation of what took place in order to get deviantART launched and off the ground.", as you can read here If you read the comment made now by jark to his own past words, you can see that he does not say at all that that staff bio exerpt is false, but simply that he wrote it that way because he had to do so. (see here [http://comments.deviantart.com/5/6104784/157282320 ). -->On July 29 , 2005 , (co-founder) Scott Jarkoff was terminated from deviantART staff, causing an uproar within the community. Various statements by deviantART regarding the issue have portrayed his termination as necessary, but most of the user base rejects this assertion. With Matthew Stephens' resignation in 2003 , supporters of Scott Jarkoff assert that now neither of the founders remain in deviantART's administration. In contrast, Sotira insists he was a founder, and also the first full time working staff member of the deviantART administration. The deviantART administration has been generally tight-lipped throughout the incident citing legal restraints. Various campaigns have sprung up in support of Scott Jarkoff, including the " Bring Back The Community " campaign, "Yellow Day" (because Jarkoff was sometimes known as the "Yellow Alien"), which was carried out by many of Scott Jarkoff's supporters on deviantART's fifth anniversary, August 7 , 2005 , and the lesser publicised "Grey Day" (in honor of Matthew Stephens). On July 31 , 2005 , Sotira posted an official response to explain the situation. The response to this entry was mixed. Copyright issues Historically there has been sporadic unease regarding deviantART's potential usage of uploaded art. Posting requires assent to dA's Submission Agreement , which grants deviantART the legal permissions to re-use and even modify any artwork posted on deviantART (see in particular Section 3. License), as well as the right to sublicense any of that artwork to a third party at dA's sole discretion. Critics have argued that those usage rights are too broad and far-reaching, that the legal language is unnecessarily complex and weighed in dA's favor, and that the difficulty of terminating the agreement means that "dA effectively owns your art." Defenders assert that deviantART needs the rights to legally offer its basic services, and to enable future services and business relationships that may become desirable. (See also the official Help Desk response to questions and criticism.) On March 1 , 2006 , deviantART's administration issued the most dramatic revision to date in response to months of community initiative. The far-reaching usage rights remain intact, but matters of termination have been clarified, improved, and made more accessible, so that artists can reclaim their usage rights simply by removing their works from dA as they please. Though some remain concerned about the basic arrangement, many now feel reassured by the new "freedom to leave." Outside the legal issues involved in posting art, the immense popularity of the site has made it an easy target for copyright violation, as a malicious user can easily reuse artwork displayed (usually as clip art for websites) without the author's knowledge. Also, many users either ignorant of the site's purpose or the site's submission agreement often submit art works they did not produce. Others attempt to use deviantART as a photo-hosting site for their own needs, which is also strongly discouraged. Due to the impractical nature of researching the copyright status of any art work reused in deviations, many copyright violations remain untouched until the violation has been proven. Administrative work regarding policy violations is often viewed as one-sided and unconcerned; this is because some users are not aware of the copyright policies, and claim to be falsely or mistakenly accused. This has led to many clashes between users and staff. Concerns over free expression A concern for some deviantART members is the supposed increasing Intolerance towards certain kinds of art, such as those depicting male nudity, as opposed to the female nude which is very popular on the site. The site itself is unbiased towards or against any type of art, other than images which are graphically pornographic or promote racism. The deviantART staff are also able to delete any of the Deviations on the site, and will do so if that Deviation has broken the rules of the site. However, there have been worries that artworks or comments have been deleted when they back up positions that either contradict the site's staff's political positions or draw ire from the site's sponsors or potential sponsors. One notable incident of removing artwork that soon became controversial was the confrontation between the site and noted Internet animator David Firth . The Daily Deviation Each day some deviations are chosen by staff members to be shown on the front page. These are called the Daily Deviations, or DD. Only some staff members have the ability to feature deviations, and site policy is that this choice is completely up to the individual. There are guidelines that staff should seek to promote lesser known members and refrain from giving a Daily Deviation to a member who has had one before, but these are not mandatory. Misunderstanding the above policy has led to concern from many members in the community who feel that the Daily Deviation should be used for a certain purpose. The lack of a certain type of artwork among the list of Daily Deviations is often seen as censorship. This is, however, only due to the tastes of the staff who feature deviations. The most controversial aspect of this is between male and female nude photographs, where the female nudes which have been posted as Daily Deviations vastly outnumber the male nudes. Daily Deviations can be suggested by normal users by use of the site Note message system. The deviantART FAQ recommends that users send their notes to the Gallery Director who oversees the gallery in which the art they want to suggest resides. While some staff members reply to every suggestion received, others only reply to suggestions they agree with. This has led many users to believe that their views are seen as unimportant by staff and led to a more fractured relationship between staff and users. Some members see Daily Deviations as very important, others are more ambivalent. As it is, a featured deviation is only spotlighted for one day. Normally this results in between 1000 and 8000 additional views of the artwork. Other ways for deviations to be promoted by users include Linking to them in Journals , or marking them as a favourite. Concerns over deviantMOBILE The deviantMOBILE service allows artworks to be downloaded to a user's phone wallpaper free of charge, whether that user is the author or not, but only if the original author has agreed. This has raised some copyright concerns, especially because the original authors of the downloaded Deviations receive none of the revenue produced. The main concern over the service is that it is an ''opt-out'' service rather than an ''opt-in'' one, in that all artworks submitted to the site before the onset of deviantMOBILE were automatically signed up for the service. This led to many full galleries being made available without the authors' awareness, as many artists said they did not receive the emails that warned them of the introduction of deviantMOBILE. Most objections to the service fail to take into account the stipulation in the license agreement that deviantART may distribute anything submitted to the site using any form of digital media. However, some also point out that a mobile-phone screen is hardly the place for artworks, and devalues or defaces the work of many artists unfairly. deviantMOBILE is still in service at the current date. REFERENCES
:: Note: The summit was held Friday and Saturday, contrary to how the second paragraph of the Wired article reads.
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