Update

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Lately I wrote an article about the recent changes on DA - Bye bye, Popularity! - not really knowing what was going on. Now #hq released an article about the recent site updates that sheds light upon some of my questions.

Summarized: Deviantart is using an algorithm called "Fair Exposure"to showcase the most popular art on the front page. The task is to expose a varied cross-section of all kind of art concerning styles, genres and art forms - meaning not biased toward any topic, yet still based on popularity.

But as many of us have realized - this is not working very well. I appreciate that DA wants to make the popular system "fair" so that many other great but lesser known artists get a chance but to me it seems quite the opposite occurs.

Fair Exposure isn't Fair

In former times the vast majority of pictures that were loved and faved by many people ranked high. Now the system seems to be more random, selecting pictures that a lot less people truly like and want to see on the front page. And it shows in the number of favourites compared to the number of views that "the most popular pictures" of the last 8 and 24 hours are by no means the most popular pictures in any way. How is that fair to lesser known talented artists who have to rely on luck or fair to widely known and professional arists who earned their popularity with diligence, gained experience and talent?

Reading the comments on that article about the updates makes me see that I am not alone with my observations. A lot of people are upset because they don't find what they like on the front page anymore. Or they are upset because they worked hard to gain more attention, almost even made the front page but now are set back to zero. Others are upset because they try to make a living from their art but won't get commissioned anymore because they can't be found anymore (maybe I am among them). Some are complaining that deviations with only few favs are being ranked way higher even within the same subcategory than deviations with thousands of favs which seems to be totally random. Or they're complaining that many deviants abuse the current algorithm that follows a certain pattern concerning styles, genres and art forms by miscategorizing their deviations.

I still think it's positive to try to make the exposure of art fairer than it was but I see a major problem in this benevolent intention: the phrase "fair exposure" combined with "most popular art" is a contradiction in terms. How can a popular list ever be fair - no matter on what it is based on? It doesn't matter WHO makes the front page - popular artist, not popular artist, new artist, experienced artist, hard working artist, beginner or expert - those who are exposed on the front page gain much more attention on their art than anybody else, not because they are the best but just because they are at the top. So forget about fairness as long as Most Popular lists exist.

Suggestions

A lot of deviants have been made a few very interesting and useful suggestions in my opinion and I trust that DA will take those changes into consideration if this is technically possible. I support the idea of 4 different tabs on the front page:

1. Newest Deviations
2. Most Popular Deviations (based on popularity concering views, favs and comments, independent from styles, genres and art forms)
3. Fair Exposure (exposing art from lesser known artists, independent from styles, genres and art forms)
4. Random Deviations

Let me know what you think about these ideas. +spyed wrote in a comment that more updates are coming so let's see if things take a turn for the better.

The Ever-Growing-Community Issue

We are a huge group of very different artists of all ages, backgrounds and tastes that is ever-growing day by day which is not exactly working to the advantage of this place. 20 new deviants are joining DA every 30 seconds on average. That makes 57,600 new deviants in one day. Already years ago I held the opinion that the DA community is getting far too big to be a nice and inspiring place where like-minded people get in contact, comment on each others pictures and journals and discover new art step by step. Today our Message Centers are flooded with an ever new influx of new deviations coming from the group submissions, many journals and featured events but lesser comments and feedback on our art. A lot of deviants are experiencing that. It's getting harder to keep up and deal with that massive overload of new deviations so that many of us aren't able to take the time for commenting anymore. We have thousands of new pictures to view, some of them we fav and go away and the major rest just gets deleted from the inbox and remains unseen. Everybody thought that the new group system was a brilliant new feature and it truly was in beginning. But now it consumes us because there are too many groups with too many new almost random submissions that we can't view or don't want to view. Stupidly, many artists depend on the groups now, otherwise their art wouldn't have a chance to get attention at all anymore. Isn't that ironic?

My Suggestion

That this site is getting more and more unmanageable is nobody's fault but it makes me thinking about a radical solution for a long time now. What happens in natural systems when something gets too big? Either it splits into a few subdivisions OR - it's doomed! What I want to suggest is to split Deviantart into 4 subdivisions: Deviantart-MAIN, Deviantart-PROFESSIONAL, Deviantart-EROTIC and Deviantart-KIDS. This way you can keep the conflicting main target groups separated and a lot of problems will be solved at once. When a new person joins the site they will be asked what sub-communities they want to be part of and so they can roughly filter their preferred art in advance. They can select one division or even all if they want  (unless they are minors who aren't supposed to see mature content). The access to all divisions would be granted of course but you wouldn't see art in your messages from divisions that you didn't choose.  An artwork can be submitted to more than one division, too. It would appear in different galleries but with the same unique URL. The categories in each division would be quite similar.

1. DeviantART-MAIN
In the main subdivision goes all general art of all levels from amateur and free time artists.

2. DeviantART-PROFESSIONAL
In this community all professional artists are gathered who wants to offer their commercial services.

3. DeviantART-EROTIC
All mature content art goes into this section.

4. DeviantART-KIDS
This is the place for all very young artists who mainly have a passion for fanart or other pictures suitable for children.

What do you think about this idea?

Update


Vote in my Poll and share your opinion! Thanks for that.

What do you think about splitting DA into 4 subdivisions?

`Lilyas

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