Fella Presents; A Roadmap to Inner Peace.

Are you having a problem? Are you frustrated? Do you feel like deviantART is confusing you on purpose? Well stop banging your head against the keyboard because we have a dedicated team of staffers waiting to help you!

As any deviant who has been around for more than five minutes can probably tell you - deviantART is a big site with lots of features, forums, sub-forums, galleries, and enough complexity at times to make a n00b's head spin.

We also realise that when deviantART does occasionally redesign itself, add new features, sections, or other goodies for your enjoyment, we also unknowingly introduce some of those little bugs and confusions which can make your deviantART existence a living hell for a little while.

The solution to your confusions, questions, and the evil programming bug or server delay which plague you is the deviantART Community HelpDesk.

In this article we will be attempting to instruct you on getting the most out of your Community HelpDesk experience and how the courteous and friendly our Community HelpDesk Team goes about their duties.

Community HelpDesk Tips

TIP #1: Know Your Problem or At Least Be Able To Describe It.

As much as the Community HelpDesk Team might want to help you they can’t read your mind. While you might think that a question like “dood, my page is b0rked” is nice and ‘to-the-point’ it doesn’t really help us to solve your problem. The more detail you can provide the better (and faster) we can serve you.

TIP #2: English Is Best But You Have Options.

deviantART is an international community so we certainly realise that not everyone has English as a first language, but it is the language that gets you the fastest response time. If you only have a partial grasp of English just do your best with what you know, patience is one of our virtues and we’ll simply keep asking questions until we understand your situation. We will do our best to help you even if you don’t know any English at all; just use your native tongue, but please understand that there may be a slight delay while we grab a book and translate and please forgive the possible butchering of your language in our responses.

TIP #3: Legibility Counts.

We know that not everyone has perfect typing skills and we don’t expect you to be a walking dictionary so we expect a few typos here and there- but please avoid using ‘internet shorthand’ or ‘l337 speak’ in your HelpDesk tickets.
While something like “DA piccie t/o on upin” or “|\/|y 9R4pH1c d1dn7 l04d” might make perfect sense to you we’d prefer the old fashioned, plain English, “I get a timeout whenever I try to upload”.

TIP #4: Examples and Specifics Are Nice.

If you are reporting something like flaming or if you are referring to something like a deviation or forum thread on the site please provide a link to it. While the Community HelpDesk Team will do some of the research we’d rather you link directly to the one insulting comment rather than making us read all 200 comments on the page.

TIP #5: Too Much Information Is Bad.

While we like you to be specific it gets confusing when you don’t know when to stop writing. Just state your problem as clearly as possible without writing a small novel. If someone is harassing you, just say you are being harassed by ‘so-and-so’ and skip the copy & paste of every word you two have ever exchanged and leave out the exhaustively detailed history stretching back to October of 2002. If we need to know these things we’ll ask about them, otherwise the information overload just gets in the way.

TIP #6: Check the FAQ.

The deviantART Community HelpDesk and FAQ share the same page, and most of the answers to common everyday confusions and questions have been pre-answered in the FAQ portion of the page so check that out first and you might not have to wait for your solution.

TIP #7: Forum Posts Are Informative and Useful.

Every time a site-wide bug or error occurs the Community HelpDesk gets buried under a mountain of tickets reporting the issue and asking for an explanation and how long it will take to fix it. The best thing to do is to wait a little bit and keep your eye on the deviantART Status forum; the moment we understand exactly what is happening we will post the details there for all to read.

TIP #8: deviantART Related Issues Only Please.

Unfortunately the deviantART Community HelpDesk is unable to assist you if you are having hardware or software related problems; we can not tell you why your computer has begun whistling and belching fire, nor can we tell you why your MP3s won’t play and we’re probably just as stumped as you about how to get that Talisman skin to work. If you have a deviantART Prints related issue that requires help then please utilize the Prints HelpDesk. Use of the Community HelpDesk for Prints related issues is not supported and will result in major delays in receiving the help you desire. We implore you to head directly to the Prints HelpDesk for print related issues

TIP #9: The Community HelpDesk Team Didn’t Cause Your Issue.

Please try to remember that the Community HelpDesk Team didn’t cause your problem- they are here to help you resolve it. The Community HelpDesk Team doesn’t ban people, they don’t move or delete submissions, they don’t set policy, and they didn’t cause the bug which has been driving you up the wall so please don’t vent your frustrations and anger against them.

The Way Things Work: The Community HelpDesk in Action

• The process begins when you Contact the Community HelpDesk from the FAQ page. You should be aware that there are two HelpDesks at deviantART; one for General Inquiries and one for Prints Inquiries, so make certain that you are using the correct desk. Submissions to the Prints HelpDesk will be answered by the Prints CS Team. You’re defaulted to the Community HelpDesk so if your inquiry is prints related make certain that you tab over to that desk instead.


• The General Inquiries desk will present you with a drop-down menu of categories to choose from, just make your best guess as to which one describes your problem best or just leave it set at ‘General Help’. Below this category selection you will have a comment field where you may provide all the details of what is troubling you.


• Once the Help Request is submitted it becomes known as a ‘ticket’ and is assigned a number and enters the queue along with other recent tickets.


• The queue of tickets is then sorted and prioritised by the Community HelpDesk Team as soon as humanly possible. These highly polite and helpful individuals will then process your ticket in order of priority.


• During this process a Community HelpDesk Team member may resolve your question immediately, or may simply refer you to a specific FAQ entry or Status Post for a pre-existing answer.


• The more complicated issues such as bug or harassment reports and inquiries concerning copyright violations or bans may take slightly longer to resolve. In these tickets the Community HelpDesk Team member may ask for additional details if your initial comments were somewhat vague or confusing and they may perform some preliminary information gathering.


• Once they determine that the ticket is properly prepped and ready it will be forwarded to the correct department for proper handling. This means that, for example, if you are reporting someone for being abusive the Community HelpDesk Team will ultimately forward you ticket to the Policy Enforcement Division rather than resolving it themselves.

Further Information

Your Community HelpDesk Team:

Manager:

$phae

Staff:

+amolerouth
+tobyf
+zeruch
+lady-blue
+ninjabrick
+schemata-69

Related Links:

Community HelpDesk and FAQ
Prints HelpDesk
Help Forum and System Status Forum

Thank you for reading!