Introduction

Welcome to the latest issue of Yellow Alien Weekly Transmission. This is where I, the Yellow Alien, as Director of Community Development, discuss the various issues taking place here on deviantART.

Community Development

Community Development is the largest department in deviantART. We are charged with being on the front-lines of the battles that take place daily. It is our duty to communicate with the community and listen to the feedback received. The Community Help Desk Team, Policy Violation Team, News Team and Message Network @dministration all comprise this huge department and are here to help assist the masses in any way that we can. If anyone was unsure as to who runs Community Development let me answer that for you: I, $jark, run this entire department and am directly, or indirectly, the supervisor for all folks in Community Development.

From My Desk

The following issues are items of interest, possibly reoccuring, that need to be addressed with the entire community. Some of these might be repeats however they are all very pertinent for the entire community! Read and heed what comes from my desk because if you do not follow along then you might find yourself abducted by aliens and taken to an undisclosed location and probed for hours on end. Of course some folks might enjoy that but that just so happens to be beside the point!

• Dislike deviantART? If there is something that you dislike about deviantART then I implore you to post your thoughts here in my journal. I will be addressing many of the points in next weeks issue of the Yellow Alien's Weekly Transmission; it is going to take me about that long to finish reading through all the commentary and come up with something worthwhile for the YAWT.


• Bugs Bugs Bugs. deviantART is fully aware that there are bugs within various aspects of the site. Certain known issues such as deviations not immediately appearing on user pages, as well as favorites, among others, are being worked out. These bugs are not simply solved in the standard manner that one would assume due to the volume of traffic that deviantART receives daily. We have to be very mindful of how we implement solutions otherwise we risk introducing more bugs or more problems. Our number one issue is always going to be latency between what you see on the site, your interaction with the site itself and the database solution that powers deviantART. Trust me when I say that we know how to solve these problems; like I said, it is not as easy as you assume. We are doing everything that we can in order to resolve the bugs and oddities with the site. deviantART CTO, and highly intelligent geek, $mccann is the smartest man on earth and is working all these issues. If I have faith in him then you should too!


• Daily Deviation Features. We receive 10000+ submissions of art to deviantART on a daily basis. On the "best" day we might feature a total of 20 deviations via the Daily Deviation featuring mechanism. We search every crack and crevice of the site in order to locate some neat things to showcase for the community. The fact that we might feature 20 deviations out of 10000+ does not degrade the "honor" that is bestowed upon one's art being selected as a Daily Deviation. After all, we end up featuring a mere 0.2% of all art submitted each day. Can you honestly say that we are featuring too much knowing that bit of information? I have no idea why people continue to question the number of Daily Deviations; it completely perplexes me but until this issue subsides you are going to see constant information flow from the staff.


• Daily Deviation Bashing. We do not tolerate offensive commentary, or remarks leading towards the disagreement with a deviation selected as a feature, as a comment on a deviation that is selected as a Daily Deviation. While we do encourage feedback regarding our selections we will take immediate administrative action on any individual that complains about a particular deviation being chosen as a Daily Deviation. After all, it is not fair to the artist to have to read such disparaging comments when they had absolutely no say in the selection of their deviation as a feature. If you want to voice your dislike for the choice then do so by sending a private note to the administrator that featured that particular Daily Deviation.


• Mature Content. If you do not desire to see erotic art when surfing deviantART then turn on your mature content filter. This will ensure that you see all content that is not marked as mature. If you somehow end up running in to a deviation that is mature content but not marked as such then report it via our Community Help Desk. Furthermore, if you do not desire to see Daily Deviations that are considered mature content then turn the filter on. It is really that simple! For the love of God, please stop saying that the deviations are pornography. There is a difference in pornography and erotic art and our Gallery Directors know the difference. If erotic art is featured as a Daily Deviation you can rest assured that it is not considered pornography. Remember that pornography is a violation of deviantART policy and will be removed as soon as we locate it and the deviant will receive a lovely parting gift.


• Help Help Help. If you require assistance then please use our Community Help Desk as opposed to sending a direct note to an administrator. We need to maintain official accounting records of all administrative activity that takes place between the staff and the community and the only way to do that is to make use of the Community Help Desk. On the same token, prints and accounting related help requests must go through the Prints Help Desk. Everyone on staff will love you to death for paying homage to this! Trust me.


• Frequently Asked Questions. Check out our FAQ. It is filled with a plethora of information that will surely answer the majority of questions you may, or may not, have.

Community Help Desk Team (HDT)

The Community Help Desk Team is probably the busiest group of individuals in Community Development. The number of Community Help Desk Tickets that comes across the desk is unbelievable and our dedicated, volunteer, staff works wonders with the help they provide the community. This division of Community Development is currently being run by me as `phae has recently resigned. With that said, here are some of the more popular issues running across the Help Desk Team during the past week:

• Backlog. Our Community Help Desk has been on top of the tickets and response times are fabulous. If you do end up submitting a ticket you should expect to hear something back within 24 hours though do not go postal if we somehow do not get to you in that time period. There are many factors that could lead to a delayed response even though we are handling cases in record time these days.

Policy Violation Team (PVT)

The Policy Violation Team is, by far, the most underappreciated group of dedicated administrators within Community Development. Their main mission in life is, bluntly, to remove deviations and handle deviants who are not abiding by our policies. Because of this they are a prime target for attacks even though they are merely following the rules set forth by the upper echelon of the deviantART administration. Please do not ever think that barking back at a Policy Violation Team Member will serve you any good. While in the short term you might feel better it will ultimately, in the long run, be the worst thing you can do. This division of Community Development is run by $realitysquared. With that said, here are the top issues handled by the Policy Violation Team lately:

• Pornography. Although we have announced this no less than 4 times in the news over the last two months, and the fact there are several FAQ entries dealing with the subject, we are forced once again to declare that pornographic or explicitly sexual images are not allowed to be submitted to deviantART. Come on people, this is no joke and will not be tolerated!
  
  We take this situation very seriously so if you have any friends who are submitting this sort of imagery or who are wondering if it’s okay then please advise them before they come to our attention; the punishment for submitting explicit sexual imagery can be quite severe.



• We have also received a good number of reports over the last week or so but unfortunately many of the reports themselves were poorly written and contained no substantial evidence. Remember whether you are reporting a deviation for some sort of policy violation or if you are reporting something to the Community Helpdesk you need to show us your proof in the form of a link to something which we can look at for ourselves; otherwise your Helpdesk case will be delayed and your Violation report will most likely be discarded.



• Reporting Suspected Violations. On the subject of reporting violations; DO NOT send personal Notes to the Policy Violation Team.
  
  The Policy Enforcement Division of deviantART adheres to very strict documentation requirements and your personal Note does not come anywhere near this standard. You MUST use the official documentation systems which we have in place, namely the Report Violation tools for submissions and the Community Help Desk for all other matters. These systems create verifiable and reviewable documentation while your personal Note does not do anything even close.
  
  If you insist on relying on personal Notes in order to address your issue please don’t be surprised if you receive instructions to use the official reporting systems or if you receive no response at all.



• Spam Comments. We are once again seeing an increase in various types of spam messages and we are yet again making the announcement that spam is not well tolerated here on deviantART. While it might be fun to pass around a particular message to all your friends there are those among you who take this friendly practice too far and cross the line into something we need to discourage.
  
  There is no reason to paste a message onto a hundred pages; it is difficult to even justify doing 20 or 30 but bear in mind that we will be judging whether or not something is ‘spam’ based on the volume of messages, content, and size of the post with an extra bit added in for the potential annoyance factor.
  
  Please do us all a favor and show a little restraint.



• Abuse. Our last reminder is that if you get abused, insulted, harassed, spammed or otherwise attacked please *keep your mouth shut* and simply report them.
  
  When you insult, harass, spam and attack your tormentor in response you become *part of the problem* and when we come around to check what the problem is you'll be caught in the punitive action just like the guy who started it so do yourself a favor and don’t do anything which would make you part of the problem.

Message Network @dministration (MN@)

The mission of the Message Network @dministration is to make the deviantART Message Network a friendly place to chat for deviants while offering up exciting chat opportunities for the community by way of the various Signature Chats and other similar events. This division of Community Development is run by $euphoria. Here are some things happening around the MN@ world:

• dAmn Issues. There have been some issues with dAmn lately that we're looking into. We have a few of the issues fixed for you thanks to the IT department, and we'll be doing our best to get the rest taken care of as well.


• dAmn Exploits. Please note that if you know of a bug in dAmn and you use that knowledge to exploit the system, get around a ban, or otherwise disturb the community, you will be removed from deviantART completely.


• dAmn Bots. It has not been in the FAQ up to now, but there are no bots allowed in official channels. The only bots allowed in #devart, #help, and other official dAmn channels are those put there by the MN@. Any violation of this policy can result in administrative action on your account.


• dAmn Events. We're still working on some great events for you. If your group has an event coming up, let us know and we'll be glad to help publicize it for you.

In Closing

Hopefully someone, maybe one or two people, found this information interesting and informative. I will be releasing an article of this nature on a weekly basis, every Friday afternoon or evening. Stay tuned until next week where we will discuss even more exciting issues that have come up around the community. If you have any suggestions for issues you would like discussed then please let me know via a private note with the subject "YA Transmission Suggestion." I might not respond back to you immediately but I promise that I will consider your suggestions.