Greetings...

As the Director of Community Development I am the person who represents your voice to the rest of the deviantART administration. I'm ultimately in charge of the Help Desk, the Copyright & Ettiquete Team and our Chat network. Every Wednesday I will be releasing a report; updating you on the internal progress of the team and the projects that interest you most.

Community Development

We Are Moving!

The Weekly Updates will be moving from its normal Wednesday home to Fridays! Spread the word!

Almost There

The Bugs. Yes, you know them, and most likely do not love them. Well, neither do we and thanks to the help we have gotten from you, the community we have gathered a comprehensive list of issues and are hard at work at resolving them. In fact, tomorrow, myself, $pachunka, $dionyziz, and $spyed will be sitting down face to face to go over the list and fix the outstanding issues.

So again, thank you for all your help with reporting things to us and all will be smooth sailing soon!


Copyright & Etiquette Administration (C&E)

CEA Update

CEA is moving forward in its new format of two full time staff and as a result Helpdesk inquiries remain steady at an average response within 24 hours.

The introduction of the Hide and Block tools have had a dramatic effect in the number of required administrative action; however we continue to receive reports of minor situations. Please try to handle isolated incidents or minor situations through the use of these tools which were provided for such occasions.

Continue to report serious situations as before.

Report Backlog

The Reports Desk backlog of reported submission violations remains to plague us.

Currently there are approximately 6900 reports awaiting review. Reports are currently being cleared at a slightly more rapid rate than they are being submitted.

Advanced progress was being made up until the point the Report Violation option was reintroduced on deviation pages. This resulted in a surge of new reports amounting to over 700 reports coming in just a couple of days. Increased reporting over the next few days also increased the number of waiting reports as they came in at a rate higher than we were able to clear them.

Currently reported violations are back down to expected levels so steady progress is once again being made.

Community Help Desk (HD)

The deviantART FAQ gets a makeover

That's right, our fearless borgs ($hexentanz and +ewm) have given the FAQ a summer cleaning. So what does that mean for you?

Well it is now easier to find items in the FAQ, the keywords have been beefed up once again and more technical entries have been added.

But wait there is more! It's now skinnier, yet jammed packed with tons of technical sodium!

So what are you waiting for? Go on and check it out today!

Message Network @dministration (MN@)

Thank you!

The MN@ Team would like to thank everyone who attended, helped and participated in the Birthday Bonanza events last week. Those of you who are still awaiting confirmation of your prizes, please have patience, we'll have them on their way to you soon!

I'd personally like to give a HUGE thank you to all the MN@ for proving that once more, dAmn is the place to be to celebrate the birthday of deviantART.

Last but definitely not least, thanks to all the helpers in #help who assisted with the influx of users experiencing various bugs and confusion during the launch of v5, alongside the Birthday Bonanza.

Clarification

It has came to our attention over the past few weeks that some deviants may be slightly confused or misled due to the use of 'Staff' as a term or level in custom channels. Bear in mind that some of our younger users in particular take the word 'Staff' in a very formal manner, and have at times contacted MN@ to enquire about action which a 'member of Staff' took towards them, when infact, the incident involved no deviantART Staff at all.

Therefore, we'd like to encourage all founders of custom channels to review the levels in your channel, and avoid using the term 'Staff' to describe your Operators and Moderators.

MN@ ( Message Network Administrators) are denoted by the symbol @, and at no time would we ever ask you for your password for deviantART. We have a channel called #MNAdmin which we may use to discuss any disputes regarding administrative action, if appropriate, and we would never contact you via any Instant Messenger to do so. Anyone who receives a ban from our official channels (#devart or #help) would receive a note, detailing the length of your ban, and the reason(s).

At times, MN@ may be required to take action in a custom channel due to activity which breaches policy, or when no active moderators are around in the channel, resulting in users requesting assistance. This would also result in an administrative action note issued to the appropriate parties, and the channel founder. We do not disclose information regarding channel closures to anyone other than the channel founder(s).

So please, if you have a custom channel, have a think about how you operate and moderate, and let's try avoid confusion!