To begin with...


Welcome to the 5th edition of the Forum Newsletter!


I am so sorry.

Interview with $lolly and the competition winners this month!

The Forum News
_{Ok, what the hell actually happened this month in the forums? Srsly?}

SOMEONE BECOMES EMO

23:24:33 <CrystalEternity> quick, somebody do something
23:25:06 * AngelsLilDevil becomes emo
23:25:08 <AngelsLilDevil> >_>
23:25:10 <AngelsLilDevil> <_<
23:25:42 <conorschild> you know what
23:25:50 <AngelsLilDevil> No I dont.
23:26:00 <CrystalEternity> WOT
23:26:01 <conorschild> those three lines are better than any news i've got
23:26:09 <conorschild> I'm putting them in, godammit

IN OTHER NEWS: NEWS CANCELLED

I'm cancelling the news, this was too awesome.


_{Ok, now that's out of the way..}

An interview with $lolly

Through hard work and endless man-hours, I managed to secure an interview with $lolly. Or I noted him

It took some time, I'm fairly sure he was drunk at one point, but here's the interview in full :3



You're now the head of community development, and therefore essentially the forums. Could you tell us what your role exactly is, and also a little history behind it (when you started, how you were brought in, etc.)

That's a lengthy answer *pulls up a chair* As Director of Community Development I have a lot of different responsibilities. In a very technical sense anything that a deviant can interact with on the site in any way is my territory, which is just a fancy way of saying the whole site but territory sounds cooler. Breaking it down more, I over see the CEA, Help Desk and MN@ teams who are managed by $realitysquared, $hexentanz and $chix0r who all do an amazing job at what they do.

To further go into it, I oversee policy changes, gather feedback from users on what site features they like, don't like would like to see, have suggestions for and so on. I also work closely with $spyed discussing the long term vision of the site and ways to improve it. The best way to really describe what I do is that I spend just about every waking minute thinking about DA and quite a few of my sleeping minutes as well.

As for how I got brought into it, I began on the site as a regular user a long time ago, December of 2001 on my ~waynemanor23 account to be exact, lurked, submitted some awful photoshop filter nonsense, left that account, swapped through about 8 more and ended up with this one which used to be known as `lllo0o0olll and became a forum whore primarily posting alongside my fellow forum whoresmen `wizzo, `dinyctis, and `disintegration, as well as old school guys like `mooboy, %godofodd, `adam1975, `lady-blue, `alteredreality and a ton of others. Some time in 2003 I was contacted by *spot about coming on board with the prints team. `musicinmyhead, who was prints customer service at the time, had told him about me and that I was generally pretty active and helpful in the prints forums so I initially was meant to do customer service but I took a liking to quality control. After a few months I took over as Quality Control Supervisor from %achfoo and then a year or so later I took over the whole print department when *spot left the position.

The a year and a half ago the community development position opened up and suddenly I was in the position I never dreamed would be attainable. Right back in with the community where I liked to be. Don't get me wrong, prints was kick ass and a lot of fun, but it sort of cuts you off form being out there interacting with people.

You've been around the forums for a long time, and had experience with many of the forumers. What would you like to say to forumers that are 1) that are new 2) that are mid-range (maybe 1-3 years?) 3) that are oldschool?

I would say to the new people spend some time looking around so you don't post things in the wrong area and upset the natives
The rest of this advice is for everyone else though. Be nice to the newbs. It drives me bonkers to see someone make a mistake and post in the wrong spot on their first time out and get slammed by 50 regulars in the course of 30 seconds. And please spare me that "not our fault, you need to add more mods" because it is, quite frankly a load of crap. People post so fast to thing that no matter how many mods are around 30 posts would get in before the lock. And a million mods do not magically make you not be an asshole if you plan on being an asshole.
Believe it or not, you CAN keep your cool internet hard ass persona going without having to knock the newbs


Recently the dA staff has become a lot more involved, with more mods being introduced, staff joining in more with the forums and contests being set up. Can you say why this has happened?

All part of the plan. When I took over comm. dev I already had a fairly clear vision of what I would like to do and have just been fine tuning and following that. We are in a fairly unique position on the site right now. About 2 or three years ago almost all the core and higher up administration were a part of the site from either day one or even before it and involved in the making of it. Now we have almost entirely reversed that and the majority of the administration are all people who joined DA simply as deviants like anybody else and none of us ever intended to end up being part of the administration. Lord knows I didn't join thinking "golly, one day I will be just about as high up that gol durn ladder as I can go! You betcha!"
This is not to say the old admins were bad, just that they had a different perspective of never having viewed it from our perspective. Now you all these deviants running it so when someone has something to say we always know exactly what they are talking about since 99% of the time we have actually experienced it ourselves first hand.


There have been stickies up in some of the forums asking for ideas for the forums. What things have you learnt from these? What plans do you have for the forums?

I learned that the forum regulars have a ton of killer ideas and a lot of devotion to this place. I didn't need the threads to tell me that but it is nice to see it anyway. But the overall impression I came away with is that a lot of things in the forums are old and outdated. The basic structure is fine, but the forums themselves could use some organizing as far as the layout on the pages go. Some forums can be dropped and some new ones made and so on.
And policy. I think policy in the forums needs to be changed and I've been changing it. It needs to lighten up and has lightened up. It's a forum, people like to goof off and talk trash. It's fun and mostly harmless. And when it's not harmless that’s when the steel toe clown boots come out and some ass gets kicked

As for the plans, 30 days tops you will be hearing about what the plans are, the bulk of which all came from you guys.

In an ideal world, forgetting constraints, what big change would you like to see with the forums?

Like in an ideal world full of all constraints even technological ones? I think it would be kick ass if the forums were some sort of virtual reality where people could actually walk around in. Imagine walking around and suddenly pps out in front of you? That would be the best day ever

What has to your mind been the best moment in the forums (link plz)?

I can't find a link to it but there was a day a few years back when someone spammed our forums with this way out there post about how he was a real jedi, very sincere about it and linked back to this very serious jedi discussion forum filled with people who all felt they were also real life jedi's…
Then a small group of us made accounts there and began posting, and then began a thread on DA for people to tell us what to ask and say and we'd post the results back. It was absolutely hysterical. We weren't overly mean, in fact we were pretty much the opposite. I pretended to be a troubled kid who wanted to learn the force to kick ass on some bullies at school. Like an 8 year old kid. And over the course of the week I kept making the story more elaborate till finally I "went dark side" much to the horror or all these Jedi's
But there's a ton of hilarious things that have come out of the forums. Seeing all the crazy trends from the SBA battalion and the batty avatar craze way back in the day to the forum jihad and now with the plz accounts, the name tag stuff, the moustache avatars. It's always just this awesome natural progression of events that turn into full blown forum wide trends.
_{If anyone has a link to this, it'd be greatly appreciated}

What about the worst?

The worst is when the forums lag due to our servers being overloaded But by the end of this year we shall most likely be set up so server lag is no longer an issue.

What moment (whether you were involved or not) are you most proud of in the forums?

Refer to the Jedi question for one of mine But things not relating to me, I would have to say I am just proud of how cool of a community we have and in particular the forum community. It is consistently the most inventive, creative and funny forum crowd I have seen anywhere, and I spend a lot of time out there looking at different places, and we kick ass on everything out there.


What's your biggest regret?

Getting scared by *MurkHellsing

(Suggested by *VernonX9000 >_> ) Should everyone REALLY sex =conorschild?
Only if they are of the legal age and it is consensual and they have a strong constitution.

_{Additional journalism done by intrepid reporter *VernonX9000}

The Forum Best

Threads

The Four Whores of dApocalypse by `Stykera - what part would forumers play in the apocalypse?

Twisted Lyrics - dA style by $chix0r - Songs with dA related lyrics!

when is domestic violence excusable by ~wigglepuppy - "When she burns dinner"

A forum thread is like a..." by `lady-blue - Some great analogies :D

Pimp of thisshit (dA) by *VernonX9000 - this issue's obligatory Vernon thread: now with drunk!

Too much female attention by ~Aramakael - Dream on, Ara, dream on

Comments

[link] by =Unch in [link]

[link] by ~chengda-inferno in [link]

[link] by *Vlei in [link]

[link] by *VernonX9000 in [link]

_{If you have any good quotes/threads, note me}

Competition Results!

After literally 5 minutes of judging, the winner of the stamp competition and a 3 month sub (donated by *azarath :3) is *Onionpie!



YAYAYAYAY. Now whore out this newsletter

I'll give a link once this is submitted so you can link straight to it

And finally...


Moar news plz

Next time in The Forum Newsletter!: I FIND OUT WHO ARAMAKAEL REALLY IS

_{A reminder: any good quotes/threads, note them to me}