In the recent war over fair exposure and popularity, I and my friend, ~PumpkinToast have found that we cannot support either sides of the arguments. Neither is what deviantART needs and both are incapable of fulfilling the roles as they are imperfect. We have decided to write this article to state why the facts stated above are true. Keep in mind that this is our opinion and ours alone. You are free to say why you agree or disagree to what we say. Though flat out flaming isn't going to get you anywhere

First let us discuss the normal "popular" system. The popular system, which has been around for years, is more mathematically correct in that the deviations with the most views/favs are the ones that get the popular slots. Making it the one that makes the most “sense". Technically, it is. But just because something has the most views/favs doesn't necessarily make it good art. The reason at times that we consider it not "good art" is because many times, people will favorite artists works, for the simple fact that the person is popular. Some do this thinking it will give them so called "connections" so they themselves will also become popular. Further reasons are that people seem to have a "God" complex for people who are popular, or that they are simply very dedicated to following that artist. While the art may be good, it isn't necessarily what should be considered "the best examples" of art on this website. After all, deviantART is about ART not page views, favorites and comments.

So now we should probably talk about the system that got cut. Recently, a change was made in the system of how deviations get into the popular section. Instead of deviations with more favs/views, pictures in more under populated categories had their favorites and views count more then they actually were. This may seem like a good idea for everyone to get more for fair exposure. But deviations in very populated categories had to get a large amount of views/favs. This is not fair exposure, it just let's un-discovered artists get the lime light. Which is a supertabulous thing, but it's still not fair either way. So a number of people made a petition to revert it back to the old system. And now we're right back where we started.


So.. what is it we need to have on the front page? Well, the popular and fair exposure systems didn't work, so what will? We need something that will a) provide fair exposure to artists of all kinds for HARD work and b) not be based on favorites and views. We don't just want to see anime and fandom in the most popular, but we don’t want to see it completely out of there. Instead of judging on favorites and views, shouldn't dA judge on the quality of the art work? Of course, it would be TOO HARD to comb through all the deviations on deviantART.

So, we have thought of a system of doing things that might be a little better. Daily deviations, are quality work that the moderators here find worthy of receiving a "DD." If we could do something like or similar to this, but still have daily deviations be a greater award, I think that this might just solve our problem. But it would have to be un-biased, and truly based on the quality art. AND to use all categories. ... And yes, that means fag- I mean fanart. The moderators own belief on the content of the pictures shouldn't be accounted for. The only real thought that should go through their minds is "This probably took a long time to do. They must have put a lot of patience and effort into it. This is an amazing piece for an artist their age, etc."

Now for the fact that unfortunately the mods can’t do all of this . I suggest that senior deviants, and other deviants that have made contributions to the site, be given this ability to give out these things that I haven’t figured a name for XD.

Me and ~PumpkinToast probably got a lot of things wrong here D:, but we just wanted to let our opinion out and see what others thought :/ We actually wrote this in msn and took turns in certain parts, so you might notice a style change at times. I submitted it to gossip because it won't let me add it to deviantart inc. stuffs