It's my role as Director of Community Operations to ensure that things are running as smoothly as possible within the community. It's also my job to listen, and ensure that your voice is heard by all departments. This means that I work closely with other departments such as Community Relations, devious Technology, Creative and Advertising on a daily basis.

In this Community Operations Newsletter, I hope to provide an update of what's going on in Community Operations, and provide you with a tease of some projects which we are working on right now.

What is Community Operations?

deviantART's Community Operations Department encompasses the Help Desk, Copyright & Etiquette Administration and Message Network Administration (MN@). These 3 teams are dedicated to providing a high standard of community development, encouraging innovative and creative opportunities within the community.

Our department drives an environment where deviants can come together and be empowered within, and by, the community. We believe that community development is not a department -- it's an approach which helps people to recognise and develop their ability to reach their potential. By providing this organised, motivated, accountable and effective department, we are leading the way for deviants to continue participating in a way which they feel listened to, valued and inspired.

You can read more about our core values here:
FAQ #84: What are the Core Values of the Community Relations and Operations Departments?

Interested in volunteering opportunities within the Community Relations and Community Operations teams? Find out more: FAQ #85: Can I be a volunteer on deviantART?

Copyright & Etiquette Administration

The Copyright & Etiquette Administration Team consist of $realitysquared, $damphyr and $y2jenn If you ever contact us regarding stolen or inappropriate deviations, ban queries, harassment enquiries, or any other cases which involve the enforcement of policies -- these are the people who will handle your reports. They're a total powerhouse of awesome.

Copyright and Etiquette Administration has been busy since the last Community Operations newsletter.

In addition to handling the normal workload provided by your Help Desk tickets, emails and deviations reported through the Moderation system we’ve been in deep discussion on a variety of issues which affect the community.

On 25 August we published a news article which was intended to address the questions and concerns that many in the community had regarding what some viewed as an abnormally high number of “Art theft” reports being returned without any action being taken. If you missed this particular announcement you should give it a reading so that you can understand our stance on what we consider to be a valid infringement report.

We also had a similar discussion on 29 July concerning deviations reported as “ornography”. We talked a bit about how the official deviantART definition can vary quite a bit from your own personal interpretation and how this difference is responsible for a lot of the reports which are returned without any action being taken.

Current ongoing discussions and projects include addressing concerns about journal CSS use and copyright issues, Favorites cheating, issues involving Collections used for insulting or abusive purposes and a few other more minor issues.

And finally for those with a curiosity towards statistics, between 1 May 2009 and 15 September 2009 the deviantART moderation system saw 115,713 new cases filed. During that same time span our Staff closed 134,314 cases, which includes 18,601 reports from the existing backlog queue.

Help desk

The Help Desk Team Consists of $ewm, $Stykera and $fangedfem, and are responsible for the handling of all community & retail customer service and support.

Since our last newsletter, we said a fond farewell to `hexentanz and began recruiting for a new Customer Service Manager to lead up the team. We're hoping to have this position filled by the end of the year, so watch this space!

Over the past few weeks the team have been working very hard to keep the response times on tickets within a reasonable time frame, and despite being 1 full time member of staff down, help desk tickets continue to be handled within 24 working hours.

If you've noticed a zenlike feeling amongs the team lately, then you're not mistaken. We recently began to transition ourcustomer support platform over to the zensational zendesk. As our very own $spyed says, "...it's pure win sauce!" Major zenlove and kudos to $chris for supporting the team and helping us help you in a more efficient manner

MESSAGE NETWORK ADMINISTRATION

The Message Network Administration Team (MN@) is led by Project Manager $Tachy-on and a group of kickass volunteers spread out across the globe. You can find the team in our chat network (dAmn) and in the forums. Our Official channel on dAmn is #devart which is where many people break their chat cherry on deviantART. We also provide assistance in #mnadmin for chat related issues, as well as in #help which provides real time assistance with deviantART community related enquiries. You can often spot some of the Help Desk Team in there too, as well as a number of our volunteer community helpers.

Over the past few months we've seen a number of changes to the MN@ team. We'd like to thank `rapidograph, `Comrade-Kelly, `scarletwave, `XgAD, `DreamingMyth, `IaiaRose, `anjules, `dxd, `ThomFaust, `karyaazure, `Vayde and `yashachan for everything during their time as a volunteer and wish them the best with their future endevours.

We've welcomed on board @littlefishey, @dammitMEL, @bellchild, @hazelnutx, and @catboyry to the team over the past few weeks, and will be adding more in the near future.

To make sure that you don't miss out on any announcements from the team, make sure you check out #MN-Volunteers, it's the Official MN@ Group.

If you've never visited dAmn before, make sure you stop by #devart at some point -- who knows, you may even end up in the latest edition of The LOL Corner.

MISCATS

Once upon a time, in the formative years of our community, Volunteer Gallery Moderators (known as Gallery Directors back then!) would spend hours going through reports, correcting miscats as they saw fit. As our community grew bigger and reporting became more sophisticated, we encouraged the volunteers to spend time in their galleries interacting with the community, rather than getting frustrated and burned out going through never ending reports. We didn't feel that this was fair to ask of someone who clearly had much better skills and qualities to offer the community. This led to the development of a new moderation desk, which is only visible to certain staff.

Despite popular belief, deviantART Gallery Moderators under the guidance of $Moonbeam13, Director of Community Relations, are NOT responsible for handling miscat reports. There has been some misinformation passed around about who is responsible, and who should -- and shouldn't be - handling miscats. So, I'd just like to formally address this matter. Gallery Moderators do not have access to miscat reports.

However, Gallery Moderators do have access to a tool which allows them to move a misplaced deviation, should they find this when browsing, or directly linked there by another deviant. We have asked that should a volunteer decide to spend some time browsing through a particular gallery, and find a deviation which they consider to be being misplaced, that they only move the deviation if the root category is incorrect. An example of this would be a digital photomanipulation that has been uploaded into a traditional art gallery, or a photograph of a sculpture which has been uploaded into the digital art category. Anything else, e.g. something in photomanipulation > conceptual, should not be moved into photomanipulation > emotional.

Sounds fair, right?

We tried and tested out an automated system which sadly brought it's own set of issues to tackling miscats. We developed a set of trust metrics, where deviants could be tagged and their reports auto-moved. This proved to be helpful at first but as time went on, it caused some issues where an image was being moved within a sub-genre -- and as stated previously, we believe that as long as the root category is correct, and the image is not misrepresentative, then we should allow the artist to have the final say. I would also like to formally state that we will not be forming a new team of volunteers to handle miscat reports, nor any sort of hidden, "ghost mods" or such like. It simply will not work and has been proven in the past to be nothing but damaging to the community.

Currently, all miscat reports are being collated as part of a data analysis project. This will allow us to benchmark the level of what the community considers to be miscats before we move into a new system. I know there are some deviants who spend a lot of time browsing purely with the intention of finding miscats, and pride themselves on high levels of accuracy. It's great, and I know that it gives a sense that you are "giving something back" to the community by bringing such deviations to our attention. One thing that I have found interesting is that it isntIf you have sent in reports and are waiting for a response, then please consider this to be your official "Thank you!"

It's clear that issues such as art theft, policy violations such as pornographic content should take precedence over an image which has been uploaded into an "incorrect" gallery. That's not to say that we don't view having tidy galleries as important, just that a lot of the interpretation as to what should go where is very subjective and ultimately, we believe that we should allow the artist to have the final say in such matters.

With that in mind, we're still researching what would be the best approach to providing a more effective, community based system which provides higher levels of artistic integrity to our community. It will also provide interaction and responsibility to both the reporter and the artist affected.

I would like to ask that you bear with us as we move forward with high priority projects such as the public launch of Groups before we can begin a formal project plan for handling miscats. I've discussed this recently with both $spyed and $mccann and have been assured that it will happen in due course. I apologise for any frustration that you may experience meantime, and ask that you show consideration towards artists who perhaps are less familiar with our community than you are.

I'M LEAVING, DELETE MY ACCOUNT!

Would you be surprised if I said "ok!" to the above?

This is something which I hear on a daily basis, and whilst we won't actually be deleting your account. I am delighted to announce that we are currently very close to being able to provide you with the ability to de-activate your deviantART account.

Now let me just clarify. I don't want anyone to leave, ever. Who in their right mind would want to leave dA? However, I very much understand that at times, inviduals feel the need to have their presence on deviantART hidden or removed from public view due to things such as innapropriate usernames which they feel will impact on their chances of getting into the military or college, new pseudonyms, change of political views, etc.

I'll present more details when we're ready to launch, but this will be something which you cannot undo - so please make sure that you consider this carefully. Meantime, if you do have an old account which you don't want to use anymore because you've grown out of the analboy15 nickname -- there's no need to upload all your goatse and tubgirl pics to get your own way. Soon, you can just push a button and your account will be de-activated.. FOREVAR.

PASSWORDS

This is just a friendly reminder for everyone to change your password. It's something that you should all do regularly to keep your account secure. It's really important that you pick good, secure passwords that aren't easily guessed by others. We get many reports into our help desk where someone claims that their account has been hacked -- and in reality all that's happened is that someone has guessed your password, often from hints on your account and account name! So if you're a sonic fan and your name, avatar and every deviation in your account is sonic - please don't use "sonic" as your password

GROUPS!

WHAT?! You didn't think I was going to get through this without mentioning groups, did you?

I'm currently supporting the alpha-testing of Groups, which is pretty awesome. Last week, I converted #Thumbshare and #designerscouch to Super Groups and they join a number of other alpha testers. Please make sure that you are following all the updates on #hq for all the essential updates on Groups. Whilst you are at it, make sure you add #communityrelations and #communityops too - we're about to launch our own group to the public and we want you to be part of it!

COMMUNITY RECOGNITIONS AND UPCOMING EVENTS

November Deviousness went to `Cyantre, congrats again!

With the end of 2009 just around the corner, I've already began putting a list together for the next round of Seniors who will be announced in December. If you would like to suggest someone for Seniority, please make sure that you read the following FAQ:

FAQ #29: How do I become a Senior Member?

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

Since it's November 5th, I'm going to leave you all with some fireworks!


Those of you who celebrate Guy Fawkes Night have a good one, but make sure you do it safely