The article(s) you are reading here are part of the DeviantArt Study collection, an examination of DeviantArt's policies, actions, and behaviour back in 2005.
DeviantArt, the Corporation · 2005-01-07 23:39
During his exhaustive search for a years subscription to DeviantArt through an art trade, my good friend mochi pointed out to me that yearly subscriptions to DA are now $30 for one year! I start thinking to myself, didn’t they used to be something like $12? I know of cheaper email services that put more work into keeping their servers running than DA puts into at least making sure your page requests are served (even if it does take 15 seconds). DA has been constantly getting on my nerves for the past 2 years. They just keep getting worse.
I wouldn’t even touch this subject unless I had experience in the field and knew about how much work is required to keep this kind of a site online, but I do in fact have that experience. I know from talking with the developers working on DA that it’s run from PHP and MySQL, and from using the site, I have a very good idea what their database schemas look like, and I know how they have their distributed services setup. That all happens to be my area of expertise when it comes to computers, networking, and programming. So don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about here. I have yet in the past 2 years seen a solution to the buggy friend management system, which shouldn’t of taken more than two months to implement, test, and throw on the production servers.
The second DA started charging for subscriptions with added features, they became a company with paid employees. I’m not arguing their steps when they made that move, it was a required move for the fact that there are servers and bandwidth that need paid for. I’m just saying that for having full time paid programmers, they’re doing one shitty job at keeping up maintenance, scaling their servers, and making choices on features, website design, and the way they handle image thumbnailing. They aren’t doing the job their paid for. Having a DA subscription means absolutely shit when the site doesn’t even work properly.
There was a time I actually considered making a DA type site of my own that was coded correctly from the ground up the first time. That was maybe 6-7 months ago. I even registered a domain name for it, but also mostly since it had a whole different purpose that what DA is for in the first place. The point I’m going to make right now is that DA needs to shape up before I ever sign up for a subscription, and they really never deserved the subscriptions they have right now. I may at some point (as soon as I’m finished with some other website ideas I have that come before this) start work on that site again considering it’s already paid for and already hosted. It’s pretty pathetic that 10-20 people get paid to run this site, and it only needs maybe 5. That doesn’t include community leaders, etc, which I’ve also found happen to be the artists on this site that are making lots of money off of prints on this site, but don’t even get me started on the politics of DA.
I guess I should also mention that yes, Spot, we have met in person. Also, sorry Pinguino, I know DA is somewhat of a home for you, hope to see you at next Defcon. I’ve managed to keep the Scavenger Hunt competition running strong, it’s now an official event as of Defcon 12.
Update: As if it wasn’t enough, DA had to prove me right the same day I originally posted this.