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parallellogic
[5094601]
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"Skunkworks"
# Statistics
Favourites: 1654; Deviations: 69; Watchers: 1011
Watching: 658; Pageviews: 485458; Comments Made: 26105; Friends: 658
# Comments
Comments: 2870
~Dude are you still data mining these days?
Or more specifically I've been loaded with 50% overtime at work for the past half-year and am sitting on a lot of data I simply haven't had the time to analyze. When I get a day off somewhere in here I'll do a follow-up to the Dead Daily Deviations stuff.
~Is there a reason why inactive for 10yrs+ accounts can't be returned to the community?
There's no technical reason you couldn't reuse unused usernames. If you watch really closely you'll see the staff do actually reuse old accounts for niche purposes. One recent example is where spyed took the abandoned angelo account and changed the user's name to angelo4 . Once the name "angelo" was no longer used, spyed claimed the account for his own use. Normally it is impossible to claim an old username like this, even after the original user changes the username.
web.archive.org/web/2012101006…
The problem is more policy than technical. If you have account "X" which you visit from time to time by typing the name into a search engine (ie you don't click a direct link to get to the page) then you may be surprised one day to find that the person behind the account is suddenly not who you think it is. If one user is abusive and then gets banned, then if their username becomes immediately available, then other users might try to claim it to drum up more drama. The same user may even try to re-claim their own name.
Re-using abandoned names is tricky too because there's a question about whether or not the original user may return some day to re-use the account - I created deviantSEARCH and haven't used it in three years, so should someone be able to use it? Do all unused usernames have to go back into the pool of "available" names or only the ones someone wants? For example, do I keep my alternate account until someone wants it and makes a request for it? So then the question becomes one of how long a proper grace period is between when a username is unused or gets banned before it can be re-used again.
You need to develop machinery/procedures for resolving disputes between old and new users claiming a username. You have the drama caused by disputes. If everyone knows when a username is going to become available, you end up with a sniper war with multiple users trying to claim it. You could end up with a market of username-squatters like with domain-name-squatting - people could claim names just so they could sell them at a premium to users who really want the username. I don't think re-using old usernames is straight forward and the DA staff currently seem more focused on the mobile side of the site.
~I ask as I am interested in dead accounts, i.e. those with no activity of any kind.
I do also have some un-analyzed data from a while ago where I crawled the entire site and stored basic stats for about one-third of the entire user base. From that you could probably see how many accounts are "active" based on pageviews and number of watchers.
You can probably get a pretty good sense of inactivity from the data I've already posted though - only one-third of all accounts have been used long enough to set their avatar. For every user you see around you, know that there exist two accounts that have likely never been used.
deviantART - Data Mining 8.1 - User Activity.
Status
Overview
Still looking for work, nothing promising yet. Also, I hate Daylight Savings Time, it messes up my programs.
Below I track the occurrence of keywords in journal titles. I also review the data from a truly random survey of deviantART users and attempt to identify when users go inactive. As with the previous analysis, you can see dA's growth stagnate over the past two years.
Commission
Cenit-v has completed another rendition of my character. I started out with a very vague notion of the pose I wanted for this piece (I had more of a "swooping" short animation in my head rather than a still image). I think he did a great job of capturing the low-flying scene
Data Mining
Key Words in Journal Titles
As a follow up to my
dAta Mining 7.3 - Premium Memberships Update.
Status
Summary
The number of subscribed users (133,000) I listed in my previous dAta Mining reports were overstated by about 25%. That's rather odd since spyed confirmed an even higher number (150,000) of PMs. So either spyed announced an incorrect number or a third of all premium members have vanished in the past year. I have a conspiracy theory.
Nothing to report on the home front aside from a minor cold I can't seem to shake.
dAta Mining
I mentioned previously that I am running a script on dA to collect stats on users across the site. I have about a third of all users on dA cataloged right now, but I have yet to formally process the data.
While collecting data I noticed that roughly half of the users who had a premium membership when I first collected the data last year don't have PMs anymore. This struck me as a rather
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I would say any accounts that have no activity since being created should not be able to be saved for no real reason, of all the original usernames (the one I pine after is alex ) why should someone who hasn't used the site in 14yrs be able to keep it when they add nothing to the community? What we have now is every other user with some ridiculous numbers or dashes in their name rather than a proper username.
I don't know if there would be a domain squatting issue, if accounts weren't used of what real benefit is it to keep an account? If an admin simply took the unused username and re-activated it for use then it would again be a first come first served issue. I doubt the people that made hundreds of accounts when dA started were aiming to cash in on them 15yrs later? Maybe I don't know the economy of buying and selling domains but I personally wouldn't be interested in a 15yr investment to get a measly amount of money (possibly). It certainly wouldn't be an issue them logging in and making journals and submitting deviations just to keep the usernames as I suspect that would be too much of a hassle to them.
Impersonating wise if an account has never had any use like angelo4 or alex then there is no real issue with that. If a username has been banned for breaches of policy etc. then I would say that is different. Would we have people getting usernames banned simply to spite others into not having them? I don't know probably not, who has time to do something so pointless?
Like angelo says he has moved past the spyed persona, I too have moved past this persona and would love to just use my actual name. Maybe it just takes some volunteers to sit on the issue and work on it as a case by case basis?
I appreciate the mobile site needs working on but there are a lot of devs out there that want this. I did a poll recently and a solid 1/3 of them would love to change their name to a dead accounts. I suppose it's all down to man hours though isn't it, do we want to concentrate on superficial things like usernames or constructive stuff like the mobile site.
Well good chat, cheers for clearing up some stuff pal, keep on mining!
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~(the one I pine after is alex )
~if accounts weren't used of what real benefit is it to keep an account?
How much would you pay to have the username alex if I had control of it? Would you pay $50?
~Maybe I don't know the economy of buying and selling domains but I personally wouldn't be interested in a 15yr investment to get a measly amount of money (possibly).
I'm speaking more about the day the staff theoretically issue this account-reclaiming feature. That day a domain squatter could swoop in and claim lots of accounts and then sell them to the highest bidder.
~If an admin simply took the unused username
The help desk staffing was recently cut in half due to budget constraints. Using a human to moderate a non-profit activity is going to be a hard-sell.
~I doubt the people that made hundreds of accounts when dA started were aiming to cash in on them 15yrs later?
I think the staff may have taken the time to claim all the usernames that were words in the dictionary. Even if you had a way to reclaim unused accounts, there may be some that may never be returned to active service.
~Maybe it just takes some volunteers to sit on the issue and work on it as a case by case basis?
With volunteers you need some sort of selling point to make the task interesting enough to moderate. To me what you're describing is just bookkeeping and would be better suited for an automated routine.
~I did a poll recently and a solid 1/3 of them would love to change their name to a dead accounts.
On an unrelated I don't put a lot of stock in DA's polls; they're horrendously biased. Response bias, confirmation bias, the fact you can't even randomize the poll options makes them a poor estimator for gauging population statistics.
Biased Poll Results.
Status
Biased Poll Results
As you may recall, I ran a poll a few days ago. When I posted the poll, all the poll options were periods ".", so all options were the same (when the poll was done, the poll options were changed to numbers for easy identification). This poll was aimed at identifying whether or not the fact that dA's decision to *not* randomize the poll options had any effect on the poll results. If dA polls were exactly the same as polls where the poll options were randomized, then the results from dA's poll should be indistinguishable from a poll where the poll options were randomized. Namely, when I posted this poll, all options should have gotten approximately the same number of votes, but as you can see below that clearly wasn't the case.
I'll admit I haven't brushed up on my stats in four
~Well good chat, cheers for clearing up some stuff pal, keep on mining!
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Points well raised.
What would activity be classed as? Accruing watchers and pageviews is not activity on the part of the account owner that's activity on the part of the visitors. Certainly an account with no comments, deviations, journals or even an avatar would be classed as inactive. Although maybe the admins can see activity such as logging in etc. on their side of things?
I can understand that admins may have claimed a bunch of accounts, that's fair enough.
I'd say the task of giving people account names they have wanted for a long time would be pretty rewarding. Maybe an automated software could just clear out old unused accounts, it would sure keep the place a lot tidier (hell what's the point of a random deviant button if you have a 66% chance of hitting an inactive account with no content?)
Polls aren't the best way to ask the question that's for sure. Look at how much effort went into wording the Scottish Referendum vote!
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~Accruing watchers and pageviews is not activity on the part of the account owner that's activity on the part of the visitors
That activity could be initiated by off-site behavior. Imagine having a YouTube channel linking to DA, but you just haven't uploaded anything to DA or use the account. Users may watch that account in the expectation something will be posted in the future.
~Although maybe the admins can see activity such as logging in etc. on their side of things?
I would think that would be the most telling metric.
~random deviant button if you have a 66% chance of hitting an inactive account
The "random" deviant button only samples from the list of users who are currently online, it's not actually random. If it were truly random, probably 5% of the accounts returned from it would actually be active. There are a lot of unused, abandoned and banned accounts.
deviantART - Data Mining 8.1 - User Activity.
Status
Overview
Still looking for work, nothing promising yet. Also, I hate Daylight Savings Time, it messes up my programs.
Below I track the occurrence of keywords in journal titles. I also review the data from a truly random survey of deviantART users and attempt to identify when users go inactive. As with the previous analysis, you can see dA's growth stagnate over the past two years.
Commission
Cenit-v has completed another rendition of my character. I started out with a very vague notion of the pose I wanted for this piece (I had more of a "swooping" short animation in my head rather than a still image). I think he did a great job of capturing the low-flying scene
Data Mining
Key Words in Journal Titles
As a follow up to my
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Fair enough, I still get inactive accounts crop up on the random deviant button, I guess the server just sees log ins as activity.
Good stuff, cheers mate!
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Woa
I first found you because of you mentioning me in you're 'Discover Friends', and I got to admit, I love your art /)030(\
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Hey what gives with D.A. just now? I was sending a link to friend here and it wouldn't let me send it because the site thinks it spam for some stupid reason.
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I have not experienced this issue, so I don't know what the root problem is. It's possible you're attempting to link to a site that DA has black-listed and are being prevented from doing so.
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Okay, now I have quick question. How do I set one of my deviation into storage mode?
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When you hover over the "Submit" button there's a drop down with "Manage Deviations" as an option:
www.deviantart.com/managedevia…
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Wow, your page is SO informative!! Thanks for sharing all the info you post it is very helpful and eye opening!
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Dude your badges have me droOLING!
I love dA and I've only been here for one year-- and just-- /hUGS DEVIANTART/
your badges are intriguing *^*
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The stuff you do is amazing.
Love the data analysis.
You're awesome.
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Wow you completed that community puzzle FAST!!
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I wrote a program to do it
From the custom widget on my profile page:
At time of writing, my name appears at the top of the Top Scores for both the Get Puzzled and the Snowball Fight lists: www.deviantart.com/puzzle/10th… & www.deviantart.com/puzzle/snow… . Yes, a program was used to accomplish those times, though I would like to point out that I wrote every line of code of the program myself, rather than using something off-the-shelf (so to speak) that others used (to slow the clock of their computer). My point in doing so, if there should be a point, is showing that dA has recognized a problem but failed to fix it, and even continues to build on the same flawed system. When the Puzzled Flash app first came out, people were exploiting it in very much the same manner as they do now. The response of the staff was to clear the High Scores a total of two times (within a few days of the launch of the app). With this most recent release of the Snow Flash app, no changes were made and the same problem still exists. I feel it should be very clear that either the scores should be regularly cleared (or by default only show the highest scores for the week/month or something like that so that faked scores are not a permanent blight on the site), or not have any Top Scores at all (or even better would be to compare your scores with your friends, limiting the exposure and removing the ability to cheat in a public manner). Anyone with access to the proper tools can fake scores in the app, and relying on no one to ever do so is ridiculous - the app therefore was not designed correctly for its intended purpose and should be fixed accordingly. But like so many other things, from forum posts being permanently lost after three days (the forums have not been searchable for the past two years) to News not being available for groups the--last--hope.deviantart.com… or after a certain point for personal accounts aro-chan.deviantart.com/art/Su… - if it wasn't fixed in the original design cycle, it's destined to remain broken for all users to contend with.
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Say I am trying to find a deviantart group that was PS2 fans, think you can help me a bit?
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I'd suggest the group search engine:
groups.deviantart.com/?qh=&…
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I unintentionally upset a user and she has blocked me. Got any advice?
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Just stopping by to say hello 
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Hello, I was pointed in your direction.
I was asking around if anyone knew or had a script that would display who gave you a llama and how much you had gotten at that point, that I can add to my profile page.
You, like I said, was recommended for your mad skills.
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If you want something publicly accessible, it needs to be a feature of the DA site itself. An extension can alter how you see the site, but not everyone sees it, since an extension is local to your computer. There is no official DA widget for that, but I think you should hold on to that idea and suggest it if the staff ever do a call for ideas.
if you have not already and I'll give you a summary of your trading activity when I run the script.
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Hey, just left the comment.
I'll remember for when they ask.
And you're welcome.
I'm looking for code to put on my profile so everyone can see, not an extension for just me. I don't care that much about getting llamas, but it seems most of the people giving them to me do, or something like that, so it's being posted for them.
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What you're looking for is a "profile page widget", and there isn't one for llama badges currently.
The only way I could realistically see doing this would be to set up a separate server to periodically query your llama activity (cron job) and calculate how many you had given, returned, etc.
You would then need to have the server generate an image showing your stats. You could then hot link to that image from your profile page. It wouldn't be real-time, and it'd be a lot of effort, but it would technically do what you're describing.
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Yeah, that is a lot more work than I thought. I wouldn't ask anyone to do that for such small results.
But thank you for giving it as much thought as you did.
We'll, or I'll, just have to wait until DA makes one themselves.
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Hi dear !
I really want to become popular on deviantart !!! what should i do ???
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Well, this is an art site, so I'd say practice your art a lot and then after a few years you'll be popular. I'm not quite sure what you're asking.
FAQ #56: How can I get noticed on this site?
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Hello, I am a bit curious about Premium membership.
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FAQ #28: What are the benefits of becoming a Premium Member?
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Maybe you should write a journal about Runaway Llamas badge - because all people who have collected 100,000 Llamas have a Golden Llama but they got the 100,000th Llama badge many years ago... So it is maybe now possible that if you collect 100,000 Llamas now or in the future, the 100,000th badge will be Runaway Llamas badge. Or not. There is no people in deviantART who has that badge so it is maybe only a joke.
Llamas on the Run
twitter.com/DeviantArt/status/…
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Maybe they're starting their April Fool's joke early this year...
st.deviantart.net/badges/llama…
Yeah, I'll write up a journal
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Wow, how did you get such a quick score on the 10th birthday puzzle?
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From the custom box on my profile page:
At time of writing, my name appears at the top of the Top Scores for both the Get Puzzled and the Snowball Fight lists: www.deviantart.com/puzzle/10th… & www.deviantart.com/puzzle/snow… . Yes, a program was used to accomplish those times, though I would like to point out that I wrote every line of code of the program myself, rather than using something off-the-shelf (so to speak) that others used (to slow the clock of their computer). My point in doing so, if there should be a point, is showing that dA has recognized a problem but failed to fix it, and even continues to build on the same flawed system. When the Puzzled Flash app first came out, people were exploiting it in very much the same manner as they do now. The response of the staff was to clear the High Scores a total of two times (within a few days of the launch of the app). With this most recent release of the Snow Flash app, no changes were made and the same problem still exists. I feel it should be very clear that either the scores should be regularly cleared (or by default only show the highest scores for the week/month or something like that so that faked scores are not a permanent blight on the site), or not have any Top Scores at all (or even better would be to compare your scores with your friends, limiting the exposure and removing the ability to cheat in a public manner). Anyone with access to the proper tools can fake scores in the app, and relying on no one to ever do so is ridiculous - the app therefore was not designed correctly for its intended purpose and should be fixed accordingly. But like so many other things, from forum posts being permanently lost after three days (the forums have not been searchable for the past two years) to News not being available for groups the--last--hope.deviantart.com… or after a certain point for personal accounts aro-chan.deviantart.com/art/Su… - if it wasn't fixed in the original design cycle, it's destined to remain broken for all users to contend with.
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I see. Sorry for not reading >_>
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No worries, I'm just saying I wrote that years ago
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I would like a feedback and comment
dADroid: Automate your dA routine
Developer: DRSDavidSoft
By joining the dADroid grid, you can automate your daily tasks, be relaxed and browse dA arts. dADroid will do the job for you.
- Never worry about forgetting to return a llamma again
- Get points without giving watches/llamas/faves yourself *
- Thank people who have gave you watches/llamas/faves by sending a random comment (plz accounts are accepted.)
After logging-in to dADroid, you'll see the configuration page.
You can set different rules for dADroid. For example, you can set a rule for dAhub to check for the newest watches/llamas/faves, or set a rule
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I left a comment on your journal.
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Thanks for the comment - I think I should add more purposes to the project, not just llamas and other stuff.
Do you have any ideas that you would like to use on dA if I program it?
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Sure thing. Idk, I'll have to think about it - I normally just program stuff when it's needed, assuming I have time. Currently I'm working on cataloging the watcher stats for some of the site's most popular users, though it takes a while because of the rate limits
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