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Here is an image I am going to post as my status for the #soundofsilencemovement protest May 1-3. Please feel free to repost.

To be honest, I'm terribly fickle when it comes to sweeping change. Sometimes it's fine, especially when the outcome is positive, and sometimes I'm just in a stubborn mind and wont accept changes (even good ones). I will admit, I've been giving Eclipse an honest chance the last few days and have come to the conclusion there are a few technical aspects that are an actual improvement (the llama system is faster). That said, I still feel Eclipse is poorly designed and the community has been marginalized in the interest of building a 'modern' website. While the weird little type, poor page proportions, and the inability to switch my 'home' page to my profile page (as opposed to my Recommended for you page) is very annoying, being marginalized by those who purport to listen to the community is over the line.

To me deviantART was a place where artists of all ability could share their journey with others. Something like MySpace without all the noise (and less of the epilepsy inducing tiled GIFs). I'm not sure deviantART really had an air of professionalism like ArtStation or Behance, but it definitely garnered a measure or two of pride from simply being part of the community. Not to mention that even the well known artists weren't so high and mighty as to not interact with their fans and occasionally give helpful pointers. It is a special place, more than the sum of the website.

So to be disregarded by a development team, and seemingly pushed into using an interface reeking of Wix/SquareSpace/etc templated web development is incredibly hurtful. Especially so considering the irony of deviantART being founded for the purpose of sharing skins for ugly interfaces (WinAMP was never very pretty), and not they want it to "look like a modern website". What does that even mean? I'm on ArtStation, I think it's a cluttered mess and the page frame wobbles around while scrolling. Is that modern? Change for the sake of change is not always a good thing. Consider this: early trucks from Chevrolet were impossible to lock the keys inside of (my experience is with one from 1953, which all trucks from 1947 to early 1955 are more or less functionally identical). The door locked from the inside via pushing the door handle forward, and could only be locked when the door was closed. The key only locked/unlocked the passenger side door from the outside. The only way I can conceive possibly being able to lock a key inside the truck is to lock the closed driver side door from inside, scoot out the passenger side door, lock the open door with the key, toss said key into the truck and close the door....maybe. While I can agree the door handle/lock arrangement is questionable (kiddos could inadvertently open a 'locked' door while driving) The button system on various cars in the last 50 years was not much of an improvement. Point is, who cares if it looks like a website from 1995? Not all websites from back then were eyesores created by designers lacking restraint.

Tl;dr -- Here is the flag I'm going to wave in protest of the hypocritical, heavy-handed manner in which the deviantART development section has been acting toward the community. While I am against change for the sake of change, I am open to the possibility of change for the sake of an improved user experience. I appreciate some of the framework improvements already in place, yet feel they are overshadowed by poor design. Do something unique deviantART, don't be ArtStation by deviantART!

Description

Here is an image I am going to post as my status for the #soundofsilencemovement protest May 1-3. Please feel free to repost.

To be honest, I'm terribly fickle when it comes to sweeping change. Sometimes it's fine, especially when the outcome is positive, and sometimes I'm just in a stubborn mind and wont accept changes (even good ones). I will admit, I've been giving Eclipse an honest chance the last few days and have come to the conclusion there are a few technical aspects that are an actual improvement (the llama system is faster). That said, I still feel Eclipse is poorly designed and the community has been marginalized in the interest of building a 'modern' website. While the weird little type, poor page proportions, and the inability to switch my 'home' page to my profile page (as opposed to my Recommended for you page) is very annoying, being marginalized by those who purport to listen to the community is over the line.

To me deviantART was a place where artists of all ability could share their journey with others. Something like MySpace without all the noise (and less of the epilepsy inducing tiled GIFs). I'm not sure deviantART really had an air of professionalism like ArtStation or Behance, but it definitely garnered a measure or two of pride from simply being part of the community. Not to mention that even the well known artists weren't so high and mighty as to not interact with their fans and occasionally give helpful pointers. It is a special place, more than the sum of the website.

So to be disregarded by a development team, and seemingly pushed into using an interface reeking of Wix/SquareSpace/etc templated web development is incredibly hurtful. Especially so considering the irony of deviantART being founded for the purpose of sharing skins for ugly interfaces (WinAMP was never very pretty), and not they want it to "look like a modern website". What does that even mean? I'm on ArtStation, I think it's a cluttered mess and the page frame wobbles around while scrolling. Is that modern? Change for the sake of change is not always a good thing. Consider this: early trucks from Chevrolet were impossible to lock the keys inside of (my experience is with one from 1953, which all trucks from 1947 to early 1955 are more or less functionally identical). The door locked from the inside via pushing the door handle forward, and could only be locked when the door was closed. The key only locked/unlocked the passenger side door from the outside. The only way I can conceive possibly being able to lock a key inside the truck is to lock the closed driver side door from inside, scoot out the passenger side door, lock the open door with the key, toss said key into the truck and close the door....maybe. While I can agree the door handle/lock arrangement is questionable (kiddos could inadvertently open a 'locked' door while driving) The button system on various cars in the last 50 years was not much of an improvement. Point is, who cares if it looks like a website from 1995? Not all websites from back then were eyesores created by designers lacking restraint.

Tl;dr -- Here is the flag I'm going to wave in protest of the hypocritical, heavy-handed manner in which the deviantART development section has been acting toward the community. While I am against change for the sake of change, I am open to the possibility of change for the sake of an improved user experience. I appreciate some of the framework improvements already in place, yet feel they are overshadowed by poor design. Do something unique deviantART, don't be ArtStation by deviantART!