The simple act of writing a comment, going through your inbox, and browsing somebody's gallery.
Basic, vital functions on deviantArt.
Basic, vital functions that are fundamentally broken in Eclipse.
"
What are you passionate about?", dA's
team asks.
. . .
I am passionate about having a sense of community, about being able to have interesting conversations on this site.
I am passionate about the conversations I've had with people in the past 13 years, which I revisit frequently.
I am passionate about being able to express myself creatively with my comments, aiming to be as non-generic as possible,
even making little comics using PLZ-icons to entertain others.
I often go to page 20, page 30 in my inbox to see if maybe, I can think of a witty reply
now.
On Eclipse, I can't even use
basic HTML-formatting (<
i> <
b> <
u> <
hr>), use :icon
PLZ: tags or even
smilies without jumping through hoops that make it unfeasible. There isn't even a "preview" button, because there is simply
no formatting at all.On Eclipse, I can't write comments creatively.It gets worse:
I can't even look at the ~3600 conversations I've had with people in the past 13 years in my inbox, because "infinite scroll" has replaced the "page"-buttons.
"Infinite scrolling" has no place in an inbox,
unless you're on mobile and
just want to take a quick peek at your
latest messages, and don't care about the rest. But I
do.
"Infinite scrolling" is, why I never bother checking out an artist's
twitter for their work, unless they barely have any tweets.
"Infinite scrolling" is, why I stopped checking my
tumblr dashboard 3 years ago. You can't read comics from "newest to oldest", especially if you lose your place and have to scroll down several minutes
every single time you visit just to find it again.
"Infinite scrolling" is nice for checking out someone's
YouTube channel... unless they have 500+ videos, and you're
somewhere in the middle and
now you can't stop scrolling down or else you'll never find your place again.
"Infinite scrolling" works for news articles. You're not gonna start reading the New York Times from Issue #1, you're
only interested in the latest.
It does
not work if you want to read a comic in an art gallery from the start.
It does
not work if an artist has 2000+ artworks and you're trying to get back to #
1000 where you last left off.
It does
not work if you want to go to "page 50" in your replies-inbox.
It does
not work if you care about the 3600+ memorable comments or discussions you had with people in the last
13 years.
There
are ways to
make it work.
Don't get me wrong - I
do browse galleries even on current dA using infinite scroll,
BUT I also make
frequent use of the offset-parameter.
In an inbox and on comment-pages however, infinite scroll really has no place outside from a mobile app.
At least give us back the offset-parameter! (E.g. "offset=200" or "page=20") [example 1a] [example 1b] [example 2] DeviantArt's search will even update the URL-parameter on the fly as you scroll down, so you can restart your browser and return to exactly where you left among 10,000 search results. DeviantArt-search in Eclipse still has that! Now apply it everywhere else!
Without an offset-parameter, "Infinite scrolling" is like a book with no page numbers, and no bookmarks. Every time you come back, you have to start at the first page and try to figure out where you were.
"Infinite scroll"
doesn't work if you care about anything more than just "the latest",
unless you have shortcuts.
It
doesn't work if you
care about the conversations you've had with people on this site over the years.
I've spent
13 years on this site putting
effort into my replies to people, to be creative, to entertain.
...I've already been "famous"
before elsewhere. I
know what it's like to get flooded with generic comments. "lol cool", "awesome XD", "omg cute kawai".
Still
nice, but...
1.6 million views on a Youtube video may not seem much today. But it
was in 2007/2009.
"September 22nd '08: #98 - Top Rated (All Time) - Entertainment - Germany"
"February 8th '09: #96 - Top Rated (All Time) - Entertainment - Germany"
I
know that it isn't about the numbers, it's about the
community. And to stand out among a crowd in somebody else's inbox and really engage with them? You gotta be more creative than "omg lol".
I learned that, just as I got started on this site.
I put effort into my comments. On the days I don't have the time to work on my art or my stories,
I write deviantArt comments as a creative outlet.
I sometimes spend
an hour or two just writing one comment on deviantArt that only one other person is likely to see. I make
drafts for my comments, usually in a text file on my PC - sometimes I don't finish a comment the day I started writing it. This, too, is impossible with Eclipse, again since there is no formatting-syntax.
I see these comments as
part of my art. Maybe not the type I'd put up in a museum for others to marvel at, but the type I'd put in a photo album to
frequently revisit, and share parts of with others.
I started posting on Youtube around the same time I started posting on deviantArt, 13 years ago.
And even though I got far more attention on Youtube than I ever received on deviantArt, I feel more at home
here.
Here, I have a sense of
community. Sadly, I never quite got that on Youtube. In part that's my own shortcoming. But mainly? I blame Youtube's
terrible comments- and inbox-system that's only gotten worse over the years and made interacting with people in any meaningful way a
chore. "Regular" deviantArt literally has the single best inbox / comments system I have seen anywhere on the entire internet in 20 years.
Eclipse does not.
I judge
other social media sites by how well they can reproduce deviantArt's inbox- and comments-functionality. DeviantArt shouldn't imitate other social media sites,
they should be imitating deviantArt.
Not everything about the social media giants is "perfect".
Don't imitate their mistakes.On Eclipse, I can't even use
basic HTML-formatting (<
i> <
b> <
u> <
hr>), use :icon
PLZ: tags or even
smilies without jumping through hoops that make it unfeasible. There isn't even a "preview" button, because there is simply
no formatting at all.Eclipse won't let me be creative. On a site for artists.
...That's far from it's only shortcoming.
How do I find the first page of a comic in a gallery with 1000+ artworks if I can't go to "&offset=900" anymore?
If I click on a comment-thread, why does it only use 50% of the available space and the entire thread past the ~5th post is awkwardly mushed?
Where are the journals on my user page? Like with comments, I no longer can use formatting in journals.
And so on.
-_-Many people are talking about leaving. I don't
want to leave. DeviantArt has been my primary social media platform for
13 years!But Eclipse is literally UNUSABLE.
What am I supposed to even
do on this site then if I can't talk to people, look through my inbox, or even browse other people's galleries?!
art by
22.000+ people have already signed. We can do more.
Apologies if I don't respond anytime soon. I've been busy for the past 2 weeks backing up as much of deviantArt as I can (comments-threads, artworks, artwork-comments pages, etc), through both manual and automatized means, before it all goes to hell. -_-