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Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

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Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#181

Post by ehnto »

mcbits wrote: post #59
egeozcan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a definitely "person who develops for web" but not necessarily a Web Developer within the context of any community which assigned a specific meaning to that title. The definition may, of course, change over time and it already differs across communities. On the top of my head, I know many freelancers who wouldn't consider you a web developer without good Photoshop skills and many JavaScript- oriented develope…

The first I heard of Wix was a few months ago when a local news site deployed their new design. The page would be completely blank for 10-15 seconds while it made hundreds of requests for useless little React turdlets. As far as I can tell, they "fixed" it by moving away from Wix. If that's normal for a Wix site, then I would say no, nobody involved on either side of the transaction is a web developer except in the m…

It's madness. I keep saying it, but this is basic UX stuff. Even using JIRA lately has become painful as components bounce all over the place while they sling in code asynchronously with no UX indication. Save a sub task and watch as the whole page jiggles about like it's trying to avoid being clicked.

I will get you, edit button. You cannot escape my patient pointer.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#182

Post by jlebrech »

Senderman wrote: post #151
sideproject wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to elaborate what was so amazing about the dA community? I ask sincerely as someone who was never a part of the community. I've visited the site in passing a few times, so I know of it. But would love to hear the specifics as to what makes (or made) dA such a great place for you (and others of course!)

DA has always had a culture of being a safe place online to post something you've made without fear of ridicule. I joined in 2001 as a person-who-liked-drawing but had no scanner, so I tried out writing, since that was a category on there that other people were doing, and I got terrific feedback from a handful of strangers, who quickly became friends. Now I consider myself a writer. Programmer/writer, but writer none…

fear of ridicule you say.

I deleted my account because a workmate found my lightsaber rotoscoping on DA.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#183

Post by david-given »

bigiain wrote: post #165
uiri wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To save you the quick google search, this is it: http://dangeruss.deviantart.com/art/A-Dangeruss-QNX-12 It is the oldest submission not performed by deviant art staff and the oldest submission still online.

Awww, QNX! I remember booting that from floppy disk, must have been '97 or early '98... (I wonder if there's an ARM SoC version of it? I'm guessing I must have been running that on a Pentium grade machine - a Raspberry Pi or NextThing CHIP is _way_ more powerful...)

It is only pretending to be QNX, it's really Windows...

Here's the (genuine) QNX boot floppy demo, BTW. Alas, my new laptop doesn't have enough RAM to run it.

http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#184

Post by thinkMOAR »

bluetwo wrote: post #67
thinkMOAR wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it means enough, i just deactivated/deleted my deviant art account. This unclearness, plus their in my humble opinion, horribly annoying youtube ad campaign, did not make me ponder about deleting my account for a second.

I hope you deleted your artwork first. If you simply close your account, your work will still show up in searches.

they explicitly mentioned all my stuff will get deleted.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#185

Post by Two9A »

glasz wrote: post #172

always wondered what dA's stack is. anybody has any insight?

They've never made a secret of it being LAMP throughout. There's still some code in there from the original PHP4 site 14 years ago (or at least, there was at the time I left staff).

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#186

Post by mseebach »

egeozcan wrote: post #52
minimaxir wrote: post #4

Yesterday, coincidentally, there was a surprisingly silly and heated discussion in a large Facebook group about whether a person who specializes in Wix can be considered a "web developer." ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackers/permalink/1... ) Hacker News is biased toward DIYing websites from scratch, but WYSIWYG builders like WIx are very important for those who aren't tech-savvy. DeviantArt, in a world…

You are a definitely "person who develops for web" but not necessarily a Web Developer within the context of any community which assigned a specific meaning to that title. The definition may, of course, change over time and it already differs across communities. On the top of my head, I know many freelancers who wouldn't consider you a web developer without good Photoshop skills and many JavaScript- oriented develope…

This reminds me of the "webmaster" days when the debate was over whether doing HTML could be considered "programming". My position then as now is that being a programmer (developer in this context) requires programming a programming language, and neither HTML or Wix is that.

On the other hand, in practice, in the presence of a technology that non-programmers can use to build perfectly viable products, the onus is probably more on the "programming-language-programmers" to differentiate themselves and seek out the challenges that can't be solved by "HTML-programmers". If you as a programmer find yourself in a venue head to head with a Wix'er, you may win a small victory in the battle over definitions, but you will lose the war. If the problem can be solved with HTML/Wix, in most cases it should solved with them.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#187

Post by mstade »

jlebrech wrote: post #182
Senderman wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DA has always had a culture of being a safe place online to post something you've made without fear of ridicule. I joined in 2001 as a person-who-liked-drawing but had no scanner, so I tried out writing, since that was a category on there that other people were doing, and I got terrific feedback from a handful of strangers, who quickly became friends. Now I consider myself a writer. Programmer/writer, but writer none…

fear of ridicule you say. I deleted my account because a workmate found my lightsaber rotoscoping on DA.

I guess they mean you wouldn't fear ridicule from other DA members. But this is still the internet, people will find your stuff and possibly make fun of you because some people are just plain idiots.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#188

Post by jlebrech »

mstade wrote: post #187
jlebrech wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fear of ridicule you say. I deleted my account because a workmate found my lightsaber rotoscoping on DA.

I guess they mean you wouldn't fear ridicule from other DA members. But this is still the internet, people will find your stuff and possibly make fun of you because some people are just plain idiots.

I thought it was cool to learn rotoscoping i was trying to be the star wars kid or anything.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#189

Post by ukyrgf »

neom wrote: post #8

From 2001-2007 I worked on helping build the community at dA. Had such an interesting and unique childhood and teenage years due to deviantART (and IRC). I owe everyone from that time a huge thank you for helping me become who I am today. It lost all it's magic (for me) when Scott and Eric Kolb left. Angelo is an absolutely amazing guy and I really really admire him but it was pretty sad to watch the community die. F…

I came over to deviantArt from dMusic. I had no interest in graphic design or digital art but I loved what those guys were doing as web architects. I definitely lied about my age on a contract when I joined the staff. I cringe looking at my old userpage and have no idea why they ever put up with me, but I'm glad they did because I learned so much as a programmer just from being in the same room (or IRC channel, more accurately) as them.

The biggest gift they gave me was a little space on their server to run my own PHP site, which I used to rip of all their code and make an online community for DIY punk bands. It kind of exploded in popularity and was so badly coded that I constantly crashed their MySQL server and eventually got the boot. When I went to college I figured programming was the obvious path, but the Java and VB classes they offered seemed so outdated and unimportant compared to what I knew was possible on the web. It really bummed me out on real world computer stuff so I just dropped out of technology completely and played starving musician for way way way too long. Now I'm old and trying to catch up to kids who don't even know a world without social networks...

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#190

Post by ukyrgf »

namenotrequired wrote: post #163
neom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... that's the first time I've ever been thanked. So, you're welcome. I think DeviantART worked pretty well because of the team that was charged with looking after it. We screened community leaders pretty heavily for being genuinely kind and good humans who, in very many cases, cared more about the community than the art. I think everyone who worked on community building really appreciated and loved art and (self…

Is it true that in the beginning, staff members would comment on every piece of art that was uploaded?

It wasn't a policy, but it was definitely just part of the atmosphere. Wow, that's odd to think about now, isn't it? The internet seems so interactive now, but back then a user submitting something to a website was absolutely a new thing.
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