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Policy - Frequently Asked Questions
This section is intended to explain some of our more unusual or controversial rules and systems.
Why is there a maximum execution size limit?
This rule is the result of a community-voted position that it is better to be able to see a composition in it's entirety in the browser, instead of having to download it and open it in an image viewer to fit it on the screen. It makes the site a more practical tool for viewing the artwork, and reflects our priority of art and design over technical concerns.
The user survey clearly showed that people were prepared to scroll a little vertically, but definitely not horizontally. It also showed that the vast majority of users are using a resolution of 1024x768.
Why do you delete inactive accounts?
This is an art community, not a free image hosting service. We are only interested in devoting resources to members who are interested in being an active contributing member of the community, which involves more than just updating their gallery each year. This practice makes it more worthwhile to leave comments, because they're more likely to be heard. This is designed to be a small community, not a large ghost town.
Why can I only upload three executions every three days?
1. This is to prevent the practice of "flooding" - making occasional visits to upload huge amounts of work. It is designed to encourage people to visit more often which makes it possible for them to become involved in discussion of their work.
2. If you upload a lot of work at once, you will not get as much feedback. That's just the way it works, people tend to comment on their favourite one or two only. If that doesn't bother you, you're in the wrong community.
3. It's unfair for the people who post right before you to have their work pushed off the stalking page before anyone can see it.
4. By posting regularly, you're helping to make the community more interesting for the other members by adding to the healthy flow of new art.
Why can't I post my artwork in PNG format?
1. Even though most members are now using Firefox, the vast majority of NON-member visitors are still using IE6, which does not provide adequate PNG support. If I allow PNG posts, the site will look broken to a lot of people, which is not an acceptable situation.
2. PNG is a great technology for webdesign, but offers no real practical advantages for the display of two-dimensional artwork, which is what our site is about. It shows the same information with a negligible improvement in quality at the expense of a much larger file size.
Why don't you have a literature section?
We really want to have a literature section, and when it happens, it will be done right - not just an awkward tack-on to the image galleries. But it's a big programming job, and I don't get paid to develop or run this site, so it's going to have to wait until I have a lot of free time, which is not on the horizon right now. My first priority is making sure we do what we do do well.
My photo was deemed a "snapshot" and removed. Who are you to decide what is and isn't art?
One of the main things that people like about this community is that the galleries contain only artwork, not piles of random garbage imagery with actual artwork maybe 10% of the time, like virtually all unregulated art sites. The only mechanism we have for this is that someone has to draw a line somewhere. That line is based on human judgement because there's simply no other effective way to do it. I honestly don't like having to do it, but if I don't, I might as well take this website down, because we'd all be better off back at deviantART.
Naturally, it's a question with a lot of grey area, and the line is drawn through the grey, so when an artwork is kicked out of the gallery, it's typically something that is only slightly off. But this is how we maintain the standards we have, and it's the price you pay for the quality of the galleries here. If I make an exception and allow something that doesn't belong, that lowers our standard and I have to allow everything else of that new low standard.
When we do ask that an execution be removed, it's almost invariably for one of the three following reasons:
1. It's an overly simply wallpaper graphic with very little artistic merit - we don't host wallpapers, they belong on your desktop. Just post the artwork you used to make it, if it's even yours.
2. Photos of your friends drunk. This is a non-starter, don't even try it. Put it in your journal. Aside from not being artwork, it's not interesting to anyone except you, it's actually annoying.
3. Excessive stock use. Use of stock images in the creation of your own work is permitted but if you just found a photo on DA or sxc.hu and photoshopped it for any amount of time to make it look better, then it's not your artwork and does not belong in your gallery, regardless of whether you have permission to use it, or how much work you put into it.
If you'd like to see a particular question addressed here, please send a private message to one of the admins, or even start a discussion about your issue in the forums. Thankyou.
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