SEE BOTTOM FOR UPDATE

So we’ve made it clear that Artists are very important to us at here at Holosuite. We support them in what they do, we promote them, we commission them, we try and get their names out there. In this way we were very similar to deviantART.com. I say were, because that site has lost track of what it set out to do. It has been a downward spiral for a while now, and today the straw broke a camels back.

I posted a day or so ago on my own personal dA journal moral issues I was having with renewing my premium for the site. Mainly a lack of good customer support, and an offensive and often misguided administrative stance in regards to certain artists. The primary subject of the journal is artist CallMePo a man I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of times. Po recently got banned, for reasons you can get a clear reading of here on his tumblr. Essentially, there was no reason for his banning, he was banned for ‘re-uploading prohibited content’ which is to say he posted an image that contained thumbnails of images he’d had deleted previously to his scraps to contest their deletion, a process that proved that the items themselves were never in violation of the rules, thus not prohibited content.

That was 6 days ago. It took a single day for them to even inform him of why he was banned, more than that to tell him which image it was that got him banned. And then today, we learn that his appeal has been rejected. Why? Well as you can read here they say it’s because he had too many previous suspensions on his account. That’s the problem though. CallMePo had never been suspended. He’d had items deleted, he’d been contacted by admins. He even had items he uploaded straight to storage, that nobody but he could see deleted because a Mod was watching his account out of their own accord, but Po has never once been suspended from dA.

In essence because the ban held no merit they have invited issues with which they are holding his account in limbo. A website, that claims it dedicates itself to artists, that is actively seeking the top-level domain .ART because it “wishes to keep it within the art community” has actively rejected members of the community that made the site what it is due to the frivolous and malicious activities of a hand full of its “professional” moderation staff.

With Po’s ban in place this man has lost his primary source of communication with his customers, which also means he’s lost his primary method of peddling his wares. What this means is dA has taken away from this man livelihood, how he makes money, pays his bills, and keeps a roof over his head. DeviantART has in one unjust action potentially condemned a good and talented artist to obscurity because they do not have enough professional integrity to admit that someone within their members is wrong and made a mistake.

DeviantART has completely lost track of what is important about an artistic community. They allow images of under aged characters and quick webcam facebook style shots of peoples faces and more unmentionable things flood their galleries with no repercussions, and yet they take the time to make and support false claims against talented artists like Po. This is something I and the professional integrity of Holosuite Magazine cannot stand for, and I hope that our Artist friends stand against it as well.

UPDATE: After another admin was informed that no such suspensions were actually handed out, the admin accelerated his claim, and he’s been converted to a suspension. He will return to dA soon. Someone at least in the staff still has some integrity.