deviant ART

°dygel:icondygel:

E. A. Kolb  

  • Status: Former Staff Member
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  • Deviant since Jan 30, 2001, 1:59 PM
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Adding Value to deviantART

Journal Entry: Tue Apr 8, 2008, 6:29 AM
  • Mood: Neutral
  • Listening to: Counting Crows - Cowboys
Some of you may be aware that I've only recently "come back" after having left two years ago. After I departed DA staff, I moved onto other ventures and divorced myself from the internet in general. Now I've come back and found that in two years' time, not a great deal has changed. As someone in IT and high technology, this is pretty astonishing to me. In an era where folks are already looking at a sort of "Web 2.5", deviantART is still working on "Web 1.7". (Yes, I pretty much just made that up right there.)

My problem is that the success of deviantART as a business is symbiotically linked to the success of participating artists. Right now, everything is a big stew and the flavors don't all mix. In particular, I'm less than thrilled about the Collections feature because I don't see how this translates into dollars and cents for fine- and pro-artists. It's boondoggle for the community, and that's important. But DA is losing ground on the internet as the place to buy art.

I've had a couple conversations with people recently, and thus far the people I've been talking with have yet to turn the gun on me and ask: "Okay, you clearly feel strongly about this; what would you suggest to actually make things better." It would be a fair question, and you'd be wrong about me in more ways than you know if you think I haven't got an answer.

The answer is clear: mathematics. Yeah, that subject most of you were all too eager to discard after high school.

Let's back up a step and talk about art preference. If you look around my favorites, they're fairly diverse. I like to pick and choose, but what you won't see is a lot of fan art or emoticons. These things have their place in an art community and that place is, in fact, important. I'm just not a part of that scene.

So, you look at a piece of art. In this case, I'm looking at the one below. Broken Dawn by `arcipello.


If you find yourself looking at this piece of art and loving it, wouldn't it be reasonable and even valuable for you to find things that are similar? Damn skippy it would? But how do you get from A to B? What do you use to determine what to recommend to the viewer that they may also like?

Note that I used a key word there: recommend. This problem has been solved before. You build a recommendation engine! How do those work? They tend use a technique called the k-nearest-neighbor algorithm. This is an algorithm that lets you compute, say, that someone who purchased one item also purchased this item. Another example would be to say that someone who reviewed this item positively also reviewed this one positively. You've seen this in action before if you've ever visited a major etailer like Amazon or a movie site like Netflix.

Why not use it here? If you liked Broken Dawn, why not have an "Exploring deviantART" panel that would calculate there is a strong correlation to like exit scene by `spyroteknik (below) as well?


What's the end effect? Well, if you started with Broken Dawn, you could skip from deviation to deviation, following a common theme. What's that theme? People who favorited what you're looking at also gravitated towards the recommended pieces of art. So, you would skip from `arcipello to `spyroteknik to ~ANTIFAN-REAL to `nighty to `tigaer. I don't enjoy fan art; it's not my thing. With a k-nearest-neighbor algorithm, I can explore DA without running into much of it.

Or let's say fan art is your thing. You'll find yourself "exploring" around recommendations that reflect that. Into high tech skins? You'll see more of those. Into off-beat urbane art like `jasinski's? You'll find your way to ~melocopter and friends in no time.

There's real value in this. A lot of the artists I named sell prints. If you're looking to deck out an empty-walled room with DA prints, it can be frustrating to try to find things that work well together. DA Prints Store just doesn't do enough to help you find common pieces of art. Sometimes, you find one artist you want the room to be a shrine to. Sometimes, you want a mixture of artists. You've got to hunt, to cherry pick. Recommendations are manual and don't correlate to a specific piece.

Here are some exmaples of the kind of things you could find yourself hopping around to with a good k-nearest-neighbors algorithm. It all depends on how well its implemented and how strongly correlated the data actually is. These are pulled from my favorites to exemplify the similarity principle.



DA engineers, you have the data set to do this. You have the community tools used to power this. You have the ability to let users of DA drive their experience of actual art on DA. All you've got to do is do it. I've been gone two years and came back to Collections, a version 2.0 of the Favorites system. Come on, guys. Bring DA up to speed.

Thanks for your attention. And now, back to work. If I said any more on this subject, I'd damn well have to charge for it. :lol:

Devious Information

  • Current Age: 26
  • Current Residence: Knoxville, Tennessee
  • Favourite movie: The Hunt For Red October, Moulin Rouge, Finding Nemo
  • Favourite artist: Yoshitaka Amano, M. C. Escher, Josh Simpson
  • Favourite poet or writer: Dylan Thomas, Frank Herbert
  • Favourite game: Arcanum, Chrono Trigger
  • Favourite gaming platform: PC, PS2, SNES, NES, GBA:SP
  • Favourite cartoon character: Mentok the Mindtaker, Phil Ken Sebben
  • Personal Quote: A good author will write what he knows. A brilliant author will pen things that no man may know.

Deviousness

dygel has done a simply outstanding job by producing the first edition of deviantMAG, which was highly successful. On top of this he is one of the most dedicated, intelligent and eloquent deviants here on deviantART, going out of his way to answer questions and help put fires out before they become uncontrolled. His exceptional management and people skills were the key factor in ensuring that deviantMAG launched so well. The deviantART staff wishes to extend our congratulation on a job well done and recognition well deserved.
-awarded March 2002

Devious Comments

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~malatya:iconmalatya: 3 days 12 hours agoFlagged as spam
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~musti06:iconmusti06: May 1, 2008, 12:23:51 PMFlagged as spam
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~Stream-Sun:iconStream-Sun: Apr 25, 2008, 10:47:17 AM
Appologies for butting in, but thats probably the best explanation i've heard in years.

--
I GOT SOUL, BUT I'M NOT A SOLDIER.
I GOT FAITH, BUT I'M NOT RELIGIOUS.
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Wow, thanks for the watch! I wanted the chance to flip through your book more but oto kiralama when I got back I couldn't find you! evden eve nakliyat Thankfully Matt let me look through the book he got from you.

Beautiful stuff!
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!nakliyat:iconnakliyat: Apr 21, 2008, 6:09:35 AMFlagged as spam Mood: Wow!
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Wow, thanks for the watch! I wanted the chance to flip through your book more but when I got back I couldn't find you! Thankfully Matt let me look through the book he got from you.
Beautiful stuff!

nakliyat -
evden eve nakliyat-
°dygel:icondygel: Apr 8, 2008, 5:02:39 AM
I wasn'ta fan back in the day. It's a nice feature, to be certain. But what does it add? I go to the Top Collections page and I see... 6/16 resource collections (this is down from 8/16), one emoticons collection :roll:, and 9/16 art collections. Of the remaining 9, one is a Naruto collection :roll:. So, unless you're a Naruto fan or looking for resources, the efficacy of the feature is already cut right in half.

How much art exposure does this grant? Well, triffiling little. Do you get notified when a friend makes a collection? Not that I can tell. The best I can see, there's only any meaningful exposure for top collections (which I've highlighted how that's often absurd) and brand new collections (which are largely empty). And collections for myself, what do I need them for? I have faves. I have a wishlist. All this feature really does is let you subcategorize favorites.

There's no value added. It doesn't get any more exposure for the artist, or I'd need to be shown some empirical evidence to believe the contrary.

So, my beef is this: where's the value? I'm not a pro artist, but if I were, I'd be concerned. It's getting easier for the vast expanse of Naruto and Kingdom Hearts art to get to the popularity spots, and harder for fine- and professional artists to gain exposure. Collections add no value to them. "So my art can be collected digitally," they say. "Fantastic. This will really help me put bread on the table."

I think it was `fusionrock who recently uttered something to this effect: deviantART has grown from a community of artists into a community that includes artists. Yes, there's some fantastic art here, but it takes a lot more effort to find it if it's not fan art, emoticons, or stamps.

--
E. A. Kolb - °dygel :dygel:
Appreciate life today. Appreciate life tomorrow. :tribute:
Appreciate art.
`halfliquid:iconhalfliquid: Apr 7, 2008, 11:55:59 PM
Remember when we used to have that collections feature back in the day? Not sure if it was called something else though (I want to say "packs", hmm). It was being put to good use then what with the ability to group together like "Best of .. " collections or putting together your own "favorite wallpapers" and such. Why do you say it's worthless now? I have not played enough w/ it to pass judgment, but I did read some of your complaints before (such as the uselessness of having packs w/ one deviation in them, haha, or sorting through them?).

Yeah. And I see you on the prints side of things. Honestly though, I'm one of those who just browse through the 'best selling' ones and take a few picks there, unless I have an artist-friend who I want to purchase from, then I go straight to his/her stuff. But lots of stuff could get lost in the shuffle, especially when you can't seem to find what you're searching for.

--
:halfliquid:
((_8?(|)
°dygel:icondygel: Apr 1, 2008, 5:46:55 AM
Ah, doin' fine for the most part. Shocked that bupkis has improved around here in two years. Far as I can tell, two things have changed:
1.) It's easier to submit prints, and
2.) This worthless collections feature's been added.

Granted, #1 is a good thing. But it's not easier to shop for prints. Seriously, I had to look for days to find what I want to put on my new office walls.

You?

--
E. A. Kolb - °dygel :dygel:
Appreciate life today. Appreciate life tomorrow. :tribute:
Appreciate art.
`halfliquid:iconhalfliquid: Mar 31, 2008, 6:55:18 PM
How are you, my friend?

:bump:

--
:halfliquid:
((_8?(|)
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!hegel1:iconhegel1: Mar 28, 2008, 6:49:45 AMFlagged as spam
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@limetastic:iconlimetastic: Mar 14, 2008, 1:09:12 PM
:glomp:

--
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°dygel:icondygel: Mar 13, 2008, 4:36:09 PM
:ahoy:

--
E. A. Kolb - °dygel :dygel:
Appreciate life today. Appreciate life tomorrow. :tribute:
Appreciate art.
$spinegrinder:iconspinegrinder: Mar 13, 2008, 11:45:42 AM
Hey Eric! :wave:

--
Ollie
Lead Apostle of Real-Time Logic Enhancement
deviantART, Inc. - We iterate transparent paradigms!
=distancexkills:icondistancexkills: Mar 11, 2008, 5:17:32 PM
knoxville oO??

:]

ill be in Seymor soon! :)

--
[ dk# ] -

Q:What's your favourite animal?
A:ZOEY
°dygel:icondygel: Mar 4, 2008, 1:17:32 PM
I've been too career minded in recent history to have taken the time to do any writing. I'd like to get back to it and I hope that as my new job advances, I may find myself in a position to better realize my creative efforts. My big problem is that I get into a creative project and hit a point where I realize I have to seriously change my lifestyle to really be able to make my work into something I can really get out to people, and that's not a sacrifice I've been willing to make. So, creativity gets relegated to the backburner...

--
E. A. Kolb - °dygel :dygel:
Appreciate life today. Appreciate life tomorrow. :tribute:
Appreciate art.
`splat:iconsplat: Mar 3, 2008, 10:35:47 AM
Long time, no see. How's life treating you these days, sir?

--
`splat
Patrick Haney, not a sausage
Designer, developer, deviant
`eilidh:iconeilidh: Mar 2, 2008, 4:01:59 PM
That's good -- I'm glad. :)

You know, I still have one of your writings on my hard drive -- Lychgate King. Do you write at all, nowadays?
°dygel:icondygel: Feb 29, 2008, 7:25:09 PM
I am doing well, thank you. I just got done plowing through the big 'ol stack of deviations in my inbox. I'll try to hover around and at least be more active with the connections I've already made.

--
E. A. Kolb - °dygel :dygel:
Appreciate life today. Appreciate life tomorrow. :tribute:
Appreciate art.
`snowmask:iconsnowmask: Feb 29, 2008, 6:56:05 PM
Yo :)

--
S . . . . . :snowflake:
`eilidh:iconeilidh: Feb 29, 2008, 5:29:27 PM
Oh my! You're still around! I tried at some point to track you through your site link here, but that didn't get me anywhere.

How are you? Hope that all is as well as it can be.
:hug: