deviantART - Virtual Community Exercise

I already posted on deviantART. This is a copy of what I had to upload for my virtual community exercise. Forgive me.

devianArt is an online arts community. It is a community because we are there to share a communal interest and aim, e.g. art and the discussion and commenting on art. It is without national borders, as it is open to anyone around the world that has access to the net. The community has a slogan, ‘Where Art Meets Application’, I’ve got no idea what it means but it sounds cool. Most people in my experience sign up to DA to chat to people from around the world about their art or others art, to get inspiration or to find stock images for their own work. There are multiple ways of communicating with others on DA, you can comment on an individual piece of someone’s artwork, on one of their journal post, a general comment on their main page, a personal note directly to a fellow user that others won’t be able to read or on one of the many forums.

There are three types of accounts at DA; Member, Subscriber and Prints. Members have full access to their own gallery, upload and commenting abilities for no cost. Subscribers are those that have paid a subscription fee and get extra features such as a calendar, shoutbox etc. Prints is an account you can pay for in addition to allow the sale of selected images from your gallery to other people. All of these accounts allow you to manage exactly what information is released to fellow deviants about yourself, from as little as your handle, to detailed information about your likes/dislikes, true name, location, etc. I’ve been a member since the end of November 2004, got a nice group of colleagues going and have recently begun creating a series of images I hope to stick somewhere up around Uni.

Finally I’d have to say as an artist community with over 11.3 million individual submissions, deviantArt is successfully creating an atmosphere where one can upload their work and receive constructive criticism and encouragement on them without fearing an unjust flame war or discrimination.

The link to my deviantART can be found in the sidebar.