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Description
I have long been wondering why I have missed so much of the early 'involvement' of the community regarding Eclipse whereas I'm active on DA on a daily basis. Why am I only now experiencing Eclipse being shoved down my throat? Have I truly been sleeping?
I have been an active user for 12 years. I’m online every day, since the day I joined and I have been a Core Member for many years, thereby supporting DA financially for a long time. This website and it has been my home for all these years and I have always loved this place. However, now I am very worried about the forced changes of Eclipse. I cannot recall a vote about it and I cannot recall any clear early announcement about the planned changes by the time that we still may have been able stop it – or at least influence it more. There was no clear, obvious involvement of the community like there is now with the recent updates. Also, with community I mean us, the plebs, the regular users- not the elite and the professionals. So, only after the course of Eclipse was already settled, there have been clear updates and an alleged option for us to throw in opinions, which however feels like it is all in vain. Like mustard after the meal as said in Dutch. As a mature artist, I will explain why the current developments are such a pity and I hope that my opinion -and the opinion of many others- is at least read, or even be considered.

DeviantArt was truly Deviant; beyond art.

I have been around since January 2007 and was always attracted by the pleasant colours, the friendly and inviting interface and the general neat overview that the site provided of a given artist. The small thumbnails and texts invited to click on it and read what the artist had to say about their stories and characters. DA was inviting to explore art and the artists as persons. Through DA we could express ourselves beyond only art and find like-minded people. The systematic, overview-orientated interface of the old DA facilitated contact between artists based on their self-expression. That brought beginners and professionals on equal grounds and stimulated young artists to communicate with pros and learn from them. The flexibility and personalization that DA allowed through DA ID's stamps, custom boxes and more, made us and DA as community truly unique; truly Deviant. DA was different from the mainstream social media and other art-related platforms and it was here that I have met like-minded Deviant artists. I have met my very best friends on DA. I owe DA a lot. DA has been our home for as long as it existed. DA's interface invited people to read what an artist had to say and to engage in conversations. It allowed the artist to lead viewers through their gallery in the way that the artist themselves want, not in the way the website dictates it. All these features made me, as a Deviant person, feel home. All these features made me choose the unique DeviantArt over any other art-platform or mainstream social media.

In it's current form, Eclipse seriously threatens all these features that made DA truly Deviant. With Eclipse, artist bios are reduced to a small box, muffed away and stuffed to the side by the gigantic empty spaces and gigantic thumbnails. The thumbnails are so massive that they attempt to substitute viewing the actual artwork; they no longer invite to click on the work and read what the artist has to say. They no longer invite people to explore an artist’s stories. For example; I write a lot under my drawings. I post character-sheets with detailed descriptions in the artist's comments. In Eclipse, this text is narrowed down and laden with massive line-spacing, which makes it discouraging to read with painful colours and endless scrollbars. Am I now forced to make a mess and write it elsewhere, in separate literature posts? Although, literature pieces are also narrowed down in the same way, which will make the work of serious writers suffer even more. We can no longer customize our profiles and galleries only because the staff aims for a "modernized unified experience" for all of us? That is literally what Eclipse is meant to be, as I recall from an article written by the staff. So overboard with customization and self-expression. We all have to become a datapoint in the vast faceless grey mass-social media. That is not what DeviantArt truly is.

DA becoming uniform like any other social media – only popularity matters.

There is something else that shows clearly how Eclipse is turning DA into a mainstream faceless mass-media and that is how it emphasizes popularity. One of the strongest points of DA was the equality. Beginners and professionals could easily talk to each other and with DA’s classical interface, there has always been a low threshold for people to submit their work. That is what made DA so unique and so Deviant. Now, in Eclipse, there is a strong emphasis on popularity. The stats are shown bold, right next to the title of the artwork and right next to my avatar and artist-name, as if this is the only thing that matters. Is this what really defines the value of art or the artists as persons? In order to find the artist comments under an artwork, I have to scroll down past the statistics. This will subtly, yet obviously, shift the focus of the community from the value of art and its story to shallow competition for popularity. It will take away the spirit of equality that was so essential for DeviantArt. With this, DA becomes like mainstream mass-social media like Facebook, where only the quantity of likes and popularity matter. Why should popularity and ‘success’ in the form of faves and comments be the main focus; rather than sharing art with like-minded Deviant people? This creates an entirely different, competitive and snobbish attitude among artists and closes the door for insecure and/or beginning artists. The introduction of Facebook's "like"-system into DA, further stimulates that. This discourages actual interaction and propagates laziness instead. It only alienates users from each other and leads to a whole different mindset based on shallow, careless interaction. I know that I'm often short on time and I know the temptation of just 'liking' a comment rather than answering it. But I do-not-want- this temptation and this shortcut. I want to thank every person who comments on my work individually, no matter my lack of time. I want interaction. That's why I am on DA in the first place. Offering people this shortcut will dramatically reduce the incentive to interact, which makes DA only more alienated, more massive, more faceless and more like the general mass-media. In other words; it kills DA's unique identity and spirit. A "modernized unified experience" is NOT what DeviantArt is about.

Some people prefer a computer screen over a phone!

The aim for a "modernized unified exeperience" also shines through in the fact that Eclipse is designed for phones and phones ONLY. Its interface is repulsive, if not downright obnoxious for computer-screen users. I remember that in the old days, many websites got automatically scaled according to the size of the browser/screen. That was in the old days. Why is this not possible for a modern website like DA? Mammoth-sized letters and thumbnails give the impression of screaming advertisement billboards instead of art. Is that the impression DA wants to give us? The combination of massive empty spaces and yet massive letters and 'thumbnails' makes the whole interface feel terribly off, terribly messy and very uncomfortable. Browsing is no longer pleasant, nor does it stimulate clicking on an actual artwork to read the artist's stories. It only stimulates mass-consumption of pictures with easy shortcuts to likes and favs; this devaluates the art itself reducing it to something people will just skim over and never linger to learn more about, let alone truly appreciate. No more depth in art. No more meaningful interaction. Just mass-consumption of pictures like on Instrabram or Tumblr, while people walk the streets like headless hens with their eyes stuck on their phones.

Another confusing modern phone-orientated adaptation is the reduction of hyperlinks to icons, so simplified that they no longer illustrate intuitively what they stand for. This is a needless decrease in readability of the interface for those who do not use a smartphone. Even worse is that you have to hover over hyperlinks to let them appear, often in the form of yet another tiny, cryptic icon. It becomes counter-intuitive and it is not only DeviantArt that now falls for this fashion. It is everywhere on the internet. Navigating becomes more like a search-puzzle.The horizontal alignment of lists is another element that makes the interface difficult to navigate for computer-screen users. Computer-screens have a horizontal orientation, phones a vertical, so it is only natural to have icons and lists aligned vertically on big, wide screens and horizontally on small, narrow phones. That makes sense. What does not make sense, is filling the entire big screen with massive horizontally aligned icons, leaving no space to see the art that you are attempting to look at.The icons are so massive that the entire list doesn’t even fit on the screen. This is mildly said annoying when I intend to spend time in someone’s gallery and I have to scroll back and forth or click myself to exhaustion to browse through all of the enormous folder icons. This is yet another example of ineffective space-use and makes me quickly lose interest in browsing on DeviantArt altogether. DeviantArt is a place where I want to spend time, not a simple phone-app that I would use to scroll though pictures in turbo-speed and leave. There is a much, much more efficient and more screenviewer-friendly way of designing an art-website in which navigation is a key-element.

The narrowed text fields are yet another phone-orientated adaptation that looks vastly overdone on a big screen. Instead of letting the text scale itself according to browser width, there is now a fixed narrow column in which all texts and comments are concentrated. That leaves an uncomfortable amount of empty space on the sides, which could have been used for vertical alignment of menus, icons, ect., or simply to extend the text itself so that it isn’t an infinite scroll-sheet. This narrowness quickly leads to comment threads becoming very messy. I lose overview over the comments and get yet again, I get demotivated to engage in a conversation. The massive text-spacing and big bold letters do not contribute to my reading motivation either. The feeling of "too long; didn't read" strikes me much more quickly in Eclipse than in classical DA, where text spacing is comfortable and text sections are wide enough to stimulate reading. In Eclipse, I only find myself scrolling and scrolling, until I quite quickly feel fed up with it and leave. That is a pity for the artists who want to share their stories and engage in meaningful conversations. Why is meaningful, in-depth interaction discouraged like that throughout Eclipse?

This is not where the massiveness and yet emptiness of Eclipse ends. The watch-section shows deviations, journal posts, status posts, polls and even artist name changes in tiles so enormous, that there is only space for 3 posts/messages on my entire big screen. Compare this with the classical DA where there is space for 21 posts/messages. These 21 tiles give a quick overview and it feels pleasant to the eyes and on the brain. Whereas in Eclipse, these massive tiles, bigger than a coffee-mug (11x11cm on my laptop and 16x16cm on my big screen!), are incredibly cumbersome and downright repulsive. I'm not in Las Vegas; I don't need such screaming billboards on my inbox on DeviantArt; I want a neat, pleasant overview that is easy to navigate and manage and yet invites me to explore art and stories. Another thing that I don't find well-thought out, is the merging of messages and the huge boxes in which comments, favourites and replies are all thrown in a pile together. It gives me the feeling of drowning in my messages; I see too few of them at once and yet, there are too many messages converged into one channel. What about artists who get hundreds of favourites on each deviation? They will get lost in their messages the moment they open this interface. Comments and replies get buried instantly under all the favourites. This part of Eclipse needs a lot more tidying if not a redesign altogether. Smaller letters and much smaller boxes would be a good start.

The last thing to mention concerning the highly cosmetic, yet repulsive modern phone-orientated interface is the colour choice. Dark backgrounds can work, and many people like them, but white letters on black is painful for the eyes and gives me a headache, quite quickly. These big white bold letters of links and titles come across as amateurish; like a child screaming for attention. The long texts that I write under charactersheets are now so unpleasant to read that I have to copy them to Microsoft Word and read them there instead. For comparison, DA's classical colour scheme with its mild, neutral, yet pleasant green and the low contrasts was so pleasant that I preferred reading texts on DA rather than in MS Word. Then in the light theme, the contrasts are even stronger, by far too strong for normal reading. It's either so dark it impairs readability of the interface or so strikingly white that it feels sterile, like reading legal documentation rather than an art site. In both cases the contrast with the text is so strong that it constantly strains the eyes. So, why throw away the excellent colour choice that was the classical DA green, one of the very things that made the site so recognizable and unique – and replace it with something that gives people headaches? It strikes me as needlessly following the vogue of countless other sites and softwares that now implement the very same dark and light color themes, and becoming their faceless copy, rather than preserving what works so much better while staying true to the Deviant in DeviantArt.
Far too Art-station like

I really wonder what the developers of ArtStation would think about Eclipse given the extent to which it imitates their own site. What is the point of imitating another platform's design, appearance and interface and throw away DeviantArt's own identity and uniqueness? If I wanted to be on an art-platform that looked like ArtStation, I would have joined ArtStation and not its DA copy. No, I like the unique features of DA and joined and supported DA instead. In fact, the interface and appearance of ArtStation is -in my opinion- quite sterile, mainstream, annoyingly big and screechy and above all, very impersonal. It is not a place where I would prefer to hang around, express myself, make friends and share my most personal art and stories. The classical DeviantArt did make the perfect place for all that. However, with Eclipse, I get the impression that we are all suddenly teleported to ArtStation - a place where I do not want to be, to begin with. Again, what is the point? Not ArtStation's success; DeviantArt is a bigger art community. Moreover, DA is so successful and popular namely because of its uniqueness, because it creates a niche of its own. It is one of a kind on the internet – it makes no sense to try to copy the niche and brand of another, already existing site.

Is it because of ArtStation's reputation as being more proffesional because it is more uniform and about art and art only? If that’s so, is it a negative thing that DeviantArt is much more welcoming for beginners and insecure people to express themelves and become artists? Or that DeviantArt is so much more variable and allows everyone to express themself freely as their own unique person and creator? If the staff of DA cherishes the community and its spirit as much as they try to convince us, then why are such vital aspects of this very spirit suddenly neglected and replaced with the sterile look of ArtStation? Is it because some 'pros' look down upon DeviantArt as amateurish? Well, I don't think copying ArtStation is going to fix that. If it even needs "fixing"; it might even harm DA's reputation further as being a copy rather than an original art platform of its own. Furthermore, such 'professionality' as seen on ArtStation quickly turns into arrogance and snobbishness and feels very uninviting for amateur and hobbyist artists. If DeviantArt truly aims for this kind of professional environment, beginners and insecure people will only feel more insecure and less welcome because they get intimidated by the pros and the impersonal, snobbish attitude. There goes DeviantArt's equality and warm, welcoming atmosphere: straight out of the window.

Taken it even further, I get the impression that self expression and genuine creativity is seen as unprofessional. How can the snobbish pretence of 'professionalism' be put over one's creative expression and genuine identity in a site devoted to creativity? Yet it seems to be, therefore, DA has to become as uniform and streamlined as ArtStation. This uniformity may even do the opposite to what is intended. It doesn’t evolve DA into a ‘proffesional’ art site, but only exposed the lack of creativity and originality of the designers of DeviantArt Eclipse. Customization and HTML are a form of art and creativity too. Why kill it? It feels like DA is becoming like sheep that want to blend in with the rest of the mainstream modern internet. Why not change the name of DeviantArt entirely then, if it is to becomes so unoriginal, faceless and mainstream? It is clearly not Deviant anymore, judging by the direction that Eclipse is taking.

The principle of forced changes

Then there is the last, yet perhaps most important point. The forced change. Yes, I see the point of discouraging people to treat DA as a blog platform and upload random pictures from internet by making the site look more proffesional. But what really makes DeviantArt, is the community. In contrast to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and ArtStation, DeviantART is truly a community. It is us, who keep the site running. Without us, there would be no DeviantArt. Without us, there might only be a site that has neither the spirit and identity, nor the art, creativity and atmosphere, nor even the size of DeviantArt. We are the biggest art community in the word. Yet, it feels like we are being majorly ignored and treated as insignificant amateurs by our own staff. About 90% of the community seems to dislike Eclipse and oppose it. There is a lot of a negativity in the community concerning Eclipse and yet, it gets pushed through nonetheless. Many have already said that they will leave DA once Eclipse is sealed.

Yes, I know that there have been interviews with DA members and it is claimed that representatives of the community have been involved in the making of Eclipse, all the way from the early phase of development. However, how is it possible then, that the vast majority of the community is strongly against the current developments? Clearly, those whom the staff have consulted, were not representatives for the majority. I cannot say much more about this, since I don't know what actually happened. That is a problem in itself, because if I was truly being represented by someone in the early stage, I should have known at least something about it. However, I do suspect that only elite professionals and the very most popular artists have been asked for their opinion – and of course they have been positively biased towards the idea of Eclipse, they are popular and professional after all. However, they cannot represent the whole community and their purely professional interest for Eclipse cannot represent what the whole community needs and loves about this unique place. I doubt all the hobbyists and less popular artists, let alone non-paying users, have been represented adequately or at all – but they constitute the majority of DA. It doesn't feel like a community-conscious decision, but more like a course set and sealed by the chosen few in spite of the community.
I still find it rather strange that, in all those 12 years of intense activity on DeviantArt, I have completely missed everything of the early planning of Eclipse. Yes, I must admit, I have avoided Eclipse news for the last few months because I was so dishearted and repulsed by it. It is only during the last few months that Eclipse is presented so openly throughout the community for feedback and discussion. The course of Eclipse, however, seems to have been sealed many years before. Never have there been community-wide polls. Never have there been clear presentations of the Eclipse plans to the entire community. Only now, we get overwhelmed by all the Eclipse commotion and advertisement. In that regard, I wonder why is it necessary to promote and advertise a site to its very own users – if it were really any as good as presented, that hardly would have been necessary.

Speaking of which, another thing that I repeatedly read in all the Eclipse advertisement, is it being presented as a so-called 'improvement'. Yes, I agree that there were things that could be improved on DA. Things that had nothing to do with changing the whole interface into a billboard-style copy of ArtStation. Things like some functionalities that could be added or certain interface shortcomings that could be smoothed out – none of which however justifies replacing the whole interface, and most of which are not even properly addressed in the new one. Much more importantly though, things like the site being flooded by disgusting fetishes, porn, hackers, bullying, trolls. Eclipse will not fix any of that, only the active staff can do that. Instead, I get the impression that all their time is now devoted to making Eclipse and forcefully promoting it to the disgruntled community against its clear rejection, rather than working on fixing the actual problems or even properly managing the site. There is an increasing tendency of people not receiving adequate assistance from DeviantArt's Help Center – even against harassment and abuse. It feels like the staff is neglecting some of their most essential functions in order to create a whole new site altogether, that nobody really needed.The interface of classical DA worked excellently. Some tweeks here and there could improve it even more and some change could be refreshing. I am aware of the fact that many people are neophobic and prefer a status-quo, especially concerning the places in which they feel safe and at home; like DeviantArt. In order for change to happen, you have to step out of that comfort zone and see that some changes are, indeed, an improvement. However, Eclipse is far too radical and above all, unasked for by the majority. It does not improve anything. Instead, it is such a degradation of the website’s uniqueness and even functionality that it causes strong resistance in the community. It strips DeviantArt off it's identity and does not fix the actual problems.

My conclusion

So, after all these 12 years on DeviantArt, I can say that it has always felt truly Deviant -until now. It was my prefered home, which I loved and cared about. However, the way that Eclipse currently looks and functions, feels like a mainstream mobile-phone orientated, overwhelmingly messy, billboard-styled copy of ArtStation where Deviant artists can no longer freely express themselves with DA ID's custom boxes, subgallery icons and much, much more, nor interact with fellow Deviant artists and like-minded people. This way, DeviantArt loses it's unique open atmopshere to this 'modernized unified experience'. What a sterile, faceless phrase. Even that speaks of how Eclipse kills the spirit of DA. That is why I am worried about the current changes into Eclipse. That is why I'm even considering moving to the one and only classical style platform left; FurAffinity. That would be a downgrade for me in every sense because classical DeviantArt had much more to offer me than FA. It had everything that I could ever wish for as a Deviant person and artist. It was my true home and no other platform could even remotely touch upon that feeling. But now, with Eclipse's current status and direction of development, I feel chased out of my beloved home.

Description
I have long been wondering why I have missed so much of the early 'involvement' of the community regarding Eclipse whereas I'm active on DA on a daily basis. Why am I only now experiencing Eclipse being shoved down my throat? Have I truly been sleeping?
I have been an active user for 12 years. I’m online every day, since the day I joined and I have been a Core Member for many years, thereby supporting DA financially for a long time. This website and it has been my home for all these years and I have always loved this place. However, now I am very worried about the forced changes of Eclipse. I cannot recall a vote about it and I cannot recall any clear early announcement about the planned changes by the time that we still may have been able stop it – or at least influence it more. There was no clear, obvious involvement of the community like there is now with the recent updates. Also, with community I mean us, the plebs, the regular users- not the elite and the professionals. So, only after the course of Eclipse was already settled, there have been clear updates and an alleged option for us to throw in opinions, which however feels like it is all in vain. Like mustard after the meal as said in Dutch. As a mature artist, I will explain why the current developments are such a pity and I hope that my opinion -and the opinion of many others- is at least read, or even be considered.

DeviantArt was truly Deviant; beyond art.

I have been around since January 2007 and was always attracted by the pleasant colours, the friendly and inviting interface and the general neat overview that the site provided of a given artist. The small thumbnails and texts invited to click on it and read what the artist had to say about their stories and characters. DA was inviting to explore art and the artists as persons. Through DA we could express ourselves beyond only art and find like-minded people. The systematic, overview-orientated interface of the old DA facilitated contact between artists based on their self-expression. That brought beginners and professionals on equal grounds and stimulated young artists to communicate with pros and learn from them. The flexibility and personalization that DA allowed through DA ID's stamps, custom boxes and more, made us and DA as community truly unique; truly Deviant. DA was different from the mainstream social media and other art-related platforms and it was here that I have met like-minded Deviant artists. I have met my very best friends on DA. I owe DA a lot. DA has been our home for as long as it existed. DA's interface invited people to read what an artist had to say and to engage in conversations. It allowed the artist to lead viewers through their gallery in the way that the artist themselves want, not in the way the website dictates it. All these features made me, as a Deviant person, feel home. All these features made me choose the unique DeviantArt over any other art-platform or mainstream social media.

In it's current form, Eclipse seriously threatens all these features that made DA truly Deviant. With Eclipse, artist bios are reduced to a small box, muffed away and stuffed to the side by the gigantic empty spaces and gigantic thumbnails. The thumbnails are so massive that they attempt to substitute viewing the actual artwork; they no longer invite to click on the work and read what the artist has to say. They no longer invite people to explore an artist’s stories. For example; I write a lot under my drawings. I post character-sheets with detailed descriptions in the artist's comments. In Eclipse, this text is narrowed down and laden with massive line-spacing, which makes it discouraging to read with painful colours and endless scrollbars. Am I now forced to make a mess and write it elsewhere, in separate literature posts? Although, literature pieces are also narrowed down in the same way, which will make the work of serious writers suffer even more. We can no longer customize our profiles and galleries only because the staff aims for a "modernized unified experience" for all of us? That is literally what Eclipse is meant to be, as I recall from an article written by the staff. So overboard with customization and self-expression. We all have to become a datapoint in the vast faceless grey mass-social media. That is not what DeviantArt truly is.

DA becoming uniform like any other social media – only popularity matters.

There is something else that shows clearly how Eclipse is turning DA into a mainstream faceless mass-media and that is how it emphasizes popularity. One of the strongest points of DA was the equality. Beginners and professionals could easily talk to each other and with DA’s classical interface, there has always been a low threshold for people to submit their work. That is what made DA so unique and so Deviant. Now, in Eclipse, there is a strong emphasis on popularity. The stats are shown bold, right next to the title of the artwork and right next to my avatar and artist-name, as if this is the only thing that matters. Is this what really defines the value of art or the artists as persons? In order to find the artist comments under an artwork, I have to scroll down past the statistics. This will subtly, yet obviously, shift the focus of the community from the value of art and its story to shallow competition for popularity. It will take away the spirit of equality that was so essential for DeviantArt. With this, DA becomes like mainstream mass-social media like Facebook, where only the quantity of likes and popularity matter. Why should popularity and ‘success’ in the form of faves and comments be the main focus; rather than sharing art with like-minded Deviant people? This creates an entirely different, competitive and snobbish attitude among artists and closes the door for insecure and/or beginning artists. The introduction of Facebook's "like"-system into DA, further stimulates that. This discourages actual interaction and propagates laziness instead. It only alienates users from each other and leads to a whole different mindset based on shallow, careless interaction. I know that I'm often short on time and I know the temptation of just 'liking' a comment rather than answering it. But I do-not-want- this temptation and this shortcut. I want to thank every person who comments on my work individually, no matter my lack of time. I want interaction. That's why I am on DA in the first place. Offering people this shortcut will dramatically reduce the incentive to interact, which makes DA only more alienated, more massive, more faceless and more like the general mass-media. In other words; it kills DA's unique identity and spirit. A "modernized unified experience" is NOT what DeviantArt is about.

Some people prefer a computer screen over a phone!

The aim for a "modernized unified exeperience" also shines through in the fact that Eclipse is designed for phones and phones ONLY. Its interface is repulsive, if not downright obnoxious for computer-screen users. I remember that in the old days, many websites got automatically scaled according to the size of the browser/screen. That was in the old days. Why is this not possible for a modern website like DA? Mammoth-sized letters and thumbnails give the impression of screaming advertisement billboards instead of art. Is that the impression DA wants to give us? The combination of massive empty spaces and yet massive letters and 'thumbnails' makes the whole interface feel terribly off, terribly messy and very uncomfortable. Browsing is no longer pleasant, nor does it stimulate clicking on an actual artwork to read the artist's stories. It only stimulates mass-consumption of pictures with easy shortcuts to likes and favs; this devaluates the art itself reducing it to something people will just skim over and never linger to learn more about, let alone truly appreciate. No more depth in art. No more meaningful interaction. Just mass-consumption of pictures like on Instrabram or Tumblr, while people walk the streets like headless hens with their eyes stuck on their phones.

Another confusing modern phone-orientated adaptation is the reduction of hyperlinks to icons, so simplified that they no longer illustrate intuitively what they stand for. This is a needless decrease in readability of the interface for those who do not use a smartphone. Even worse is that you have to hover over hyperlinks to let them appear, often in the form of yet another tiny, cryptic icon. It becomes counter-intuitive and it is not only DeviantArt that now falls for this fashion. It is everywhere on the internet. Navigating becomes more like a search-puzzle.The horizontal alignment of lists is another element that makes the interface difficult to navigate for computer-screen users. Computer-screens have a horizontal orientation, phones a vertical, so it is only natural to have icons and lists aligned vertically on big, wide screens and horizontally on small, narrow phones. That makes sense. What does not make sense, is filling the entire big screen with massive horizontally aligned icons, leaving no space to see the art that you are attempting to look at.The icons are so massive that the entire list doesn’t even fit on the screen. This is mildly said annoying when I intend to spend time in someone’s gallery and I have to scroll back and forth or click myself to exhaustion to browse through all of the enormous folder icons. This is yet another example of ineffective space-use and makes me quickly lose interest in browsing on DeviantArt altogether. DeviantArt is a place where I want to spend time, not a simple phone-app that I would use to scroll though pictures in turbo-speed and leave. There is a much, much more efficient and more screenviewer-friendly way of designing an art-website in which navigation is a key-element.

The narrowed text fields are yet another phone-orientated adaptation that looks vastly overdone on a big screen. Instead of letting the text scale itself according to browser width, there is now a fixed narrow column in which all texts and comments are concentrated. That leaves an uncomfortable amount of empty space on the sides, which could have been used for vertical alignment of menus, icons, ect., or simply to extend the text itself so that it isn’t an infinite scroll-sheet. This narrowness quickly leads to comment threads becoming very messy. I lose overview over the comments and get yet again, I get demotivated to engage in a conversation. The massive text-spacing and big bold letters do not contribute to my reading motivation either. The feeling of "too long; didn't read" strikes me much more quickly in Eclipse than in classical DA, where text spacing is comfortable and text sections are wide enough to stimulate reading. In Eclipse, I only find myself scrolling and scrolling, until I quite quickly feel fed up with it and leave. That is a pity for the artists who want to share their stories and engage in meaningful conversations. Why is meaningful, in-depth interaction discouraged like that throughout Eclipse?

This is not where the massiveness and yet emptiness of Eclipse ends. The watch-section shows deviations, journal posts, status posts, polls and even artist name changes in tiles so enormous, that there is only space for 3 posts/messages on my entire big screen. Compare this with the classical DA where there is space for 21 posts/messages. These 21 tiles give a quick overview and it feels pleasant to the eyes and on the brain. Whereas in Eclipse, these massive tiles, bigger than a coffee-mug (11x11cm on my laptop and 16x16cm on my big screen!), are incredibly cumbersome and downright repulsive. I'm not in Las Vegas; I don't need such screaming billboards on my inbox on DeviantArt; I want a neat, pleasant overview that is easy to navigate and manage and yet invites me to explore art and stories. Another thing that I don't find well-thought out, is the merging of messages and the huge boxes in which comments, favourites and replies are all thrown in a pile together. It gives me the feeling of drowning in my messages; I see too few of them at once and yet, there are too many messages converged into one channel. What about artists who get hundreds of favourites on each deviation? They will get lost in their messages the moment they open this interface. Comments and replies get buried instantly under all the favourites. This part of Eclipse needs a lot more tidying if not a redesign altogether. Smaller letters and much smaller boxes would be a good start.

The last thing to mention concerning the highly cosmetic, yet repulsive modern phone-orientated interface is the colour choice. Dark backgrounds can work, and many people like them, but white letters on black is painful for the eyes and gives me a headache, quite quickly. These big white bold letters of links and titles come across as amateurish; like a child screaming for attention. The long texts that I write under charactersheets are now so unpleasant to read that I have to copy them to Microsoft Word and read them there instead. For comparison, DA's classical colour scheme with its mild, neutral, yet pleasant green and the low contrasts was so pleasant that I preferred reading texts on DA rather than in MS Word. Then in the light theme, the contrasts are even stronger, by far too strong for normal reading. It's either so dark it impairs readability of the interface or so strikingly white that it feels sterile, like reading legal documentation rather than an art site. In both cases the contrast with the text is so strong that it constantly strains the eyes. So, why throw away the excellent colour choice that was the classical DA green, one of the very things that made the site so recognizable and unique – and replace it with something that gives people headaches? It strikes me as needlessly following the vogue of countless other sites and softwares that now implement the very same dark and light color themes, and becoming their faceless copy, rather than preserving what works so much better while staying true to the Deviant in DeviantArt.
Far too Art-station like

I really wonder what the developers of ArtStation would think about Eclipse given the extent to which it imitates their own site. What is the point of imitating another platform's design, appearance and interface and throw away DeviantArt's own identity and uniqueness? If I wanted to be on an art-platform that looked like ArtStation, I would have joined ArtStation and not its DA copy. No, I like the unique features of DA and joined and supported DA instead. In fact, the interface and appearance of ArtStation is -in my opinion- quite sterile, mainstream, annoyingly big and screechy and above all, very impersonal. It is not a place where I would prefer to hang around, express myself, make friends and share my most personal art and stories. The classical DeviantArt did make the perfect place for all that. However, with Eclipse, I get the impression that we are all suddenly teleported to ArtStation - a place where I do not want to be, to begin with. Again, what is the point? Not ArtStation's success; DeviantArt is a bigger art community. Moreover, DA is so successful and popular namely because of its uniqueness, because it creates a niche of its own. It is one of a kind on the internet – it makes no sense to try to copy the niche and brand of another, already existing site.

Is it because of ArtStation's reputation as being more proffesional because it is more uniform and about art and art only? If that’s so, is it a negative thing that DeviantArt is much more welcoming for beginners and insecure people to express themelves and become artists? Or that DeviantArt is so much more variable and allows everyone to express themself freely as their own unique person and creator? If the staff of DA cherishes the community and its spirit as much as they try to convince us, then why are such vital aspects of this very spirit suddenly neglected and replaced with the sterile look of ArtStation? Is it because some 'pros' look down upon DeviantArt as amateurish? Well, I don't think copying ArtStation is going to fix that. If it even needs "fixing"; it might even harm DA's reputation further as being a copy rather than an original art platform of its own. Furthermore, such 'professionality' as seen on ArtStation quickly turns into arrogance and snobbishness and feels very uninviting for amateur and hobbyist artists. If DeviantArt truly aims for this kind of professional environment, beginners and insecure people will only feel more insecure and less welcome because they get intimidated by the pros and the impersonal, snobbish attitude. There goes DeviantArt's equality and warm, welcoming atmosphere: straight out of the window.

Taken it even further, I get the impression that self expression and genuine creativity is seen as unprofessional. How can the snobbish pretence of 'professionalism' be put over one's creative expression and genuine identity in a site devoted to creativity? Yet it seems to be, therefore, DA has to become as uniform and streamlined as ArtStation. This uniformity may even do the opposite to what is intended. It doesn’t evolve DA into a ‘proffesional’ art site, but only exposed the lack of creativity and originality of the designers of DeviantArt Eclipse. Customization and HTML are a form of art and creativity too. Why kill it? It feels like DA is becoming like sheep that want to blend in with the rest of the mainstream modern internet. Why not change the name of DeviantArt entirely then, if it is to becomes so unoriginal, faceless and mainstream? It is clearly not Deviant anymore, judging by the direction that Eclipse is taking.

The principle of forced changes

Then there is the last, yet perhaps most important point. The forced change. Yes, I see the point of discouraging people to treat DA as a blog platform and upload random pictures from internet by making the site look more proffesional. But what really makes DeviantArt, is the community. In contrast to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and ArtStation, DeviantART is truly a community. It is us, who keep the site running. Without us, there would be no DeviantArt. Without us, there might only be a site that has neither the spirit and identity, nor the art, creativity and atmosphere, nor even the size of DeviantArt. We are the biggest art community in the word. Yet, it feels like we are being majorly ignored and treated as insignificant amateurs by our own staff. About 90% of the community seems to dislike Eclipse and oppose it. There is a lot of a negativity in the community concerning Eclipse and yet, it gets pushed through nonetheless. Many have already said that they will leave DA once Eclipse is sealed.

Yes, I know that there have been interviews with DA members and it is claimed that representatives of the community have been involved in the making of Eclipse, all the way from the early phase of development. However, how is it possible then, that the vast majority of the community is strongly against the current developments? Clearly, those whom the staff have consulted, were not representatives for the majority. I cannot say much more about this, since I don't know what actually happened. That is a problem in itself, because if I was truly being represented by someone in the early stage, I should have known at least something about it. However, I do suspect that only elite professionals and the very most popular artists have been asked for their opinion – and of course they have been positively biased towards the idea of Eclipse, they are popular and professional after all. However, they cannot represent the whole community and their purely professional interest for Eclipse cannot represent what the whole community needs and loves about this unique place. I doubt all the hobbyists and less popular artists, let alone non-paying users, have been represented adequately or at all – but they constitute the majority of DA. It doesn't feel like a community-conscious decision, but more like a course set and sealed by the chosen few in spite of the community.
I still find it rather strange that, in all those 12 years of intense activity on DeviantArt, I have completely missed everything of the early planning of Eclipse. Yes, I must admit, I have avoided Eclipse news for the last few months because I was so dishearted and repulsed by it. It is only during the last few months that Eclipse is presented so openly throughout the community for feedback and discussion. The course of Eclipse, however, seems to have been sealed many years before. Never have there been community-wide polls. Never have there been clear presentations of the Eclipse plans to the entire community. Only now, we get overwhelmed by all the Eclipse commotion and advertisement. In that regard, I wonder why is it necessary to promote and advertise a site to its very own users – if it were really any as good as presented, that hardly would have been necessary.

Speaking of which, another thing that I repeatedly read in all the Eclipse advertisement, is it being presented as a so-called 'improvement'. Yes, I agree that there were things that could be improved on DA. Things that had nothing to do with changing the whole interface into a billboard-style copy of ArtStation. Things like some functionalities that could be added or certain interface shortcomings that could be smoothed out – none of which however justifies replacing the whole interface, and most of which are not even properly addressed in the new one. Much more importantly though, things like the site being flooded by disgusting fetishes, porn, hackers, bullying, trolls. Eclipse will not fix any of that, only the active staff can do that. Instead, I get the impression that all their time is now devoted to making Eclipse and forcefully promoting it to the disgruntled community against its clear rejection, rather than working on fixing the actual problems or even properly managing the site. There is an increasing tendency of people not receiving adequate assistance from DeviantArt's Help Center – even against harassment and abuse. It feels like the staff is neglecting some of their most essential functions in order to create a whole new site altogether, that nobody really needed.The interface of classical DA worked excellently. Some tweeks here and there could improve it even more and some change could be refreshing. I am aware of the fact that many people are neophobic and prefer a status-quo, especially concerning the places in which they feel safe and at home; like DeviantArt. In order for change to happen, you have to step out of that comfort zone and see that some changes are, indeed, an improvement. However, Eclipse is far too radical and above all, unasked for by the majority. It does not improve anything. Instead, it is such a degradation of the website’s uniqueness and even functionality that it causes strong resistance in the community. It strips DeviantArt off it's identity and does not fix the actual problems.

My conclusion

So, after all these 12 years on DeviantArt, I can say that it has always felt truly Deviant -until now. It was my prefered home, which I loved and cared about. However, the way that Eclipse currently looks and functions, feels like a mainstream mobile-phone orientated, overwhelmingly messy, billboard-styled copy of ArtStation where Deviant artists can no longer freely express themselves with DA ID's custom boxes, subgallery icons and much, much more, nor interact with fellow Deviant artists and like-minded people. This way, DeviantArt loses it's unique open atmopshere to this 'modernized unified experience'. What a sterile, faceless phrase. Even that speaks of how Eclipse kills the spirit of DA. That is why I am worried about the current changes into Eclipse. That is why I'm even considering moving to the one and only classical style platform left; FurAffinity. That would be a downgrade for me in every sense because classical DeviantArt had much more to offer me than FA. It had everything that I could ever wish for as a Deviant person and artist. It was my true home and no other platform could even remotely touch upon that feeling. But now, with Eclipse's current status and direction of development, I feel chased out of my beloved home.