The Great DA Troll of 2007

On July 10th, 2007, Lolly announced several policy changes on DeviantART, which included the following extremely significant change:

iii. We will only intervene in cases of extremely aggressive commenting; we will no longer attempt to mediate arguments or other debates as most can be resolved between the users, by using the block system or by simply walking away from it. Artists by nature argue and we simply do not have time to intervene nor is it always healthy for us to intervene in some of the more spirited debates. We will only intervene in cases of extremely insulting commentary; we will no longer address comments which are considered to be ‘merely’ rude or coarse and a certain level of swearing and rough language will be tolerated without penalty.

iv. We will no longer address issues involving personal journals; deviants are free to discuss other deviants in their personal journals (commonly termed “calling out” ). We will continue to address hate speech, etc in personal journals. EDIT: We will be upping the maximum amount of users one may block from 20 to 100 sometime in the next few days to help ease concern in this area as many felt 20 was too low

Translation:

We won't b& you for being mean to each other anymore.
We are extremely lazy fucks.

Naturally, this will enable a tremendous amount of drama, which may or may not include Snapesnogger creating a yes-chamber so voluminous as to propel her into her own show at the MOMA.

TARTlet Reactions

It remains to be seen if this means people banned under the old rules, like Shadowgamers, will have their bans lifted. Probably not seeing as the Lordly Assfaces of DeviantART are a bunch of LAZY cunts.

And as is DeviantART tradition, the drama began immediately:

"Bad idea if I ever heard one. Now you're going to get every pissed-off n00b on the site making lists of the Deviants they hate and rallying their friends against administration for carrying out their duties. It's nothing new, but for some reason you guys have suddenly decided to allow it." [1]

"Unfortunately, a user can only block 20 people. If someone with more than 20 fanbrats calls a user out in their journals, that user is going to need more than 20 block slots. gg dA; catering to the deviantDIVAs and trolls since 2000 :/ This whole news post screams 'I don't want to do my job properly so I'll half ass it.'" [2]

"So, wait, people are ALLOWED to link to other people's pages and sick their fanbrats on whoever, just because you have in place a system to block some users and hide comments? Oh yeah, THAT'S a good idea, how wonderful of you to change that for 'the better'. ... dA seems to love drama, 'ey?" [3]

"This is, honestly, the most idiotic thing the administration of this website has done since I joined." [4]

"Does this make an ounce of sense? Isn't "calling out" deviants in your journal, and making remarks about them considered libel, something you've clearly also just stated remains an issue of Zero Tolerance? Make up you mind. But if you continue to go the route of allowing deviants to call out and defame other users via their journal, there will be NO good to come from this, simply more HD tickets and more headaches for administration. Correct me if I'm wrong though...what good do you believe will come from allowing deviants to say almost anything they wish in their journals about fellow deviants?" [5]

"Oh, so apparently stealing and harassment are A-OK now! Now THAT makes me feel just GREAT. :/ No seriously, WHAT?" [6]

"but a lot of this site ISNT a real world art scene, its a bunch of under-aged children who have no idea how to tolerate opposing opinions and take things WAY to seriously. giving them free reign over what and who they can bitch about may cause a LOT of excess drama on here, which we simply do not need." [7]