About a month ago deviantART parted ways with one of our beloved co-founders. The common response by an organization in such an instance is to say very little. Normally saying very little is the respectful and expected thing to do. But I guess you could say that deviantART is not a normal company, and more information, not less, is expected by the deviantART community.

With the large black cloud surrounding his departure some of us have found ourselves standing further apart than we'd like to. And we have a few major roadblocks preventing us from coming a little bit closer together. I think it's time that we remove at least one roadblock by taking a moment to fondly remember Scott's contributions to deviantART over the years.


It began with an Idea

For starters, Scott introduced deviantART's original (overall) framework. Following a trend that continued to fail for other sites at the time, Scott's most notable innovations to the trend were the deviantWATCH followed closely by the actual layout of the user pages. I personally consider the user pages to be absolutely brilliant. For the simple reason that unlike other community sites, deviantART's user pages feel like home. I enjoy theorizing on why, but you should really ask Scott. He later enhanced them with Phase I of journal features, and planned Phase II which will still reach completion one day.

An astounding amount of effort goes into building a community like deviantART to the point where it is today. A lot of people contributed their time and energy, and some gave so much more. Hearts, souls, vials of blood. I couldn't summarize for you what I've seen with my two eyes here. Some of the characters believe so strongly in this vision a book could be written on the contributions of each. And Scott's would be longer than most.


The result?

If you take a look at deviantART with regard strictly to it's implications on free speech. So vast, so free and so pure that only the collective appreciation of the whole receives greater acknowledgement than the individual. It’s a tribute to the Internet, a vessel for artists to convey unhindered expression. Devious, purely devious. Transformative, differing from the norm.

For this we have a few people to thank, Scott Jarkoff among the greatest.


The Past Month

As the head of the company I get to take credit for the hard decisions. Someone has to, I suppose. But as with every good team, we do reach consensus before making any big decision. Alas even with this painful beating taken arms down, I've done little to defend myself. One week passed, two weeks passed, three… four. We witnessed a tremendous celebration for our Yellow Alien. Thousands of deviants, yellow icons, works of art submitted and thousands of comments. Call it a rebellion, call it a protest; I call it a celebration of Scott.

In hindsight we should have released a joint statement. We didn't, and within 12 hours there was a very angry mob, armed with the idea that anything said by "this side" would be a spin. There really was nothing that we could say that would have slowed that storm down. Latch on to something steady; that's about it.

However much I disagree with a lot of what has been said; however hard it has been to remain silent. I took the beating, in front of every one of you. And believe me, I felt it.

On some level my silence was out of respect for Scott, ironically enough. You can doubt that if you like, I won't fault you for it. In my defense, the stress that I and undoubtedly a few others behind these scenes have been through together isn't something any one of you can relate to (directly) at all.


So what happened?

If there's one word I'd like to use that might help you understand it would be mutual gridlock. It was a difficult situation. The company felt it needed to do what it did to break the impasse.

If it helps you to know, Scott is still one of our main share holders. We are hopeful that Scott continues as an active productive contributor to the deviantART community and that the Company someday becomes a financial success.


Celebration of Scott's contributions

To celebrate Scott's contributions, a "Co-Founder" status has been created and applied to °jark's account. A History document will grace our About Us page in good time honoring Scott as well as some of the other major contributors to the site.

Generally we embrace Scott with open arms. Scott is technically and metaphorically speaking, the very first deviant. From just that perspective, things wouldn’t be the same without him.

We look to resolution and a bright future ahead.