I bet a lot of you are wondering what happened to theO. I be a lot of you are thinking the end is nigh. Let me explain, to the best of my knowledge, what's going on.
At first I was freaking out, too. Fortunately, Starscream (aka Axel) made an unofficial chat page where I voiced my concerns. I was reassured that this was only a maintenance issue. While I was relieved about that, I would have preferred a little warning.
The chat regulars seem to know Adam on a more personal basis than the average theO user. They seem to know what's going on. The problem is that (a) maybe I'm wrong and they don't know what the deal is, or (b) they've been sworn to secrecy for some reason.
The fact that theO was down two days for maintenance is irksome, but I'm guessing that it was very much needed. It's this communication breakdown that bothers me the more than anything. I'd at least like an active mod to keep the peace so that this post-maintenance freak-out doesn't happen again.
If you want to join the Discord chat, click here. I hope Axel is OK with me posting that here.
I was pleasantly surprised to find an online survey from theO in my inbox. OK, so it was in my Gmail Promos folder. So sue me. I won't give any details on what the survey is about besides the fact that it's theO-related, but if you subscribe to theO's newsletter, you can take it too.
This poster has no affiliation with theO's newsletter. I just subscribe to it and read it.
Update: The Bossman himself posted about it here.
Because it's not DeviantART. That's why.
To elaborate, here's what theO has that DA doesn't:
- A tightly knit, friendly community
- The chance to be noticed
- The fact that all members have a common interest of anime and manga
- Submission categories based on fandoms instead of a whole bunch of different variables
- Fan work dedications
- Challenges
- Worlds (and lots of 'em)
- User input for site design/features
- A tagging system that doesn't involve mushingallkindsofwordstogether
- An admin team that isn't made of jerks
- Uncensored... things
Could theO be better? Sure. Lots of improvements could be made. But as things stand now, it sure is better than DA.
For those of you who have seen me on DA, I won't be uploading anything there in the foreseeable future. I'll pop in now and again, but I'll be sticking to theO for all my artwork-posting needs. Except cosplay. I need to find a site where I can post pictures of that.