Miscategorised deviations have been a topic for discussion for a while now, and as promised, here's the latest update on how we plan to handle miscats in the community.

Currently, we provide the opportunity for all deviants to report deviations which they think are in the wrong gallery. It's relatively simple, and you are given an option to suggest where you think the particular deviation would be best placed.

Once upon a time, in the formative years of our community, Volunteer Gallery Moderators (known as Gallery Directors back then!) would spend hours going through reports, correcting miscats as they saw fit. As our community grew bigger and reporting became more sophisticated, we encouraged the volunteers to spend time in their galleries interacting with the community, rather than getting frustrated and burned out going through never ending reports. We didn't feel that this was fair to ask of someone who clearly had much better skills and qualities to offer the community. This led to the development of a new moderation desk, which I am sure you are all aware of.

I know there are some deviants who spend a lot of time browsing purely with the intention of finding miscats, and pride themselves on high levels of accuracy. It's great, and I know that it gives a sense that you are "giving something back" to the community by bringing such deviations to our attention. Thank you! That being said, there are also some deviants who spend a lot of their time reporting things just for the sake of it -- and sometimes out of sheer spite -- which results in frustration for staff who have spent time ploughing through reports, essentially wasting time.

If you sent in reports over the past few months, you may have noticed that some were handled quicker than others - that's because we implemented some automated tools which were implemented based on high levels of correct reporting. We felt that this would bring a positive solution to handling miscats but ultimately it has caused issues. I have since removed the auto moving of any deviations in order that we can gather some data on the levels of miscat reporting prior to moving to a new system. That means that any reports which have been sent in over the past 2 weeks will not receive any action, however they are still very important to us and I would ask that you still send in miscat reports when you feel the need to do so.

In reviewing the priorities for our Copyright & Etiquette Admin team, it's clear that issues such as art theft, policy violations such as pornographic content should take precedence over an image which has been uploaded into an "incorrect" gallery. That's not to say that we don't view having tidy galleries as important, just that a lot of the interpretation as to what should go where is very subjective and ultimately, we believe that we should allow the artist to have the final say in such matters.

This brings me to the proposed changes for handling miscats.

We'd like to develop a system which puts the handling of miscats firmly in the hands of you - the community. Many of you have told me directly that you wish you could help out much more with miscats, so here's your chance.

In developing a community based system, we would provide you the opportunity to communicate directly with the artist. Here's an example of how this would work.

`Beccalicious is fed up at her work and decides to spend time browsing through the lit galleries. Becca finds a deviation which is uploaded into Poetry - Narrative by ~shakespeare, but after reading, she believes that this should infact be uploaded into Poetry - Spiritual. Becca would then hit a button on the deviation which would provide an opportunity for her to suggest where she believes this would be better suited. This would generate a message which would land in ~shakespeare's message centre, just like the current critique message. The message would provide a nice friendly message to ~shakespeare detailing the suggestion and provide a YES or NO option regarding the suggested gallery. Hitting YES would move to the suggestion. Hitting NO keeps your work exactly where you uploaded it. Seems simple, right?

Now I can already hear your furtive fingers typing away regarding abuse of the system, what about multiple reports etc, so hold on, I'm not done yet, and we are way ahead of you there. We've already taken into consideration providing an alert system for staff, which would monitor reports and let us know when a deviant ignores multiple suggestions, or when a particular deviation receives a high level of suggestions, indicating a potential situation. This is something which I will ask your further input on at a later date.

The purpose of this update right now is to ask you what your thoughts are on the provision of a system where you could have direct communication with artists, and give you as artists the right to decide where your work should go.

In addition to this, we will also be looking at implementing time restraints on reports. E.g. If a deviation has been in a specific gallery for 6 months, then it will be immune to recieveing miscat reports.

I believe that this system will be a positive step forward in our community and provide a really effective system of bringing higher levels of artistic integrity to our community. It will also provide interaction and responsibility to both the reporter and the artist affected.

I very much welcome your input - what do you think?