... and some of those people work for DeviantArt. Let's take a look at the latest support ticket I've posted, only to find myself greeted with silence, as you can see in this screenshot. Remember that post from four days ago? As of this hour, it is still not in the feed for this blog. I wrote to support, after noticing that something was wrong.



"Feb 04 12:19 am

My blog feed:

[link]

This is currently empty, even though I posted to my blog

[link]

14 hours and 50 minutes ago. Yes, I do understand that feeds don't always respond instantly to the presence of new content, but this is a new record. I've never seen a feed come close to taking this long to respond, before now. Something does seem to be broken.

If it helps, I saw another feed slow down in its response to new content, but not by as much - five hours, in the case of a group feed. I didn't think of recording the name of the group at the time - sorry about that - but maybe this will give you some idea of what's going wrong? Just thought I'd bring it up."



I'd seen bad service before, but was surprised by how bad this service would be. I started keeping track of what wasn't happening.



"At 2 days and 5 hours since posting, still nothing in the feed.

February 05, 2012 02:58 pm



I tried switching setting on the blog post so it would be submitted to the Journal Portal, whatever that is, but this didn't seem to make any difference. At 3 days, 12 hours since posting, still nothing and I think I can see why. Maybe. Clicking on the link atop my feed, instead of going to

[link]

where my journal is in fact located, I end up at

[link]

where I see the words

"Newest of 0 deviations in Journals for by:joe-dunphy "

Well, there wouldn't be any, because blog posts aren't deviations. It looks to me like you've got the feed looking for deviations in a non-existent category, instead of looking for the content where it is. This would seem to me to be a very strange choice. Would you please consider the possibility of making another?

February 06, 2012 10:27 pm"



Or maybe they've redefined the word "deviations" to include blog posts? One way or another, what they were doing wasn't working. I soon found that the blog feed on #homebrewing, a group of which more will be said, later, wasn't working either - over three hours after my first post to that group, nothing has appeared in the feed. Normal system performance everywhere I've ever been, other than DeviantArt, has been for content to appear in the feed nearly instantly. I had a hunch that I was being played with by the staff, in retaliation to a complaint I sent in about an earlier misfire in the system, and my dissatisfaction with their originally proposed resolution to the problem, as I still do, but wanted to be open to the possibility that these people weren't absolute sphincters. Look it up.



"In this case, the problem is with the feed for the blog for this group

[link]

Despite the fact that there are two posts to this blog

[link]

[link]

both of which have been up for over an hour, now, nothing is to be seen in the feed for the blog

[link]

I suppose that, if all else fails, I can set up feeds for these blogs at Feedity. Because of the stonewalling I've been getting on my most recent ticket, I'm very seriously considering doing just that. Must it come to that? Do I really have to tell those who come to my group that I had to create what looks like it should be a completely superfluous externally hosted feed for a group that supposedly already has a feed, because DeviantArt can't get its act together? That wouldn't make the company look very good, but there is a limit to what I'll accept, just to avoid causing your company to lose face.

I've been very patient with you folks, but enough is enough. As far as this one goes, a failure to respond will be seen as being a response, itself."



Finally, reality just slapped me across the base of the head, and made me accept that the guy I had been dealing with was, indeed, the exit portion of a gastrointestinal tract. I'd already seen an admin respond to a truthful report that the FAQ was wrong - on this very subject, in fact, before feeds were created - by eagerly locking the thread. The only place to publicly discuss problems on DeviantArt is in a forum where trolling is encouraged as an artform, discouraging any serious discussion of reasonable complaints. It is what it is. The staff is not going to suddenly become conscientious.

They're free to be that way, but they're not free to be that way and evade criticism. I've set up a feed at Feedity, and this does make DeviantArt look really bad, but that's tough. The staff made its choices, and this is one of the natural consequences of those choices. Let's move on.