lol edit 2, At one point in this it says "Let me explain that so you guys don't go freaking out that there are plans in the works to get rid of symbols or some such nonsense."

And what it *should* say lol is "Let me explain that so you guys don't go freaking out that there are NO plans in the works to get rid of symbols or some such nonsense."

oi vey lol that's a blunder and I think a subconscious slip on my thoughts on the subject lol looks like I inadvertently almost caused the ruckus I meant to avoid. Either that or people interpreted it as a typo or nobody would freak that much if it happened

Anyhows...

*EDIT-For the TL;DR crowd
=Thiefoworld summed up the whole thing very succinctly with this comment;
"symbols are just as pageviews... and money, there's nothing wrong with them untill someone bases their whole life on it"
/edit

So…why no symbol then? According to the last poll I ran that's the next big question people want answered so here it goes I guess.

Reason one, pretty simple. I was asked what symbol I wanted to have when I left. I could have chosen any of them actually but didn't want to keep any admin symbols for obvious reasons. Would make things kind of confusing to the average person so that was a no go.

The uhh alumni symbol. No thanks. To be perfectly blunt I never cared for that symbol and frankly, a lot of people with it have quite frankly, acted like some of the biggest dickheads on the site. Not all of them mind you but a good enough amount where I just didn't feel like joining that "group". Plus add some little lines on the side and that symbol looks like goatse. Fuck that.
Had a senior tick back in the day, and a *,+ and a ~ ( Random trivia; ~elgatodiablo got me my very first ever sub to dA way back in the day ) so it kind of came down to me going "hrm I've had all of them for the most part. Staff wise I've had %, + and $. So that led to thinking and kind of shooting the shit with $spyed about symbols and some talks we've had off and on for a couple years about symbols and the dA community.

And the one thing we both kind of came to realize is that deviant symbols are sort of a pain in the ass
Let me explain that so you guys don't go freaking out that there are NO plans in the works to get rid of symbols or some such nonsense.
Over the years of working here, some of the biggest freak outs and some of the things we both would see people get most attached to are what symbol another deviant has, and when they would lose it for whatever reason, left the position they were in, removed from it, got banned, fucked off, whatever.
People always noticed the change of symbol first and always seemed to have a "fear the worst" reaction. Like your favorite admin suddenly has no symbol, you go look at the page and inevitably you would see things like "omfg dA keeps getting worse" or "wtf how could they do this to you? and so on and even more interesting is these comments would be there before the person in question even had said anything at all.
God knows, anytime someone left being a volunteer or paid staff member, I would inevitably get some hate mail on the subject within minutes. And a large focus was always on the loss of symbol. And some people who left for whatever reasons would also use it as a focus. Write up journals going "well no more ___ symbol for me anymore" then harp on about it.

Things like this are just the high profile instances of where symbols can be a bother. From their you get into weirdness like people who leave staff wondering why they didn't get an alumni symbol and someone else did, or in the community, why someone is a senior and why they aren't, and then there's the odd "class" system that revolves around subscriber vs non subscriber and even more odd are the subs who do beta testing feeling they are one up from a normal subscriber even though it's just a matter of checking a box in your settings.

The world in general is really focused on symbols and easily recognizable iconic imagery, and the online world even more so, and a community of artists compounds that even further and me and him saw that here on a larger scale and more regular basis than most people.

Hell, most people probably don't really even think about it much if at all, but when they do it can get a little nutty and a little negative. To that end though we did clear up and move out a lot of the older symbols that staff had because frankly there were just too many and it was damn confusing.

But yeah back to the point, some days we'd kind of joke around how life would sometimes be a lot easier if there was never a symbol system in place but also know it can't happen entirely or at least not without a whole lot of panic and freaking out.

And hey, in a lot of ways they can be cool, don't get me wrong but just not when they become the main identifier for someone or a way to snap judge someone else.

So basically, the no symbol thing came down to it being just cool to not have one, and was a nod to some internal discussion on the subject in general. And yes, I do realize that me not having a symbol does nothing to help the situation, if anything it compounds it by being one of a kind.
But hey, I was an admin so I'm expected to be hypocritical

And in retrospect this stories not even all that exciting lol So next journal, my thoughts on some of the journals that hit the today page combined with choking a few bitches