No Coup Today

Prismacolorists is not an inactive account. It's also not going to become a Group. I founded it as a club, a particular type of club that I would have a lot less trouble running than admins of other clubs. We have hundreds of members all on an honor system that hasn't failed yet, the only glitch in the system is that sometimes I'm out of touch for a while and I need to pass on new members.

You can join just for messaging me. That remains true.

Since its founding, every member of Prismacolorists became his or her own admin, posting your art and following the rules because -- we all liked it that way! You didn't have to wait for an admin to approve your submissions, check to see if they were actually done with colored pencils or markers -- graphite pencils, pastels, anything made by Sanford Prismacolor counts -- and you didn't have any hassle after the initial signup.

It ran that way for years, until very recently someone set up a poll asking who was the owner. Gee. I asked for donations to help with the cost of running the club. Raph1966 stepped up to the plate and I'm very grateful. But I've supported this club out of pocket running it the way it's always been about 95% of the time since the founding.

Some members have been very helpful with making avatars and icons, running contests and challenges, putting tutorials in the journal -- you know who you are and I'm still so grateful for your help. This club really belongs to all of us.

And it's going to stay what it is rather than become a Group.

If someone wants to found a similar Group themed on Prismacolor products, yay and good. Let them. I probably won't participate in it because I'm not interested in juried entries or voting on memberships. That's not what Prismacolorists is all about.

Alone among all the clubs on dA as far as I know, Prismacolorists is a truly egalitarian club. You were your own admin. There was none of this nonsense about having to limit how many submissions anyone could post daily or weekly or anything like that, or having a small number of admins bottleneck all the backed up submissions because the club got too large and popular with so many members submitting that every one of the admins or whatever the staff are called in other clubs couldn't keep up and still have a life.

I know I'm disabled. I know I'm not always there, that I can wind up sick or wind up doing something else and with my energy levels, if I am doing anything else, I may not have time to keep up with the admin stuff.

I'm going to have to do it this time though, because deviantART wouldn't let me change the password back to the original password that every current member has. Which means that thanks to whoever changed it, I'm stuck with a ton of admin work.

It's going to have to work something like the other clubs now, and that is a rough thing. But I've bought another year's subscription for the club and it will continue as close to our old policy as I can make it. With one difference.

You are still going to be your own Admin. Now, I would like to ask every active member to also be an Admin for whatever submissions stacked up in the messages at Prismacolorists.

Answer messages from members who haven't seen this journal entry and tried to log in and couldn't. Tell them the password's changed, accept their submissions in Prismacolor pencils, markers, other brands of colored pencils or markers and any other Prismacolor product and repost them, being sure to disable commenting and add a link to their original Deviation so that people can comment and favorite.

Just copy and paste this text and put the actual link and Deviant username where I put "username" and "link."

This is a club! Please comment or favorite at "link" so that "username" will see and be able to answer your comments. Comments have been disabled here so that you'll use the link instead.

And do that with your own submissions of course, as soon as you get your password. We can keep the club this egalitarian and go back to the sensible way things were in fairly short order if every active member pitches in to become an Admin and help out.

My email address is associated with this account no matter who bought a subscription for it. This club account is anything but inactive. I will be checking DeviantART daily for a while in order to make sure all active members do get the password change. Hopefully we won't have to go through this again.

But if the password gets changed on me again, I will retrieve password and change it again and have a much clearer idea of who pulled this trick. We might be able to get back to normal with enough Admins, but I will have to increase security if this ever happens again.

I don't want to do that. I will probably not be able to take on daily updating myself, not and still write novels and have a life and all. I've kept this club alive for you -- for all of you, because even when I'm gone for months I come back to tons of beautiful submissions in the Gallery and activity and growth. Old friends and favorites are doing fantastic new things with the pencils and markers. New members post exciting and gorgeous art.

We will NOT be an elite organization. We will not make it hard to join or hard to participate. This club will remain exactly what I set the account up for -- a gigantic, colorful, thriving Art Jam where those who love Prismacolor products, colored pencils and markers can see other works, be inspired, post their own, add tutorials and have a good time.

It's not about drawing a line and knocking out beginners or folks who can't draw well or folks that an inner circle doesn't personally like or inactive members. In all the time it's existed I've never deleted an inactive member. You can come back after years and pick up where you left off, no problem.

But if you do it now, you'll need to message me to get the password. It used to be an open secret that we all shared the password. Members all knew and no one came out and said it, because we didn't want to attract hackers.

Now I'm counting on the trustworthy majority to become Admins and keep the club running as smoothly as it always has.

I suggest that if someone wants to found a Group, they do so with a similar username like PrismacolorLovers or Prismacolorfans or anything else, since they don't do duplicate usernames. Groups run differently. I don't want to set one up and this account's still active, I just sank my real money into keeping it as-is.

Many, many thanks to everyone who answered the poll and mentioned that I am really the owner. I am still here and have been getting more active on dA anyway lately. I'll be checking daily until the majority of check-ins have arrived. Don't give out the password to others, direct them to me, we'll still keep it on that basis.

Sorry everyone has to renew their membership this way, but we need to get around the hack to make it work. If we have enough admins, it can run as smoothly as ever -- just be sure when you do come in to repost your work that you help by reposting any submissions waiting in the Messages here.

Maybe we can get back to normal in a reasonable amount of time. Remember, there are hundreds of you who all DID operate on the honor system and we never had a problem until now. If we have to, we'll go to a regular Admins system, but the only way to keep it flowing this smoothly is to have lots and lots and lots of Admins to spread out the load -- because I don't think anyone else here wants to have to stop and check twice daily to upload stuff.

Anyone who does that, of course, will have my heartfelt gratitude -- in fact, let's sweeten that a bit.

I'll stake a really good ATC in colored pencils as a prize for the new Admin who puts in the most time and effort helping the club right itself in this crisis by reposting submissions, putting in time helping to sort this out and otherwise helping the club. So track the time you spend doing Admin stuff, you could win one of my good originals. Runner-ups will get a good ATC print of one of my CP originals or a fun ATC done with markers (much faster method, your choice CP print or original markers ATC). I'll keep this open for a while and see how many Admins sign up to become Real Admins.

If we have enough of you, things can stay pretty much like normal. And of course, any actual Admin has the convenience of being able to do his or her own uploading with no delay at all.

If there's a tie for Most Active Admin, I'll probably be generous and do two ATCs. I've got a few really excellent ones that I haven't been willing to part with up till now, but the club needs them.

Enjoy the club, sorry about this inconvenience. I will check robertsloan2 daily for messages from prospective Admins. Let me know how long you've been with the club too. Even if we've commented and emailed and stuff a lot back and forth I'm still curious.

We need enough Admins that if I wind up out of it for months at a time, the club still runs as if I was there. That's how it's always run, that's how it'll continue. I know my chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia limit my own participation -- but the club's worked fine despite that all this time. The more volunteers, the easier it'll be on everyone.