This is kind of difficult to answer because I don't feel like there is any one feeling attached to seniority. Seniority is a really cool thing and I am happy to be a part of it, but I also realize that it's not always what it's made out to be.

Since I'm a past CV, to me my seniority does not feel different as someone else's seniority that was gained because they stood out in the crowd and deserve recognition because of their positive impact on the community. So you guys, the ones that got your seniority because of awesomeness, I salute you! The rest of you, who are former CVs like me, I salute you too, but in a different way. I respect that you managed not to drown because of those billion DD note requests  haha! Represent! (do people still say that?) Just kidding though, I love all of you

From the POV of someone receiving seniority I think it's deviantART's way of saying "you've done something good for this community and we appreciate it". That alone holds a lot of meaning for those who receive it, their fellow deviants acknowledged their efforts and bestowed their gratitude upon you through seniority. From a community perspective I think it’s good to have seniors, many of them became seniors after stepping down from being Community Volunteers so they often act as a bridge between the community and the staff members, passing on suggestions and ideas, helping out wherever they can… etc. I feel seniority helps keep the community alive and united in its own way.

I think is something great, a recognition to deviants who go an extra mile in making this community awesome, one way or another, and that's the beauty of it; it's not given for a single reason, many seniors are given the status for different reasons, but I think is great that the community gives this recognition to those outstanding deviants. The only thing I don't like from it is the ambiguity of the concept, even I as a senior can't exactly say what seniority is

I love that the people who work really hard for deviantART - as a community, as a business, or whatever other angle they decide to work hard at - get recognition for their efforts. It's a great way for the staff to show their gratitude and their support for the community, which is something that people forget often: The staff really do love this site and the people on it just as much as regular users do, even though sometimes they have to make hard decisions that the community might not agree with 100%. By giving us our little medals they're raising our individual profiles within the community, but also showing other people that they might get the same special treatment if they put in effort too. It's a great way to make people want to get involved - maybe someday they'll get to join our little Order of Badges.

Being a part of the council of elders makes me feel special and appreciated for the very hard work I put in during my time in the Fan Art gallery and boy, I'd love to get back into that. It symbolizes one of my biggest accomplishments and gives me a chance to share inspiring words to non-seniors since they tend to look up to us. We must be very wise, for the council of elders will always open their doors to non-seniors. We are also extremely old too. You're welcome to our hands anytime, but not on our lawns!

Community involvement is a really big thing for me. I'm all about community and doing what I can to help nurture and grow community spirit/involvement/etc... I don't feel that my previous experience as a CV has had any real impact on my thoughts and feelings in regards to community involvement though, so I'd hope people will see me and what I do/say/feel and how I think as just me without any relation to prior experiences as a volunteer.
I love seeing other members get involved and just really getting their hands dirty by working to drive the community forward. It's not hard and I think everyone can find at least something small they can do to help push our communities forward, even if it's just leaving encouraging comments or such.
As far as improvements go, I think we've lost a lot of community involvement over the years. I'm not sure if it's because people are browsing more and more from their phones while on the go, or if it's a generational thing where kids don't want to spend the time and give back to the communities they love, but it I'd be overjoyed if more people would start getting involved!

I'm actually one of those CV's that mysteriously disappeared after finishing my term and it seems like there's always lots of news to catch up on. I'm loving all the changes and the direction that the community is going.  As for improvement, I can't really say.
I personally love to be involved into the community because whatever I put into it, it always comes back to me positively. It's a bit like karma?
I'm actually volunteering in another local community and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to do that right now (don't worry it's not cheating, I still love you dA).

We have an amazing community, always looking for new goals to achieve and projects to contribute to. I know most of our CVs already host plenty of contests, chat events and projects and I love that! I hope they continue to foster and encourage the community to strive for improvement and success! That being said, I would like to see other CVs who might not be too active except for featuring DDs to step forward and start engaging with the community they look after!

I feel the community has grown a lot, during the years I've been here, and with that the way we interact with each other has evolved, most of these changes have been for good and I appreciate that, but I also think one of the things that somehow are getting lost is the personal interaction with each other due the great volume of people who are here compared to the people that used to be here a few years back. Though I don't think is something necessarily bad, many people is joining the site and of course, not all of them are interested in getting involved in the community the way I did or many people I know did or are doing right now, but that's ok, if you're a member of this community and post your art, write journals and comment other's art, you are in fact getting involved in the community. The only thing I would like to see more, is people reaching these new members to let them know there are volunteers who can help them, there are groups and activities that are fun to join and that doing good for others is in fact, rewarding.

Community involvement is a great thing, but it's not limited to just one specific way of being involved and it can happen in a lot of ways that people don't think of or know about  - some people might do a lot of back-end work on projects and not take a lot of credit publically, or work in weird departments of dA's staff where they don't interact with the front-end much but do little things every day that help a lot of users enjoy their time here, or maintain really unique galleries and collections that inspire and teach other people. The possibilities are endless but what they have in common is they impact other people who use the site in a tangible way. That's the definition of "community involvement" in my mind.
It makes me very happy to see people joining the site to actually network! A lot of people come here just to drop their art or fav some stuff and then not interact any further, and I respect their right to do that. They're important parts of the deviantART machine too. When someone new who has a lot of talent and initiative joins and starts educating other people, critiquing art, joining sub-communities I find that inspiring. The dA community is huge now so it can be hard to work up the courage to become that active when you're new. I'd really love to see less of a sense of the smaller subcommunities being their own things separate from the dA community as a whole, though. There is a lot going on around the site and when you're only looking at your little clique of people you can miss a lot of great opportunities elsewhere.

This was actually something I experimented with during my times as a CV. I then heard from little birdies and magpies that a lot of people like to collaborate with other artists and make big public projects in groups and such!!
So I became a curious little monkey , and decided to experiment by making a big project out of the simplest character I could think of.
Take my big Kirby collab for example.

There was really no charity purpose to this thing. I just wanted to celebrate Kirby's 20th anniversary, and after having promoted this in the communityrelations
my message center exploded. Therefore as it turns out, the majority of the CR members were active artists looking for ways to be a part of the community. 166 people were involved in that Kirby collab.
I've had plenty of other success with the community, take the Pokemon Charity Ball collab:

I was overwhelmed with how many people were involved, a whopping 270 people, and this was for the Filipinos when they were hit by that Typhoon. We bought a shelter for the homeless with the money we raised. Big time. I was extremely proud of deviantART that day.
I would love to see more people getting involved with such things, because they really can bring out the fun and motivation in you. However I haven't had much luck with big collabs lately, so I'm noticing it's becoming more 'dead' here in the community, I hope there is a way we can resurrect the dead and put them to good use.

I volunteered in a few areas and each area was unique in its own way. I think there are a whole bunch of different sub communities on dA and some are larger while others are smaller, but it's within the sub communities where you'll generally find more involvement and enthusiasm for the community as a whole. I like to think of it in terms of living in a large city where you don't really know or interact much with your neighbors vs living in a small town where everyone knows everyone.

I have learned so many things; strangely time management was a big one because of the workload. I've also learned so many new forms of art that I never knew existed. What I loved most was the comments and ideas that deviants shared with me. I miss the billions of notes.
I'd love to volunteer again but maybe not right now. I would not feel right doing it since I can't give it the time that it deserves.

There’s just so many amazing people, when you become a CV you get to interact with a wider audience and you get to learn about them AND from them. It’s been a while since I was CV but I remember their eagerness to learn and their enthusiasm to improve the site with their ideas.
I’ve been a volunteer twice, first as Fan Art CV and then as Manga and Anime CV. I think it’s good for the team and the community to interact with different people with new and refreshing ideas for the galleries. I could be interested in volunteering again in the future, but probably only for the Fan Art category, I think that’s where my heart belongs the most. I felt a genuine connection with its community when I was Fan Art CV.

I learned many things of course, but I'll tell you one and I think is one of the most important: our commnity is DIVERSE and as such, there are people of all kinds of mindsets, points of view, ways of work, etc. and each should be respected. There are for example, many people who are so jealous of their work and will get offended if you share their work even if just by putting a link on a tweet, while there are others who are so relaxed in this point and will even encourage you to use their art for things like banners or icons, etc. without asking for permission, and both positions should be respected. There are also artists who are serious about their art form and will try to do everything as professional as possible, trying to build a carreer out of their art, while there are others who are here just for fun and will do silly things because they're just having fun... and both should be respected. DA is a huge community and we are all here for different reasons, and as long as you don't break any rules, you should be free to do whatever you want and be respected (and of course, pay with the same respect).
Would I volunteer again? Of course! It's an experience I loved, both times, and I would certainly do it again, if given the opportunity... just not that soon maybe in a few years, I'm currently enjoy being just a "regular" deviant

The community is huge, passionate, supportive, open to being influenced and cultivated, very reactive to things they like and don't like, and overall pretty forgiving. When I was a volunteer (we were called GMs back then) I had more long discussions with users about little minutiae like phrasing of DD write-ups than I could count, because they'd send an email or a note expressing their like or dislike about something they saw and then actually invite dialogue about what it meant to them. Even the users who were really mad in their initial notes would usually turn out to be pretty nice if you let them express their side of the situation, acknowledged it, and invited them to discuss how you could do better next time.
I'd volunteer again, yes - the experience was great and I loved being in a position where I could so readily advocate for the photography community at the staff level. Sometimes it feels like voices get lost in the community and no one's going to be able to find them let alone listen to them and try to make changes, and that's basically what the CV position is, being the person who listens and advocates. But it's not something that I feel I absolutely need to do if I want to help the community. I've been involved in things both before and after being a volunteer that I think have had just as much impact as volunteering did, if not more. But it's still nifty to be able to look at things like the darkroom gallery's subcategories and be like "THAT RIGHT THERE. I DID THAT."

I would absolutely love to volunteer in the Fan Art galleries again, because I feel that is where I really thrive on. I love on nostalgia and traditional Fan Arts most, though I have always given EVERYONE a chance. I would feature popular artists, and unpopular/struggling artists. I had a preference to expose the unknown, and I had been suggested popular artists many times. It's almost a war when it came to people suggesting DD's.
I feel suggesters need to realize that they should worry about trying to get a piece exposed rather than trying to get their username engraved on the DD box.
Don't get me wrong though, I have had many great suggesters noting me and am still friends with some of them to this day.
When I conducted interviews during my term, I noticed they were very friendly and had a ton of knowledge to share. They were an amazing pleasure to interview, and I even carried them on after my term ended.
This community basically in a nutshell, is very involved and I mean it in a good way.

I don't think I've had much change in the way people interact with me on the site. Overall I have seen people return the same attitudes to me that I put out there. So if I'm kind and helpful, I generally see appropriate responses to that, regardless of my symbol.
It's also worth mentioning that I think that people are starting to care less and less about what symbols are attached to which users, and rather are focusing on the person as an individual.

Of course. From before premium to after premium there was no difference in interaction. It really changed when I got the next to my name, I got so many more page views the second I got my CV title also the notes started to flood in and people started acting differently (both positively and negatively) with me. After getting the senior symbol (once my term was over) it kind of all got back to normal.

When I first joined the site not many people paid attention to me but that had little to do with my symbol though. Even with the following symbol changes I haven’t noticed any difference in the way people approach me, except for when they come to me suggesting DDs (that I can’t feature anymore though) or when they ask me for guidance in certain aspects of the site.

Well, I think the only significant change I noticed was during my terms as Community Volunteer, I think mainly because for the people who are not that involved, seeing a deviant with a "rare" symbol, such as the heart (or the hat ^ as it used to be) makes them think you're someone important, and/or someone who you shouldn't mess with. And even in a general sense, CVs get indeed gain some kind of respect, I think the efforts of a CV are taken more seriously, which is understandable, you're somehow doing things "officially", so to speak.

When I first got fairly active on the site - early summer of 2006 - I had a kind of odd experience. I got active through the chat community and most of my friends at the time in the chat community were senior members, volunteers, and staff. On dA to an extent the community lumps you in with the people you're seen interacting with a lot, and the people I was running projects and rooms with had nifty symbols too so when I got my first tick in 2008 I didn't get treated any differently that I remember. I got a bigger following after becoming a senior, but that had more to do with me getting involved in more things and opening my mouth about specific things that got people talking. I switched accounts when I became a volunteer, and that was a much bigger change for me - people who'd been absolute jerks to me for years all of a sudden wanted to be my best friend and I had to grit my teeth and smile and not tell them to go to hell. And a couple people who were good friends for years did the opposite, and stopped talking to me because I gave in to "the man". I took a bit of a hiatus from dA after I left the volunteer team, and when I came back it was back to normal. People treat me now the same way they did before I volunteered.

I will tell you one thing, I was having a very hard time fitting into this place when I first joined this community. I've made more rivals than friends, and my first account tomthechar was basically bombed with MS paint Pokemon drawings. It was very discouraging. I never been able to draw well anyways, but I can make anything with my hands so that makes up for that.
Then I eventually made StormPenguin my new account and submitted my photos, tho I was never happy with my photography. I still had rivals but I started making friends around them. Not to mention all the drama and blah blah blah.
I decided to make myself feel more accomplished, I send my first DD suggestions to snowunmasked (who is dangerously awesome in high levels btw ) and had my first suggestion accepted by her. I felt so happy that because of me, some awesome artist is going to have 5 times more views than ever. The feeling was great and I started to make friends with a brighter side of the community.
Then one day, the most jawdropping thing happened when I was in Hawaii. moonbeam13 contacted me and wanted me to work in the Fan Art gallery!!
I was utterly speechless and literally had to wait a couple hours so I could come up with words again! I accepted the challenge and a new world of art opened up to me. I would do this again in a heartbeat
When my term ended, I became a member of the circle of elders. It had become a lot quieter, tho it didn't affect how I was able to run big collaborations. My Pokemon Charity ball collab was run when I was a Senior Citizen (did you get off my lawn yet?)
It does however, affect how many messages I get a day tho I still get DD suggestions from time to time!

I actually suggest people for seniority once or twice a year, though the number of people I've suggested is generally pretty low (2 - 4 different people per year usually).
What I look for when suggesting for seniority is involvement in the community. I tend to suggest the people who work hard to make dA an awesome place to be. Often I suggest people who work hard behind the scenes because in my experience, those are usually the ones who put in the work without expecting anything in return, not to mention the community as a whole generally doesn't ever recognize their efforts, so it's nice to see them gain some recognition for the dedication they give to the site.

Personally, I would look for someone that has had a strong positive impact on the community. Someone who always goes above and beyond.

I’ve suggested quite a few deviants for seniority and they all had many things in common, they were all selfless people who strived to make deviantART a better place. You can tell they do it out of love and not to achieve a status, their love for the site is genuine and it shows. Just being close to them makes you want to follow in their footsteps and nurture the community.

I'm going to say something that might sound stupidly obvious, but I think not many people think of it when asked a question like this, and that is: if the person is nice, friendly. Of course I'm not saying that we should give seniority to a deviant just because they're nice, but being nice is the start of it. If you care about others, if you strive to make this community better and focus your time here to that, you start by being a friendly deviant, willing to be nice to others. Many people I know who were eventually given seniority share this quality.

I like seeing people get seniority who build, or contribute to the infrastructure of, their own specific corners in the dA community. I suggest a few seniors every few months, and I usually suggest people who've made efforts to either legitimize an art form on the site or build a community around a specific genre, style, topic or theme (chats and forums count too!). I also suggest people who are voices that rise above the crowd in unusual ways - people who complain or support, but do it eloquently and convincingly - like Danium and raspil. I try to throw in one wild card type suggestion every time too; my most recent one like that was a user who has maintained a feature of one different piece every day for the last eight years within a single subgallery of photography.

I would look for someone who very involved with the community and express their genuine love for art. I feel seniority should be awarded to people who consistently tries to leave their footprint in the community not for fame or popularity, but because it strengthens the community and secures our world of art for generations to come.

My advice would be not to aspire to be a senior!
While I can understand that it's cool to have a special symbol that tells you apart from other users etc, to me, I'd like to see those awarded who don't aim for it, but rather give because it's something they love to do or are just passionate about.

If you want to be a Senior for the sake of being a Senior then you're doing it wrong. The best way to become a Senior is to make a strong positive impact on the community. If this is something that interests you then do it! It doesn't matter what you get in return because believe me; you will get lots of love

Be genuine! Do your best and do it from the bottom of your heart, only then will you be acknowledged as a senior. It’s not about the symbol, it’s about the appreciation from people you help, that’s the greatest reward.

I think the first thing is that you don't try to be a senior. If you're trying maybe you're not doing things properly. Do your thing without wanting to be rewarded for it.

My advice goes for current seniors as well as aspiring seniors: Don't try too hard to "be a senior member". Just be yourself and do what you'd normally do in the community. Recognition will come for you eventually. And think about why you're doing the things you do - is it to help the community, because you genuinely care about the community? Or have you lost sight of that, and now you just want to be/stay notable so you're keeping things going that you don't feel as passionately about anymore? If you're finding the latter to be true, just take a big step back for a while and think honestly about what you care about and how you can bring that to the community. Even now as a senior, and even when I volunteered, I take that big step back now and then. Every time I do, it makes me feel better about my presence on the site and the impact I can make. Plus it helps remind me how much I care about the things I care about, so my motivation skyrockets.

Just because you don't have a DD or a medal, it DOES NOT MEAN you're not a great artist. Make lots of art for people to judge, while they are judging, go and make more art.
If all else fails... PIIIIIZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAA.

BIG thanks to our interviewees!!! We hope you enjoyed this "get-together" with them!
Until next time!!!