I think I am half-and-half on this Rule 34 material. I have seen works I felt tasteless and unnecessary, perverting characters and fiction I typically viewed as not being sexual or corruptable. However, there are artists I feel do it right, that do not cross that line that defines tasteful and tasteless sexualized fanart. Reiq comes to mind. Cyberunique's not too bad. In the case of FerdKat, I don't think there was an offense rendered or the line crossed.

Illustrators of your genre seem to make up the minority here. I felt that the size of this community should have permitted a reasonable accommodation for multiple genres. Like minds will group together, and users will find their niche and render themselves oblique to all other genres. To find works like what were deleted, a user would have had to shut of his mature filter and deliberately search users he knew to draw images of a suggestive nature.

There are works that I hate with a vengeance. Were I a moderator, would I go on a pyromaniacal blitzkreig against all the works that didn't appeal to me? I can complement this moderator for at least owning up to his behavior and rendering himself a lightning rod for this issue, but must lament him for being a castrated prude. This seems like vengeful activism, and I can't see the justification. I have seen some of the replies in the moderator's journal and wonder if this represents the consensus of the users of this site, or if he is generally attracting the positive feedback of an isolated populous featuring views polarized to his.

Is there room for everyone here? I discussed briefly with RandomReduX about his stance on the excessively-liberal guidelines of another website and had to agree with him that maybe the site amend its rules to ban lolicon. One can filter objectionable material from his or her search, but I would certainly not want to carry the stigma of other users whose activities I felt would reflect on us all. How much is a reasonable accomodation?

What was done right with FerdKat's illustration? He didn't draw sexual intercourse, which falls into the moderate policies of this site. He portrayed the character as an adult, which should be obvious. He didn't model the character in the Stephen Silver template, which helps tremendously. There were ways of doing this wrong, and I've seen them, and I think that his way was a way of doing it right.

Hanging the stigma of being a pedophile on a person for drawing works like that is more than libel ... dems fightin' words. People who don't like what FerdKat draws can just turn him off.

I can complement this moderator for at least owning up to his behavior and rendering himself a lightning rod for this issue, but must lament him for being a castrated prude.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ haha. XD

I can't help but wonder if this situation can possibly resolved in an acceptable manner for Ferdy or any of the other artists who do similar works. DeviantArt, at least in my experience, seems to give their mods a great deal of discretion in how to enforce the "rules." There is little hope in changing this particular mod's opinion (at least from what I've read of his posts), and I don't believe this is a situation where DeviantArt will be willing to back up the minority group of artists being trampled over. I could be wrong, obviously -- there very well may be someone on the staff that genuinely believes in the right to freedom of expression through art, even if they don't particularly agree with it. However, I wouldn't put too much hope in it. Honestly, it's DeviantArt's inability to accurately enforce its own policies or support its smaller user-bases that are the chief reasons I don't recommend anyone actually paying for a subscription at this website, although I guess I tend to subscribe to the method of using consumer buying power to influence the way a business runs.