!phoenixleo's deactivation

He was an active community member, well known as a nice and funny guy who loved supporting artists, he was winner of January's Deviousness award, he had a DD and around 700 watchers... I decided to write this article since many people may be wondering, where did he go?

Frankly, he didn't tell us why he left, so we have no way to be sure All we can do is speculate. I'm just writing this article to give my informed thoughts, in hopes of avoiding uninformed speculation - and to point out some information regarding his leave, and deactivation in general.

After all, it may be tempting to assume he was sick of dA for some reason, especially after his article on April 1st, deviantART Hear our complaints. But I think it's simply him needing more time to focus on his studies. Before deactivating he submitted a journal and sent a note to a couple of friends making clear he was 'on hiatus'. He actually went on hiatus once before already, in February, but kept coming back more and more often. This deactivation may be to avoid that happening this time; he wouldn't be the first to decide to leave dA (temporarily or not), to not get too distracted from studies or other commitments.


The following journal was submitted May 10, 2011, 5:25 (I'm in the Netherlands – so that'd be 3:25 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time aka British winter time) – exactly a day and 10 hours prior to the submission of this article).

Hello everyone,

I will be on a hiatus of unknown period of time from dA. So I will be inactive during this time. Journals and news features will not be posted during this time (including contest prizes if I have given any). I may be able to visit sometimes...The Contest modules contest links can be seen in the previous journal.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

Take care everyone and hope all of you are alright!

This mentions hiatus, but no reason, and doesn't imply deactivation either (after all we can't access his previous journals anymore now). But a couple of minutes after submission of this journal, he sent me and another couple of friends points, along with a note to say he was 'going woosh' from dA for a while and that we could do with his points whatever we wanted.
_{(I can still access this journal through the preview since it's still in my messages. Of course I can also still access the note he sent us, but since notes are meant to be private I didn't want to put it here, just in case.)}


He has 30 days (of which 1 already passed) to reactivate his account, since you can now reactivate a deactivated account whether it was hacked or not. If he's too late, he'll have to return on another account, losing all he had on the other one.

His deviations are currently hidden from public; they'll be removed after those 30 days. His news articles can still be seen.

He can still login, view his messages, he should even be able to access the Seniors forum still. Of course, we don't know if he will (but in case he is, sending him a note to tell him you miss him wouldn't hurt, right?).

We also don't know if he still lurks dA anyway Raf, if you're reading this, I hope you don't mind I submit this as an article (otherwise you may want to contact help@deviantart.com to get it removed or something?). Also, we miss you – I hope you're alright, and will return


Now, just in case he sees this – let's all use the comments section below to tell him something or to make him a nice drawing, okay?

PS; faving this article will be interpreted as supporting phoenixleo and/or this article, not his deactivation.