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With Eclispe being now a thing. This is something Ive been wondering for quite awhile now. A lot of people who used to go onto Deviantart have left for Newgrounds and twitter, while deviantart is still being cluttered from its bad reputation of various things that made the website a joke to begin with.

Because it's a containment site for the exact kind of art that gave it it's reputation.

The same reason Youtube isn't dead despite tons of bad policy and feature changes: Previous investment into that site.

I hate DA. Its extremely cluttered and what I hate most is lack of ability to upload multiple photos into one post.
Just took a photoshoot? Gotta upload, title, tag, age rate, and add a description to every single photo. no thanks.
tumblr was one of the best places to upload and view photos. Pillowfort is nearly there, but needs a little bit more funding and time, but much better than anywhere else like DA or twitter. Really wish twitter had a better way to sort through old photos.

idk anyone who still uses it, but it still seems to be active.

Seniority; people trust what they know and fear what they don't. Most of the people I know that do art will mention DA first when asked about art sites, so it's gotten to the point that it's the go-to for most newcomers to art, at least until they move on to something else like Twitter, Instagram or Newgrounds.

Now I must confess that this thread is the first I've heard of Eclipse and Newgrounds was somewhat underground for a while until Tumblr's mass-exodus revived it somewhat. So there it is: it's seniority has reaped it enough popularity that it is perfectly safe no matter how bad it becomes. It is now a Nigh-Perpetual Decadence Engine similar to how YouTube has become.

Deviantart is the first stop for art. It's probably the most likely place a person goes if they're interested in looking at art or uploading themselves for the first time. Or at least, excluding social media.

It's sort of like what Kommando is alluding to; other places aren't well known(newgrounds), have fallen out of favour (tumblr), or are niche(pixiv, furaffinity).

As cringe as the lion's share of art and users there is, I genuinely hope it stays around. It's been a cultural time capsule as one of the biggest and last vestiges of early Web 2.0 (until its recent design change, that is, which may be partly to blame if it dies).

DeviantART's decision to shift to a half-baked UI may have dealt a huge blow to their userbase, but for many artists there's simply no other alternative. Me included. Even with Eclipse, DA remains one of the most popular art-sharing platform around, for better or for worse, and I don't see it changing until a new, more accessible art sharing site can supersede it.

One of the biggest mistakes that website designers make is to introduce sudden new changes to everyone instead of being conservative and slowly changing website.

And no, slow opt-in thing doesn't count as being conservative!

Careful of what you wish for. Remember: people wanted Tumblr dead a few years ago, and then it happened. Ask if people are happy about it now.

There's a difference on how you define 'dead'. When I mean dead I'm talking about pulling the plug on the life-support that it has left. Not taking away nearly everything that people wanted in the first place. Some of my peers that I know who have used Tumblr(and were formerly on DA) have went onto Newgrounds and Twitter since its better compared to what those two sites are going through.

I'm sure that's mere coincidence, considering that it was Yahoo who nearly killed Tumblr back then.

I still am glad and many I followed were happy to not have to deal with tumblr anymore but its also cause most everything I cared about there, SFW and NSFW, either also had or moved off to various other art sites, pixiv, baraag, newgrounds, twitter (which also tends to suck a lot for art) and pillowfort anyway.
DeviantArt has certainly lost a lot of its notability and power over the years but I dunno if itll die anytime soon, as in shut down fully dead die at least.