An interesting thread indeed! Greetings to so many that I have missed. I would like to clarify why I left WC for those that care to know. The moderation people certainly had nothing to do with it, in fact, they are all excellent folks doing a often thankless job. Jafo , in fact, came to be a friend (at least from my point of view ) and was always helpful as were many others.

The rating system has one major fault in my opinion that was the reason for my deciding it was not worth the aggravation to post here. First, not many people rate things (click the stars). A few single star votes ( almost always without explanation or comment) can therefore lower the rating enough so that an image is no longer visible to the general public. The fact that some weird folks vote "against" something as opposed to "for" something is just part of life on the web. WC is however the only site that I know of where this behavior can make the work invisible to the general public. Once an image or skin passes moderation, it should be visible to all regardless of the rating. The general public can therefore see if something is rated a single star or five stars and make their own decision. I often heard forget the rating and pay attention to the downloads. If the work is not visible to the public the downloads will be almost non existent in comparison to the visible skin or image. To share my work with the general public is the reason I publish it on the web in the first place. I only complain that the rating system policy allows work to become invisible to the public. I have my own "personal gallery" on my hard drive. I seriously doubt that many here search through the personal galleries.

It was pointed out to be that there are many subscribers here to give a large enough audience even if the general public could not see a particular image. I do not think it works that way. There are many skins here that I download when I want to use them and do not therefore have to download everything I like immediately as I know it is here for retrieval when wanted. But, I do not want to split hairs.

WC is the premier skinning site and certainly the largest. All things considered, it is a fine site with fine people working for it and running it. I will always check here for skins and to see how many of my fellow artists are doing. The rating system for the reason I discussed just did not work for me and my desire to share my work with everyone.

The Best of the Holiday Season to all!

Ken

I am asking this, only because I don't know...

Why, if the rating drops to a certain level, are the walls invisible to the general public?

If I had to guess, it either has to do with conserving space or server space (Like I said, I'm guessing, what do I know?) or to encourage people to subscribe. If the latter, wouldn't it (and I am NOT suggesting the site implement this) make more sense to hide the higher rated ones to encourage subscribing?

Once an image or skin passes moderation, it should be visible to all regardless of the rating.

This makes perfect sense. The exception being something that maybe was found to be offensive by a significant number of people (like that boot I uploaded when I lost my mind a while back)

I appreciate your views of the rating system, but that system is unlikely to change anytime soon.

I understand that WC feels very strongly about the rating system. In all the threads I have read, regarding this, I can see that a lot of time and thought went into the best way to run it. Perhaps, though, just maybe...considering it is one of the most talked about subjects and talked about passionately....some changes could be tested with the understanding it was just that, a TEST. Try them out, one at a time for as long as needed to get feedback and all. As the mods have acknowledged themselves, it's not perfect, so why not try something to see if it can get a little closer to perfect?

If I had to guess, it either has to do with conserving space or server space (Like I said, I'm guessing, what do I know?) or to encourage people to subscribe. If the latter, wouldn't it (and I am NOT suggesting the site implement this) make more sense to hide the higher rated ones to encourage subscribing?

This argument has been made before and it makes sense on the surface. But if non-subscribers didn't see the higher rated skins would they subscribe at all?

*I* always thought that the best fit would be to allow download of lower rated skins but display the higher rated ones.

In regards to testing alternative rating schemes, there is significant database work needed to manage the rating system as it is. Spending time and money developing alternatives (of which only one is going to be chosen) would likely not be a good use of resources. It brings up the whole question of Stardock resources being used for WC. Would we rather that time and money go into apps or web dev? Which brings up the question of whether WC makes SD more money than it costs to run . . etc.

*I* always thought that the best fit would be to allow download of lower rated skins but display the higher rated ones.

You mean, 'not' being able to dl the higher ones unless you subscribe? 'That' would make sense. It may not be 'liked' by a lot, but it would make sense.

Not realizing (after ALL this time) that we had the option to upload right to our personal pages (and I am going to stop after this, because I think to freakin much)..perhaps a categorie or a 'Featured Personal Pages' section to encourage people to actually look at the personal pages and maybe even encourage members to make more use of them?

(and I am going to stop after this, because I think to freakin much)

easy lad...I'm an educator, remember

perhaps a categorie or a 'Featured Personal Pages' section to encourage people to actually look at the personal pages and maybe even encourage members to make more use of them?

On the new site (http://test.wincustomize.com/), second column, 4th section down.: "Today's hot pages"

Didn't I suggest something similar just a few posts back? Hey folks! mine are the posts with the bandit mask in the upper left hand corner...

personal "galleries" and posting directly too them should give a visitor an insight into the artist and work that they may not even want to submit to the general galleries.

This isn't intended as a criticism but I feel removing your walls is depriving the very people you seek to reach of seeing your work.

A fair point Fuzzy.

Thank you. This really is a fine community.

Thank you new Daddy! I trust Andrew is letting you get some sleep now and then!

Good to see ya BX! Thanks.

Glad to see you return Kenwas!

 

let us return the thread to Po as I had no intention of highjacking

We have cohesive threads here? No one ever told me!

Zubaz I have been trying to send you that email but keep getting an error message after clicking submit.....'Missing Information' "We're sorry but your request is missing some critical information. Please click the back button and try again."

Well I've done that without success, and I can see nowhere to add information other than the subject box and the message page itself, both of which were completed, so I'm at a loss as to how to send it.

I'll copy and paste it into notepad for now and hope that someone will soon be able to enlighten me as to how I can succesfully achieve this.

Until then...starkers

ok...back to the subject-are wallpapers the only category that this rating method is applied too? if so IMO this is ridiculous! If it goes thru moderation, it should be viewable by the Public...I feel strongly about this b/c i'm getting two stars lately which is just under the cutoff and sent to my personal page! Whats the freaking point?