I hate to be Simon but...

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

I hate to be Simon but...

You visit most sites that have themes and skins and you'll notice that have a gazillion wallpapers. You come here and you see fewer than 3000. Why is that? It's because we reject 9 out of 10 submissions.

Now, most of the moderators here are nice. They send out often lengthy emails to the authors of these wallpapers explaining why they were rejected. In return, they regularly get flamed, personal attacks and occasionally threatened.

I'm not nice. I don't send moderator notices. I'm the "Simon" from American Idol. I don't like spending time on a thoughtful email to have the author resond by attacking me. I just delete them. Sorry. I know that lots of these wallpapers are pretty good that get rejected. I know that many people spent many hours on these wallpapers. But there are dozens of sites that you can submit them too. Our goal here is to keep the number low. So that it's the "best of the best". Sure, occasionally something mediocre will get through and we are biased in favor of WALLPAPERS as opposed to works of art. But in general we try to ensure that the wallpaper section is kept as small as possible.

I know this upsets some people based on the emails that our poor VOLUNTEER moderators get. But I'm going to recommend that moderation emails become rare. It's just too discouraging for our VOLUNTEER moderators to get trashed in email for trying to gently tell them why their wallpaper didn't come up. Wallpapers that don't meet our criteria will simply be deleted. We hope you understand that with hundreds of wallpapers submitted every few days that this is the only way to reasonably get through them and provide a fair way for everyone.

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Perhaps part of the "problem" with the moderation of the wallpaper section is that there doesn't seem to be reliability between the moderators about what is acceptable and what is not (see the comment by CAClark as a reference). I know of others who have had wallpapers rejected for reasons that should have been applied to other wallpapers accepted in the same time period.

Part of the anger that has been directed at moderators may come from the situations where moderator X has rejected Y's paper which is similar in style to a wallpaper by Z that moderator W approved. It's the "My work is at least as good has Z's and yet it still gets rejected" experience.

I don't know if there are any "Wincustomize Wallpaper Guidelines" that have been coedified somewhere - but maybe there should be. If the requirements are not applied objectively to each person's work, then you're going to get people who get angry.

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he is jus being an ass

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in rebuttle to comments made about me. First I'm not a newbie. While I don't post much at all on Wincustomize my opinion is just as wanted as yours. I've been a paying customer of ODNT for a long time. I'm also a skinner from the Linux world, and moderated myself. I never sent anything in that wasn't finished or A+ in nature. I understand that some people will not like a skin that many others do. My point is to weed out the 'obviously' unworthy ones. If your opinion is that they are all worthy, thats great. Just happen to disagree. If wallpapers can be unworthy, then skins can too.

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As a recent wallpaper submitter, and newbie submitter here to WinCustomize, let me add my comments, please:

* I submitted a wallpaper and received a boilerplate rejection after 5 days. That's a long time. I'm really not sure why it was rejected, I presume for artistic reasons. With such a busy load I understand that not everything can be responded to.

* I submitted a wallpaper because this is a Windows Customization site. Wallpapers lead the category list. Sometimes by a 10x or wider margin. If your focus is skinning, that's cool, but then your name and URL are misleading to a degree.

* I submitted a wallpaper because I wanted a public critique of the results of my efforts. By persons who are of merit in the community. My rejection was a comment (of sorts

and I'll work from there. I have not the design talents to create skins from scratch. I have, however, been a skin and customization user since Windows 3.1 so I know good stuff when I see it.

Thank you for your time. Jot445

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That 'best of the best' thing is what really cracks me up the most. I drop by here every week or two and I check out the wallpapers section and what do I see - endless, dull, Bryce, rubbish. Cracks me up that you can operate a moderation system and yet still end up with the most pitifully bland selection of wallpapers ever to grace an archive. If wallpapers are such a low priority on this most-hallow'd of skinning sites then get rid of them completely, spare your poor moderators the abuse and leave it to those sites that a) give a shit about wallpapers and

realise that any muppet can crank out some shiny torus's in Bryce or a snow-peaked mountain in Terragen.

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you ppl @ wincustomize are biased, you always display those cheap crappy wallpapers by adni whenever he up's a new skin - some of them are so damn cheap and ugly you can just tell. some of the worst are the ones that were done in 3ds, all you need is 3ds, some modified tetra's, slap on a few shiney materials and a few omni lights and BOOM, one cheap-ass adni wallpaper.

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c242

Join Date 03/2001

+383

bill72 : I see, You have far better walls in Your library (I counted 0)... >

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yep, Dokt is perfectly right. it´s the "best of the best" what might confuse people. the wallpaper library is far from that.

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Holy Mojo.. I missed the whole thing. 33 comments already. Alot of negatives.. Here is a tongue for you :Þ

I've submitted several wallpapers myself and got turned down. I didn't moan and complain. It just made me work harder to make something different and more exciting. I did finally get one in. Which took me 3weeks to create but it was worth the time. If they let all Wallpapers in. They would have alot of crap taking up space which didn't take people long to make. And weren't creative. Anybody can go into a program like Bryce and throw a couple things up and say here is my wallpaper. Which only took 30mins if that. Then your object would be to get up as many wallpapers as you can. And it wouldn't deal with anything about quality.
Skin moderating. The reason they don't push on that is because skinning is a person's vision on what a object should look like. It doesn't mean everybody has to agree. Just as long as they like it. And skinning some items are very hard so, if they even get one done. They have made it further then what they were before. And they'll most likely get better as they make more.
So, Flogging, flaming, or throwing veggies won't get you anywhere.
I think I put my 2cents.

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WOW, is this 4 real. i'd like 2 say that i'm happy with WC and the ppl who run it. i'm glad i dont have 2 put up with this, whew. i know 1 thing 4 certain, u cant please everyone. keep up the great work WC, b4n.

denny

ps i hope the wallpaper section stays

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Wellllllll, I just had to add that my stuff is funky and different and not what you'd call your normal "skin-compatible" WC wall and yet a few of mine manage to show up here despite that sometimes glaring fact.

Ya just gotta keep plugging away and not take it as a personal jab and just like your stuff for you in the first place.

Some stuff I upload I'm totally iffy over and I've often been pleasantly surprised to see something get accepted that I thought for sure wouldn't. And some things I thought for sure would make it in...didn't!

It's just one of those things that you can't take to heart. I'm not a skinner at all and so I feel very fortunate to have gotten some of my stuff here.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Craeonics - feel free to start your own wallpaper site and then take the hours of time to send users "The reason why it was moderated". That's what we've been doing for the past 2 years and the flames and abuse our volunteer moderators get is excessive and it's extremely time consuming.

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I would like to see moderation of skins also. If you don't want to reject skins because of ugliness that's fine because beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, but maybe instead you should reject skins on usefullness and useability. Customization is a good thing, but I can pick out plenty of skins from the WB library that just lack complete usefullness and useability. Windows is an operating system and needs to be useful and useable. For example, when I can't tell the minimize maximize and close buttons from the title bar or it hurts my eyes to look at the text on the title bar then that definitely does not make a useful or useable and in my opinion it should not be here. I'm not telling you how to run your site just stating my opinion as a paying OD and WC subscriber (which you should probably listen to since we kept your site afloat). To all you who will say be quiet unless I can do better: maybe I can or can't, I don't have the time to design the more time consuming skins such as WB, which is why I pay for OD and WC. As a paying customer I expect to see better results. When I look at the skin libraries I don't want to see skins that hurt my eyes or skins that are not useable. If you need to get a non volunteer staff in order to accomplish this that's fine. I would be more than willing to pay 40 or 50 dollars for a subscription to WC instead of 20 if you could filter out the non useable skins. Maybe cut the wallpaper library off to non-skin suite submissions if you want to be just a skin site but I always thought this was a "customization" site as it was advertised when I bought OD and as the name says. Perhaps a vote should be taken among the paying WC customers to see if the skins libraries should be moderated on things such as useability and usefullness.

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e-tin: But what's "unusable" for you may be quite useable for someone else. Also, I think WB4 now in beta has the ability to change the font which may remedy some issues on that point. Some people like dark skins, others find them more difficult to use visionwise. Others prefer light skins or the brighter colors. Still, there are a good number of skins that I find both pleasing and useable, even with my aging eyes. But YMMV.

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the fact of the matter is that all of those wallpapers take up space... and the windowblinds skins are one of the main reasons this site exists... wallpapers are important, but only to complement the skins... that is the only reson they are here... as for you bill72 don't you ever say Adni made any thing that was crap... crap is what you would make im sure, try not to put this on a personal level since you don't personally know any of the skinners here...

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Speaking of dark skins, its often neat to use the Invert skin colors option inside WB with some of the darker skins. Not always a perfect conversion job, but often quite useful.

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I apologize if I made it seem like I think useability is based on lightness or darkness. I am really only talking about the skins which are actually stressful on the eyes to look at. For example 1 light and 1 dark skin, Curly Kale with Sausages - (preview https://www.wincustomize.com/window.asp?Cmd=PREVIEW&source=http://skins.wincustomize.com/Lecrayon/wb/CurlyKale_Sausage_Set.jpg) and XP Crimson (preview https://www.wincustomize.com/window.asp?Cmd=PREVIEW&source=http://skins.wincustomize.com/Silent_Assailant/wb/XPCrimson.jpg) there is no way you can tell me that you dont have a hard time making out what those say on the screen and my point is if I can't read what's on the screen, how can I possibly use it.

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To be honest. Maybe it worked fine for them and it was their vision. And 10 to 1 they probably worked many hours on it also. The fact is, if you don't like it and can't use it. Don't download it. Just avoid it and leave it alone. But if you have a suggestion. Put it in the comments in a nice way. So the next time they make something. They know what people want and make them better. There is always a beginning with everybody. Maybe that was their first. My other point is. If you don't like it also, make your own. We would be glad to see what you can come up with.

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This debate goes on and on and on. A couple of weeks ago I heard Frogboy say something in favour of walls and keeping the library. Now it seems to go the other way. I read something about Bakerstreets point of view about deleting the walls library and he got attacked. It is an endless debate and neither solution seems perfect. A long time ago I suggested to add a library that has walls that complement skins, and have a second one that is moderated on solid basis and understandable guidelines.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1846

There are four ways that a wallpaper will, or won't make it onto the site.
1. The author is a long-time, respected contributor to the site, and the skinning community in general, and has direct access without 'moderation', because he/she is 'trusted' not to upload inappropriate content ['borrowed' copyrighted works, porn, etc]
2. A wall goes through moderation, and is so mind-numbingly horrendous, or it is porn, or it's Britney Spears rendition xyz123, that it gets an instant 'kick' by the first moderator who has the misfortune to see it.
3. A wall goes through moderation, and is so mind-numbingly awe-inspiring that the first moderator who sees it, approves it.
But mostly...
4. A wall goes through moderation that looks like the guy's last 10 submissions but, oh, it may be better, maybe not....and it receives a 'comment' by the first Moderator...then another may look at it and doubt its origins...[looks like an'adni', but recoloured] [ isn't that Misery's-Deaddreamer, but with a swirl filter?]..posts a comment.
Perhaps a third will check...yep, seen that graphic in the Nijikon wall...kick it...or is it fair-use?
Kick it...no permission.txt.
So...we kick it, with an email saying 'moderated...permission required from original author'..
Response?...'Accusing me of ripping, you effing pricks..if you'd 'bothered' to go ask him he'd have told you he let me.
Stuff you, I'm gonna go to Devart where my work will be appreciated...stick it up your arse you bunch of t**ds'
Polite email response to outburst...
'your loss, not ours...BTW...many of the same moderators here are closely involved with Devart, and the other skin sites...if it's an issue here we can make sure it's an issue there as well...same reason.'
OK, so that got a bit 'specific' but perhaps you get the mechanism.
When a wallpaper may take 3 or 4 separate, individual human-intervention processes, each, and we get, 0oh, one or two walls a day [I wish], then you'll understand it's not quite as arbitrary as you might think.
Sure, some '[relative] crap' gets through, but you should just see what hits the cutting room floor...in droves....

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I agree with "Simon" Frogboy... only let the best of the wallpapers in that way I don't have to wade through the crap to find nuggets of quality

If I want to do that, I can name a few sites that will dish up the dung....

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Anyone who submits a piece to this site, and then is told it's not up to the standards that this site is looking for should accept that at face value and have the maturity to not respond in a negative manner....
Maybe your next effort will be loudly applauded by everyone.
Did you stop to think of that before you sent off that hateful email?

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My solution would be to close the wallpapers section entirely. Keep it a skinning site, and don't allow for the over-complication of moderating another medium entirely. It seems that passions run very highly where wallpapers are concerned, and the need to moderate them only stir those passions to boiling point.

As for those people complaining about ugly skins, remember that the main purpose for this site's existence is to gather skins for Stardock's products. Just because you think a skin is ugly, it doesn't mean someone else won't find value in it, even if only as a learning aid for new skinners.

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Maybe it would be better if you'd skip the whole wallpaper section. There are enough sites that hold them for the hungry among us. You cut out the section free up room and concentrate more on the skins this site was build on!
All skins are welcome, even the ugly one's. It might just appeal to some of us. But Simon is a cold and very frustrated idiot, that doesn't care much about other people's feelings. So, don't be a simon, be a Paula Abdul or Winnie the Pooh.

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