The contest is open to all.

What if someone submits a skin on the day the contest begins (Oct. 18) and another submits theirs just before it ends (say Dec. 1)? The one that was submitted late will be hard pressed to get a lot of downloads, even if it's REALLY good. Or did I miss something?

Someone may have already thought of this, but it's up to the moderators to ensure that the skinners at Journeyman level and above don't enjoy an unfair advantage.

Specifically, a journeyman can submit a new skin, and it is automatically posted, and goes to the top of the library. A lower level skinner must wait for moderation (sometimes days) before his skin is posted. Further, a journeyman could continually make improvements in his skin, resetting the update date each time, keeping his skin at the top of the library. A lower level skinner cannot, because each attempt to reset the date results in a moderation blackout.

As is well known, being at the top of the library is a HUGE boost to download count compared to being on the 2nd page.

I'm not suggesting that Journeymen or higher skinners would resort to such tactics, but it is possible, and moderators either need to prevent it, or keep the queue empty so that the lower levels suffer no delay.

Since I don't do Windowblinds (and trust me, that's good for the community! ) I speak as a blissful non-combatant.

simple answer work towards being a journeyman you so you can enjoy the benifit.

When a journeyman updates a skin and resets the update date....then skin must then go through moderation, just the same as everyone elses skins. Also skinners that are journeymen are at that level, because the work they do is almost without exception, complete and free of bugs on the initial upload

The people who have obtained Journeyman status here have worked for it and if it gives them an extra 12 hours or less, it's because they earned it. If you want the advantage then work for it. Let's not make this any harder on Stardock than it has to be. If people continue to complain they may pull the whole thing.

BTW I do have journeyman status. I will not be competing though, and this would be my view no matter which side of the fence I was on. If you want the advantage earn it, you don't get to be the pole sitter by qualifying last!

The question that I see is,"How do you get more people to subscribe". Is there some way to set up these contests to get benefit subscribers? Are the contest skins not available to everyone?

Sounds like as good a plan as any and should produce some interesting skins.

A simple solution to excessive updating would be not to allow resetting the date until after the contest period.(you could still tweak and fix things,it just wouldnt jump back to the top til after the contest was over)

If the contest is open to all,I see no reason Boxxi or any other mod shouldnt be able to enter.A free skin is a free skin.(of course this would exclude skins done for hire)

The only downside I see to this plan would be since only windowblinds is being featured this time, is skinners 'sitting' on their designs until the appropriate contest comes along.(then sitting on their WB's till it comes back up again)

I never could...was always too impatient for comments to wait,hehe....oh,oh,the ego.

Boxxi, with any contest, generally the employees and their families of the sponsor are ineligible. In this case I would take that to be all stardock and wincustomize employees, and admins and moderators would be considered the same whether they're paid or not. Mabey people have a different view of what should happen here, but that would be the general case. Besides, the moderators have control over the upload queue. If the mods are in the contest and judging the queue at the same time, you just KNOW that someone will complain their atrocious skin was rejected because "the mod knew how awesome it was and didn't want the competition!" Who wants to listen to that?

Will Rose.....BoXXi isn't a Stardock employee and I don't think Frogboy or T-Man are planning on adopting him anytime soon...sorry to break ya the news this was BoXXi Also, if I'm correct, the Admins only moderate the wallpaper, logon and bootskin categories for artistic values....everything else gets posted, be it butt-ugly or not, so long as it's functional and not going to eradicate anyone's PC. So I think that all skinners should be allowed to participate....site affiliations mean nothing...more skins is better.

How can we check how skins are progressing, (i.e. downloads today ), when they don't update daily? I have discussed this with T-Man but he tells me the problem has not been fixed to date, or will there be a seperate list for the competition?