From someone that has done support/helpdesk.

1) This is why most owners don't identify themselves. Usually they identify themselves to most customers/public as VP of sales. I would not be surprised if we start to see less and less of Brad.

2) Of course logons gets short shift from support. At a company the money generating products deserve more attention as do evals.

3) Mistakes happen. I have seen posts from at least 6 people either tied to this site and/or Stardock. Several of them apolegetic. I am sure they are buzzing now behind the scenes. It's not fun getting sand kicked in your face in your own sandbox.

4) Some people enjoyed the gui's in spite of not winning and all the whinning. They even appreciated them. Could it have been handled better? I think that Brad would agree to that. Would the summer ones have been handled better? We may never know. Did it generate interest in WB (more sales)? Of course. Was it worth the money, time, and aggrevation? Hard to say. It probably would have generated more sales if they had spent the money/time on an add in a computer magazine or if they had payed for better placement with various search engines.

5) OD was priced with the idea of it being able to support the company. This price was determined before the popularity of Wincustomize. This site has been great advertising for the company, but at what cost? Do the extra sales offset the huge cost of this site? From all indications, no. I may be mistaken in this, but the I had heard from other sites that they payed for the amount of traffic they had. I knew one excellant site that was killed by its own popularity.
Griffinme misses thinkpiece.com.
They have tried already several things to pay for this site. They didn't sell enough mugs, hats, and such. The ads are not paying enough. Where does that leave them. In a way they are asking for a donation. I doubt that the software/skins is worth 20$. If you use the site alot, then help pay for it. Its 20$ not 100$. Do I think it is over priced? Probably, but then everything is overpriced to the unemployed.

6) I don't care for the rating system as well, but then I doubt there is a rating system that everybody would like. It would be nice to see a rating system more people could agree on though.

7) Everyone needs to take a deeeep breath. Close your eyes and imagine. In with nice calm blue air, out with tense/angry black air. Each time you do it you see your lungs turning more and more a calm blue. Each time you see less and less angry/tense/frustrated black air coming out. HEY! Wake up!

-Me

/note to self: Read Doreen's note to self.

I would like to make a comment about the rating system.

First off, we have many discussion behinds the scenes about the rating system that none of you never see. We are not ignoring the skinners wishes and desires. We have been trying to come up with a solution that is happy ground for all.

Now, in my opinion, there are 3 basic types of people who are here:

1) Admins
2) Skinners
3) Users

Admins represent less than 1% of the people at WinCustomize, but represent about 4$ of the voiced opinions. (well, Brads lengthy posts may increase that figure some )

Skinners represent about 1% of the people at WinCustomize, but represent about 95% of the voiced opinions.

Users represent about 99% of the people at WinCustomize, but represent about 1% of the voiced opinions.

Ok, now many of the skinners (not all) do not like the rating system. But skinners are the major voice of the oposition. Thats less than 1% of people that visit WinCustomize.
I think its safe to say that most people only speak up when they do not like something. If things are going well, most people just tend to be content with life and just keep to themselves.
The fact that about 99% of the people are not complaining about the site says a great deal about how things are being run.

One of the reasons that Skinners do not like the rating system is they feel it hides their work from the eyes of everyone. It only hides lower rated skins to those who choose not to create an account (visitors) or to those
who use the ratings filter. Its not permanent. But, I would like to argue that part of WinCustomize's success is due to the fact that we only show the higher rated skins to visitors. This in turn gets them more excited about skinning, gets them to come back to the site, which makes the site more popular, which in turn gets your skins noticed by more people. So in my opinion, I feel that the rating system helps the skinners get their skins noticed by more people! Not the other way around.

Just this morning, I went to download.com in search of a program to remove ad ware from my system. I chose to download Ad Aware. Do you know why, because it had a high rating! Just as I use ratings to determine which software to download many many many people use the rating system here on Wincustomize as well. Download.com allows anyone to rate the software, but at Wincustomize we only only Apprenctices and up to rate. Most of these people have already proven to be an asset to the skinning community. And therefore most of these people are fair and honest in their ratings.

The rating system is meant to aide the USER not the SKINNER. Does the rating system help you make a better skin. No, not really. But its not meant to be. Does the rating system help Wincustomize's popularity. I think so. Does Wincustomize's popularity help get more people to see your skin. ABSOLUTELY. Isn't that what is all about. Getting your skin to be seen by as many people as possible. Trying to get your skin higher up in the ranking? Getting your name exposed to millions of people? I think so. There are those of you who are doing it just for the artistry of it. And if thats the case, I bet those people really don't care one way or the other about ratings. But for those who care about rankings, I'm sure they are the ones who care abour ratings. They think ratings have the potential to hide their skins from view. But in the long run, I think the ratings help show off their ratings to more people.

As an admin, I think part of my responsibility is to represent the majority of the users. The silent users. WinCustomize has become extremely popular. I would like to think that we have a clue as to what we are doing. And that we are not just mindlessly running a dictatorship as some people seem to think.

Just because we do not take every suggestion and implement does not mean we are Ignoring you. We have changed many many things on Wincustomize based of users/skinners suggestions. But it doesn't mean we have to do EVERY suggestion.
And, as I believe Jafo has stated. We are still working on it. We are trying to find a solution that most people will like (Well, I think most users like the rating system already).

Thank you for letting me speak my mind. Now you can start picking my response apart.

Hmm, my office is right next to Brad. Maybe I should consider moving to the other side of the building next to Koop and Javabrain. Hmm, not sure if I like that deal either. Either way, I'm Screwed!

Doreen, You better start reading the thread now. If you wait too much longer it will take over a week to read it. And then by the time you are finished you will have another weeks worth of reading to catch up on. And then so on and so on...

If you are looking for the opinion of one user on the ratings system: I like the ratings. I don't make the decision to download a skin exclusively based on ratings (some highly-rated skins just don't have a look or style that I like) but they do help to guide me towards which skins I might look at first, if my time is at a premium.

I'm sure you're estimates of the percentages are pretty close T-Man. I would imagine if anyone besides Brad would know, it would be you.

That said, I do have some bones to pick.

Surely you're not implying that skinners should have less influence on the direction of the site than the user/consumer should???

Afterall, who provides 100% of the content that the users come here for? Skinners

Who provides 100% of the skins that people are paying you $20 to use the skinbrowser to get? Skinners

Who helps out the admins and Stardock by answering at least 50% of the problems/questions on the message boards? Skinners

I'm certainly not trying to put down the users/consumers here. Obviously I love them or I wouldn't give them my skins. I also wouldn't respond the emails I get from them or answer their questions on the message boards.

Again, I'm not putting down group #3. I'm just bringing the fact up that this site wouldn't exist without group #3.

One thing I didn't take into account are the skins that are here which were made by admins/wizops. I would hope that most of those people would consider themselves skinners before all else though. Obviously excluding the non-skin making admins/wizops.

Davad....I think of myself as a themer first, skinner second, and wizop third....but when it comes to caring about input into the on-line skinning 'community' I tend to put the 'wizop' for Wincustomize first, because I maybe can do more 'good' with that than my LiteSTEP-centric themeing which is still a tad 'odd-ball' [now that there's OTS], and precious few are interested in grey, transparent WA skins...[thanks, you few...cheques are in the mail]...but between the Admins and wizops we have a fair number of bases covered, with experience in many, if not all of the skinnable apps.
Wincustomize is run by skinners, and for skinners AND their 'users'. We can't ignore the 'needs' of the casual 'user' and cater solely for the comparatively small skinner base. Both 'should' and ARE 'listened to', perhaps with disparate, but equally valid viewpoints.

As for those groups '1, 2, and 3'....I fit into all of them [though I tend not to be too much of a user of others' skins....but just in passing]....and try to imagine the perception of this site from each of these 3 viewpoints....looking for a balance.
Is it over-administered - over-regulated?
Is it a skinners-only mutual appreciation society?
Is it a deserted database for mindless downloads?

Any one of those would be a 'Bad Thing'[tm]...

Some good points there jafo. Especially regarding not ignoring the "needs" of any of the three groups.

Actually, if you should only need two, think about it

Uh Oh off topic, I meant two spyware detecting programs.

I too tend to hold the opinion that without that 1% of skinners, you wouldn't have the 99% of users in the first place. All you'd have is an empty library with a message board tagged on. I do therefore think that the opinions of the skinners should be listened to above those of the users. That doesn't mean the users' opinions aren't important, or any less valid, but with a site like this it's the skinners who are needed to keep things ticking over. If one day all the skinners just stopped making skins for the site, where would you stand then? Sure, the site could keep going for a while, but once the users run out of skins to look at they wouldn't have any reason to stick around.

After the admins, it's the skinners who put the hard work into keeping the site going. We're the ones who spend our time making the skins that keep people coming back to the site, and that generate sales of Stardock products. So it does seem a little misguided to say that just because we only represent 1% of the visitors to this site our opinions should take a back seat.

However, please remember to take my comments in context. I consider myself slightly more of a user than a skinner, as I only really have three or four skins to my name, and I'm certainly not as frequent a contributer as treetog, Alexandrie, etc.