feline nominates crae for admin

one mad idea deserves another

davad70, as for "less popular" skins, variaty is good

Well, I'm not a skinner, I'm just a typical user, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I never really liked rating skins, especially when it's anonymous. I've never rated a skin nor will I ever do so (well I might have to counterbalance some moron's blatant meanness of rating a 1 to a perfectly good skin. But there's no contextual information encapsulated in just a number.

As for comments, I don't know what rating you have to be to able to add comments, but again this is tricky. On the one hand, you want some semi-informed interaction. But I really cringe when I read comments that say "That's lame", or "dude, your not trying hard enough", or "sucks". They either are mean-spirited or simply lack of understanding what the skinner was attempting to acheive and have a narrow extremely subjective view of what constitutes a good skin.

So what are the choices: limit the ability to people to comment/rate until they've hung around long enough to "mature" with the community (sounds elitist)? Let anyone comment, who say just joined the community and signed up for a subscription (and take the good with the bad)?

What I mean is that I don't think subscribers should automatically get to rate skins. If they earned their promotion in some other way that's different.

Well I guess I opened up a can of worms with this thread. That was not my intent. I was just seeking clairification on what I read. You know what they say, don't believe everything that you read.

Now I have a couple of questions.

1. How come when I try to use the skin browser and enter a question or comment I get -99 ?

2. When do I get the ability to rate?

Testing again.

WiseOldMan - When do I get the ability to rate?

from the about info, you have to be promoted to Journeymen or above before you can rate skins.

however, i beleive this is out of date, and it is actually Apprentice or above.

as for how you get promoted, this is by act of admin

Man, I should learn to read things.
Yes, indeed, according to the Windcustomize Subscription Info page, anybody who buys any Stardock product or a Wincustomize subscription gets the ability to rate:

Level 3: Object Desktop / Stardock customer / Elite User. These are users who have either purchased Object Desktop or some other Stardock product (Stardock is WinCustomize's sponser), or has Apprentice access or higher due to contributing to the site in other forms (making skins, being an active contributor to the message boards, etc.). These users get all the benefits of a registered user plus the ability to rate skins and can download an unlimited amount of content.

Anyway, it doesn't matter to me as I don't care about ratings one way or another. Just seems to me funny that the argument of those that were in favor of ratings was that ratings, as opposed to download counts, were done by fellow skinners therefore were more meaningful. Funny.

paxx, you are not the only one who should have read that more carefully

feline wonders if i am being brain washed by paxx

i find myself agreeing with you on this one paxx. it really is quite funny, in a silly sort of way.