No apology needed 1Renegade. I agree with you and pretty much said the same thing about 6 months ago, to no avail. But you can try again.

I agree. But there is a silver lining:

It does raise awareness. For years we've all thought of websites as these things that exist in a quasi-magical world of free. That websites must cost nothing to run and any costs they may run up can be easily paid for by banner ads.

On top of that, you have the view by some that by merely visiting a site you're doing it a favor.

These kinds of discussions, while repetitive do create an awareness that someone has to pay for these websites. WinCustomize has been paid for indirectly by individuals who buy WindowBlinds and Object Desktop and such.

Hence, this new awareness is helpful because suddenly it's not that these sites are paid for by some faceless corporations, but by other invididuals.

Moreover, it creates an awareness that for a community to function, there has to be some reciprication. The software guys make the skinnable widgets. The skinners make the skins and themes. The websites host those skins. All of these sides are giving something to the community.

But the software guys and the website guys have real world costs beyond time involved (Which there is plenty of that too like running into the office at 4am Christmas eve to reboot the server). They have to pay for bandwidth. They have to buy hardware to run this stuff.

The users have some level of reciprication. It's not that if they download a wallpaper they should feel obligated to give something back. But if they've downloaded tons of skins and themes then they should be giving something back at that point. They should be volunteering some time to help future skin authors solve problems or post helpful comments on their work letting them know they appreciate the time and effort they've made. They should register the software that they've obviously using a great deal of. They should try to do something to help the site whose bandwidth they've consumed.

Some people give lip service to the notion of a community. But often times what they really mean by community is other people whould do a bunch of work to benefit them and they should give nothing back.

Ideally, a website like Wincustomize shouldn't have to have a 100 megabit limit. People using tons of skins and themes should feel morally obligated to contribute something back well before they've gotten to that level (think of how much stuff you have to download to reach 100 MEGABYTES). Sadly though there is a percentage of users who don't see that.

So anyway, there's a silver lining. While repetitive and frustrating, at least awareness is being created that we're all in this together.

It does make you mad GM. You cannot read them without getting upset. It bothers me to see as many people with the me, me mentality.

As much as it bothers everyone when someone complains about the download cap, it bothers and saddens me more to see the wolf pack mentality of the people attacking them. As Brad has pointed out, the cap affects very few people around here. How many people visit this site each week? Out of those thousands and thousands of people, how many complain about the download cap? It seems to very few if you look at it that way. Therefore do we really need 20 people to pile on these people? If it was just a matter of educating them, is it necessary to belittle and insult them as so many people have done lately? I don't think it is and think it speaks poorly of us as a community.

and it makes me mad when they call us names! it makes me mad when they call other people names who I know have contributed a lot to the community and who have I know are good and thoughtful people. and it makes me mad when i see the community peace and harmony threatened. and it makes me feel impotent that I am not brave enough or smart enough to do anything about it. And I don't know how to handle all that at once. That makes me mad, too. That I am not a better person with more answers.

Porsche?......Porsche?......Have I missed out yet again?


Damn this tyranny of distance...

Davad, we cannot just sit idly by and have mis-informed accusations of wrong-doing on our part left un-challenged.
A third-party observer may just take the silence as contrition or acquiescence.
Someone calls me out for a perception of abuse of someone's rights or privileges and I'll jump to my own defence, and to that of my fellow Admins who, like me, are skinners just like the rest of you, that these 'DL-cap whingers' are claiming are being somehow maligned by the conduct of Wincustomize.com....[OK, convoluted sentence structure, but at least I followed it...I think]...

I feel sad about all those threads from people that are leaving the site and the answers from some members of Wincustomize are making me feel more sad!
The "mis-informed accusations" can be answered in more polite way.
The majority of people are not taking part in the message board, but this doesn't mean that they don't read it or they can't understand what is going on.

Yes, I know that we are not living in a perfect world, but we can make it better!

They always start off by assuming that because they have been here a day or two that they have the right to post any kind of demands they wish. The post's are angry or inflammatory. And they continue even after they have been told the answer they do not want to hear. How many new people have been "piled on" for asking:

Hey I'm new here, I just tried to download another wall and I was told my account had hit it's limit. I was wondering what I could do to help out so I would be able to download more. I really like this site and I hope someone can help me...

But they never start that way.

It's probably a good idea c242 but if you notice that 1-5 people ask the same question it shows that they do not read the message board to see if the question is already answered. So they would not even read or see that.

Yeah, no offense here, but we've seen some good suggestions just being ignored... *ducks*

The reason I get ticked has more to do with the fact that these folks show up on their soapbox, spew their 'moral outrage' and then we never hear back from them, even when their questions are answered civily (civilly?, whatever) At first, these folks were treated well and their questions were answered by Brad or whomever and the explanations were not condescending and were positive. But they keep showing up saying the same things over and over and over. I wish, for once, that, after a good explanation has been given, the original poster would come back and say something. Oh wait, that's happened before, several times. The whole thing turned into a Stardock bashing, no matter what anybody said.

There are some other solutions that I have seen used.

One is to have a gateway page to the message board. The first time a person clicks on the message board link they are shown posting guidelines, community statements, things like that. Regular people just bookmark the message board and bypass the gateway.

It takes a lot of work, and I don't think it could be done here, but we cut repetitive posts like that and paste them together in one thread.

I was just thinking last night that maybe this cap is a new thing. Maybe as more people who came here after the cap was initiated become more predominant, the problem will fade away.

One other thing we tell our members is that if no one answers a thread like that, it quickly sinks down to the bottom of the screen and then vanishes (sometimes conveniently and by design). They only want to make a statement, most of the time, and are not interested in enlightenment.

We have weathered much like this on my site, and I think I am just way tired of the fighting. Therefore, I think I over-react when I find it here. I need to train myself to step back....

As a long time Stardock supporter, I would like to see some of the rules that were put into place on the Stardock newsgroups enforced here.

The main reason I have been active in the SD newgroups going on 3 years now, is that everyone (pretty much) is civil to each other. When someone gets out of hand, they are immediately told by a moderator to clean or their language or to refrain from personal attacks.

That doesn't seem to be the case on Wincustomize. I agree with 1Renegade. Albeit that many of the comments that Brad's talks about are valid, some of the regulars here seem to revert back to the standard newsgroup habit of immediate flame, flame, flame.

John