I've gotten emails from people suggesting that with the GUI Olympics, that we've become snobby. That is, because WinCustomize, Neowin, and deviantART now are so popular that we somehow just "blew off" the rest of the skinning community.

But it's not true. I actually did try contacting the owners of every skinning site. In every case, however, I received no response. On Deskmod, for instance, I even responded to the featured GUI Olympics news item there saying how I've been trying to contact Gorman for weeks.

Customize.org, I have no idea who is running the show these days. We have to talk to someone who can actually change the website (i.e. not just a moderator) to put the GUI Olympics banner up.

Even Skinbase, I talked to Snowman and Scarebar but they can't change the page. I guess "Grave" is but I can't seem to get ahold of him.

I sent email before the contest to Chaz at ArtUproar and never heard back. I didn't know what to make of things until i started looking closer. In the old days, the owners of the site regularly participated on them.  But looking at news items and such, I haven't seen Chaz or Grave or Gorman or the others making news items or anything in a long time.

It's as if the sites have been turned over to the moderators to run on auto pilot.  So it's not that we're ignoring the other skin sites, it's that there doesn't seem to be any owners actively participating on a regular basis anymore.