Personally I think most of my work falls into the 5-7 rating range. Nothing that I create has anything particularly stellar about it. Pretty basic skins with pretty basic and general graphics, without major errors that will bork your computer. To get my skins up into the 8-9 range I figured I've got to get a whole lot better with creating images and add some pizazz to my skins. For now, I'm happy with what I make and I keep trying to get better with each new skin. Some day I'll finally make that show-stopper skin, who knows.
Oh, the reason for this post, and generally why any skinner starts to ask about ratings....is a rating they got they can't quite understand. I did a search for "rating" so that I could understand some things about them and how others feel about them. My feelings on WBSkins ratings are as follows:
1 Yikes! Major malfunctions, needs to be completely overhauled, will most likely bork your computer, this is a bad, bad skin that needs to be eradicated from this world.
2 Pretty much the same as above, but may have some artistic merit and someone might take the chance to fix it in SkinStudio, but it definitely needs to be fixed, as is, it's still unuseable.
3 Skin isn't going to break anything. Can be recognised for what it is a GUI replacement. This skin has issues with it, but these issues can easily be fixed. This skin if someone would've had it tested it prior to uploading would have rated much higher.
4 Again pretty much the same as a 3, but either there are fewer errors or there is a definite quality to the graphics being used.
5 Basic, average, run of the mill, etc. skin that doesn't appear to the average user to have any errors in it, but may have a few minor things that need tweaking.
6 Basically the same as a 5, but the author has done a few things to set his skin apart from the run of the mill drib-drab.
7 Same as a 5 or 6, but the skin has a nice graphic flair and complete feel to it or an error free skin with more mundane blah-blah graphics.
8 No errors that are apparent without using ripping it open in SkinStudio and going over every detail with a fine-toothed comb. 8 is a threshold, where quality and completeness of the skin shows. When I say completeness, I don't mean everything is skinned, ie. toolbar icons and animations, but everything that is skinned works together to create a cool looking skin and anything that isn't skinned doesn't distract from the overall appearance of the skin.
9 No errors and has a wow factor to it. This skin is a tight package and everyone wants to port this baby over to DesktopX, Sysmetrix and every other skinnable app.
10 Skinning Nirvana a place where the great skinners hang out
Skins that flawlessly transform your desktop. That you'd pay money for to use them.
Those numbers aren't hardened in stone for me. I sometimes rate skins higher for graphics quality because I'm envious of the skinner's talent.
Anyway what I found out was if your skin gets posted with a standard 6 out of moderation. When the first mary, joe or bob comes along that rates your skin, the 6 is tossed out and that becomes the benchmark.
Macrobaye made the appeal before, Fuzzy and I have expressed our concerns about the latest batch of skins. Please rate skins and please comment. Thanks for taking the time to read my drivel
And thanks to everyone who goes out of their way to rate and comment on skins.
