Okay, I'm wrong then.. my foot is tasty and I will just shut up and go on.

Phoon, I wasn't aiming my comments at you and I think your post shows how confused this issue gets. It's a perception some people have and I think it's better to discuss it than to let emotional rants carry it to some absurd level of conspiracy.

Expressing your discontent is fine. Wallpapers are a cool part of the site and should be here. Why let a few people ruin that for everyone else?

If your discontent is about ratings why should that get stretched into a bashing of the morals of the volunteers? Or the motivation of the site's owners? If anyone thinks their piece was rated too low they are welcome to ask why and dispute it. Doing so with a string of accusations and indictments about what cruel unfeeling elitist assholes we are is generally going to result in a different conversation, having nothing to do with the original complaint.

#133 by Citizen hashonboat - 7/27/2003 8:57:38 AM

There was another failed artist from Bavaria who was more articulate by far when it came to speeches targeting the least intelligent among a population. Can’t remember his name offhand but here is some of his work.



The content of propaganda is not science any more than the object represented in a poster is art. The art of the poster lies in the designer's ability to attract the attention of the crowd by form and color. A poster advertising an art exhibit must direct the attention of the public to the art being exhibited; the better it succeeds in this, the greater is the art of the poster itself. The poster should give the masses an idea of the significance of the exhibition; it should not be a substitute for the art on display. Anyone who wants to concern himself with the art itself must do more than study the poster; and it will not be enough for him just to saunter through the exhibition. We may expect him to examine and immerse himself in the individual works, and thus little by little form a fair opinion.
A similar situation prevails with what we today call propaganda.
The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.
The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function, like the poster, consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be exerted in this direction.
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success in pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes.

Once again, my statement "If your discontent..." is not aimed at anyone in particular, just a general 'you' (anyone in other words).

Some history about this site might be helpful. This is purely from my memory so correct me if I'm wrong.

Skinz.org was the 'king' of skinning sites (they had a fierce and unrelenting moderator who rejected walls constantly btw) and it became apparent that skinz was going down in flames. There was a real concern that the remaining skin sites would be overwhelmed with new members or we would loose our community to a lot of seperate smaller groups. Deskmod had vanished also leaving only a few smaller sites and DA which at that time was experimenting with branching out into poetry, indy art and was building a huge new base for their site looked like the only option to absorb all the extra traffic.

Stardock had announced that they would build a site that would act as a portal to connect all the sites, it was never intended to be a large skinning site as much as a glue to hold the community together and bring more skinners into it. Skinz went down faster than expected so the urgency to get Stardock's site up and running became greater. They decided to bring the original programming and admin crew from skinz in to build a new site. That changed the goals and character of wincustomize to become more of a skin site with a limited number of skin categories (we've never had the hundreds of categories some other sites do because we didn't want to replace any other site, just bring more people through the gate to find this wonderful group endeavor).

There were unfortunate clashes of ego as the site was launched which saw it loose the skinz guys over control issues but the site launched months ahead of schedule to meet the demand from the demise of skinz.org. From that point on the site has evolved slowly to become what it is today. The original commitment, to feature a core group of the most popular skin categories and not the hundreds more that other sites take on is still here. It was intended to help the other sites by doing this, letting people who come here hang out, post their stuff, discover skinning or continue skinning but not to replace or compete directly with the resurrected deskmod.com, custo.org, DA, LOS, skinbase or any of the other places that had formed a more tightly integrated group. We were, and still are, a combination of a portal to bring users in to the skinning world through the public attention Stardock's products get, and a place for community spirit to thrive.

At least that's the way I saw it and that's why I'm still here. I've left a couple times after dealing with Stardock bashing and admin bashing (and internal disagreements as well) because I could no longer justify the time I spent here. I'm self(un)employed as a commercial artist and living 'hand to mouth' which requires all my effort be put towards making the mortgage payment.  However, the amount of time I devoted to this site was a joy to me so I came back and kept doing mostly behind the scenes stuff (avoiding the message board).

Most of you have no idea how much goes in to a site like this not only in terms of time but also giving of one's self. The admins here try so hard to be fair, to make a welcoming environment for everyone, that I find it hard to leave because I have so much respect for them all. It would be impossible for anyone to not loose their cool occaisionally with the stuff they get accused of. But overall, I think the crew here deserves some credit for getting this far and keeping the escalation of tempers as under control as it has been.

Like I've said before, nobody's perfect, but this site strives for values and qualities that represent an ideal. If we don't always get it that's understandable, but I'd like to think that the crew here has their hearts in the right place and that the support of this site from it's sponsor is a generous gift for all who come here. And I'd like to believe that if wincustomize closed for whatever reason, there would be a sense of loss just as the sense of loss over skinz.org brought this site into existence.

Don't kid yourselves folks.  Stardock doesn't need WinCustomize one bit. We know the stats. We know the costs. Whether people put their skins here or on deviantART or Deskmod or wherever makes no difference whatsoever to Stardock. 

This issue is about Wincustomize. Don't try to bring Stardock into it. As far as Stardock is concerned, it's a community site run by the community. Anyone who thinks Stardock pulls the strings around here is mistaken. The ones who run this site on a day to day basis are community volunteers. Volunteers who spend their valuable time contributing to the skinning community.

I've never understood why people think removing their themes or skins or wallpapers from WinCustomize harms Stardock. It does not. Not even in the slightest.  It certainly harms WinCustomize of course sicne there is less good content. But that decision is between you guys amongst yourselves. 

Many artists seem to forget that this is a two way relationship. They are not honoring us with their presence by submitting wallpapers or whatever to WinCustomize. In exchange for contributing their work to the site, they have a reliable place for their works to be.  This site is going on 3 years old and in that time not a single skin, theme, or icon has ever been lost due to a hardware crash, outage, database corruption, etc.

No other site puts their contributors in the spotlight like WinCustomize does. There is no "top wallpaper authors" list on other sites, for instance. There is no top skinners list on deviantART. deviantART is, in my opinion, the world's best art site. But WinCustomize is the world's best skin site. Wallpapers fall somewhere in between.

What aggravates me to no end is the double standard. Look, fellow artists, your'e not customers.  Someone said we're a service provider. Really? I wasn't aware that artists were paying us to maintain their work. I dont' recall payments for backing it up for them every week. Or to pay for the bandwidth to distribute it.

On sites like Download.com, it costs $150 now to get your file listed and they don't host it. If you want to host it, it's another $100 per month per file. That's the real world.  So let's cut the nonsense that we're a service provider and that artists are somehow customers of WinCustomize.com. It's a symbiotic relationship. Both parties get something out of their relationship.

If some artist feels we're doing a bad job, then by all means, they should find another site (deviantART, Deskmod, Skinbase are all 3 very good sites for instance) to submit their works to. But for crying out loud, don't make a drama out of it. 

I think the record speaks for itself. DEEDS, not words, are what matter in the real world. The reason why WinCustomize is the world's largest skin and theme site is because we do treat artists with respect. We value intellectual property and treat it with the dignity it deserves. We try to fairly and evenly promote the works of skin authors and themers both here and in WinCustomize magazine. We provide consistent, reliable availability to artists and their works and for users to access it. And we give complete control over that work to the artists.

The site itself is administered not by some corporation but by a growing group of community volunteers who are themselves artists. Jafo, Paxx, Treetog, Alexandrie, DavidK, Koasati, Mormegil, Boxxi, etc. are not just moderators, they are artists themselves who have contributed vasts amount of work, free of charge, to the community over a span of many years.

In short, let's try to keep things in perspective.

#123 by c242 - 7/27/2003 1:55:54 AM You will find out soon that DA can be a very rough place sometimes, too.

Been there long enough now to find it utterly stress and headache free. An awesome little supportive 'community'/cirlce that many of us have going. Which is wicked awesome. I treat people as I want to be treated, and have always gotten that in return. Any genre of art I care to choose from, treated like a human being rather than a nimwit. S'good enough for me.

#124 by Scribe Fuzzy Logic - 7/27/2003 2:16:11 AM Plus your work will be 'lost' amongst millions of other submissions, most of which will be crap.

And those that find my work amidst the crap are the ones that I thank early and often and respect and appreciate their support. And they keep coming back for more. And other's notice my name on 'their' page so they check out my stuff, and so on and so forth. It's amazing what can take place when people are treated with kindness, gratitude and respect.

#127 by Citizen I.R. Brainiac - 7/27/2003 6:54:53 AM Yes,please dont go Akasha.I enjoy seeing your work here and I cant get DA's site to load.The wall situation does need changing but we wont change it by leaving.No Rules has a very good idea for doing away with moderation,maybe we can convince them to consider it.Bad as I hate being rejected I dont want to see this site become another filled to the brim with every little scribble that someone wants to upload.I agree with you about Frogboys post tho,...that was pretty disheartening.If we stick around maybe we can change HIS mind on the subject.Stick around,..your way to talented to lose!

I.R. Thank you for such kind words. I really mean that. But for me personally staying or leaving, the leaving part has been actually decided for sometime now. I just kept hanging on to that last thread of hope that a miracle would happen around here. I've wanted to leave for a while, but at the advice of a friend and fellow artist who suggested I wait before I decide hastily, I did, and I returned back on line only to find the same crap still going on. Life is so precious and so short--I cant justly create stress and headache when I don't have to.

As for Brad, I cannot have a shred of dignity if I read what I did and remain here. That was the over the top thing for me. He said, quote, "Are we clear?" Indeed...we are very clear. There is no and I mean NO excuse for someone doing that, let alone from the founder. I"m sorry there just isn't. Change his mind? No thank you. It's not about walls, moderation or any of that anymore it's about behavior,tact,treatment and that I cannot stomach. Reality is, we've all either bought the subscription, and the product or some ofus have bought HIS product and created work and freely offered it to HIS site, where he charges a subscription fee for those who don't design to download. Well, I'm fed up with being made to feel as though I OWE this place for being blessed with the HONOR of having my work posted. Because bottome line is, if we did not buy his product, he'd lack the change in his pocket! If there were no skins and walls to download he couldn't charge for this subscription as there would be NOTHING to download, and rather than making people feel valuable we get treated like crap. NO THANK YOU!

If you walk into a restuarant you expect to be treated a certain way, as you are the paying customer! The same goes for a boutique or ANY RETAIL/SERVICE establishment. Because this is online, it is NOT exempt from that. We all at some point paid for SOMETHING here! And maybe we should 'pay' for a customer service/treatment seminar for certain people as well.

So, as Brad asked if we're clear...indeed we are. I hope the WC Gods become 'clear' too someday.

#126 by Jafo - 7/27/2003 3:17:48 AM Lady Akasha.....In reality, all submissions are appreciated, whether walls, complex skin suites, or simple tentative steps at one's first Beatnik skin.

Jafo I read your whole post, and thank you. You and Boxxi as I already noted before in MY experience have always been great. And I commend you for that. But you are not alone, the WC Gods there are several of them, sorry. In my time here I've seen two occassions where words displaying value of an artist have been genuinely displayed,first time was Boxxi and you in this thread, in the above noted quote. And I'm sure like myself others were appreciative when reading that. But you are one guy. Behavior of others over these months, DOES NOT fall into the same suit as you just displayed. But I thank you for it. And there are mods/admins here that have shown some disgusting behavior (not ONCE) that in the eyes of some, they can NEVER be viewed in a good light.
I appreciate your hard work that you give freely to this place, and again Boxxi who's always been kind. As for talking about it... I tried that once hon, sometime ago when I originally wanted to leave, I wrote an admin to to thank them for their time and tried to discuss the 'air' around here, and indeed they were kind to my problem at hand,replied to my situation but one the subject of the air around here came up.... no replies to the 'air' around here subject.

Lady Akasha : Then GO TO deviantART. Sheesh. You act like dA is somehow "the enemy". We like deviantART too. So go there. 

Like I've said before, nobody's perfect, but this site strives for values and qualities that represent an ideal.

While trawling through several magazines recently I came across a couple of pieces by one "Andy Hutchinson" on desktops and customising.
quote.."Without a doubt, the best place to get funky wallpapers is DeviantArt(www.deviantart.com/?tier=wallpaper).
There are over 30,000 wallpapers in the abstract section alone." unquote.
After extolling the joys of DeviantArt he moves to, and I quote,"customize.org(www.customize.org)is a safe bet.There's a much more vocal community here and while there are fewer wallpapers in the archive(a paltry 6,689)they are brutally rated by site contributors.
This certainly seperates the wheat from the chaff." unquote.
Further, quote,"They've been going through some tough times with server-load lately, but ThemeXP(www.themexp.org) still has some excellent wallpapers on offer. Deskmod(www.deskmod.com)also offers a nifty selection, as does Skinbase(www.skinbase.org).
One place to steer clear of is Wincustomise(www.wincustomize.com) - wallpapers here are moderated and yet the quality threshold is appallingly low. The library seems to be stuffed with endlessly bad Bryce renders." unquote.
In another issue he goes on to give Windowblinds a good kicking .... but leave that for another day.
I have no idea who this 'expert' is but it does indicate that some people do not like what they see here and more to the point, they go and say so in an internationally circulated magazine!
And I assure you, the quotes I have cited are verbatim!
So maybe the moderation here is not such a bad thing ........ and the people doing so are doing it for free.
Jafo will bust a gut over the 'endlessly bad Bryce renders'
Then again, it takes all kinds.

Too bad I didn't read the last thread before I clicked submit...or I would have been 'clear' before typing my post. Sorry.

You can't please all the people all the time, but some people you can never please...

If you walk into a restuarant you expect to be treated a certain way, as you are the paying customer! The same goes for a boutique or ANY RETAIL/SERVICE establishment. Because this is online, it is NOT exempt from that. We all at some point paid for SOMETHING here! And maybe we should 'pay' for a customer service/treatment seminar for certain people as well.

maybe i am dumb but i don't see the connection. you go to a website and upload artwork to it. you are using the bandwidth and disk space of that website to do it. it charges you nothing to do it. but you object that the people who run the website want to have a say about which artwork they host? and to top that off you see your connection to the website as the same as a customer at a restraunt? excuse me? so is jafo your waiter? and frogboy your maitre'd in this fantasy? where is the part where you tip the waiter or pay for your food?

what they do? cancel a musical you were invovled in and you want to try out yoru drama skills here? get over yourself.

*Bangs head on desk* This is NOT about having work rejected.

Wheres my food I have been here for 15 damn minutes already.There will be no tip and if this treatment continues,we shall leave.

*Bangs head on desk* This is NOT about having work rejected.

You're right. It's not. It's about egos. Or more specifically, the egos of a few self-appointed elites who have spent the past few days telling us how poorly our site is run while advertising for other sites without recognizing how tacky that is.

I like deviantARt, I go there every day to get cool art, submit art, write in my journal, read the forums, etc. So you going there isn't a personal blow or anything.

And you are right, they don't moderate. That's why I know that today's most popular deviation is this: 

http://www.deviantart.com/view/2527405

And I must confess, such a submission would have been moderated here. I'm okay with that though.

White_Moth is only passing through while steadily winging his way towards the Light, perhaps even a little faster now.




[Message Edited]

http://www.deviantart.com/view/2527405

***SOB*** Someone using my ISP got me banned and I never can see! I tried writing to them twice! It has been a long, long time. I never even posted anything there.

One Napalmed Dove recognizes the scorched earth policies and heads for light with a the moth

goodmorphing....fear not, you ain't missing much with that link.....but contact jark...he's a 'good guy'[tm]...and explain your problem with devart site access....I'm sure he'll help you...

wombat...yes, I subscribe to only one comp mag....PC Answers and primarily because it has that Extreme Customizing section......AND I read that edition where he slammed Wincustomize's walls.....however to be fair [], at about that time....two or three successive issues...he waged a one-man vendetta against us [and Stardock]....clearly a personal gripe and genuinely of gutter-press standard trash editorial....sufficient to wipe any credibility he may have thought he had as a knowledgeable expert in the world of skinning and GUI customizing.

These days I take passing interest in noting an apparent revision of his stance, suggesting his superiors have requested he refrain from editorialising and slandering various entities.

PC Answers came close to receiving a very large piece of my mind....but I decided [as many agree] that I couldn't spare it...

The author of those articles is "Dokt" who is exiled from this site and is on probation on Neowin for the same reasons.

We plan to talk to PC Answers about his crusade against us.

i've been reading this whole thread or post, i just dont get it, with all the creative minds here, y cant we come up with some positive solutions and stop throwing crab @ each other, b4n.

denny