WOM...I'd prefer they all just take it all out on me, personally, and privately, and stop trying to inflate its importance and their self worth for no common good....

Moderators in particular are tired of the constant accusation/insinuation of prejudice and/or political favour.

The reality is that a person's wall is more likely to be downloaded here than on any other site, so every rejection is seen as a loss of potential 'fame and fortune'....in other words, it's not about 'community' it is about exposure...about 'self'.

Though it pissed me off at the time, considering all the time, care and attention on a personal, one-on-one level that I spent with him, JamMeister's departure from Wincustomize, migrating to Devart was done with maturity and class....calmly and quietly...and I must respect him for that.  People leave....mature people leave with maturity.

I'm sure he's happy over there...as am I.  I'm happy retaining my connections to all the skinning sites, though some have been genuinely objectionable at times [on far more profound levels than wall moderation].

Reality sets in and acceptance of the varying idiosyncracies of each skinning 'community', and where we all 'fit in' within the grand scheme of things...

What is boils down to is simple "grass is greener on the other side of the fence."

A lot of us who have been around a long while DO know all the other sites quite well. I like deviantART a lot and I am good friends with Jark. But any claim that their message boards are nicer in tone than this one or any other typical on-line forum is just plain ignorance at work.

I don't knwo if this is the case with you but when an author deletes all their work and leaves over the slightest provocation, it is, in my book, being a "crybaby".

I know how long it takes to submit work to any given site. Deleting it all over vague views of "lack of fairness" to "artists" is infantile in my opinion.

To many old timers especially, it comes across as pampered whiners complaining about anythign they can find. For instance, people take for granted that they have the power to remove their own work (I'm not sure you can even do this on all the sites even today). 

There was one site in which the admins of the site were literally name-calling top authors and contributors on a repeated basis. We're not talking vague stuff, we're talking profantiy ridden attacks at people who had contributed to that site for years.

So from our vantage point, for someone to "take their ball" and go home because of some nebulous concern over "respect for artists" (which seems like a hollow concern on a site like this one where artists are constantly highlighted and celebrated) seems pretty childish.

It can be hard to respond to a thread like this because so many different people post their bit to it. I was responding (not even sure if it's this thread or one of the other ones) to 3 other people before Apocalypse and LadyA showed up.

The other posts were concerning ratings though they quickly degenerated into accusations of admin abuse, elitism and site politics. None of the accusations made any sense to me. I'm willing to accept that I might be biased or I might not take things as personaly as others might. But I still haven't seen a case of admins treating people unfairly and definitely not the horrors we were accused of by some other posts.

I feel we're more than willing to discuss site issues and listen to legitimate concerns. I think those of you making claims of abuse might be confusing message board rhetoric for site policy and member posts with admin posts.

We're willing to discuss these things but bringing the drama to such a level as leaving the site to protest severe abuse, without any examples other than vague references and generalities, puts the discussion at a real disadvantage.

In what way was your account "removed"? If your account was removed you wouldn't be able to post.

Nobody removed your account GA. This is a perfect example of a situation that could be solved by contacting an admin but instead becomes an accusation on the message board.

I just tried to look you up but the user database is only returning errors. I'll keep trying and let you know what I find when it finally works.

get a grip... nobody removed you...

GA: If you were removed from teh site you wouldn't be posting.

Posting false accusations is a pretty disgusting thing. Simply because you mistyped yoru email address or whatever doesn't make us at fault.

You are quickly moving into the "despicable" category.