Personally I wish those who are disgruntled would just leave.

It takes a certain kind of arrogance to think that ones value is so great that they think their presence is so important that they stick around long after having publicly acclaimed other sites while denigrating this one.

I have no idea who Lady Ashaka is nor do I really care. I just wish she and her ilk would find somewhere else to perform their dramas.

Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Strangely, DavidK and I just quoted that very Python yesterday...

I think it was Nuvem that managed the record....around 10,000 downloads in 24 hours....a long time ago when the site was considerably smaller.

Just call it a 'perspective' thing...

Of course, Helder is a genuine master of the digital medium....and just about any other medium as well, as evidenced by his works at Devart...

I agree, in what way have they been treated unfairly by moderators or admins here?

In what way has any artist or skinner been treated unfarily by moderators or skinners?

The problem is, when someone removes their works here, they are removing their own clout.  Anyone who wants to really make changes is better served by working with the community rather than trying to dictate to it.

A person's works are their resume. Like it or not, WinCustomize is the big leagues. It is the place where more people come to download this stuff than anywhere else on the Internet. So when someoene takes their ball and goes home, it removes any influence they have. I have no idea whether Green Armani or whoever Ap67 is a good skinner or not. I have no way to tell whether they are a valued contributor or just a blow hard because their stuff isn't on the site anymore.

As for Adni, he is still here and is regularly in the top 10 most popular authors. When Adni speaks, people listen preciesely because his work does a lot of the speaking for them.

In what way was Adni "berated"? The new system doesn't coutn anonymous downloads for use in the top authors and skins selections anymore hence making it harder to tamper with. This was done for authors I might point out.

And how is this treating artist "unfairly"? Because I personally don't care about the wallpaper section? And? I also don't care about the Beatnik section either. Does that mean that Beatnik skin authors are treated "unfairly"? Or what about Kewlpad? I don't care about that section either. Are they getting treated "unfairly" too?

What I don't like is the elitist attitude taken by a small number of artists who excplicitly have taken on the attitude that their works are doing us a favor rather than it being a mutually beneficial arrangement.

I personally resent the attitude that you and Ap67 and lady A have taken that we are somehow basically your servants to provide you with a "service".

That's the attitude that I don't like. That's what annoys us. That we're just your slaves. Because you're not paying us (actually at least in your case you took out a subscription but Ap67 and Lady A certainly didn't). But labor is expected in return. In short, people like Lady A and Ap67 see us as their slaves apparently.  And that attitude is something I and others find quite rankling.

And it's not enough for someone to just go somewhere else, they feel the need to make a post about it so that they can demonstrate to the world their self-righteousness. For they seem to truly and honestly believe that we are their slaves and any attitude that deviates from that they find too "uppity" for their tastes.

Let's be real clear here: We allow artists to freely submit their works here. We provide the storage and the bandwidth so that their work is exposed to millions of people. And we do this freely. We ask for nothing in return.

Yet somehow, some of you believe that we are getting something in addition out of this. That somehow we make a profit off yoru wallpapers.

What, afterall, was the context of my comment "I could care less if someone submts a wallpaper"? It was in the context of certain people acting like this site would be nothing or greatly diminished without wallpapers.

So frankly, I and many others have no problem seeing people with an elitist attitude go off somewhere else.

Here, people are judged based on their actual deeds. Their contributions to the community over a long period of time. And we don't look at the community as some sort of clique of elite users. We recognize that the community is made up by thousands of peopel all contributing in in different ways. We recognize that the community extends far beyond this particular website as well. If Kol or Chaninja were posting here they would be accorded great respect despite not having much or any things here -- because of their contributions to the community.

But those are people who have provided real contributions to the community. Not some relatively newcomers who popped in over the last several months thinking they are god's gift to the world.

Maybe that's not the perception you and Ap67 and Lady A want to give off. But that certainly is the perception you are giving in your writings and deeds.