At this point nothing is set in stone. We are still throwing around different ideas trying to come up with the best solution. The idea is to try and make a system that is fairly seamless to the users while at the same time limiting download bandwidth for those who abuse it and not taking away from those who are casual downloaders or new to the site.

And when we do start to implement such a system I'm sure that we will perform many tweaks in order to get the system working well. And another scenerio is to only use this system during peak hours. So there are many options we can do, its just a matter of finding the perfect blend.

Also, to address Gormon's question on WinCustomize generating OD sales....Though its pratically impossible to tell for sure how many sales WinCust may have generated for Object Desktop I can say that from the start of WinCustomize.com that sales have been very steady.

I'm sure that WinCustomize has helped generated OD sales but we are not seeing any significant change in figures to show it.

So even with OD sales I would say that WinCustomize.com still is not a profitable entity.

to go back to an earlier figure, how accurate are the numbers "5% of users are taking 80% of bandwidth"?

i think there are two "views" here, one that is thinking lots of "average" users will be impacted, and one that thinks only a very small number of "very heavy" users will be impacted.

or to put it another way, what percentage of users is the initial cap expected to effect? if stopping 6 users (silly extream i hope) solves the bandwidth problem, then this sounds radically different from statements that imply 50% of users will be effected.

/me decides to press the "dont press that" button

what are the definitions of "community" that are being used here?

re: paxx having a conscience case here...

personally i am not entirely sure how to define this word, but i am going to have a go.

it seems that there are basically 3 "groups" of people here:
a) people who post their work, and are active
people who dont post work, but are active in the message boards, ect
c) people who look and download only

/me puts on hard hat and ducks, just in case

when people say "community", which groups are they including?

i am currently in group b, but would like to consider myself part of the community.

it is sensible that most (to all) people in groups a and b started in group c, but i suspect that most people in group c never progress on to groups b and a. if there are 60,000 unique visitors a day (a figure that i remember from somewhere, probably wrong ), what percentage of them are in group b? there dont seem to be many regulars on the message board, and a fair percentage of them seem to be in group a (an unfounded impression).

i seem to recall that in ancient greece to be a citizen (a member of that community) you were expected to make certain contributions. not an ideal parallel case, but still a parralel case / definition.

check this out:
1) If having a skin site were a good marketing vehicle, then every application would have its own skin site.
2) Even if SD didn't point to other skin sites, it could simply have a database of say 35 "good" skins/themes that users could ...

Can you say "Music Match Jukebox"?

It is our belief that roughly 5% of the userbase uses a disproportional amount of the bandwidth. Out of this 5%, 3/4ths of them have not purchased anything.

A person who has downloaded 50 megs of stuff from WinCustomize needs to contribute in some way. It's as simple as that. It pains me to see people use the term "community" meaning "Let's spend someone else's money!"

So how can someone contribute?

1) As mentioned, anyone with Apprentice access or higher is going to be immunse to any system we create. Those are people we've identified as people who are contributing to the site in other ways. I'm not even sure anyone posting in this discusison has less than apprentice access.

2) They could buy a shirt, a CD, or hat.

3) They could register a Stardock product.

Those are the 3 main ways of contributing.

So who would be affected by any such bandwidth limitation system?

The user who doesn't upload skins, doesn't interact on the message board, hasn't registered any software, hasn't bought a shirt or CD, and has downloaded tons of megs of stuff. Where I'm from, that user would be called a leech.

I'm not sure how someone could argue that we should somehow pay for those people. We could start a leech fund where those who are for "free everything" can contribute to the fund to help pay for the bandwidth used by the leech base.

I'm not sure I understand Gorman's argument about how this site helps Object Desktop. It's irrelevant. A user would have plenty of opportunity to decide whether to purchase OD or not before any bandwidth limit would hit them.

Here's a clue: If anonymous leecher has downloaded 300 megs of DesktopX themes and WindowBlinds skins but hasn't registered -- they ain't gonna register it. We don't want those kinds of users here, they are costing us many thousands of dollars per month.

Why should we all in this discussion who have contributed to this site in some form have to deal with the site being slow as a pig so that anonymous leeches can come on with their auto downloaders and leech 100+ megs of stuff in a sitting?

Well, I'm going to drop out of this thread for now. My points are entirely being missed, and I don't have time to refresh this thread every 5 mins .

-gorman

I've read what you've written, Gorman.

With regards to "charging for content". WC isn't looking to be a profitable business, it is hoping that it doesn't keep costing thousands of dollars more per month than it brings in. SOMEONE has to pay for the bandwidth.

Stardock is willing to pay for (as Tandis put it) X amount of the bandwidth. Where X is greater than the bandwidth skinz.org used at its height. Right now though, the site uses X + Y bandwidth.

We have to get back to using just X bandwidth. This means limiting the downloads.

The 5 megabyte limit is mentioned as one example of many. Another example given by Paxx would be to limit the # of skins per month. Another would be to limit the # of megs per month. Is that limit 5 megs or 50 megs? That will depend on what it takes to get bandwidth under control. Maybe the limitation will only be on during peek hours (10am to 4pm EST). We haven't decided yet.

And NO, I can say for nearly certain that sales of OD or WB generated as a result of this site do not justify this site's existence. Not even by a long shot.

In my view and the view of everyone here I've spoken to it's simple: If you're downloading tons of stuff from here, you need to contribute in SOME way. We're not warez FTP site running on a college dorm room connection. And Again, for the 50th time, anyone who has apprentice access or higher would be immune. So most skin authors and message board contributors are not even going to be affected anyway. And that's because those people have contributed in other ways (postings, skins, etc.).

This shouldn't even be a debate. Someone hasto pay for the bandwidth. Stardock is willing to pay for that bandwidth up to a point. But if we want the website to be even remotely useable, we have to limit the megabytage being downloaded.

Frogboy: I like your idea of a leech fund. Certainly anyone preaching that the site should have free, unlimited bandwidth for everyone would be more than willing to contribute to this fund. Otherwise, they'd be a hypocrite, and I'm sure that can't be true.

Ok folks, to those of you who read the blabber that I posted earlier: FORGET IT!
I just had a long talk with one of the admins. He explained the whole thing to me nice and quitely.
And I'm not late to admit: I WAS WRONG!

My apologize goes to the team at WinCustomize and all it's users/supporters!

/me slaps himself with a HUGE trout!

Sorry!

I agree with everything Dangeruss said.
(never thought I would say that!)

Well, the fact that Apprentices are excluded is excellent news. It basically means that if you can't support the site financially, you can support it with your participation and involvement, which is good.
I just think the term "leech" is a little exagerated. I don't feel like a leech because I visit CNN's site regularely even if I don't pay to have CNN from my cable provider, or MSNBC, or whatever. I don't feel like a leech because I download programs from Download.com all the time, mostly freewares. I agree a bandwidth solution has to be found, but I think this can be done without resorting to calling anybody any name.
And just add again on my 2 cents. I still vote for a limit on the number of skins downloaded instead of bandwidth. The user is downloading skins, he is not downloading Megs.

But here is a question that hasn't been raised before: how do you know for sure that the 5% of huge downloaders does NOT come from registered, paying apprentices and above? Is it just a guess or you can verify thins someway with the logs? Personnaly, I tend to think that most of the downloads come from people who are very familiar with skinning, not from newbies. I think that if you really want to solve the bandwidth issue permanently you are going to have to limit the downloads for everybody, maybe based on the model I proposed earlier.

paxx, surely most people well familiar with skining would already have most of the skinz for the apps they currently use? if so, then the only skin downloading they would be doing would be new stuff as it is posted, and possibly the full set of skinz when they try out a new app.

as for download.com, i seem to recall figures suggesting that wincustomize is heading for the same sort of bandwidth requirements as download.com, but without the death by adverts.

i see your point, but i am not sure how it applies.

as for names, if all that bandwidth cost was comming out of my wallet i would be inclined towards using the occasional rude word / name myself

We know because we track how many megabytes each account has used. We took a statistical sampling of the user base and looked at how much they downloaded and looked at how many of them were in the customer database.

How do you become an apprentice?

jebland: being an active member on the web site, such as making skins and themes, being active and helpful on the messageboard when people ask questions and stuff, leave comments and advices on other people's skins, etc.
They key word is involvement and contribution.

Paxx, Thank you for your reply. I love computer art, but I am graphically challenged...I have done 2 Talisman ports to Windowblinds, but I don't think they are good enough to post(even if the original author gave his permission). I am an OD subscriber (since 6/2000) and I do a lot of downloads, but I don't have much to contribute to this site except to say that I enjoy it.

Well, still just keep posting on the board, contribute, get your name known and you'll climb the ladder.

Listen to paxx...

I was curious as to, how the latest growth and recognition, will affect this site. Being mentioned on The Reg, and other well known sites, draws alot of traffic...Me thinks??
Building product ties to the new XP Release, and MS, will greatly increase the traffic, if not in sales, then exposure and product trials and general curiosity. Is this not being taken into account, by SD proper as an operational exspense? I view this site as a direct extention (sp?) of SD, and do not even try to differentiate the two anymore. When the site launched, I purchased OD, to lend support, and try to post as often as possible, comments and critisizms, and what not. I think with the States entering, a recession, things are going to get tight, for alot of folks, and we can only do what we can. I guess we'll have to see how things line up, for WC and SD and hope a mutually agreeable descision can be met.

Copy-paste for D'mer (who can't post here, hope I picked the right thread):

------------------------

here's my two cents:

1.) Renato and Johanne charging people to download their skins is totally acceptable to me. and in my opinion it is well worth the $8. Any site charging users to download others work with no fee paid from the site to the artists would be wrong. I am not saying this is what any site is doing. Just showing the difference between the two things being mentioned.

2.) OK, WC is claimed to be a separate entity from StarDock. WC is having problems paying for it's bandwidth. yes, something needs to be done to ensure the site stays online. From what I have pieced together from posts at WC there are several options they are considering for implementation. The option getting the most coverage is to limit amounts of downloads/megs to particular types of users. The user types that will be exempt from limits will be split up by people who have "contributed to the site". examples of "contributing to the site" that have been mentioned are commenting on skins/message board, uploading skins, helping users and finally, purchasing Stardock products. This last "user type" is the one causing the hullabaloo. let's break it down:

A.) OK, if the site is a separate entity from SD, then how is supporting SD supposed to support WC? The main reason given for including this "user type" is that if someone is downloading 100+ MG of WB skins even though they have not paid for the app, they are obviously just a leech. OK, I can accept that. But what about people who are downloading 100+ MG of HVD themes and have a registered copy of HVD? Or any other non-SD app such as the Box series of programs? If the site is going to say. "Your access to this site will be limited unless you support the developers of the applications that are featured on this site," then it needs to include all apps on the site, not just the apps from one company. And what about LS and other freeware apps? If a user goes onto WC and downloads 20 LS themes in one day (approximating 25-50 megs) can they be considered a leech for not paying for a freeware app?

B.) The second problem that people see with this is that it comes close to being interpreted as "you have to purchase something to get full access to the site; hence someone other than the artists are profiting from their work."

a.)In my opinion point B is not an issue due to the fact that they are not forcing you to purchase the software; because they give users other options to follow that will lead them to the same access as if they were to purchase ODN. Point A, I believe should be considered as a reason to not implement the "purchase SD products for full WC access."

Will someone please be kind enough to copy/paste this on the WC board for me since I still cannot log in to the site?
Thanks,
Deven Stephens
D`mer

And there's more where that came from:

--------------------------------

OK, I messed up big time in my post. I could have sworn I saw HVD and Box series apps sections on the site yesterday while I was looking at all this. I never go there since after all this time, I have still not been able to get my login problem solved. So I'm really not very familiar with the site content. but oh well. my points are still valid since they do have NS and LS.

Craeonics could you copy paste this there as well, please?

Thanks,
Deven Stephens
D`mer

D'mer, could you email alexandrie or T-man (pford@stardock.com)? I'm sure they can straighten out your account.

As for the issues you raise, ultimately doesn't it really boil down to a simple "Who is going to pay for the bandwidth?"

The nuts and bolts go something like this:

Stardock reserved a server and X megabits of bandwidth for WinCustomize.

WinCustomize needs a lot more than X megabits of bandwidth and so in June Stardock provided an additional Y megabits of bandwidth.

But that situation cannot go on indefinitely. Stardock is willing to pay for X megabits of bandwidth. But it's not willing to pay for the additional Y megabits indefinitely.

So as a website, we have to either find a way to pay for that extra Y bandwidth or try to lower our overall bandwidth useage so that the site runs fine with X megabits.

Stardock's bean counters have long concluded that the site is "worth it" if the site uses X megabits of bandwidth. That with X megabits, the fact that this site is the world's leading skin website (in terms of where people actually download skins, icons, etc.) it generates enough sales and "good will" in the skin community for it to be worth it. But the bean counters say that the additional Y megabites the site is using is total waste. That the money being spent on that extra Y bandwidth is money being thrown away.

We knew this back in June. So in June we did two things:

1) We did a lot of analysis on where the bandwidth is going.

2) We looked at ways we could generate additional revenue to help pay for the site.

We discovered that it's really a tiny minority of users using up a huge chunk of the bandwidth.

Each day, this site gets 55,000 downloads of skins, icons, themes, and wallpapers. Each day the site gets around 20,000 unique visitors.

But it's really only around 1,000 of those unique visitors that are using significant amounts of bandwidth. The other 19,000 come on, download a skin or theme, maybe comment a little, browse a bit and leave. But those 1,000 heavy duty users come on with a cable modem and a download queueer and download many dozens of skins and themes per day.

Surely you guys have looked at a skin section and seen some horrible wallpaper or skin or theme and seen that it still got 40 downloads in a given day. Haven't you ever said to yourselves "Why in the heck would anyone download that crap?!" That's because some people visit daily and literaly download everything new on the site.

It is our belief that by targeting the users who use massive bandwidth without giving anythign back to either WinCustomize or the guys paying the bill (Stardock) that we can get the bandwidth use down to that X megabits per month.

I think it may be accurate to say that presently (until DA upgrades anyway), WinCustomize uses more bandwidth per day than all the other skin sites do combined. I could be wrong on that and it's not a fact to be proud of because look at how active DA's message boards and news boards are and how dead ours are by comparison. Heck, LotsOfSkins message boards and user activity is nearly as high as it is here and it's being run on Chaz's parent's cable modem. So it only makes things worse that many people, when they want to interact, will go to DA or other sites but when they want to leech hundreds of megabytes of stuff they come over here.

As a person, as a user, as a skin author and part of the skinning community for a very long time, that bothers me a lot. It bothers everyone associated with the site. It doesn't bother the bean counters (they just want the bandwidth back to X megabits) but it does illustrate the bigger picture pretty well -- we need to get people who want to download fractional gigs of stuff from here to either buy the CD, become activity in the community, register a product or go away.

Phew!

For most sites, whoever pays the bills should be aloud to make the rules. However in a site such as WinCusto there are many people who contribute to the site yet they don’t “pay the bills”. Whether it is through buying products/software, or posting quite a bit of their own work on the site (all classes above citizen), They should not have a limit, or at least should have a fairly large limit.

If I understand correctly, this is exactly what’s going to happen. If that is true I see no reason for anyone to be upset. It’s the “evil” people who seek not to give, but only to receive tons of skins who are being restricted, and rightfully so. Who knows, some of those people might decide then to contribute to the site (or buy a product) so they have unrestricted access. In fact, nearly everyone on this message board (as Brad stated) are in fact being _rewarded_ with a faster site if this all goes through. Forgive me if someone has already posted what I’ve said, I just don’t have time to read everything.

Did I follow this rather long thread correctly?

btw, I'm glas u decided to stay, snowman

MooShoo....yes you followed it admirably...
...except it is 'allowed', not 'aloud'....