davad70 davad70

I'm pissed

▼

I'm pissed

from WinCustomize Forums
Ok, there are quite a few issues that have been on my mind for a while, and some newer ones that really have me irritated.

1. Why is it that lately this site seems to be disregarding the wishes of skinners more and more often? The majority of skinners, as well as many of the wizops/admins who are actually skinners, want to scrap the rating system. Do the wishes and requests of skinners matter to the people who run this site on this issue? Apparently not. I’ve also not come across a skinner who thinks that the libraries should be sorted by the date they were updated, but now they are. It was decided a ways back that the fair thing to do was to sort the libraries by create date. Now with the launch of WC2, we are back to sorting libraries by date of update. Why? Because Frogboy wants it that way. It doesn’t matter that most of the skinners want it another way. Frogboy wants…Frogboy gets.

2. We hear quite a lot about the heavy burden that Wincustomize has placed upon Stardock. We also hear quite a bit about how popular WC has become in the past year. I’m curious as to why this site has become so popular. Personally I think it’s popularity is mostly due to the fact that people can get skins from some of the best skinners in the world here, who give their skins freely. We also hear a lot about the fact that Wc needs to be able to support itself, and not be funded directly by Stardock. Yet it seems that Stardock will always be in control of this site and that it will never truly be a “community site”. So I ask, why shouldn’t Stardock pay for this site? It seems to me that this site is the greatest marketing tool that Stardock has. I would think that people buy Windowblinds and the other programs to be able to use the skins that they see on this site. So with the advent of the subscriber program what benefits do skinners get? Ummm, we get unlimited downloads just as we always have before. BTW, that’s the same benefit that OD (which I am also) users get also. So, the fact that I’ve submitted 15 skins since the first of the year gets me nothing. My contribution is apparently not better than Joe Blow downloader who paid $20. Joe Blow gets the skin browser, “exclusive suites”, etc. I get nothing but the privilege of downloading my skins as much as I want. J

3. Now to the issue that’s really got me pissed off to the degree that I finally am fed up. Anyone remember the GUI Olympics? Anyone remember the prizes that Frogboy stated that Honorable mention winners would receive? Let me refresh your memory. Anyone who picked up an honorable mention will get a free copy of Object Desktop (or a renewal), an Object Desktop sweat shirt, a T-shirt, a LWNinja T-shirt and some other goodies. Those who won multiple honorable mentions will be given additional Object Desktop renewals. posted by Lord Frogboy - 4/2/2002 1:07:58 PM. Well, I won an honorable mention and didn’t receive anything until I contacted them. They just forgot about me. That was no big deal to me, sometimes thing like that happen. So I got an email saying that my OD subscription was renewed and it was. Great right? Well, I waited about 2 weeks to get the other goodies that I had coming. Still didn’t get them, so I write back to ask when I would be getting all the other stuff. Basically I was told that they changed their mind and were not sending out any of the actual physical prizes. I then contacted some other skinners who won honorable mentions to see if they got their prizes. They all got their OD renewals, but no one got any of the other prizes for honorable mention prizes. After emailing Brad back he tells me that I should have gotten those other prizes (yes, I know that), and that he’ll check with the person who sent out the prizes to see whats going on. This is the same person that told me that there weren’t going to be any physical prizes given out for honorable mentions. Sounds very odd to me.

So….am I overreacting, or do I have a right to be a tad pissed?
44,973 views 169 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I have never seen Frogboy act so childish as I have in this thread. I have often defended his words and thoughts on other boards. I hope this issue gets resolved and that folks don't get too heated over it. Sometimes it's best to wait before responding out of anger or frustration.
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I apologise. Sometimes the imp in me gets to say too much. But removing SABERTOOTH from the newest list does nothing but sadden me for many reasons...
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Great, now I'm "childish".

Fine, I'm done with this thread.

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Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I said "act so childish" Brad.
Reply #30 from WinCustomize Forums Top
That was my observation based on some of the statements you were making - i.e.
"And just to demonstrate clearly that the GUI Olympics is not a marketing ploy, to that I say, fine, screw it. No more GUI Olympics. Forget the summer GUI Olympics. Because it was 90% an act of good will towards "the community" and all I've gotten is personal attacks and grief from it. So screw it."
Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top
BTW - I have been an avid supporter of first the OBDN and more recently just Windowblinds. I participated through voting during part of the GUI Olympics. I support this site and come here most frequently because it is, in my opinion, the best place for what I am looking for. I am not bashing you, Brad, or anybody else here. I just think that there are a few problems that need to be worked out. Tempers flare and words fly, sometimes too quickly.
Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top
ODNT
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Taking my skins off the newest list is trite to say the least, and paramont to hitting someone that can't hit back. WinCustomize has always been my prefered site since its inception, but after your actions tonight, not your words, but your acts, perhaps what davad70 says is true. Why don't you go a step further and remove all of my skins entirely?
Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Sigh okay, one last time just to reach a conclusion on this stuff:

Yes, I came up with the GUI Olympics. But since its inception I have been the target of an immense amount of grief in the form of personal attacks and behavior targeted at me or Stardock that I can't term as anything but near psychosis. I had Shoggot calling me "Evil". I had to deal with a "Consortium" that wanted to change the rules after the fact so that the skin sites (the ones who would receive half the money) would have almost total control over the distribution. I had skinners emailing things that you hopefully can't imagine. I had contestants screaming bloody murder about all sorts of minute details that simply couldn't have been forseen. And on top of that, I've had people say that what should be an obvious act of good will towards "The community" was some sort of elaborate marketing scam.

Now add to that the grief on the apparent fact that some t-shirts and other items weren't sent out (and apparently CR decided not to send them out which I'll have to look into) is turned into some sort of we don't care about skinners allegation and the net result is this: It's not any fun anymore. I did the GUI Olympics in my spare time. I don't have a lot of that. I have 2 small children and a wife and I spent a ridiculous amount of free time organizing and working on the GUI Olympics. Heck, that Consortium/Shoggot nonsense ate up literally a week of my life. It's not worth it. It's not worth doing if all one gets is grief. All I've seen are complaints and allegations. It gets tiresome having non-business people making arguments that the GUI Olympics was some sort of marketing scam.

At the end of the day, one has to ask, is it worth it? No. It's not. This "community" is full of people with big ideas and grand plans but lack the will to actually put forth those plans into concrete action. And when someone else does, they are usually the first people not to help but to attack it snipe at it (no one in this thread matches that description).

This thread is a good thing because it really reminds me that doing things like the GUI Olympics just aren't a good idea. There are just too many headaches. Businesses need to behave like businesses. The GUI Olympics was not a business venture, it was essentially a well organized altruistic hobbiest activity by a corporation. Corporations can't have hobbies. People generally cannot picture corporations doing something strictly because it's nice or fun or good. So they invent business reasons why the corporation do it.

It was a mistake for Stardock to do an altruistic thing like the GUI Olympics because people cannot accept altruism from corporations. Therefore, the reasonable course is that such contests should be done by volunteers. Or if the contest is going to be organized by a corporation it has to be done in a way that directly beneficial to the corporation (i.e. where it generates greater revenue than it costs). And while non-business people think that there are just millions and millions of dollars pouring into software developers, the fact is, the GUI Olympics was an expensive altruistic act that required a considerable amount of volunteer effort by people at Stardock (notably me and Pat).

I am no longer willing to volunteer for such a thing because of the grief involved. And Stardock should not be doing altruistic things because usres cannot accept altruism from companies. This isn't "childish". It may seem that way to those who may take things like the GUI Olympics for granted. An act that can be described as "cutting your nose to spite ones face" is a childish act. Not doing something that causes more grief than benefit is not childish, it's just plain sanity.

If someone else wants to do some contest at some other domain, I'll happily support them. I just don't want to be involved. I hope that puts things into perspective.

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Reply #35 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Mark: I have no idea what you are talking about.

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Reply #36 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Frogboy - no good deed goes unpunished.
Reply #37 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Brad,
For the record - I am not/have not been bashing the GUI Olympics. I thought it went off great given all of the issues that you mentioned above. I do pay attention to what is going on in the community and feel for the grief that you have put up with on several fronts. Having said that - I was only referring to the way that you postured yourself when responding to this thread. Volunteer or don't volunteer in another GUI Olympics. The choice is yours and yours alone I suppose. I appreciate all of the hard work you do.
Reply #38 from WinCustomize Forums Top
please guys this kind of things can be solved with emails
Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I understand what you are saying and where you're coming from. Hopefully my previous response clarifies where I am coming from.
Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top
and here i was hoping for a hippy-style thread about excessive drinking...

Reply #41 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm tired so this will be on a kinder, gentler note.

I know that Brad is a skinner. I also know that he's done a lot for the skinning community. In the opinion of many, more so than anyone else.

I know all this because although I only started making skins recently, I've been around the "scene" for quite a while. My user ID here is 188 out of a possible.....300,001? I was also around before the demise of skinz and before custo fell to the dark side.

I've helped people on the newsgroups. On an almost daily basis I answer newbie questions on this message board. I've praised Windowblinds and Stardock on message boards at DA, LOS, skinz, custo, neowin, themexp, and many more. I've also defended Brad on most of those message boards. I say all this to demonstrate that I have no personal axe to grind against him or his company.

I was also a staunch supporter and defender of the GUI Olympics. I know that Brad, T-Man, and others put many hours of work into the contest that they didn't have to. I know that the contest meant a great deal to you Brad, and that you could have spent that time doing other things. Afterall, you're a man with many responsibilities both personal and professional. You could have spent that time with your wife, your kids or your pets. But you didn't because it meant a lot to you right? Maybe you don't realize it, but I have a lot of the same responsibilities as you. I run a business, I have kids, I have a woman that I love, and I have pets (no frogs though) I could have spent the time that I did making the skins I did on any of those things, but I didn't. Why didn't I? Because it was fun and because it was important to me. Because this contest was so important to you, I wrongfully assumed that you would ensure that the promises you made would be kept.

The other issues I raised are important to me also. The issues of ratings and updated skins have been debated time and time again. Every time it comes up a majority of the skinners agree that they think these things should be changed.

Yes, there are ratings at most of the sites that you listed, but there is a fundamental difference in ratings here and at other sites. Here, a poor rating can effectively make your skin invisible to the majority of the users.
It's not very important to me that I get high ratings, but it is important to me that people get to see my work. Call me crazy of you will, but it's important to me. It's important enough to me that it pisses me off when migellito comes into a thread about ratings and says..."i guess i'm curious why some have the impression that people are giving undeservedly low ratings. are there some specific examples? and how do you know?" I hear that and I think....what planet did this guy step off of? An admin has no clue that this sort of thing happens? So we give him the examples that he asked for and then the thread just dies a slow death like they always do when they're about ratings. Now THAT'S showing skinners that you care.

So basically this whole thing boils down to the fact that I care....about people keeping their promises, that I care that people get to see my work, that I care about other skinner's feelings, and that I care about this site in general.

I told you to call me crazy if you like.
Reply #42 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I just read this entire thread. Frankly I'm amazed.

The GUI Olympics: I don't remember it saying that someone that got an honorable mention would get ALL the prizes. I thought there would be an OD subscription, or a shirt etc. The year of OD was by far the most valuable and that's the one they decided to give out. I got one and I was grateful. Never occurred to me I should get anything else. I was real grateful for the $50 I won too and I was extremely happy to know that Chaz also got $50 for my effort. The only thing about the contest that wasn't fun and I wasn't grateful for was the complaining and posturing that was so rampant before the contest got started. The consortium and Shoggot thoroughly depressed me. I almost quit this community because of all that stuff, I was so disappointed in several people I used to respect. Not to mention, totally disgusted by some other people that I have never respected... I understand Brad's feelings about the contest completely, no one involved in organizing, running or paying for the contest deserved any of the shit that was thrown at them.

Updated skins: I disagree that Sputnik should not be in the top ten. It's been rebuilt with WinXP enhancements and it's there because that many people are downloading it. I downloaded it – I'm really happy it's been upgraded and obviously a lot of other people are too. We now have a checkbox on the skin updates to update the posting date. It's meant to be used only in a case where the skin is dramatically changed (such as adding the XP stuff). If you don't check that box the skin doesn't go to the front anymore. Seemed like a good solution to me... I don't see what more we could do...

Wincustomize: An unbelievable amount of work goes into this site. It costs a fortune to keep online. The volunteers that work here do so because they love this place and the people and they want to help. The admins that are involved in the coding work outrageous hours on making it better and keeping it updated. The $20 you can voluntarily spend to help with the expense should be because you want Wincustomize to stay around. The browser and other stuff is a nice bonus for your help. Why is this confusing? Why does it seem devious to some of you? It's less than almost every other skin site is charging for their voluntary contributions.

Ratings: We discuss this a lot. There are several ideas to try to make everyone happy with it that may or may not be coded into the site relatively soon. we're still debating a few different parts of it. Ratings will always leave someone unhappy. Someone will always get lower ratings than they think they deserve and actually care about it. You can email an admin anytime to have a rating changed if you think it's lower than you deserve. The best solution though is to not care what the ratings say. At deskmod, my Windowblinds skins are the lowest rated skins on the site. Dead last. My newest skins are rated so low they're several pages back even though one of them has more downloads than almost all of the skins rated above it. I removed one of my wallpapers from there because it was not only rated dead last but it had some very rude comments too. Aside form that one wallpaper though, I don't care. And Davad - none of your stuff is rated below the filter here and I don't think it ever has been. The filter is adjustable anyway, just go in your profile and change it.

epilogue: sorry this is so long... I just keep finding myself feeling like I want to take everyone out for a drink and meet them personally. I think we forget that people work hard at all of the skin sites. Nothing and nobody is perfect but the effort that is spent is a labor of love. This isn't an industry, it's a group of people sharing their work and their ideas on websites made possible by people with enough means and dedication to provide them.
Reply #43 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Frogboy: I'm sure that you have tried to give the GUI Olympics your very best efforts.... You should have learned a lot by it. I watched it from the beginning, and saw a lot of grief coming your way.
A set of rules was posted at its inception. These rules should NEVER be changed.
You changed rules even before the contest started.. They were changed again DURING the contest and then was closed abruptly BEFORE the contest officially ended. The contestants had to wait patiently while the judging was finalized for the last few categories.....You even changed the number of HM positions and if I recall, no prises were to be awarded them BEFORE the contest began....
It's no wonder you caught a lot of flak.... You should take your lumps when they are due and don't pass it off on the skinner as being a whiner..... As a businessman you should have known better.
Reply #44 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Brad: Just have to say one tiny thing.

The reason ratings are not liked is that they are used as a way of limiting what skins visitors can see on the site. I may be wrong but I don't thing other skin sites do this. I can see the rationale behind this but when people abuse the ratings system (as some unfortunately do) it causes ill feeling. If the ratings were tied to comments (so a comment has to be made if a rating is given) they would be more helpful and less likely to be abused.

David: To answer your last question. Yes I think it was an overreaction to post in the messageboard so soon after emailing and receiving a response saying Brad would look into it. None of us have the facts as to why things weren't sent out and Brad was not given any real time to find out. Also I think it was a bad decision to lump all these things together in one message as it makes the answers get confused.

The problem with conducting things like this in public is that all too soon it gets blown out of all proportion and everyone ends up angry.

I can certainly see Brads point of view concerning the GUI olympics. From the start there has been ill feeling towards Stardock regarding it. Some people are too suspicious and others just wanted to stir up trouble. Just when you think it's done and dusted another reason to bash Stardock because of the competition arises. It's a shame but when money/prizes enter the picture it can have a way of putting peoples noses out of joint.

Let's remember why we started skinning in the first place people. We didn't see a skin and say 'Wow! that looks cool. I've got to learn to do that so I can make some money!'. We most probably said 'Wow! That looks cool. I wish I could do something like that.' Skinning is about the feeling you get when designing, creating and then finally posting a skin. It's the excitement of waiting to see what other people think of your skin and feeling you have accomplished something when you get to the 1000th download. These are the feelings I want to have when involved in the skinning world.


Oops! That was longer than I had planned. I'll go back and sit quietly for a few more months.

/me goes to sit in the corner.
Reply #45 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Reading this thread reminds me of the many committees I,ve been on over the years. "you can please some of people some of the time,but not all of the people all of the time". It's an old adage but very true. If you are in the seat what you say goes. If someone does not like the status quo they put it in writing (e-mail} or Volunteer for the job if its available or see if you can assist.

Has any one read the "Wincustomise about" in the Options Section. I thought it was a well written and well meaning mini contsitution, but i don't think it's up to date. The rating system mentioned there seems a good one.

I have to admit I am (sigh) a User so I subscribe to Wincustomise and ODNT to do my bit. After looking at some of the programs I found I was to old to learn new tricks. Lighten up all, life IS too short
Reply #46 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I didn't see a mention of how the ratings system works. There is something about rankings but that is a different thing. The only mention I saw was that Journeymen and abobve would be abl;e to rate. This apparently is out of date as I read above that Apprentices can rate too.
Reply #47 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Gah. Clicked submit too soon. Sorry for the typos.
Reply #48 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I am expressing my sympathy for different reasons to Davad and Frogboy.
I wish we could be a happy family, not always happy but always family!

TOGETHER WE STAND, DIVITED WE FALL



Hi DavidK,
You said, "The filter is adjustable anyway, just go in your profile and change it"
The visitors can't change it and they are the majority in here!


Hi pjpowell,
You said, "The reason ratings are not liked is that they are used as a way of limiting what skins visitors can see on the site. I may be wrong but I don't thing other skin sites do this. I can see the rationale behind this but when people abuse the ratings system (as some unfortunately do) it causes ill feeling. If the ratings were tied to comments (so a comment has to be made if a rating is given) they would be more helpful and less likely to be abused."
I am 100% with you!
Reply #49 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just for the record, I agree with everything that DavidK posted.

[Dave...you've been reading my mind again....get your own thoughts]...

I'm not going to get all aggro and uptight here, though....if anyone wants to hear my fair-dinkum opinions of this thread they can email me.... martinp@smart.net.au
Reply #50 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hi Jafo,
DavidK is always reading our minds, I agree with you