State of the WinCustomize Community

WinCustomize for the remaining year

Published on August 20, 2008 By Island Dog In OS Customization

I thought now would be as good as ever to write a "State of the Community" post. Over the past couple of weeks I have noticed a lot of negativity coming back to our forums, which have been a positive place for a while now. Negative and discouraging comments on skins have been increasing, and when a post was made to address it, it turns into another argument and battle. This really needs to stop and it will one way or another.

I do want to take a moment and give a big hats off to Zoomba. Just over two years ago he took over WinCustomize and associated Stardock sites, and since then we have seen many, many improvements. Not all are visible to everyone, but believe me a lot of work is done behind the scenes to make the experience at WinCustomize better. If you don't listen to the WinCustomize SkinCast (which I don't know why you wouldn't), you might have missed that Zoomba has moved on from WinCustomize. He's now doing some great work on Impulse, but thankfully he still has a part in WinCustomize, although not so much public now.

Community

The thing I have always had pride in at WinCustomize was the community. When I first started skinning people would jump at the opportunity to help, and not say that isn't happening now, but the tone has definitely changed over the years. Obviously, skinning has changed over the years as well. Commercial skinning now has a definite market and some don't seem to take too kindly to that. Regardless of how skinning has evolved it shouldn't have an impact on how the community treats each other or behaves.

The insulting comments and bullying of other members will not be tolerated at all, regardless of their rank or status on the site. We want WinCustomize to be a place where anyone can come and upload their skins and be part of this community, without having to be subject to ridiculous comments that only drive people away. For newer skinners out there, you will get criticism on your works, but don't take it personally. Listening to experienced skinners will only help you get better. On that note, giving constructive criticism is fine, but blatant attacks and insults do not help, and will be dealt with.

Here at WinCustomize we have a class system:

Citizen
Apprentice
Master Apprentice
Journeyman
Master
Wizop/Moderators

You can view specifics of each class here. Basically, you start out at citizen and if you contribute skins and to the community, you will be promoted through each of the classes. Promotion is done by recommendation and votes from the site moderators (wizops) and admins on a monthly basis. The Journeyman level allows users to bypass moderation, so your skins go directly to the gallery. The highest class most can achieve is Master, but this is not an easy road. One of the advantages of becoming a Master skinner is the ability to sell your skins on WinCustomize. There are just a handful of them currently, and we are always keeping our eye out for the next one.

This is a system that has been around for a long time, but lately I have been pondering if changes are needed, especially when it comes to the Master class. One of the descriptions of Master is, "not only must the user be a significant contributor to the community, but instrumental to the day to day life of WinCustomize." We have Master skinners that contribute quite a bit to the galleries, both free and paid skins, but are not necessarily active in say the forums for instance. Not everyone is into the forum scene, so how much leeway should be given for that? Should it matter? Those are all questions I have been asking myself lately, and one of my projects is to re-write the member descriptions and define member classes going forward.

Ideally, I would love to see all Master skinners take a more active and positive role in the community, be true leaders to help guide the next-generation of skinners. They are the "best of the best" in terms of what they do, but maybe just contributing skins isn't enough. Is more community involvement needed? I would definitely love your feedback on this. I will also be looking for skin moderators soon, so anybody in the community that has been established for a while can feel free to contact me.

Skinning

This summer has been fantastic. Usually during this time of year skin submissions drop to almost nothing, but not this summer. I haven't looked at the numbers but I think submissions have actually increased. I am also seeing a lot of new skinners make their way over here, which is even more exciting. Skinners who have been missing for a while have also made some returns, so I am very excited on the skinning front. Not to mention the GUI Champs 2008 is due to start very soon, I think the next half of this year is going to be great.

Halloween and the Christmas season are also approaching, and I would really like to get some good sets of skins going, possibly even another community based skin. I also have a mockup skin that will be the basis of a community project, but not until the GUI Champs is done. You all have enough on your hands as is.

Although I can't mention specifics, we have also been tossing around ideas for the next version of WinCustomize. Although nothing is set or guaranteed, I'm really hoping to have a bigger focus on personal pages and sorting of galleries. I will leave it at that for now.

Now lets address some issues people have been bringing up lately, and attempt to squash problems going forward. Gallery moderation has been going pretty smoothly. Most skins are moderated in good time, and we have been working to make sure a clear set of guidelines are followed. To make things easier for everyone, I wrote the Tips for Moderation guide which everyone who submits skins should look over.

Let me now emphasize some things to end some discussions and problems:

Resetting skin dates on updates will only be moderated if the skin has a significant change. Fixing a start menu issue, or altering the color slightly does not constitute that. Trying to game the system to stay on the front page of downloads will no longer pass.
Vista clones are permitted within reason. Some of the most popular skins across the net are modifications of Vista. The advantage we have with WindowBlinds is that the skins can be much, much better than the default Aero look. Now we all have personal opinions on Vista looking skins, and the origins of images, but it's things we have gone through and determined it's not a simple matter to determine who created what.
Multiple colors of the same skin must be included in a pack, or sub-styles. SkinStudio has a remarkable re-coloring feature which makes making separate colored sub-styles very easy so this is what I would recommend.

Conclusion

Overall, I have been very happy with the state of WinCustomize this year. Although there are some minor bumps in the road lately, those are ending today and I expect a great time for the rest of this year. Your comments and feedback are welcomed.

Comments (Page 1)

Philly0381

on Aug 20, 2008

I can understand your position and the frustration that you must be feeling and going through ID.

I have been on a couple times not very polite with my comments to posters in the forum. By the community replying as we do it does seem to fuel the conversation or discussion. Of course most of the posters are not looking to have a conversation.

I will, starting right now refrain from adding fuel, as it were. I will still respond, just can not let folks spread info that is not true.

The best thing I guess would be to not respond at all. The post would just go away then, and maybe the poster also.

Mirsguy

on Aug 20, 2008

I love this place! Amen to everything you said, ID!

messiah1

on Aug 20, 2008

Good read. Thanks ID.

butch123

on Aug 20, 2008

Very good article Island Dog. I would like to address the moderation issue of Vista clones. This is something that is gonna be very very hard to moderate and here is why...a few years ago Kol made the first vista clone as we all know. shortly after Jemaho and I made others. Now here is where the thing comes in...over the years Jemaho and I both have given a lot of people authorization to use pieces, bitmaps, pngs etc. including to each other. So with so many clones made and boy there is a lot I think the easiet way and this is just a thought would be to let the Vista skinners report a rip to the moderator. In this manner I see a lot less confusion. For example, A B and C upload Vista clones but B used a piece of A's work without his permission. Thats is not something the moderator would know, but A,B. and C would because we know who we gave permission to. And if we gave it 2 years ago you know I really dont see them adding a permission clause after 2 years of using the same pieces. But one thing though you can feel at ease about, all Vista clones that have been uploaded so far within lets say the last 30 days, we all know each other and everything is fine with these clones. Just my opinion. HOpe it helps in some way to make the moderator's life a little bit easier....

vStyler

on Aug 20, 2008

First of all, I have nothing against clones, I have made 4 myself... 2 as of yet unreleased and every pixel made by myself.

What I'm wondering is..considering the amount of default Aero resources filling up most of these themes I'd be interested to know who got permission from Microsoft to begin with and how one would go about giving permission to anyone to use them?

Lastly, I think installing some kind of mod mechanism to control constant and uneccessary updating is a wonderful idea.

Overall , great Article.

Jafo

on Aug 20, 2008

Considering the amount of default Aero resources filling up most of these themes I'd be interested to know who got permission from Microsoft to begin with?

Since Day One in skinning it has always been acceptable practise to port an OS graphics to another program. The earliest I can remember was Amiga to Litestep....that was around '97 or '98.

Currently you have Vista's default graphics ported to Windowblinds so they end up on XP, say.

There is one proviso, however...on any of these 'ports'. If and when the OS 'owner' decides it is not acceptable the offending work is removed.

Specifics?

Ask Kol. His was deemed unacceptable by MS. Prior to that, several years ago Apple requested a removal. Both were respected....the only proviso was that this be a unilateral request and not limited to one site but all, equally...

vStyler

on Aug 20, 2008

I see.. well.. using someone else work and calling it your own seems very low, shady at best, perhaps some kind of disclaimer should have been initiated. To me, it's ripping, and goes against the very heart of being a skinner..IMO.. but to each their own I guess.

For instance, I spent almost a week emulating the Vista start button for the aforementioned themes, aggravating at best to know some folks just 'aquire' the original and claim it as their own work... or at least don't claim it... isn't.

Always someone gaming the system.

Thanks for clarifying...I'll be off now too.

Jafo

on Aug 20, 2008

vStyler...'emulating' is an interesting word. It means 'to copy something achieved by [someone else]'.

When 'emulating' a Vista start button what that means is 'copying it', so there can be an interesting debate as to the differentiation between cut/paste from a Vista screenshot vs exact duplication separately one pixel at a time.

The outcome will be identical [assuming equal prowess/skill] so where is the real difference?

Vista clones/ports are self-evident. How they are created doesn't really matter at all.

I remember I was criticized [on Devart] for 'drawing' a nude from a photograph because my image, no matter how much effort went into its creation was just a 'copy' of the photographer's work.

I argued all he did was take a happy-snap....whereas I got out a bit of pale green cartridge paper [at the ripe old age of 17] and my conte pencils...and drew it [in real medium]. A couple of decades later I used an early digital camera [Sony Mavica] to transfer the drawing to the computer...at a whopping VGA res....then proceeded to manually/digitally rework the image to see how much better/closer I could get it to the original photo.

The original happy-snap took maybe a few seconds....my conte was 6 hours ....and subsequent PSP manip...a few dozen more.

I 'could' have simply scanned the photo...but did it all by hand/pixel-pushing...and yet people claimed it was always just a rip of a photo and dismissed any skill involved. Then again, there's also been arguments there that life-drawing is only imitating nature's artform. [they really are a bunch of nutters over there at times]...

vStyler

on Aug 20, 2008

There is no interesting debate, one is hours of hard work , one is copy, paste, done...no work at all.

Trying to justify it is almost as bad as doing it.... to me.

If it is acceptable practice for those that moderate, so be it.. I just disagree 1000% and I'd imagine I'm not alone in thinking this way.

I don't own the galleries here, I have no right to say what gets uploaded and what doesn't but I feel that it is important, as a member of a community to voice my opinion on something I feel strongly about.

eieio

on Aug 20, 2008

Basically, you start out at citizen and if you contribute skins and to the community, you will be promoted through each of the classes.

Just my opinion, but it seems this statement would be more accurate with the word 'Wincustomize' in place of 'community'

... unless of course there is an implied assumption that Wincustomize is the community.

butch123

on Aug 20, 2008

Vstyler: you know I dont know if you ever ripped vista apart but there is no such thing as copy and paste from vista to windowblinds. Being someone who has made both a windowblinds vista and Vista skins that actually work on windows Vista with no software I can guarantee that cannot be done. For example, just take the Start button. In windowblinds its done in 2 pieces while in Windows vista its done in 12 pieces, to say 12 complete orbs. The minimize maximize and close buttons and windows frames are one piece known as stream. This is only 2 examples. As I stated earlier every piece of my windowblinds that I make was made by me years ago. I mean talking about close buttons, orbs, pngs, etc. And why I dont make new ones, simple, there is just too many young people at another website that just take your stuff and dont bother asking. So as it is now, I dont mind if they take it, even they can be my guest, I dont care. But seriously if you dont believe what I am telling you rip vista apart and have yourself a look. You will see that the bitmpas cannot be copied and pasted into a windowblind....

Jafo

on Aug 20, 2008

I can 'emulate' any image you care to point a stick at....one pixel at a time and it'll be a crap-load of work to do colour-picking each and every pixel and putting them all in the correct sequence...manually...or I can copy/paste the entire graphic. The result will be identical as will be its justification/morality.

There are only two options. The moral 'high-ground' is and can only be held by those whose works never pre-existed in any shape or form at all...are NOT imitating/copying/borrowing/inspiring/emulating but are 100% unique [a difficult call when there are already thousands of pre-existing skins out there in the wild], and those whose works have a basis in historical priors, be they ports, clones or faintly inspirational are thus derivative to a degree.

If Graphic 'B' is an exact replica of Graphic 'A' what matters how that graphic was arrived at?

Creating something by hand [per pixel, even] means the result NEED NOT replicate the original whereas direct copy/paste by definition WILL.

If by either means the result is identical to the original source image then BOTH methods MUST be deemed equally suspect/rip/port/clone/whatever terminology you wish...

PoSmedley

on Aug 20, 2008

Nice article. I am looking forward to the negative issues being resolved soon.

Jafo

on Aug 20, 2008

pictoratus....there are high level members here who are hardly ever on Wincustomize.com but their position/status reflects their involvement in the 'community' elsewhere..on other sites such as Deviantart ....

vStyler

on Aug 20, 2008

Butch I'm well aware with how one goes about porting Vista graphics into WB.. Theres very little to it.

The only reason I made the ports I did was via a contract, by choice I would never copy\crop\cut\take\aquire\ anything from any other theme for an original work of mine.

I may be talking from a high ground vantage point about all this but I like it up here..shortcuts were never my thing...and honestly I feel damn good about it.

I do feel that the community\site is doing itself no favors by accepting such work and see it only hurting itself and the skinners that do all their own graphics in the long run.. but what do I know..and what does the site care... apparently.

Just because it it is 'fair practice', doesn't make it right....imo.

Discussion is over for me on this subject. Don't want it turned into another flame fest.

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