Skin Updates

sure am glad to see I'm not alone in that....

I guess maybe that's the way to getone of my skins into the top ten.....Hmmmmm....maybe I should.........Nahhh....maybe instead I'll just do a really good skin.

At skinz.org there was a script which would delete a skin for 'update abuse' if it exceeded a certain amount. I think it was more than 4 times in week or something like that. I had a skin deleted when I uploaded it to the wrong category, fixed that and hit the upload button twice, and then did a couple bug fixes pointed out in comments. Boy did I feel dumb...

I don't know how we would check for abuse here. An update should be done only to improve or fix an existing skin. With the number of people approving the uploads and the volume of work that gets sent it would be easy to get frequent updates past the moderators.

Any thoughts on what to do about this? Is it a big problem or a rare occurence?

I don't want to update my skin to fix small things because of this - I'm worried it'll make me look like I'm "hogging" the new updates board. I would like an option to *not* place it in that section when I update a skin.

maybe that's a good idea....
- when a skin is updated it doesn't apear in the newest additions list

well, as a moderator, I can tell you, some authors seems to make skins by parts, just to be able to update them at every new pixel.

For sure we can recognize who are the ones that abuses.

I say don't put the updated skins in the new additions.
How about having a separate section for updates. Have a "New addition" Window and "Latest Updated skins" Window. Just an idea.

Listen to paxx on this one...

I have another idea: If the outhor makes more then 2 updates ( wich I think is fairly enough) the skin's dll counter comes back to zero again. I'm sure all the abuser people I'll sudenly stop to make unnecessary updates.

great idea treetog!

Tog: Problem with that is if a real problem is found after the two updates it might never get fixed..........

Listen to Paxx.....

Bah, just delete the skin, that'll teach them to try things out before uploading.

Yeah. I can see where I might want to update more than twice. What if new features come out? I like the "Latest updates" idea.

Sometimes, you just need to update. And when you screw up a lot, you may need to update several times. It's happened to me, and I don't think it'd be fair to delete the skin just because it's been updated repeatedly (unless we're talking about a daily update kind of a thing).

For example, my skin that's the "most downloaded" Dashboard skin. I did the original, updated it to fix some minor errors, then updated it again a few days later to add a landscape version. I was having problems getting the landscape version to work, gave up on it when I first updated, then managed to get it working the next day. Should I have not updated the skin? Should I have been punished for updating it?

I'm not pushing to leave things as they are... frankly, I always questions why an updated skin was placed in "newest additions" anyway. I also don't think I should be rewarded for "forcing" people to dl the same skin several times. Everyone has to be registered to dl, right? Why not just have it set so only the first dl is counted, even if the skin is updated?

Ah well... I'm rambling again....

I don't think anyone has problems with legit updates. There are some who think you should never upload a skin until you're sure it's right, but most people agree that a "few" constructive updates are acceptable. I've updated some of my skins a couple times for various reasons, but there are a few people who have been updating the same 2 or 3 skins several times a week for about 2 months now. That's the real issue here. Treetog said it's obvious to the admins when this is happening, as it is to all the rest of us. Surely with the experience and wisdom that our members have, we should be able to come up with a fair and logical fix for this problem. Some good ideas have already been put forward from admins(treetog) as well as veteran skinners(paxx). I'm sure we can come up with a solution that will be fair to all of us.

I would have to say that forcing the d/l counter back to 0 is probably not the best idea. Recently I uploaded Translucent with colorisation support and optimised (16bit and 256 color bitmaps). Then when WBXP beta came out a couple of days later it caused massive slowdowns when viewing the skin in the preview window and the colors were not applied.

I was forced to change all those bitmaps back to 32bit and update it to fix that.

Then XP Copper was released with XP stuff. Of course I wanted to add that. (Another update)

Then I notice the pause button functions as a play button in the WBamp section. (another update)

Then Brad tells me how to speed up the skin by 20%. (Another update cos I don't want WB blamed for speed problems caused by my skin)

If people know the d/l counter will go to 0 they will just submit the skin as a seperate download or they will wait for a week.

Consequence of waiting for a week:

Skinner uploads skin Monday (week 1)

Just after uploading the skin they realise they have some things set to stretch instead of tile which hampers performance and update it.

It gets 15,000 downloads in a week

Meanwhile the skinner notices something they need/want to update which is hampering performance or just looks ugly on Wednesday. (D/L) count is 5,000

They think 'oops I can't upload for 2 days'

They wait for Monday of week 2 and upload the skin.

10,000 people download the skin again. (5000 didn't like it after all )

If they could have updated when they noticed the problem those extra 10,000 downloads would not have existed causing less bandwidth to be used

Maybe after 3 updates in a week the skinner would ned to submit a valid reason to update it again?

Or they could be put into a separate holding area for the admins to check separately knowing they are updated skins.

Just suggestions and probably not very good ones.

Wow that was long. Must go rest!

Oh and paxx's solutions sounds good 'Updated skins'. However there will still be some how will update lots to appear there as it makes their skin more visible.

how == who