And they shall inherit the community

from WinCustomize Forums
To a newcomer, probably nothing is as melodramatic as the regular discussion of "community". To a newcomer, it's all a matter of taking what is ultimately a hobby way too seriously.

But on the other hand, I would also argue that of all the zillions of virtual communities out there, the customization (or "Skin") community has had a lot of impact which I would credit to its blend of grass roots and commercial strengths combining (grass roots strength with commercial marketing to bring that grass roots movement to the attention of the mainstream).

l0c elsewhere made a post wondering whether we were at a fork in the road. Where on the one hand you would have the people who see skinning at "Art" and the "hackers" who like to create and edit things with resource hackers on the other side of the fork. That two distinct communities would emerge.

I don't agree with that distinction. I think there is only 1 community broken up into niches. There are the people who see computers as more than just a means to an end. And many of those people want to have the ability to customize their computers to suit their unique and specific needs. That's the foundation of skinning.

Stardock's goal has been to allow as many people as possible into that world as possible. To provide so many different options to those people that it could make a business model out of it - Object Desktop. The more people who are part of our community, the better.

However, there are two sides of the coin. There, I think, those that would like to see things as a more intimate community where the casual users are kept out and it's just a core group of expert users who set the tone and direction of customization.

What are your thoughts? Do you see customization as being eventually mainstream where most people are using a combination of what's built in and third party solutions to control their OS or are we at a high point now and that it'll soon return to being where people are happy with whatever's built into the OS and everything else is marginalized to the hackers and super tweakers?
5,445 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Personally I see the skin community as a stone chip in a giant glass window, as time goes by it will continue to spread and exand into many different fractures, each one heading in a seperate direction from the other, but all starting from the same source. While just like that stone chip over time many of the exanding fractures will merge again into a large vein, there will always be a distinct difference.

We can already see the effects of this in the members that are here. There are dynamic niches already. Small groups that socialize and work together on a regular basis, and then venture here to express a thought or release a solo creation. This brings diversity and colorization to the community along with some minor conflicts from time to time.

As for moving the community to a select group and away from the majority of people, such as an only skinner/digital artist community without the casual user being aloud in, I personally think that is a mistake. For if things are isolated from the vast majority then they become repeatative, stagnant and eventually fade away. While always working to help newcomers, and the influences they bring you end up with an ever changing, growing, and enriched community.

If it was not for the overwhelming support and inspiration of other digital art communities, and skinning communities, I personally would never of gotten into things as much as I have. I can see the same in many other people. As another thread shows the vast majority of the community is a little older than some thought. Why limit this, when you can cross the boundries of geography, religion, society, culture, and etc to bring about a unified(in some ways) community built on expanding the norm, and enhancing part of life.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Listen to MobiusCo !
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i feel urged to create wallpapers because of this site, its rewarding to see people downloading my work, i probably wouldnt bother making them if they were just for myself
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
personally i always view the word "community" with a degree of amusement.

this is simply becuase if you place 20 people with common interests in a room together then you (or at least i) would expect them to form into sub groups. the groups would intermingle, but as an external observer taking a snapshot you wouldnt think "this is a single cohesive goup".

to a degree this is simply a different way of putting the "cracked window" description of MobiusCo.

as for what people want from and bring to the "community", i am far more at the "useful tools" end of the spectrum personally. earlier today i spent a useful hour making object bar produce 2 taskbars on my machine, and then divided up all my programs between them, making everything easier to find and use.

i deeply love the wallpapers and windowblinds skins, but, for whatever reason, find that most (nearly all) of them arent really to my tastes.

at root though, i spend time here for the "community", by which i mean the people.

where are "we" going? not so simple a question. i still have vague memories of when windows 95 came out, and there seemed to be an explosion of interest in themes. compared to the two different looks of XP, that was, and is, a very minor change to the look.

so i agree with the suggestion that XP is going to drive awareness of what can be done, and this should bring new people to this world.

at the end of the day, most of us are here because we want more than "standard" windows offers, be that art, skins, power, or all of then

since it seems unlikely that microsoft will suddenly realise all of our fondest wishes for an OS in any iminent release, i doubt that we will be going anywhere soon
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The trouble with frequenting every site in this "community" is that I get déjà vûs all the time.

Okay, I admit, I have 1337 tendencies. My stomache growls when I see people who can only skin by virtue of a *gasp* skin builder.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
learning curve?
perhaps a good place to start would be http://www.vim.org/download.html
/me looks innocent
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As a new member of the skinning community, I would like to see it continue to be inclusive, as opposed to exclusive.

I don't know if I'll ever have the time or inclination to create my own skins, but I know I appreciate all the work that the skin creators put into the creation of their skins for others to use.

I have felt very welcomed here at the Wincustomize site, and I would hate to see that change.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think the community has fragmented and rejoined several times over the last year or so. I don't think there's ever been one community for skinning as much as there is now. In spite of the abundance of sites. It's an evolutionary change, growth in numbers, growth in participation and a lowering of the expectations. It's a lot easier to customize your desktop now and a lot more people have been exposed to the concept.

The programmers, hackers and application builders share the same space as the wallpaper artists and skin makers. It's one group of people working towards the same goals. Anyone who feels left out because things have changed probably has some other interest that's more important to them. Frankly I'm surprised that the community has hung together as much as it has. A lot of credit for that goes to the excellent work of the webmasters at the main sites. This 'skinning community' owes a lot to the likes of Jark, Gorman, Mian, Shoggot, Chaz, Alexandrie & T-Man, the guys that brought back Custo, Grave, Brad and all the others that are part of that effort.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
"This 'skinning community' owes a lot to the likes of Jark, Gorman, Mian, Shoggot, Chaz, Alexandrie & T-Man, the guys that brought back Custo, Grave, Brad and all the others that are part of that effort. "

It's fairly safe to say that there wouldn't be a skinning community without that bunch...
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
craeonics - Ofcourse, there is such a thing as insanity.

so long as it comes in chocolate chip mint icecream flavour, i am prepared to investigate it
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't know much about the skinning community, but I know well, that it goes better and bigger everyday. I think this is great for all of us that we are interesting for this kind of stuff!