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Stirring the pot
Published on February 25, 2008 By Zoomba In WinCustomize News

One of the most controversial galleries on WinCustomize is, without a doubt, our wallpaper section.  In the past 90% of all work submitted was rejected out-right.  Now, more is let through, but still the vast majority is placed on a user's personal page instead of the main gallery.  This has met with mixed reactions from wallpaper artists and users alike.  Some do not like the relaxed requirements, claiming that it has ruined the quality of the gallery.  Others contend that we're being too restrictive and driving away wallpaper artists to other sites such as DeviantArt, Interfacelift etc.

So I thought this week we'd put it to an actual vote.  Let everyone voice their opinion on how they would like wallpaper moderation to be handled. 

At the moment, moderators look at a wallpaper submission, and decide whether it's personal-page-only, or main gallery material.  The general metric we use is if something would be rated a 5/10 or higher (or 2.5 stars), it's good enough for the main gallery, 4/10 and lower goes to the personal page.  We only reject broken submissions, submissions with bad preview images, or rips.

So, is our new policy to send some items to the personal page, and others to the main gallery a good one?  Is the 5/10 threshold an acceptable limit, or should it be raised or lowered?  Vote on the poll, and share your opinion in the comments below.


Comments (Page 3)
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on Feb 25, 2008
leave well enough alone...either way you're gonna have complaints...and with things as they are...I can wave my winky in the forums
on Feb 25, 2008
Well I think the current system doesn't work, and nor did the old way. We have a way to sort the wallpapers by a catagory of numbers downloaded, featured, even sort by rated. Get the users to use the rating system. If we rely on a select few to decide what i like then why have the rating system. What you may think is good I might think is a sorry piece of shoot. But a wallpaper I might find to go along perfect with my desktop theme for my perfect screenshot in the pile of dirt so to speak. If it was rejected i would never know. My vote is on the rating system. We all talk about "if ain't broke why fix it?" what about if "we have why not use it". I think we should not reject anything unless it maitains a score of 1 for specified length of time. I think we should promote usage of the rating system. Award users for being an objective judge to the material of the site. We are a community, so let the community decide what is good and what isn't.
on Feb 25, 2008
Reject all but the best. I've had to retreat from WC's Wallpaper gallery because there is just too much junk in there, no offense to some artists
A diamond is harder to find when it's in a pile of dirt.
^^ Great way to put it.
on Feb 25, 2008
I'm waving my winky and am fine with the way things are, but there is another effective way to wade through the garbage. If you are a wincustomise subscriber, you have the option to view the galleries with only the star rating you choose or above. I'm not sure if thats true for regular members or not. The only problem with that is it works across the board for all galleries (not just wallpapers) I have mine set to see them all because I don't want to miss anything in the other galleries, plus I know our moderators are doing a fine job.  

on Feb 25, 2008
Reject all but the best. I've had to retreat from WC's Wallpaper gallery because there is just too much junk in there, no offense to some artists

A diamond is harder to find when it's in a pile of dirt.

^^ Great way to put it.

Same, I don't even browse the wallpaper gallery at all. I get all my wallpapers from release threads on Aqua-Soft (which are of course on dA).
on Feb 25, 2008
Reject all but the best. I've had to retreat from WC's Wallpaper gallery because there is just too much junk in there, no offense to some artists


Just sounds elitist to me...Do we reject all but the best of any other library? Granted the wallpaper gallery sees the most action, but henceforth the current moderation policy. Thanks WC
on Feb 25, 2008
As a compromise I wouldn't let anything under 6/10 or 3 stars in...
on Feb 25, 2008
Damned if you ... damned if you don't   

Just my opinion but the ratings, and decision of where to place the walls; if not rejected, is up to the personal tastes of the moderators ... not saying that's a bad thing ... it's the way things work.

Now those particular tastes may or may not coincide with that of the majority of WC users ... one man's treasure is another's trash and all that ...

Perhaps the current system of publishing only the best to the public galleries with the rest going to personal pages is fine, although upping the bar to get into the public gallery could have a two-fold benefit ... the public galleries get 'better' and more focus is/can be placed on personal pages as places to mine for those 'unique' offerings.
on Feb 26, 2008
why not let the people who use the site be the judge? why not let all the wallpapers submitted get displayed for a short time in the gallery and then depending on the ratings it gets decides if it remains or get put on to the submitters private page. that way everyone has a chance to see it and the submitter will get some feedback from the community? we claim to be a community, in fact we all had a discussion about this ealier this week. let the community decide what should or should not be???? i'm sure the moderators are doing a fine job but put the power in the hands of the people.
on Feb 26, 2008
I think the system is fine as is... well if changing the standards is the only option then it is fine. However, I don't think the standards are the issue. Yes you should continue to reject rips, broken files etc... but... However I think the better option is to just put everything in the gallery, and add another browse option. If I understand it correctly if you add another browse option to filter out everything below 5 it would be the same as it is now. I personally don't browse wallpapers here very often, because there are not enough options for me to find what I'm looking for. If you want people to use the gallery you should give them the ability to browse by at least 2 conditions. I like how Deviantart lets me browse popular and recent at the same time. Just browsing popular shows me mostly the same stuff everytime, just browsing recent shows me too much stuff to find something.
on Feb 26, 2008
Same as Bebi, I tend to use Aqua-Soft as my 'first port of call' when browsing for walls. I'd like to see tougher moderation on walls here but I also think that the same rules should be applied to some of the other galleries too...especially ObjectDock icons and logons.  
on Feb 26, 2008
I voted for going back to the old standard. I have no problem with a piece being rejected when the bar is set high.



on Feb 26, 2008
I voted for more but only because it seems I have to go to other sites to find a wallpaper I like. What makes a good wall? will I like it? will you? Decisions based on technical expertise are all very well, but take no account of artistic merit or peoples likes and dislikes in regard to walls, unlike WB which must meet a level of technical competence or they become unusable, but a wall is a wall, what floats your boat wont (or may not anyway) float mine.
on Feb 26, 2008

How about a split wallpaper section. Allow in all walls (including those currently going to pp), if then after 7 days they have a minimum of XXX downloads, they achieve a 'popular' status which can be selected from a filter. That way all the wallpapers are in the wallpaper gallery, but people can go to a select gallery if they only want the most popular wallpapers.

That would satisfy those who want all wallpapers allowed in, and those who only want to see the best.

Whatever you do, someone isn't going to be happy...

on Feb 26, 2008
I'm with Fuzzy.

If walls were held in the gallery awaiting so many ratings to decide whether it stays or goes, you risk being ganged up on by others: the old drive-by bad-rating thing that used to go on here.

But with Fuzzy's idea, when a wallpaper reaches a given download number (Say 200?), then it could be considered "safe" or a permanent addition to the gallery and if it doesn't reach 200 within a week (2? Doesn't matter: whatever time period) then it goes to the artist's personal page/gallery.

Gosh. Hope I made sense.
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