Lyrra opened this issue on Dec 28, 2002 ยท 25 posts
hauksdottir posted Sat, 28 December 2002 at 9:37 PM
Lyrra, Far better to put the maker's name or initials at the END of the filename!!! If somebody ONLY does female skin textures (HappyWorldLand for example) then it doesn't matter where the name is, all the files will end up in my Skin Textures folder. But few people only do one thing... even Schlabber has branched into other categories besides poses. For somebody like Traveler it is essential to put the name of the object first so that rayguns go under Weapons and mushroom houses go under Architecture. Including the author's name is essential to keep books and goblets from being overwritten by the next file called simply "book.zip" :sigh: I've upped the number of basic folders to 7. At the time of download, I rename the zip and stash it into one of: character, animal, hair, clothes, stuff, lights, territory. (This is on my sacrificial internet-connected PC.) Files then get moved to the Mac and put into proper folders such as Plants, Jewelry, Books&Scrolls, etc.. However, even within that it is helpful if the first part of the zip name is a descriptor: "palm-queen-thgeisal.zip" helps if there are a couple hundred plants in the folder! I worked my way through college as a reference librarian (4 years experience with both Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress systems). The most important part of ANY filing system is to put things where they can be readily found again. This depends on the logic of the user, and users tend to be lazy and easily frustrated. If you were hunting for a suit of armor for Mike, would you rather look under the names of everybody who possibly could have made such a thing? Or in the Armor folder? Since so many of the inquiries here are of the type "I need a peacock" rather than "I need something by Anton", I suspect that most artists have an image rather than a creator name in mind when they are building a scene, and if they named and filed their zips by image they could lay hands on them faster. If they added the creator's name, they wouldn't be asking later "who made this?" I usually have to add other information when renaming the zip: what it is and who it is for. For props it isn't essential to indicate which character it is for. Even hair models can be tweaked to fit almost everybody. Other assets are more particular. "Tiffanytex4v2-artist.zip" tells me without having to open it that it is a skin texture for Vicky2, whereas "Tiffanytex4uwing-artist.zip" should go under fairy wings. Slapping a stained glass texture all over Victoria is interesting, but avoidable. ;^) If someone wants my category names, I'll post them as a starting point. An artist who specializes in robots and battleships (for example) would have a different emphasis in the subcategories, but just about everybody downloads "furniture" and "hair". Having more information in the filenames makes the right item easier to find. If the creator of the file adds this information, that item might get used more and proper credit will be given. Carolly