Why "approve" a free item? To avoid "copyright violations" or to "micro-manage"? If an item is in violation of a copyright, someone tells an admin, there is a public witchhunt and the item is removed. And, no, the site is not "covering their butts". According to ditigal copyright rules, the site assumes that people are following the rules. The site only has a responsibility to remove an item when someone else claims that it's already copyrighted. If a site does not know that the item is copyrighted, but removes it upon notice of copyright, then they should be clear. However, if an item gets approved and THEN there is a copyright claim on it, the site becomes liable. For example, "You approved the Enterprise-E mesh your Free Stuff section. What do you mean you didn't know it's against Paramount's copyright rules to redestribute meshes of their ships? You mean your mod missed that? Well, what else did he miss? I'll see you in court." People have brought up other good points: will the new mod be able to keep up with approving the stuff? If he goes on vacation, sure, someone else can fill in for him, but what if his computer goes down and he can't approve stuff? Days turn into weeks and the people start to feel like vendors- they upload stuff and it takes weeks to get approved. Of course, people aren't losing revenue like the vendors, but stuff, when people don't see their free stuff posted for 5, 8, or 10 days, they get frustrated. And the worst thing for a website is to have frustrated users. And will the mod be researching every single item to make sure it's not a "derivative" of an item from DAZ, 3dcafe, scifi-mesh, or any other mesh/ texture sites? What if someone converts a 3ds object from a 3D Studio Max site and uploads it (without permission from the original creator)? Will the mod catch this? How will he know? Seems like a lot of work to me.

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To get to the point, though: Why wait at all? Since all you're uploading to the Free Stuff is a "pointer" to the files on your own website, here's what you do: 1) Upload the file to the Free Stuff section. It will get approved whenever (depending on the size of the queue and such). 2) Post a message (with a large render of the item) to this forum, telling people that your item is now available on your website. Include a link to YOUR SITE (download page or the item itself), instead of the usual "Now in the Free Stuff section". (Incidentally, the graphic that you attach to your message post IS hosted here on Renderosity, unlike your Free Stuff thumbnail image, which is hosted on your site.) Alternatively, you could post a message here in the forum (again, with an image) saying that your item is available at 3D Commune or wheverer else. Make sure you include a link to the item. By the time your item is approved, everyone will have already have downloaded it from the link you provided in the Poser Forum. Of course, you can also post a second message (with an image, if you want) telling people that the item has been approved. In other words: Message Post 1: new item at my site (image and link to website) Message Post 2: (when item is approved) new item in Free Stuff (image and link to Free Stuff section) Message Post 3: (a few weeks later) look, I've reposted my item again (image and link to either website or Free Stuff section). This means that the this Poser FORUM becomes the place to upload links to free stuff (complete with large renders of the item)... and the Poser Free Stuff section dies away due to the "approval process".