I received an e-mail from Renderosity which stated: Dear Member, One of your gallery items has been removed by the staff at Renderosity.com for the following reason: Removed for using the gallery as a contest, which is against our TOS. Please keep this in mind when submitting future images. Thank you, Renderosity.com The TOS does not say ANYTHING against contests! Get it together!

There's a major thread running about this in the Poser forum.

Rendo doesn't have contests??

Not in the galleries, there is a forum specifically for contests.

The galleries were not meant to be a place for contest, and contest there will not be allowed and would have never been had we even known. If someone wants to sponsor a contest, there are proper ways to do so. Renderosity could be held legally liable for something we didn't even approve or know was going on. The TOS does address a general term for using the site improperly. Any practices that affect the normal operations of the community (Admins will take whatever steps are necessary to restore service)." When developing a Terms of Service, there is no way to know of every single way our service, site and tools could be misused. I will be updating the galleries info tomorrow to make sure everyone is clear. I've found a total of 6 contests in the galleries, which just started in the last 2 months. I'm cleaning them out so future members won't attempt to have independent contest outside of our approval and procedures. This is for everyone's protection, Renderosity, contest sponsors, and contest participants. I've notified those holding unauthorized contest to go through the correct channels so they can still exist. Renderosity loves having contest and we don't want to discourage anyone from sponsoring one or participating in one. However, we have to know there going on and they need to use the part of the site that's built for them.

Oh! I meant to also explain that your image, if it does not break the tos is okay to repost with a title of it's own (instead of whatever contest) and no reference that it's a contest entry. We will be working with the members & merchants that want to sponsor contest to get them in the contest area.

I too had a contest image pulled but no one at Renderosity ever sent me a memo about it.

So where IS the "Contest Gallery"?

The same happened to me SophiaDeer!

Hi Ardiva, I think they mean when you look up at the top of the page and see the link for Contests. It takes you to another page that lists all the contests being held etc. The only problem I have ( and it is not a big issue ) with that is they only allow 5 lines for notes and my credits often take more than that. I also like to leave a little quote too. Also the thumbnail cannot be any larger than 100 x 100 which I find a tad too small. Hope this helps. Best, Nancy

Oh, I see now, Nancy. Hmmmm..

Renderosity removed my H & H Contest image and didn't inform me about it at all!! Kind of upset. I enjoyed viewing the comments that I had and spent a nice amount of time doing the image. No offense at all, but who wants to see the same image posted again after it was already in the gallery for days or even weeks? Just my statement! God bless though:o)

I loved your H & H image, PJ! and your image made the Hot 20 too. Hugs, Nancy

Thanks my friend Nan:o) This is why I'm upset considering that I have 90 comments to view and everyone was kind enough to leave them. I could've of change the name easily!

"Any practices that affect the normal operations of the community (Admins will take whatever steps are necessary to restore service)."" Care to explain this a little better, JenyK, that's awfully vague. I personally haven't entered any contests (Don't think I'm good enough yet), but the matter in which this is finally resolved will have an impact on any future contest participation I may have.

"Any practices that affect the normal operations of the community (Admins will take whatever steps are necessary to restore service)." That's like the line in a job description that says "...and other duties as assigned by management." In other words, it means whatever they want it to mean. In my case, my instructions on how to bypass the old graphic top menu (the one that was voted off the island) using firewall software was flagged by admins with this wonderfully open-ended phrase. I'm thinking of including it in the TOS of the site I maintain.

yeah i have had a couple of pics removed one for H & H and
Thats Entertainment, now i know why, thanx for the info, but i
never got an ebot to tell me that its been removed. oh well. :

Hold on, now, I must be a little slow on the uptake here, are we talking about not being allowed to refer to the image as a contest one? or about running a contest from the gallery? If its the former rather than the latter, why can we not reference to it in the comments/title as an entry to a contest? If I enter a contest someone is running here, and the rules of the contest do not state that I cannot post it elsewhere I should be able to post it in my gallery and tell people its an entry into a contest. They can then go vote for it if they choose too. :) By saying that we cannot do that, thats denying alot of people who dont browse the entire site, and the entire gallery looking for one particular artist, but only go by their favorite artists lists to see their new images the opp to vote for their favorite artists, simply because they dont know that artist is entering the contest there. I really cannot see why we are not allowed to refer to the fact that the image is entered into a contest in the notes with the image if thats what you mean.

It's about running contest in the gallery. I was trying to clean up the evidence that contest were being run improperly in the galleries and removed images that really shouldn't have been. I've beaten myself up (along with the hundred members) over this act of pure stupid, and we (really the programmers that had nothing to do with the removals) are working to resolve. It will take some time to try to recover the items from backup. Please try to have some patience for the programmers sake (and maybe a little forgiveness for me-?). Thank you, Jenifer

Hey Jenifer I have always been the queen of putting the wrong foot forward for the right reasons - I understand where you are coming from. Being an admin is never easy - you are doing a fantasitc job and we love ya bunches! Thanks for keeping the community updated. :) Huge Hugs! Dee-Marie

Thank you, Dee! :) I appreciate your support and encouragement. BDC, you are allowed to refer to the fact that the image is entered into a contest in the notes with the image. The problem is (or was) using the gallery to announce/launch contest on Renderosity that we were aware of and therefore couldn't make sure the proper guidelines are used.

Thank you for your apology, Jenifer. Even though I was/am irritated about this whole fiasco, life goes on.

"BDC, you are allowed to refer to the fact that the image is entered into a contest in the notes with the image. The problem is (or was) using the gallery to announce/launch contest on Renderosity that we were aware of and therefore couldn't make sure the proper guidelines are used."

Jeny,I totally agree with this and this is why I got so angry with you in particular...this was the heart of my argument and I was told in no uncertain terms that this would not be a problem and I have already stated the situation with Fergusen to prove my case in this regard.But if none of the admin step forward to publicly address this and explain what happened...to accept accountability so it can be put to rest,then people like me who took part are made to feel as if we did something wrong when the single term in the TOS that you refer to does not say one way or the other if this was a violation or not.

People are happy to see their art going back up,but other than you're making a boneheaded mistake here...not one admin that I've seen so far has stepped forward to say they knew about it,that they encouraged it and they did nothing to stop us from doing it.

Again...we didn't have to sponsor these in the gallerys,it was just more fun and to a degree got more people involved and people who aren't always at the top were winning these things.It was more fair in all of these regards...but it also relied heavily on the honesty of those holding the contests and the search engines ability to find all the entrants (which is a nightmare and why I didn't do a second one).

So again...maybe I owe you an apology Jeny,but someone owes us one as well for encouraging these things in the gallerys when voices were raised early on saying exactly what you just said here!!Amen Jeny...you finally got me agreeing with you as to the why~but until someone steps forward to explain why the admin wouldn't act earlier this is going to be a sore issue.When members from my site voice such concerns as this,someone's gonna hear from me until that wrong has been righted...and this ain't righted til the admins who should have acted earlier step forward to apologise. "The galleries were not meant to be a place for contest, and contest there will not be allowed and would have never been had we even known." But of course,untrue statements like this do tend to ruin any understanding of your actions upon reflection...how much proof do you need Jeny to prove the admin knew about this thing

Message edited on: 09/17/2004 22:03

The images titled "A Girl for Lord Arcady" are still missing. We want those back too!
Let's get some things straight:
Other admins DID know about the contests going on in the gallery. That's a fact, they've commented about it in the forums, even encouraged it.
Other admins did NOT know of Jenys deleting action.
So if we're talking about who knew what, let's be clear about it.

I'm willing to believe JenyK herself did not know about the gallery contests before Thursday. Jeny, the line Armorbeast quotes, shouldn't it have read "The galleries were not meant to be a place for contests, and contests there will not be allowed and would never have been had I known?"

The why I can agree with, barely. I don't know US and Tennessee law, so you may be right.
The how was definitely wrong. You are correcting that - it's not finished yet, and I expect compensation when irreversible harm has been done.

Armorbeast, an apology from the admins as a team would be nice, but it's not enough. The current system allowed this mess to happen, so it must be revised.

Admins, tell us what is being done to prevent blunders like these to happen again. And a "we're looking into it" is not enough.

Message edited on: 09/18/2004 13:04

Jeny, thank you for your apology. I'm not one of the people who had an image removed, but I've seen these furors come and go for years now. Usually, the PTB never apologize at all and everyone just gets the stonewall treatment. I just wanted to say that I'm really pleased to see someone actually admitting a mistake and apologizing and trying to make things right. :-) Now I can beat you up a little if it'll make you feel more at home... ;-P bonni

ok! Thanks for answering my q jenny! No longer confused.

waves at BDC You're welcome! There are a few gallery post in which the thumbnails or full-size images need to be re-uploaded. All the database info (like comments, titles, notes, ranks, etc) was restored, but we'll just need some members to use the edit link (under title) to reload the images that didn't get restored. I've tried to contact these people directly since there were only a few. But, I figured it's best that everyone know...just in case I might have missed notifying anyone. Thanks, Jenifer

As far as I can see, everything that could be restored has been restored. Thanks for the complete and thorough resolution of this issue. Now let's get back to creating art!