Once upon a time there was this place called Renderosity were people came and posted images, some were rude, others very crude but some were quite nice, I came I looked and every now and then I commented.
I sat on the sidelines until I tried my hand.
I worked, and I worked and finally I posted, tons of renders discarded along the way, I posted for my first image, proud of what I had accomplished, ready to show the  world, not as good as many I had seen, but not as bad as others.
Upload.
A minute went by, then an hour, a day, and then a week....within a month 30 renders posted with a total of maybe...200 views.  What could I have done wrong?  I wondered.  So to the forums I went,  I asked and the answers came from various sources....
"Oh, the renders is nice, but you need to entice"
So back to the rendering board I went, yet a thumb to entice, I was not sure, hmm a cut, here a cut here, perhaps this...for this is what my favorites did when they were just starting...some of this and some of that, Take that off and show a little flesh, hmmm that's better, but perhaps I should show a naked woman's breast.
So there again I was, with a gallery with 30 images...and less than 200 views total, and two comments given....
Upload.
Two big breast in the thumb...a minute..a view, an hour lots of views, more and more and my popularity grew. at the end of the day, this one render, no better, nor worse than the others had tripled the views to my gallery and my comments kept flowing.
Time went by...
My renders would seldom feature nudity, seldom feature breast, clean thumbnails...and on the average a new render would recieve in a day 600 views, a comments on page 2!
And then I moved.
No internet,
No access to my old email,
Internet restored,
Enroll children in school
Off to the ship we go.
Finally some time ...now where was that link, what was my username...what was my old email address?
And back to the rendering board again "this will be great better than any other of my works"
Upload
a minute
an hour
and I was back to square one.
My skill had improved, much more thought behind each render...but no one was looking and then I remembered!
Boobs in the thumbnails, show a little flesh and the views started to come, and with views more comments, still not where it was but slowly but surely climbing back, yet this time I would entice the crowd with boobs but upon opening the render hopefully they would see the amount of work in each piece.
Then a new rule...
And gone were the views,
And gone were the comments...

Was it a gimmick, did I lie, trick or mislead? No, the thumb did show what was inside and if one did not wish to view, they did not, but they viewed, they viewed a lot.

Without clicking on any of my images, look at my galleries first page, look at the views when you get to Cosplay Sisters which was posted the day before the thumbnail changed (I changed some a lot of the thumbs on the ones prior to that when I was unsure of the new rule) look at the difference between the day before and the subsequent days after.  Now if I were one of the popular artist....the change would not effect me, but I am not...an artist, nor am I popular.  And although I do dervie a great deal of joy from making a render and the time I spend before even opening poser, the fact that no one is looking...well it sux.  Many of the newer guys will most likely feel the same....not a whine, a fact.  

As for Renderotica the bondage images at first were going to go the way of the do do and for a few days they were gone...then the members spoke up, and the site did something inovative...it listened.  All the members accounts were changed to filter out those images and if you wanted to see that type of stuff, you had un check that filter.  If something was mislabled the mod simply changed it to what it should have been and a email was sent saying hey we changed the setting from this to that because....

Now Renderosity already had the default filter but went a different route...the established guys applaud it but if you look deep down in their galleries (for those that still have their first few renders posted you will see where they went from 1 view and hour to 100 views an hour with a slew of comments....for the most part you'll see it wasn't the quality of the work that all of the sudden changed, it was the boobs in the thumbnails, once they became established then they left that behind, but for new guys, if you're not established here your views will become less and less.  
Tomorrow I'm going to time myself and do a five minute render....watch what I put in the thumbs and watch the views and the comments compared to what I posted the last few days...most of you won't be surprised but some will pretend they are.

oooh I wrote way too much, sorry I love to write.  The site admins and mods for the most part are doing great jobs, but I like many others in the last few days (a lot of folks have taken down their galleries and other post a lot less) are finding out the joy that was here once upon a time seem like a distant fairy tale.  
We all remeber what happened when McDonald's tried to "grow up" the infamous Arc Burger?  Yeah...there's good (this isn't a hardcore porn site so the renders shouldn't have hardcore porn) and then there's too much "thumbnails nudity, I won't mention my other ones" ala the difference between the Big Mac and the Arc Burger.