Hey everyone!

As of today we are starting a new approval process for all freestuff items uploaded to the Renderosity Freestuff Section.

Please check the freestuff upload page, and you will see that there is a new notice that will inform providers of the new limits on uploads and approvals per 24 hrs per provider.

The new limits and approvals are as follows:

Upload limit: '3' per 24 hrs, per provider
Approvals: '1' per 24 hrs, per provider
All uploads received above upload limit of '3' per 24 hrs will be deleted.

I also want to touch on some points that have become an issue of late, regarding our freestuff area, and its abuse.

We have been seeing quite a few duplicate items being uploaded to the freestuff section that have been previously approved, that lead to the same files over at ShareCG. This is not allowed, as it is an abuse of our Freestuff Section.

We request that providers check their already approved items to make sure that they are not uploading duplicates. All duplicate items found will be deleted.

If you have any questions about the new limits, feel free to post here, or Sitemail me or Bobby, and we will be glad to help you.

Thanks!

~Jani

Thats a good thing ... i dont think people should make bad use of the freebee section here at R'O to make some cash on a other site..
Making cash from it is ok but do it on that site and not true here.
Hopefully this new set of rules does make a end to the CGshare-SPAMMING of the freebee section.
The freebee's here was always about quality and lets hope it will renturn to that .

Thnx R'O !

Chris

Ups! That means I will need at least as twice as long to announce here what I allready have in stock, because I just decided to give up my own freeware server (and I better stop making more free items). I planed to upload 2 or 3 a day for the next 3-4 weeks. No SPAM, really not.

Maybe Rendo users better look directly into shareCG to be sure not to miss something :)

How unfortunate that everyone is penalized for the actions of some who show no self control and chose to abuse the free area in order to make a few pennies on a freebie site that encourages people to spam in order to make a few pennies off of the hits and downloads.

Was there no other options or alternatives that didn't penalize everyone? Perhaps set a limit for those who host on a server like ShareCG which encourages spamming to get the maximum uploads and money.   And allow more uploads for those who are hosting on  free or paid sites that aren't paying for hits/downloads?

It's really those who are hosting on ShareCG  that is the problem. Anyone using another hosting site be it free or paid are uploading their items for the sake of offering freebies, not for the sake of trying to make pennies off of their uploads.

Also, I don't understand the reasoning behind allowing 3 uploads in 24 hours but only approving 1 of those in the same 24 hours. Why not just allow 1 upload and 1 approval in 24 hours? The way it is now someone could be uploading 3 items per day everyday which is 21 items a week and only having 7 of those approved during that week. That's a backlog of 14 items just for that one person.  That's going to lead to a huge backlog of items awaiting for approval.

I didn't know they were submitting the same item here more than once. I recall in the old days, when they switched servers that held the freebie, they would sometimes resubmit it. but I reckon this means they were resubmitting items without actually moving them from sharecg. possibly resubmitting the same item to sharecg, but it'll be a nitemare for sharecg to go thru all that stuff on his server and check for duplicate fotos, renders and other 2d stuff. adp, we'll keep an eye on yer page there. and thx fr the nice v3 helmet armour item.

For me what shareCG pays isn't of mutch interest. On the other side, it is a good and fair system. But the problem - we see it all - has to be soveld on shareCG's end.

The new rule just leads to multiple accounts per SPAM-user.

shareCG should be able to check his server records to see if the same IP address is associated with multiple usernames. then he could delete all of 'em, or maybe all but one of 'em.

Quote - shareCG should be able to check his server records to see if the same IP address is associated with multiple usernames. then he could delete all of 'em, or maybe all but one of 'em.

Same IP-address? I didn't have the same IP address for long. My provider hangs up the line at least once each day and provides me a new "dynamic IP". This is standard in most countries for most users.

Nobody is able to detect if a user opened several email accounts to use them with registration. This is normal allready with many other services :)

Acadia, we are not trying to penalize everyone, but the backlog in the testing area was getting way out of control. {wayyy above what you quoted up there} Some items were so backlogged till they stay for days if not a week, and more were coming in everyday...

We talked about doing 1 item approval and upload per provider, but that sounded pretty harsh, so we are allowing 3 per provider as opposed to the 5 per day like it was.

Also, we are not going to penalize those providers who use ShareCG..not everyone there does mass uploads.

Hopefully, with this system we can eventually cut down on some of the mass uploading as time goes along.

@MissNancy:

We discovered the duplicates while in the testing phase..we download each item uploaded here, and in the case of users on ShareCG, sometimes its pretty easy to spot if a provider has uploaded one file to Rendo more than once, by looking at the providers portfolio over there, and cross checking what has already been approved here....very time consuming, but one of those things that needed to be done,  in order to keep the abuses to a minimum.

Then sometimes we have those who have so many items, they are not aware that they have actually uploaded an item they already had gotten approved...so by doing all these cross checks, we can really cut out the needless duplicates, clutter, and sometimes abuse of our freestuff area.

@ Adp:

We're not going to cut out anything that has already been approved, this is all going forward..so if you have anything in the testing /pending area over 3 items, we will let you know ;) You can still upload 3 items per day, but only 1 of them will be approved per 24 hrs.

We will check the dates on all uploads, and if anything over 3 comes into pending in a 24 hr period, it will get deleted..so let's try to keep it at 3 if we can.

Hopefully, again, this will pan itself out..if it doesn't we'll, do something else until we get this monster under control :)

I know I am rather sick of single backgrounds being uploaded. I love free things as much as the next person, but why not link to a gallery where we can pick and choose the free item instead of seperate links for all these backgrounds?

Quote - I know I am rather sick of single backgrounds being uploaded. I love free things as much as the next person, but why not link to a gallery where we can pick and choose the free item instead of seperate links for all these backgrounds?

Unfortunately that's against the Renderosity Freestuff rules. Each item MUST be a direct link to the page the item is on. I already link to my gallery when I announce a freebie in the freebie forum and with every post I make via the link in my signature. Unfortunately, it appears that a HUGE portion of the freebie downloaders do NOT read the forums.

Believe me, those of us who are providing models and meshes to ShareCG are just as disgusted by the situation with backgrounds and textures being spammed everywhere. I wish I knew the answer to fixing the situation.

My guess about the duplicates is that some people are trying to get their freebies back to the top of the list so people will find them and that is abusive.

Some of the freestuff links to websites, like the recent V4 free jewelry, where you can pick which free item to download.

This is true, but in all those instances they link to the page the items can be found on. This can't be done for ShareCG items because the page numbers change as new items are added to each member's freebies gallery. This makes it impossible to link to the page an item is on at all times.

Devil's advocate time:

You obviously haven't got enough people working on it, bad management is not the freebie makers fault. Don't penalise the people potentially putting money in your pockets as they'll start staying away, put enough people on the job to get it running properly.

Oh.. dear.... and here I was going to try and upload my first freebie. I have know idea where to start and don't have a web page or anything like that. All I wanted to do was give my texture to the freebies area.

Quote - Oh.. dear.... and here I was going to try and upload my first freebie. I have know idea where to start and don't have a web page or anything like that. All I wanted to do was give my texture to the freebies area.

Thats not to difficult at all
1 You! have to find a place where you can store it.
2 read the info on the upload page of the freestuf..
3 Do what you read and upload your thumb nail to R'O
4 wait and see when your stuff hits the Freebee section

These new rules dont affect you and 98% of the others who upload freestuff.
And when you dont know what to do after reading the info etc etc you can always IM a R'O mod for help...

I hope this helps you

Chris

Thank you Chris. I'm still trying to put all my bits together and have worked out how to make a zip file, so that's a start. As I have only .png and .pz2 files to worry about, it shouldn't be too hard now that I know where to look for help.

still wating on an answer to this:

*Upload limit: '3' per 24 hrs, per provider
Approvals: '1' per 24 hrs, per provider

you can upload 3 but only 1 gets approved. whats the point of this illogical setup? you are creating a backlog for yourselves straight off and creating more work per day per provider.

can you explain the logic behind this decision?*
*(since it can't be to prevent a backlog... the system you are describling would inherently create a backlog!)

Quote -
Hopefully, again, this will pan itself out..if it doesn't we'll, do something else until we get this monster under control :)

Yes, time to do something.

I just wished I started my planed upload orgy earlier :)
With the new rules it will last a bit longer until I have anything published. That's all. I can pretty well live with this.

Maybe a prominent note on the freestuff page about the freestuff forum may be a good thing.

LTD, part of the issues we had, were too many people working on it, and we ended up tripping over one another, and sometimes more got approved that should not have been...so we've cut back on the amount of people working on the freestuff approvals, and it should be ok. Only time will tell ;)

Khai,  what the plan is, is to cut out so much mass uploading by a few providers, and my thoughts are that after some time, the mass uploaders will realize that they will not be able to abuse the system anymore, and will cut back on their uploading habits....if they only get 1 approved per day, they will eventually not upload more than that because it will not be worth the effort.

We could have gone the '1 upload, 1 approval, per 24 hrs' route..and we still could go that direction if this plan doesn't work...one way or another however, this abuse of the freestuff area has got to stop. We're trying for the easy approach first.

This way might still backlog us to a point, but it is not going to be anywhere near the backlog it was before we did this.

Let me ask you all while I'm here.....would you all prefer 1 approval, 1 upload per 24 hrs?

Adp, Good idea, I'll look at getting something placed on the freestuff page ;)

I would actually prefer that the guilty uploaders be asked to knock it off. It's not like the approval folks can't tell who's uploading 12 freebies or however many they are a day. That's just me.

But if you're only going to approve 1 a day, I see no point in allowing more than 2 uploads a day. The reason I say 2 is it allows the uploader to upload the next day's upload before their 24 hours is up and thus free's them up from having to watch the clock so much. The only point of a 3rd upload is to give them three days off from uploading.

Normally I don't have too much to say, but having only recently begun to share things with the community this is in general relevant to me. 

There is no doubt that something has to be done because while I might be new to submitting free stuff I am a long time beneficiary of downloading them and I have seen the horrendous flooding of the area.  And since some folks seem sadly unwilling to police their own habits in this respect I would say this plan is as good a place as any to start in curbing the problem.

I personally wouldn't have any issue with it being limited to 1 upload and 1 approval per 24 hours, as this would logically guarantee that you didn't have a backlog problem.  But that is probably because, as a beginner, I'm a bit slow. When I upload one, it takes me a day and sometimes two (depending on what I am working on) to finish, test and package another one for upload.  In fairness to those who have backlogs of unposted items and those who are quicker than I am you should probably allow either two or three uploads every 24 hours so these folks aren't playing a clock watching game just to share something with the community.

Just my two cents worth which in these inflationary times is probably worth about half a cent. :)

3 uploads/1 approved a day is fine, IMHO. As Barcode said allready, most providers aren't affected. The other ones will get a kind of timebuffer.

@MatrixWorkz: A few providers have to pay the bill for whats going on. And because we can avoid something must be done, we should support it. Cut off these abusers throat :)

Perhaps things are turning back to normal after a while.

Quote -
@MatrixWorkz: A few providers have to pay the bill for whats going on. And because we can avoid something must be done, we should support it. Cut off these abusers throat :)

Well I'm aware of that but it's certainly not fair to those who don't abuse the system. I'm not in the habit of uploading 12 items a day. I've done at most 5 a day and that was when I'd finally decided to link to the freebies from freestuff instead of just the forums.

For the first three months I didn't link from the freebies section at all and only posted links in the forums so when I did finally decide to link from the freebie section I had a few months of backlog to get uploaded fairly quickly so I did five a day. Now I'm lucky if I do 2 items a day. It's still just sad that some people have to be penalised for the behaviour of others.

Please don't lump all who use shareCG in the same basket, some of us are responsible & don't abuse the system.

Don't blame us for the greedy, shareCG seem to be working on the problem, but I think Rendo needs to be responsible too & also address/disipline these people, not penalise those who are doing the right thing.

Matrix, although I see your point and also agree on most aspects of your argument, some points just aren't logical! Although the rosity team COULD notify all current abusers as you have recommended, it still doesn't put a stop to new user/abusers! Rosity would have to wait for them to abuse before they could be notified to stop said actions, creating an endless and useless process of repeatedly notifying people to stop abusing the system. (Take into account that repeated abusers are probably by nature not very honest ppl, and therefore probably don't care about the wrongness of their actions!)  Also, using such a system allows too many loopholes for the abusers to use to get around the admins! So, rosity would be forced to overwork themselves in and endless endeavor to be overly forgiving! Yes, I admit that it is not fair that the regular (and honest) users of such systems should be punished for what others are doing, but that is how life works...if you allow dishonest ppl a way to be dishonest, they will simply follow their nature! But with this new system, it will EFFECTIVELY stop the abusers! Rosity's other option, of course, would be to put an end to the freestuff section, which I am sure that none of us would want to see happen! Again I will point out that I DO agree with you that it is not fair, I would say to give the new system a try and be glad that the system is still there for us to enjoy, albeit with a few limitations! Just my two cents, hope you take it into consideration! 

Dal I understand why it's being done. I'm not taking my toys and going home. I'm simply stating my opinion on the matter. I don't really see that there's anything for me to consider, other than to play the hurt child and take my balls and go home. I'm not blaming the mod's for having to do what they've done either. As I said, it's not really cutting into my current upload rate all that much. I just wish there were another way to moderate the abuse without penalising non-abusers.

Purging abusers of all things good from the earth would be nice, eh?  But I guess thats not very feasible, is it?  We can only hope that they all drop from the face of the earth, or become inexplicably computer illiterate or something.....I know, I'm dreaming! But it keeps one's spirits up to keep firmly in mind that all things are possible!  :-)

Quote - Please don't lump all who use shareCG in the same basket, some of us are responsible & don't abuse the system.

Don't blame us for the greedy, shareCG seem to be working on the problem, but I think Rendo needs to be responsible too & also address/disipline these people, not penalise those who are doing the right thing.

Let me just second that... I think many many of us who use Share CG to upload their free stuff try to make good work  and give their best to provide the community with nice free stuff. But as beeing one of these people I really think it is a good thing that ReRo now takes stepps to quench the flood of freebie spam like that single backgrounds ant the likes. I can only hope it works...

Well, for me 3 uploads and one approval is ok. My rate is much lower as I can't even dream of finishing a, lets say, decent clothing texture set in one day!

Didn't I hear somewhere that tim (the owner of this site) also owns shareCG.

I do understand the reasoning of this change...

But how smart is it to do just before the christmas freebee givaways season? Bet ya didn't think of that!!!

*"January 3rd my santa sled is approved- it was held to make room for a cyclorama background"

*No--this is just another example of bad, cheep and self-serving management.

Dont know where you heard that Geo, but I know David and Jake own SCG.

Also, we were not thinking about any particular freebies, in any season..including Christmas freebies.

Quote - "January 3rd my santa sled is approved- it was held to make room for a cyclorama background"

• Who exactly are you quoting here? :huh:*

I'm actually disturbed to find that most of the cyclorama uploads were made from free photos already on the internet at this site: http://www.fontplay.com/freephotos/

I emailed the owner of that website only to find he was somewhat disturbed that someone was making money off of his photos.

Ummm,  Im not sure about all the Cycloramas you are talking about Matrix, but if the guy was disturbed because someone was making money off his photo's,  then he should not have placed this in his terms of use:

"These are free photos that may be used by anyone for any artistic endeavor,

personal or commercial without having to give credit or a link etc. Terms of Use:

Use these images at your own risk. I can only assert that the photos were takenby me and my friends, and we don't mind if you use them."

Do you know which images were used?

You might post in the copyright forum about this as well ;)

Quote - Didn't I hear somewhere that tim (the owner of this site) also owns shareCG.

.

Well if you did you certainly heard wrong, lol....That is why rumors are so unecessary because they are just that RUMORS, no fact at all.

Just want to clear up that false rumor as Tim or anyone at Bondware/Renderosity has no affiliation with ShareCG at all. 

Quote - Just want to clear up that false rumor as Tim or anyone at Bondware/Renderosity has no affiliation with ShareCG at all. 

Bad news ;)

JSM, I sent you a PM of the email I got from Dennis Hill about the images in question. He does request a link back to his website as credit. Whether he means a clickable link that people can follow to support his own website  with it's ad revenue is something to be discussed with him. The link's given in the descriptions of the above mentioned items are not clickable and do not direct people to his site so that he get's his own revenue. In anycase, He's aware of the issue now as well.

I never heard that rumour, either. one would think that if folks are gonna try to start rumour-mongering, they'd at least be plausible :lol:

I don't see the problem is with uploading backgrounds - as long as those are valid - like someones put some effort into making a background or taking a good photo.

The real problem is that SINGLE idiot who keeps uploading photos to ShareCG under the guise of "cyclorama" backgrounds. Lets face it, it's not for the good of this community it's soley so they can rack up a few extra dollars over at ShareCG. 

Which is NOT fair on those guys = ShareCG do a brillant job of providing a home for 3d stuff, giving us a chance to download stuff we may not get the chance to get because the creators can't afford to run a site.

And then idiots like this come along and abuse it. I say theres a simple solution to this problem - ban that single idiot from uploading anything to freestuff. 

:)

Quote - ShareCG do a brillant job of providing a home for 3d stuff, giving us a chance to download stuff we may not get the chance to get because the creators can't afford to run a site.

And then idiots like this come along and abuse it. I say theres a simple solution to this problem - ban that single idiot from uploading anything to freestuff. 

Applause.

The issue has been resolved between the owner of the photos and ShareCG and the uploader. He's made the credits to the original site clickable links and all three parties are satisfied.

It's a pity that the actions of a few people have caused all this trouble and worry for everyone else.

Very true.

Moreover, the action taken does not stop "newcomers". Actually somebody uploaded plain JPEG pictures as "Poser Backgrounds" to shareCG. Maybe a missunderstanding. Maybe the beginning of a new SPAM attack.

But this is no longer a problem Renderosity is involved in. Thanks to the new Freestuff-Provisions :)

I'm with Anniebel and Varnayrah, there are many of us trying to provide quality content. Our intent is not to get rich, at least not be the ShareCG method. LOL! But the extra $5-10 dollars does help pay for the yearly email account, a stack of blank CD-R's and a few pots of coffee. We have also made requests to improve the uploading procedures, clean up the content, and we are assisting in anyway possible to help them with this task. Let me say thank you to all that shared their content, also thank you to all that have downloaded textures or models from me. I appreciate all of the kind gestures, comments, and new friends this has provided. Evolving is not a painful process, stopping the process is.

I used to upload around 7 items at once - because I could only upload at the weekend, not having access to the internet for uploading during the week.

I uploaded textures - I try my best to ensure that these are each time different from the last one - because I take photos of different things, like no two walls are the same, no two roofs, different types of sand, gravel, concrete, carpet, etc etc.
I then spend quite a lot of time making these images into seamless tiles so that when put onto a 3D model the repetition is either negligible or as near as d&mn it that I can get it.

I do not consider this is spamming.  If I took an image of the brown carpet, posted that and then posted that same image but colour adjusted to red, yellow, orange, green, blue etc etc  Now that would be spamming. 

Especially if they are not tiled and thus require a good deal of work to get them useable.

I think that measures to cut down on this sort of thing is a good idea - but I'd prefer an allowance of 7 per week - obviously.  Lol

I do not like the idea of 1 per 24 hrs - please!

The PTB at ShareCG are also trying (at last) to curb abuse of the system - I hope they manage it.

They do do their best.

I was also concerned about the fact that only one per 24 hours would be permitted. I normally get the weekend hours to work on uploads as my weekly schedule include business travel and sometimes long hours. But I have just given up on this issue that we could have more than one upload and approval in 24 hours. I asked if we could have a monthly quota of 30, when we hit that we are cut off. This way we could still upload easily with our silly schedules, allowing Rendo to take advantage of the content we share. The one per 24 hours will definitely curb my uploads and reduce the overall content that I share at Rendo, not so everywhere else. I am interested in making a better system, just losing the energy to fight.

Vkirchner, The upload limit is 3 per day {21 per week} and 1 approval per day {7 per week} You still have 28 approvals per month this way, so Im a bit stumped what you are asking for?

Are you asking for 30 uploads and approvals just whenever during the month? If that is so, that would throw us right back off where we were..mass uploads and a backlog that won't wait, because we would have to allow that for everyone.

I understand your problem, I do not have a solution for you.  I am only commenting on the fact that I can only upload on weekends, weekdays are too busy with my work schedule because of travel, so this will severely limit the total number of uploads and approvals.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Quote - I understand your problem, I do not have a solution for you.  I am only commenting on the fact that I can only upload on weekends, weekdays are too busy with my work schedule because of travel, so this will severely limit the total number of uploads and approvals.  Nothing more, nothing less.

If you upload three a day on Friday, Saturday & Sunday, that's 9 uploads per weekend. Times 4 for the month and you've actually gone over 30 uploads for the month at 36 uploads. I don't see the problem here. If you only upload on Saturdays and Sundays that's still 24 uploads a month. Hardly an issue if you ask me.

So your saying that they will pass one a day until all are approved, if that is the case it will work fine. It just seems a little difficult for them to keep track, but it's okay by me.

I'd like to commend the admins for tackling this issue.

They won't get it to everyone's satisfaction, but the difference is clear for all to see - not least in the fact that the principal offender is reduced to one upload a day rather than his/her usual seven or eight. Freestuff is already looking far less cluttered and less of a chore to wade through.

Thank you.

Thanks Steerpike :) Its looking alot better in the back too