First off, thanks so much dogbite1066 and vkirchner comments like your's really do mean alot to me :-) 

I'm not sure how long Spacebones has been cranking them out, but I have been building 3D stuff since 1990, I still have Poser 1.0 (not installed though). It shipped on 3 floppy Disks...lol Sooo, I do have a bit of practice, 17 years of it. Man that just screams...Hey dude you're getting old...lol

As for the new policy for watching over the free section I think it is a great idea. Now mind you of late I am doing well to get 1 new item uploaded per month, and when i do upload something it is something that has just been finished, so no chance of it having been uploaded before.

One thing to keep in mind is the free section is the starting ground for most merchants and free downloads are often only free to the person downloading them, not the people who provide them.

The only reason I went merchant was to help cover the costs of my freebies. My free section was costing me $55 a month to host the files so they were free to everyone except me. These days it costs me $25 per month to host my free files.

It is not unreasonable to expect some to try and cover their costs by moving items to market. This is done by putting your better items in the market. Some do jump the gun and start trying the market before they are ready and others wait till long after they have the hang of it. This does effect the quality of the free section.

So ya consider it costs me $300 per year (not complaining, just using myself as an example) to give my stuff away, many others bear the same costs, or can not bear the cost but still want to contribute some how. My market pays for the cost of my site, so those who support my Renderosity Market actually support my Renderosity Free section. Now mind you you can get free websites to host files but they are rarely large enough. My site is 2 gigs of space and 200 gig of bandwith, ya can't get that for free. So many folks that would be happy to give away all there stuff can't because it is to expensive to do so. In my humble opinion it's hats off to any and all that are willing to post for free downloads. 

I also send thank you letters to all those folks i downoad free items from to let them know how greatful I am for them sharing their hard work (you'd be supprised how few thank yous you do get).  Overall I do pretty good in this area, I get 1-2 letters per month. I suggest if there are those that you do like to download from on a regular basis to send a quick "thanks" via site mail, it s good encouragement. You'd be supprised how many free stuff contributors are encouraged to do more knowing that their suff is truly liked.

This sort of thing does effect what will show up in the free section. Me my rule is simple, if it took more than 50 hours to make it will head to market 80% of the time. But about twice a year it will go to the freesection.

WOW sorry for the long winded responce, guess I am rather fond of the Free Section :-)