On the HONOR system, on YOUR honor- anyone that reads this ENTIRE post here, by me, feel FREE to pick up a FREE Poser prop at the bottom of ALL my words... (Yes, Poppi, your name is mentioned....) ----------------------------------- Goodness gracious! PLEASE let's try to refrain from all the bashing here and let us get one good idea across plainly before it turns into a flame war! Sheesh.... It's about quality, and being tired of seeing substandard merchandise cluttering up the store, the same stuff that used to be put in free stuff for a while at least, until the modeler got the skill and the self confidence to submit it for sale, and by that time we had learned a little better what to do, how to do it, and what NOT to do... and about being sick and tired of being a regular customer at this store and the "let the buyer beware" attitude. I just added up my purchases for this year from the Renderosity Marketplace- in all I have spent

$542.64

that's JUST from this store, and just durng the past 1 year (not counting about an equal amount spent at DAZ and other places). As a regular and frequent buyer, as well as a merchant here, it becomes a little frustrating after a while dealing with what has basically become a digital flea market where you pays your money and you takes your chances. Well I took no chances with the $542.64 that I spent here, because I checked out each artist that I made purchases from as much as could be possible- gallery posts, what others had commented on a particular item, etc. And I thought it would certainly be nice to have some sort of set of REAL Standards of Excellence so that all this be-waring wasn't so darn necessary... In America, the very heart of free enterprise, there are standards testing facilities and organizations by the score, both governmental and privately owned. Poopie peddlers cannot hide behind the phrase "free enterprise" because even in America we do like quality- just ask the U.S. car manufacturers what happened back in the 1980's... ...and then those car manufacturers WISED UP and started doing some REAL quality and safety testing, and created sets of absolute standards by which to rate a vehicle's performance and quality and safety levels... and then it kinda got cool to drive an American car again... (no, I've always driven Ford pickup trucks, even the bad ones, but they're somewhat better now). People demanded quality, and for a while the only place they could get it was in a foreign automobile. THAT was FREE ENTERPRISE at work... but that same free enterprise demanded that there be quality and a way to tangibly measure that quality beyond "...well, I kinda like the green one..." ...and so the idea was born. It was a better idea than my previous tack of posting in Free Stuff a better version of some junk that somehow made it's way into the marketplace. And then I discovered that I wasn't the only one doing that... But what really got my fire going was hearing, WEEKS ago, that RCook was ranting that anyone undermining the Holy We-Can-Do-No-Wrong Marketplace should be site banned, and then using that same tired old threat to try and intimidate Mehndi and Goddess knows who else into giving up any idea of quality standards imposed from outside at all. SHAME ON HIM. THAT, POPPI, IS PART OF THE REASON FOR SECRECY... Truth is, for everyone that rants on about how everything should be free and there should be no marketplace at all, MUST understand that without the Marketplace, this place we all love so well to come and vent our frustrations would probably not survive. It just plain costs money to run an operation of this size, and the owners and operators MUST have a way to pay for that. But they now run the risk of discrediting the Marketplace that helps pay for this operation, by diluting the overall quality of the Marketplace as a whole. As I've said before I don't make my living from selling my models- and I personally prefer the barter system to dealing with any cash at all- hey, I'll trade you my faerie for your cool warrior princess... but I think that puts me in a good position to be able to speak out about some things, this hot topic being one of them, because MY bottom line doesn't necessarily have dollar $ign$ strewn across it. Now that you've all calmed down, I'm glad you can see the rationale behind it- it's not money, and heaven forbid it AIN'T about trying to start yet another snobby clique for the express purpose of excluding people- it is 100% about quality and honor, and being able to have it mean something about your hard work and craftsmanship, that you've reached a certain milestone for your long hours of painstaking care and attention to details and should rightly be rewarded, if that is your wish, by knowing that you've done something that meets a high level of excellence by being accepted into the store. Do you think that those several pages of standards that DAZ holds it's vendors to, is about them being snobs? Hardly. No reason we can't have our cake and eat it, too... Now since reading all that has gotta be hungry work, y'all have some free birthday cake on me... just click on the image to help yourself. May the faeries bless you all, Thorne, a Renderosity original =};-}>