I remember admiring these great materials a few months back - thanks for adding them to the Freestuff section. I'm on my way...

Great work Don. I'd never heard of the site before, so I'm grateful for the heads up here. I've already downloaded quite a few of your models. Thanks for your generosity and hard work. Bill

Congratulations both, and best wishes for the future together. Bill

I haven't really tried this yet, but am very impressed with the results you have achieved here. Another voice pleading for a tutorial.

Just to mention, you can also use the F6 key to bring up the material editor. Another little tip (probably mentioned somewhere in the backroom, but just in case...). If you have already created several trees of the same type, changing the material for the trunk via the material editor will affect all of them. However, if you then add another tree of the same kind, it will have the original default materials. This can be useful, but if it is not what you want, you simply need to change the material again in the editor.

I have gleaned one useful tip from this thread - never to bother opening another one started by the infinitely tiresome Veritas777 (or should it be 666?). My respect to Guitta and Lynn for remaining calm, polite and helpful (words whose meaning you might care to look up, V777) under this unwarranted barrage of abuse.

My new configuration: P4 3GHz Windows XP Pro 1Gb RAM 400Gb disk space (2 hard drives) ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mitsubishi 22" monitor Just installed Vue on it - working fine and so much faster than my old 450MHz machine.

Congratulations Yves - a very worthy winner.

JR221 - thanks for that. I haven't been around here long enough to have encountered the old numeric system, nor indeed the time when I believe rankings were not anonymous. I wonder why these two changes were made - I'm sure it was with good intentions, but they both seem, at least with the benefit of hindsight, to have been for the worse.

Sorry - last sentence "coting" was a mistype for "voting", but in fact I of course meant ranking rather than votes anyway.

Yves - I think your specific worry is unfounded. I have replied in more detail on the thread linked from #1 above.

Yves - I don't understand your point. In your scenario, by the time the minimum 5 rankings have been received, assuming the first was a very low one from a troll and the remainder were all nearer the high end, then the troll's marking would become an outlier beyond the limits of the bell curve and would be omitted from the overall ranking. This would occur irrespective of when the troll posted, first, last or somwehere between.

Of course it isn't perfect. As has been pointed out, "block voting" from a group of trolls or more likely a troll with "multiple personalities" could still sway the ranking - in the extreme case more strongly than before, as a mass attack could cause the fair votes to actually be discounted as lying outside the accepted region thus having absolutely no impact on the overall result! Hopefully though such cases would be glaringly obvious and would be reported for suitable exclusion action against the individual(s) concerned.

I do agree with Nish's point though. The lowest few terms are so pejorative that I think few other than trolls would consider using them, preferring not to rank in such cases. Obviously since you are computing standard deviations, you are converting these verbal rankings into numerical equivalents. My guess is that these are in a simple arithmetic progression by unit decrement. If so this could be construed as a bit misleading, as the verbal representations don't seem to me to form an especially linear progression between the extremes, and in any case are open to individual interpretation, a particular problem in a multi-lingual community such as this. I would have thought simple numeric marks out of ten would be easier to grasp. I am still of the opinion that removing anonymity from the coting would be an effective deterrent to trolls.

Thanks Robot - I scan-read it as I downloaded it; looks to be some very useful information you've collated there.

I am very sad to learn of Mark's death. My condolences to his family and friends. He will be missed by those of us who only knew him through this and similar Forums too.

Off to take a look right now - thanks Thomas.