I suppose this isn't a specific question that can be easily answered, but I feel bothered about recent events in the gallery. I've always felt very comfortable coming here, asking questions, answering the very few I can (!), reading posts, posting images in the gallery. It took me over a year to work up the nerve to post an image, I was so intimidated by the great stuff there, but everyone was so kind and welcoming to me, and very helpful with suggestions as well.

It seems like all of a sudden, lately, strange things are going on in the gallery, though. One individual decided to go against the Renderosity Terms of Service, and be dishonest about comments, ratings, and voting, I suppose to get their stuff into the Hot 20 or something. This same person keeps coming back with similar or now a new name. This is just plain dishonest, no buts about it. And it's caused Guitta and the admins a lot of extra work. Now, we've had an individual with an empty homepage and no gallery trolling the gallery and making nasty comments on images and voting images very low. For what reason? Just to be mean? To impose their ideas on all of us? My mom always told me that it's best to either say something postive, or not to say anything. If it's constructive criticism, that's one thing, but when it's just plain mean, that's another. None of us are required to make a comment, a vote, or a ranking when we view an image; I look at a lot of images at Renderosity, and don't comment/rank/vote on most of what I see in the other galleries. But to purposefully make snide remarks and low rankings...what is the point of that?

One result of all this is that one of my favorite people and Vue artists has left the site. This is a person who was kind and helpful to me and many other people, who never did anything mean to anyone. Another result is that I don't feel very comfortable here; I feel like my trust is being betrayed or something like that. I see good and well-meaning people's trust being abused. A third result is the extra work things like this cause to Guitta and the other Renderosity staff; no wonder we don't see may images from Guitta in the gallery any more, to our loss, since things like this have to take up her time.

I don't suppose there is really anything we can do, as users at least, to fix this. In the online world, just like the real world, there are always people who want to take advantage of other people, because they have some type of problem. I want to thank Guitta for all her hard work to try and keep this a safe and good place for all of us to share. Maybe if we all stay vigilant, and try to help Guitta by doing so, we can cut some of these problems off at the start.

Sgiathalaich