I definitely agree with the others who suggested less-stringent upload guidelines and the whole "uploaders-in-good-standing don't have to go through the moderation queue" thing. I've had some lots that I spent a lot of time on building, uploading, making suggested changes, uploading again and having them be rejected for some VERY nitpicky reasons.

Well, I'd like an increase in the limit of file sizes from 10 MB to something bigger, especially since people now seem to upload inhibited neighborhoods (especially those that require EP's (not just the BG)).

Also, I noticed that when you write feedback for a creator, it might be hard for them to know that you asked a question, so, is it possible for them to get a notification that someone gave feedback, specifically for those who use the feedback button, they don't need to receive a notification if some just wanted to thank them.

All of the above could be my words. When I started creating in 2007 there was no moderation for my category of cc but once it did occur it was fairly speedy and I did not have problems with it. The last few years something happened to the moderation process (constant changes required and nit picking about things that had nothing to do with the actual content) where one says it is just not worth going through all these hoops. I am like AlfredAskew as in I don"t care about download numbers anymore. I am my own worst critic so trust me to want to upload something that is up to snuff.

If you want people to start uploading to MTS again you have to have a bit of good will towards them and stop with stringent policies that aren't helping quality control but rather hindering alot of quality content ever making it onto the site. Roll back the clock a few years and see what made MTS great.

I think it would be great if lots could have a no CC/CC filter. Then we'd finally stop seeing lots titled "Your New Home - no CC"
But that's the only way to let browsing people know a lot has no CC.

Also, if it could be implemented, a download updater thingy would be nifty.
Example: Create an "update notification" button that creators can add to their download if they want. Site users who click on a download's "update notification" button would be notified anytime that download is updated.
The notification could appear on anyone's My Downloads page, sent via PM, whatever you decide.
I'm thinking this would be mostly for mods and such that need updated with patches, but it could apply to any download that may need updated/fixed for whatever reason.

Thank you all for your input and suggestions. We really do appreciate it - keep 'em coming!

Sounds like, for the most part, people are in agreement over some major points, which is... really excellent, as we have a couple of pretty big changes in the works that we'll be doing an official announcement for pretty soon, very much along the lines of the suggestions here. Very nice to see that, despite the first post specifically not mentioning any current plans, you guys have come up with basically the same idea on your own, and that creators seem pretty across-the-board agreed on some of those big points.

Yes, I'm being intentionally cryptic as I don't want to say too much just yet, till we're closer to rolling it out... but you creative type peoples have more than a few brain cells to rub together, so I'm sure you can figure it out.

Okay. Once I recoloured the painting easel from Sims 2. It was declined because of the bad quality pictures. I had a really rubbish computer. So maybe make exceptions for people with low-end computers. Also, the picture requirements for things, such as houses, one directly from the front, one directly from the back, are really hard to get perfect. So maybe be a bit more lenient, so long as you have good views of all angles of the house, inside and outside, it'd be better. I have built a house and didn't upload it here because I couldn't get the photos right. Taking the pictures is more of an art form than actually building the houses. It put me off even bothering to try, knowing it'd be rejected for my pictures being at angles.

That sounds exciting HP. :D

Perhaps a quick thanks button for each upload on the download overview page would be useful and remind people to thank? Maybe it only shows if you've downloaded that item? Or maybe it shows on all DLs but is red (for example) if you've downloaded but not thanked an item. I posted this in the downloader’s thread too since I wish for this as a downloader to remind me to do it and as a creator to remind others to do it to me



That was from a downloader's PoV and taken from the downloader's thread but from a creator's PoV, I think it would be kinda cool to have a 'download of the month' or maybe a monthly top ten chart or something. Based purely on Downloads of course and nothing to do with the moderators. Heck, maybe even award a small “creator of the year” type prize for the person with the most downloads each year. Of course, I don’t have a hope in hell of competing for that but would still enjoy seeing others win and could at least make a feeble attempt at making the top 10 for a month I just think it would be a fun way to inject a bit of excitement into the creation/upload process :D

ETA: *creator of the year prize or a little badge under their name like the mocha/latte awards.

Just to support the comments about too much emphasis being put on judging the screenshots, it shouldn't be forgotten that it is very simple for a player to try something out in their game and then delete it if it disappoints them. It's not as if people are paying money up front and there is no-refunds policy. So really the images attached to the upload post don't *need* to be quite as amazing as some moderators have insisted on.

First of all: you guys are awesome. After the whole bootstrap episode, I didn't think you'd be asking feedback antime soon, yet here you guys are again, trying to make this site better yet again. Also, I really appreciate the fact that you keep such a close eye on this thread.
I think the most important points have been covered by those posting before me, but I'd like to add my two cents aa a new creator What I aim for as a creator is very much related to what I want as a downloader, so apologies if this overlaps.
What I like about MTS, is the fact that it is moderated quite strictly. As a downloader, I know what I am getting, and therefore as a creator I don't mind the hassle because I know it serves the purpose of the downloader. Also, I feel a little proud everytime my upload gets approved, because then I know it's good enough. Uploading to the exchange wouldn't give me the same satisfaction. However, I can totally understand that after a few decent uploads, people get tired of the moderation process, especially when the comments come across as nitpicking. The point I'm trying to make is that a happy medium should be found. Who is going to decide when a creator is good enough and/or when his standards are dropping? Even when creators are their own moderators, I'd still expect to see clear pictures and detailed descriptions. Sure, moderation afterwards is possible, but how will you make sure that a creator actually will be making the changes required? I'm not saying that all creators are evil and this plan is wrong, but I'm just raising some questions I'd like to see answered before this system rolls into place. One suggestion I'd like to make is to send the direct uploaders the sheet/checklist you use to moderate, so they can use that as a reference for checking their upload. If this sytem would help to get awesome creators back, its totally worth the effort. i would love to learn some new stuff, have their creations as examples and be able to pick their brains.
Which brings me to my second point: there is so much knowledge available at MTS, yet it can be quite difficult to find what you are looking for. Many tutroials are old or outdated, and CFF is most useful when you have created something already that you wish to improve. In an ideal world, where moderators and site helpers would be paid for their tremendous efforts and are bored and looking for something to do, the wiki and tutorial section would be updated and better organised. Beginning creators, like me, would then know where and how to start, ask less silly questions, meaning that experienced creators are more likely to want to help because they know that the other person has at least been able to try and understand the basics.

It's possibly a personality thing. Some people enjoy the feeling of approval by people in authority, and that's fine. My idea for receiving the "accredited" stamp after uploading when the moderator has time to check it may satisfy that. But a heck of a lot of the most innovative and talented people are quite the opposite, and get irritated by too much overt authority, and they may be the people who have stopped uploading here. Hopefully MTS management will be able to find a compromise that suits both ends of the spectrum.

Surely if a creator has a featured or picked upload in an area that is enough to say they are good enough in that area to bypass a long moderation queue.
My idea was it was box you could tick on the upload wizard to say if you have a featured or picked upload in that area you are uploading to. That way if you are picked for your clothing you can get through any new clothing items through quickly but don't get through without moderation when you decide to try make-up. I have no idea how hard something like that would be to make and it would have to have some kind of self checking system to prevent cheating or just making a mistake.

I like the idea of some kind of self moderation form.



Yes, I'm not really happy being told my effort on a particular upload was a 3 this time and a 4 that time. They really don't know how much effort I put in and looks can be deceiving. Also what might be easy for one person might have taken another person much more effort so you can't judge someone else's effort by your own talents.

It might be a personality thing, it might have to do with a difference in experience, maybe my opinion is different after ten more lots! I like your idea of the approval stamp, but I would still argue that the uploads that don't get this stamp should be removed in due time. Don't get me wrong, I like this idea of the system overhaul, I'm just hesitant because I'm a fan of MTS's high standards. I agree partly that there is too much focus on presentation, but the photoshopped images of other CC-sites have made me so disappointed everytime I checked their stuff in my game, that I don't go there anymore. Which is why I wanted to have a discussion about the details of the compromise as well, to add to the question why there should be direct uploading

I know this doesn't help now, but revamping the download browser completely is pretty high on my list of "Things to do" for MTS. The current one hasn't changed much in functionality for about 7 years (when I first wrote it), and especially for things like filters, multiple games, and just generally browsing things it's not... optimal.

So, even with the new theme revamp and the download blocks, I'll probably be rewriting the whole damn thing at some point soonishly. Which is going to need about 4 buckets of coffee and a locked room for a week because man that code is awful (and just about the most complicated thing on the site).

Yes, please. The shape of the mesh and placement of highlights doesn't change between different colors anyway, and taking separate pictures of each color always took me a lot of time.

It's not really about quality - there's as much good pay stuff as good free stuff, as much bad free stuff as bad pay stuff etc. It's more about principles . MTS is a 100% free site, so downloaders always need to be able to get what they see in the pics completely for free. We also respect creators' policies, so if a creator says that something can't be included (which all pay creators do), we respect that. So we end up a bit stuck - we can't have pay stuff required because it's pay, and we can't have pay stuff included because that'd be shitty towards the creators. We have been discussing middle roads on this recently, but I'd be interested to hear other people's suggestions too.

This is an interesting one! I'm always a bit unsure about doing this kind of thing, because while I want to get uploads approved as fast as possible, I'm always wary of stepping on creators' toes. How would other creators feel about mods editing their uploads in this way?

This is already the case.

We use templates for the guidelines, so that there's less risk of them getting out of step - it means that if we increase the max pic size to 2500x1800, we just change one template which shows up on all the guidelines pages. That avoid the situations that used to occur very frequently, where we'd change a rule but forget to upload one or two guidelines pages, so creators would end up getting the wrong info. It's certainly not meant to encourage anyone to switch to TS3 - I'm a TS2 person through and through - it's just a practical thing; and the TS3 guidelines pages also have TS2-specific advice on them.

These kinds of issues are always tricky. Especially with lots and sims, it can be very difficult to say, objectively, 'this is good' or 'this is bad'. We aim to err on the side of approving stuff, but as you say, it can still lead to odd ratings even when those ratings are 3+ and thus approvable. Hmm.

I'd probably say that spellcheck plugins for browsers are so common nowadays that there's not much point in us duplicating the functionality.

I like this. I'd also like to know which bits the four people who pressed disagree disagreed with .

We do have the My Feedback page, under User Options. The problems with notifications is that we don't have a notifications system . Email notifications used to pants the servers, so we turned them off; we still have a protozoal on-site notifications system floating around somewhere, but it was never finished.

They do.

My Downloads currently marks any uploads on the list which have been updated since the downloader last downloaded files from them. Would you prefer that to be scrapped and for My Downloads to only mark those downloads which the downloader has specifically signed up for updates from?

I'll look at the rest of the posts soon, have to head out now .

Thing is, I would have happily uploaded a 5500+ faces short hair for The Sims 2 to this site and wouldn't have thought anything of it were it not for someone pointing out 'LOL ARE YOU SERIOUS!?'. Even after creating 30(?) hairs, still doesn't mean I don't need moderation and things pointed out to me sometimes. I personally need the help. I'm not a great creator, but still have high downloads (as it's hair, hair is freaking popular either way) and it would suck if thousands of people ended up with a mistake and would have to re download because it was auto-approved.

Maybe there can be an opt-out for those who got featured an x amount of time. Like "You don't need the hand-holding and peer-review will be enough, but if you want, we will still look at your stuff. Please tick the box if you want this download reviewed by mods."

You know we'd have deleted the fuck out of it, though, hon. :D

YOU would. "HAHA IT'S NOUK LET'S HAVE SOME FUN!" :D

Nouk - Even with the totally-hypothetical-no-really-auto-approve-for-good-creators system, moderators and users can still point out things that could be done better by commenting, and uploads can be revised... It moves the feedback you get from moderation to a more general thing, but poly counts are required -anyway- so it's not like someone couldn't look at it and go "5500 polys, that seems high" and then either not download or post a comment asking what the crazy dutch hair-making lady has been smoking that makes her think that count is okay.

You probably got me wrong. I was looking for a word had to do with yelling, arguements, complaints and ended up with rubbish. A spellcheck may be nice to have . I can't really come up with a middle road on this though. I know there do excist good creators with free items, it's just scattered all over, and much more job to find. Finding a good creator involves work. They all have their things, good and bad, and what can I live with?

Like everyone else, most of my thoughts have been said. I started uploading my lots on my tumblr because I found that I was very discouraged by what some moderators said about my lots. Yes they are so many house styles out there, but some of us stick to the same style, that's what we like to build and we can expand on that. But when we're told that our lot looks like everyone else's, it's like a slap in the face. I don't approve of the star rating at all. I agree it should be used to pick "picked" and "featured" lots, but sometimes you stop and wonder why you got 2 stars for your texture/terrain paintings or your gardens when you've done nothing wrong. The size of pictures I think also needs to be worked on. I like to be able to upload clear pictures of what my lots look like, not blurred pictures, which I can now easily do on my tumblr. The only thing I do it change the balance of light on my pictures but when uploading to MTS with the file size limit my pictures end up so blurry they look like horrible representations of my lots, etc. Also perhaps allow downloads to be uploaded in package format. I barely use CC in my lots anymore, but every time I do, in goes a credit link. I also like the feedback/commenting system. Other than that, and maybe a need for a better filter system in the downloads menu, this site is alright. I just prefer my tumblr because of the freedom I have of uploading a lot and whatever pictures I choose to put with it when I want to .

You know sometimes you just need the confidence to do that yourself. I know for me it would be an additional selfcheck, and I would be a bit apprehensive about it, but that's good in my opinion. It shows you take it seriously, and that you should.

That and one thing that I'd like would be having the post split. I'll try to explain it the best I can but basically instead of having to write the post in one box, more boxes, each one representing a section (i.e. Requirements, Description, Specifics, etc...). This would save time having to make your own layout and make it simpler for those who have a hard time figuring out what to write (*cough cough* me *cough*)

A Changelog section would be nice too, without having to change the post to include them.

Last, a marker that describes what changed, something like what Twallan has on NRaas (i.e. Coding update, Translation update, ...) keeping a custom one where you write why you updated it (as it is now).

What I'm describing is something along the line of elements that you add to the post and customize them to your needs

EDIT : I've just noticed Nonamena suggested something similar too, so yeah, that too

Exactly. It's not like downloaders need to have their decisions made by moderators in all respects. Sites can always remove a download that is reported to be destroying people's games and making them unusable even after deleting the content. But then the current moderation process does nothing about rejecting broken or game-breaking content anyway - so while it judges presentation it actually doesn't protect the end user anyway. That relies purely on subsequent user feedback.

In some ways it might have been more useful if the moderation process consisted of game testing, and therefore validation of safety. But even this can be misleading since a modder or creator can always upload an update without going through the queue again. And that update might be game-breaking. So some thought maybe should be given to what is actually being *said* about a download to end-users when that download is approved.