The continuing problem is, that undoubtedly those who wish to abuse the ratings for malign purposes will, on average, make more effort to do so than the casual positive voter because they always do.

Still, one step at a time I'm just glad to see some progress is being made. Compared to the 4 years everyone has been waiting for the Sims 2 exchange problems to be fixed, this is a lighting turnaround!

Well done to those protesting on your Boycott creations (Bit of a contradiction I know, but it's really made some waves and it was definitely fun to see!).

Okay, dealing with life outside of spore there are 20 new pages can someone give me a TLDR. is the strike over?

GrandPeep wrote:Okay, dealing with life outside of spore there are 20 new pages can someone give me a TLDR. is the strike over?

Short answer: "For now"

Longer summary:
+ Maxis fixed the infinite vote problem

- Maxis has not fixed 1 user being able to vote up to 5 times
- Maxis has not removed the ability to vote for yourself, nor the ability to downrate others.

= Maxis seems to have recognised there are issues that need looking at and are in the process of doing so now they know there's a BIG call for change.
= Protest is off for now to let Maxis make their move, things don't just change overnight but I don't believe further protests will help the community

Ryuujin wrote:
= Protest is off for now to let Maxis make their move, things don't just change overnight but I don't believe further protests will help the community

Umm.... This protest helped the community.

We should wait unleast until next Teusday before we decide to do something again.

Didzo wrote:

Ryuujin wrote:
= Protest is off for now to let Maxis make their move, things don't just change overnight but I don't believe further protests will help the community

Umm.... This protest helped the community.

We should wait unleast until next Teusday before we decide to do something again.

agreed, also, ...kinda fun...odd.

Didzo wrote:Umm.... This protest helped the community.

We should wait unleast until next Teusday before we decide to do something again.

Yeah i meant in the short term, another day of withholding content or spamming the top-rated list would cause far more damage than it'd solve, for the short term weneed to give Maxis some space so we might as well carry on, buisness as usual =p

I'm going to assume that the boycott is over, right?

AEH450 wrote:I'm going to assume that the boycott is over, right?

I think that, in general, the boycott has been lifted.

The inifinite vote was a small step in the right direction, but it's kind of hard to establish what to do next. Abusers will still have the "5 second screen name" exploit, but if you take that away, then the legit users who actually use that option for multiple family members will be punished for something which isn't their fault.

I personally think Maxis should install some "Waiting period" for deleting a screen name, but still allow the sub accounts to vote in the sporepedia.

dang gone that long I guess I'll go upload my latest then

Sweet, glad to see it worked out and I can upload again as well as gathering glorious new content.

Torbin wrote:Abusers will still have the "5 second screen name" exploit, but if you take that away, then the legit users who actually use that option for multiple family members will be punished for something which isn't their fault.

I just wanted to second this line of thinking.

Sheesh! I only got one day of protesting...and I didn't even make anything to not upload! Timing is everything, I guess.

Torbin wrote:
The inifinite vote was a small step in the right direction, but it's kind of hard to establish what to do next. Abusers will still have the "5 second screen name" exploit, but if you take that away, then the legit users who actually use that option for multiple family members will be punished for something which isn't their fault.

I personally think Maxis should install some "Waiting period" for deleting a screen name, but still allow the sub accounts to vote in the sporepedia.

Yep, a waiting period would definately help out by making exploiting the rating system harder. However, I still think that eliminating the downrate feature is the best solution.

As for dealing with duplicate/stolen creations, there should be a "watermark" placed on all creations: if you post a creation that you didn't create from scratch, the original creator's screen name should also appear on that creation.

How's that for a solution?

Glad to hear things are back to normal. Whatever normal is :]

And I must say after reading quite a few of these posts... there are some very observant, reasonable people here. Was an interesting event, and it's surely fleshed out some personalities.

Didzo wrote:
As for dealing with duplicate/stolen creations, there should be a "watermark" placed on all creations: if you post a creation that you didn't create from scratch, the original creator's screen name should also appear on that creation.

How's that for a solution?

I agree with the watermark. I have used another's creation as the base for my own (search for Kermit, I'm kinda proud of him ;^D ) The difference is that I made sure to give credit for the original and sent a message to odDballL about my use of his ship - and he loved it! So all was good. Point is, there's no problem with using other's works as a template, as long as credit is given where credit is due. And if a watermark system is implemented, it could be furthered by automatically notifying a user when their work is used, giving them the opportunity to approve the creation or report it (in case it's just a direct copy). And if it does get reported, then it should only keep the copy out of the online community - the copier could still use his pirated copy offline, but should not receive any credit from the community.

So check out Kermit, the description names the creation I based it off of so you can check out odDballL's original - he has some pretty creative work and deserves some credit.