In a effort to help Jake and Dave come up with a way to make this site work the way they wanted it to, I have the following ideas ...

Make revenue sharing payments only apply to a limited number of items per person, ie: 20 or 25. Anyone who has less than this limit would be paid on all items. Anyone who has more than this limit would be paid on the most recently posted items or items specified by the user. In this manner, all content posted would still be generating views for the advertisers, but only a limited amount of content would be splitting the shared revenue. This would level the playing field and allow for only the quality items (or what a user believes to be quality) to be paid on.

Also, the rating system needs to be upgraded. For a rating/review to be entered the individual has to be logged into the system so that their handle is identified on the post. No more 'guest' postings. The rating stars and comments need to be linked together so that when ever a comment is posted it requires a rating to be associated with it. This way abuse of the rating system will be removed because you will know who posted the rating and why they rated it the way they did. Comment sections with gibberish entered would be automatically removed even if the rating was a five star.

For download items, a review process needs to be put in place that removes any items that uses trade names, film titles, or other copyrights/trademarks that could create issues for the site. These types of items are fine for fan sites, but not on a business site and not when the items are being used for advertising purposes for other sites that are money making sites. "LIKE" items would have to be dealt with on a one to one basis to determine if there is any copyright infringments involved or leave it up to the community to decided in comments and reviews.

David

You are all missunderstanding what I'm saying. I agree that the rating system should not be used to decide what is payable content. What I am saying is that if there is going to be a rating system it needs to be tied into the comment system and require a person to be logged in so that their comment and rating is identified to an individual. This would make many people who abuse the system to think twice about being as @$$ towards someone and giving them a one star because they don't like them for whatever reason. If you have to identify yourself and put a reason down for why you are giving the rating, it makes it much more difficult to mess with the system.

Personally I think what is needed here is a two tier system.  The first tier is for folks who want to upload models, textures, etc and just have people who download them.  They can upload as much as they want when they want but they wouldn't be eligible for revenue sharing.  The signup process would be just as the site does now, with little verification or requests for personal information, and you could always leave them the "donate via paypal" button in case someone wanted to donate to them for their work.

The second tier would be a little harder to qualify for, and this would be those folks who want to take part in revenue sharing.   The amount of information required would go beyond just a simple email address and paypal account. Your IP would be logged (not foolproof, granted, but it cuts way down on multiple account abuses) to start with and you could not start a duplicate account from the same ip address.

When you sign up to be considered for revenue sharing, your submission would be reviewed for quality.  At first this could be done by the admins, and later on once you have a few people who qualify as revenue sharing "vendors" for lack of a better term, you could allow them to volunteer to help in this vetting process.

Good suggestions Stepdad though there could be problems with reviewing for quality as that requires a person's opinion. How will a 'quality' product be defined? The criteria would need to be set out very clearly. Also it can be difficult to predict what the punters want - I have been quite surprised at times by the popularity of certain items.

Also, by nominating 'vendors' as volunteers in the process of approval, you could also be creating problems. How do you prevent prejudice? If a person accidentally offends one of these vendors couldn't that lead to submissions being rejected or judged too harshly? Also, if you submit an item that directly 'competes' with the vendors own work, couldn't that also cause problems?

I say this, not because I think your ideas aren't valid, it's just that I can see the potential for other problems to arise. Will it become a case of who you know rather than what you create? [Point in case, I have noticed that some of my products which are of a particular type always attract a one star rating - interestingly it is the items I've created which are similar - but not identical - to another contributer's works. These items are unusual which is why I provide them. So what would happen if the ratings were done by the 'competing' vendor and that person happened to be chosen as a quality reviewer?

Just my two cents worth. 

Well, quality naturally is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, but with a committie voting on it I think you can pretty much be assured that the standard will remain pretty much the same throughout.  Individual opinions might vary somewhat but get a small group together and your results will be fairly uniform.

Also, once someone has acheived status as a revenue sharing member they wouldn't need to worry about their submissions being judged unless someone reported them for uploading a bunch of less than quality submissions, in which case the committee could review it again and see if their was a big difference in quality between their original submissions and there new ones.  It would be pretty easy to spot the spammers in something like that, and if you catch one they lose revenue sharing status and can't regain it for a long time, perhaps as much as a year.

Also, if you want to make sure the committee reviews everything fairly just make it so they can't see who submitted the model up for review, all they have to go on is the quality of the submission itself.  That way you could never say "I got rejected because the committee has it in for me.." because they would have no idea who's models were who's.

Pay your committee members a little extra stipend from the revenue sharing dividends as long as they remain active in judging submissions, and your all set. 

One other thing to note of course, since your initial submissions would be reviewed by a group of people, no one person could deny you status as a revenue sharing member regardless, so as long as you make a quality submission you should be good to go.

Have the site track the committee members votes both ya and nay, and if you have someone with a much higher percentage of nay votes per month they'll stand out like a sore thumb, giving you the ability to deal with the QC member by either talking to them about your expectations or in extreme cases just replacing them with someone else.  I think if the QC members know their votes are being tallied in such a fashion they'll stay honest enough, and granted one guy might be a bit more particular in what he feels a quality submission is but again this will cause a minor variance in vote tallies, not a huge one.  A  huge one gets you noticed.

I guess my thinking here is it's alot easier as a site admin to ride herd on a small group to whom you have delegated some authority than it is to try and police the entire site yourself, and I think it wouldn't take long before you could get a good staff together to QC material and review those that have been marked as questionable by concerned site members.  But not to worry, I don't take your pointing out areas of concern about these ideas as a bad thing, indeed I think it's a good thing when people do that.  Gives you a chance to consider all the pro's and con's and fix problems before they arise.

See that's part of my rub with the rating systems Dad. I DO Give 1 star ratings and I don't do it as a punishment. I do it because I think the item has merit above and beyond not rating it at all which is what I do for the most part. I don't rate often and I rate towards the low side unless something really stands out as a 4 or 5 star item to me.

You don't call Best Western a bad hotel just because it's not a Five Star hotel. Neither do I call items I give 1 star to bad items. It's this difference in view points about what the stars mean that causes all the grief. I don't think 1 star is bad, others do. Never will we agree on what they mean coming from extremely different view points on them. 

Lets be honest there would be very few people here who would not want some revenue if it was available. Two tier systems would not work. I would assume that most people who post here think there work is of a standard that others would like to use it. Some people might be more desperate for money than others. We don't know the circumstances of everyone. I do know there are some people here who really really  do need the money they were getting from here.

Let us also be honest. The site earns money because we and other people access it. And because we and other people upload items here. If that didn't happen there would not be any money.

What's wrong with paying by stuff that is actually downloaded rather than just looked at......

It would seem to me to be the fairest way of all to filter content.... if somethings naff then no one will download it. the biggest problem with paying by page views as far as I could tell, was that you had to look at the actual page to decide wether or not you wanted something.... most of the time I'd look and then not download said object once I'd seen a full sized preview and read the info......

I'm good with that idea myself, Spacenewt.  That's how The Sims Resource would reckon their artists 'pay'.  And they also had a sort of committee deal to approve new submissions.  The committee was, admittedly, pretty lenient, but I think in all, quite fair. 

I'd also suggest that works in progress not be eligible, simply by the nature of the beast.  It's not a finished artwork or whatever.  

I'll also put out that it is not that difficult to find people who are violating copyright and the like, even if it is material one person is unaware of:  Someone will be, and having a reporting system for suspected copyright violation is easy enough to put in.  This means the staff doesn't have to be familiar with 2904023420398098523423 forms of various material.  

That's easily abused by people, too, so once a report comes in, the staff can google and check for themselves.  Then it can be acted on.  

Ratings and comments are great, but most people don't bother with them.  It's not that they're mean or bad people, they just literally forget or don't notice.  (For instance, when was the last time you remembered to fill out the "how was the service here?" cards at the local coffee shop?) 

I don't have much of a burning want or need for the portfolio things, I really do not think that I'd be getting a job from making mat poses.  There's people who have the schooling and all for graphic arts, I certainly don't!   

I would agree that a per download basis would be far wiser, and would help eliminate some of the problems. There are of course factors that would need to be taken into account ahead of time to prevent abuse starting up again.

First one I could see, would be that you would need IP tracking being used, as well as a system in place to prevent automatic downloads.

Second,would be that only one download per IP address should be counted. Yes, people might not get the file the first time due to errors, but you've still been paid, you shouldn't get paid for their reattempts.

Third, would be to continue hand inspecting the logs before payout. This should prevent people from using an internet cafe etc to generate huge download counts since a large amount of IP's from the same area would throw up a large warning flag.

I would also definately agree that the rating system needs to be tied to the comments. I know for myself, that I've got a bunch of five star ratings that to be honest, I would love to know why they rated them that high. My partner and I work hard on each of them, but I Know they're not perfect. Having the comments linked to ratings would be a good way to know if it's people just rating things high because they feel they should, similar in principle to giving only positive feedback in galleries, or if they really like things that much.

Second,would be that only one download per IP address should be counted. Yes, people might not get the file the first time due to errors, but you've still been paid, you shouldn't get paid for their reattempts.

Bad idea (there are a lot of people using proxies - means a lot of people having the same IP at the same time). Better is using sessions and bulding a user history. It isn't required to offer downloads to non-registered users if a fast registration system is in use.

Third, would be to continue hand inspecting the logs before payout. This should prevent people from using an internet cafe etc to generate huge download counts since a large amount of IP's from the same area would throw up a large warning flag.

Ha ha ha! :) There are so many ways to implement "click-bots". Using an internet cafe is what the clueless are doing :)

To have a picture: Create a webpage (simple HTML) with something a lot of people are interested in ([censored]? Games? Music?). Advertise this webpage. The webpage contains an invisible frame requesting a page from ShareCG. Everybody visiting your webpage generates a "view" on ShareCG with his own, unique IP-Address. If a download is addressed, this download is started (and mostly interrupted by the surprised, innocent user).

Another: A lot of hobby-forums allows using images and/or iframes in comments. Anybody who accesses a page with a prepared comment generates a view on ShareCG.

Ergo: No way around offering downloads only to registered users.

Here's another thought:

To get paid here for download/views of items posted you would have to provide a SSN, EIN, or ITIN and W-8BEN (for people outside the USA) to qualify so that income taxes can be recorded and reported. This IS income and should be reported especially if you live outside the USA! I can guarantee you that the moochers and cheaters will vanish in a heartbeat because they'll never want to provide that kind of indentification information and/or probably can not! Jake, Dave, I have my SSN memorized and will supply it to you if requested!

Well, you state that a two tiered system won't work, but you never really give any reasons as to why you feel that way.

Yes, the site makes money because we access it, however it does not make additional money from those abusing the system.  The idea is to weed out the abusers and reward the honest model makers.

Since you don't necessarily want to burden everyone with a reviewing system of some sort, give people the choice.  If you want to be eligible for earning additional revenue thats great, but you'll need to jump through a hoop or two first.

If you don't, then you can upload your stuff here to your hearts content and never have to jump through any at all.  I think that's fair enough, your thoughts?

I can guarantee you that the moochers and cheaters will vanish in a heartbeat because they'll never want to provide that kind of indentification information and/or probably can not!

I think this is a way to go.

 The second tier would be a little harder to qualify for, and this would be those folks who want to take part in revenue sharing.   The amount of information required would go beyond just a simple email address and paypal account. Your IP would be logged (not foolproof, granted, but it cuts way down on multiple account abuses) to start with and you could not start a duplicate account from the same ip address.

An email address registered with PayPal *is* verified. Useless to fake, because you couldn't get your money out of PayPal.

Sending a code to an email address and the receiver has to enter this code into a webpage before money is sent out is another possibility to verify users.

Any dialup-user gets a new IP address every day. No chance to check this. If you have a need to make it 100%: Use a certificate (sent out via snail-mail) and SSL for upload. A bit softer: Submit Access-ID's via phone (a good way to make some extra money). Anything is better than doing something based on an IP address (I'm able to fake my IP-address while accessing a website, by the way - and I'm not a champion).

No system is going to be perfect.  Someone will always figure a way around it.  Finding something that works is the best you can hope for. 

I keep seeing why ideas can't possibly work.  I'm no programmer, goodness knows, but I have helped run the family business, and I can tell you, not every strategy against theft was perfect -- BUT some worked much better than others.  

For instance, closed circuit camers work great, but the large, forbidding looking shop dog worked even better.  Putting a large forbidding shop dog into your local Best Buy will not work.  It will work in a small boutique auto parts store.  

The small shop can't afford the full spectrum security system.  Does that mean they roll up and go out of business?  No.  It means they use what they have to their best affect.

Instead of promptly slamming shut ideas, can there be a little exploration for how they could be made to work at a reasonable level of security? 

Instead of promptly slamming shut ideas, can there be a little exploration for how they could be made to work at a reasonable level of security?

Do you read that I wrote:  This is a way to go?

Talking on how to implement security for a web based business is not the right place here. This is a well known issue allready solved on some million other websites. Somebody working in the internet business sould be familar with how to do it.  

The absolutly wrong strategy is what ShareCG did (for whatever reason): No security provisions at all. 

I read everyone's, and for every good looking idea, there's a shoot-down.  That's why I said something.  :)  

I didn't mean you specifically, but yours was the last post up when I was responding, so that's the one I used to reply to.  This style of forum rather baffles me for where to respond if I just want to make a general response rather than to a specific post.   

I'm not faulting anyone, I'm saying that there is more merit towards working to what works than towards what doesn't work.   

There is really one main way to do this and that is make sure that what is uploaded is copyrighted and belonged to the person who is uploading it. But that does mean each upload being reviewed.

Who is to judge whether it is good or bad or is going to be popular?

I do think that the owners need to sit down and think about it very carefully. But lets be honest they are making money out everybody's uploadings

And let's also not forget that EVERY site the offers downloads of freebies posted by other people is making money off advertising too! The difference, the others are not paying ANYONE anything for that. They have always kept all the money! Don't point an accusing finger at SCG as if they suddenly became greedy, at least they tried to share with us. It was the users that screwed it up the most ... not SCG. So let's all of us point the finger of blaim where it belongs ... AT OURSELVES!

I am not blaming them but it is the reason for the site. They are not altruistic well wishers. Let us also remember that the reason the site has been popular for people using it to store their free stuff is in part the prospect of some sort of return on it.

I think that the problem is that the site has been brought down by its popularity as they did not realise how any people would suddenly see a chance to make some money.

I found the following idea posted over at Renderosity. You might find some merit in it. It sounds helpful in anycase.

In reply to:

---

How about the following to solve or address the mediocre content problem?

Require downloaders to maintain a ratio of ratings to downloads, so that they have to rate at least 50% of the number of items they download.

Require uploaders to maintain a ratio of positive ratings and ratings period, so if they upload too much that isn't viewed and rated, or upload too many items with low ratings, they lose their upload priveledges or have to take down those unviewed or low rated items?

---

Rendo also limits the amount of uploads that they'll post on their site per day, that might be something helpful, too. 

Now what would be cool is if you couldn't download without giving a rating!  Comments are a little harder to get out of people, for whatever reasons.  And then establish a fixed "rating" for the ratings.  So, one star would be "It has enough merit for me to download" and five would be "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S FREE!".  

I'm interested in seeing what the site owners are considering, myself.  We're the users and we can toss out ideas, but I'd like to think the owners had at least something in mind before cancelling; and would like to know what's looking promising to them.  

Though I don't really expect to see much before Monday.  :D   

"This is similar to something that I request a while back. If an item has no views over a 90 day period it is automatically dropped from the system. This would help keep the system clean of items no one is looking at and force the uploader to evaluate the quality of what they uploaded. Broken links be da**ed ... if no one is actively looking at something, why keep the clutter around?" -David

I'm not a fan of this idea David, perhaps something along the lines of if an item with no views for 90 days be archived & only reinstated into the pay tier when an actual download occurs.

Many times quality is not the issue for no views, such as items for older "obsolete" figures or programs. 

Which is why the two tiered system.. those who don't wish to provide any additional information don't have to, they can still upload submissions and download at will just as it is now.

However those that are willing to go through a little extra verification can be eligible for revenue sharing.

True, dial up users do get a new ip address daily, but how many dialup users are there out there?

Really the IP check doesn't prevent the scammers, it just discourages them from submitting 100 different requests that the Quality Control folks would have to look at.

To even be eligible for the second tier a sample of your work would have to be reviewed first, and once you reach the second tier if you start uploading a bunch of garbage and doing all the old scams on getting extra clicks other people can report you easily to the QC folks or a second security committee if folks feel a second group would be in order for this purpose, but they can then review your submissions and if they feel it's warranted terminate your revenue sharing access immediately.

This pretty much kills the scammers in their tracks - and your right, the paypal email address is probably the best overall verification you can get, just have the site track those who have been rejected or terminated based on paypal email addressess and not allow people to keep signing up for the second tier under mulitple accounts that way.

Basically the verification is more to reduce the workload on the QC and or security folks, it doesn't catch the scammers persee, just makes it a little harder for them to circumvent the system.

"the paypal email address is probably the best overall verification you can get, just have the site track those who have been rejected or terminated based on paypal email addressess and not allow people to keep signing up for the second tier under mulitple accounts that way." -Stepdad

Umm, I have two very different email addresses for the same paypal account. Simple enough to remove a current email addy & replace it with another valid address.

True enough, don't use paypal much anymore so I'd forgotten about that particular feature, but again the "verification" really doesn't have to be 100% perfect, just enough to discourage the scriptkiddies and scammers a bit to cut down on the workload for the quality reviewers.

The real first line of is the reviewers themselves, the second line is the ability for people on the site to report people who are abusing the system to the reviewers for immediate action.

With that system in place it really doesn't do them much good to change ID's every 10 minutes, they still can't get any revenue unless the upload an acceptable quality product. 

Since the scammers can't maintain that standard, they won't stay in the second tier long enough to be eligible for a payout, assuming you still keep the payments on a once a month.

If you lose your status as a revenue sharer, you forfiet all your claims on any portion of that revenue.  The scammers can't upload tons of crap and generate tons of clicks for it anymore, doing so is obvious to the rest of the site members and they'll get reported in a heartbeat.

I like the idea of a reminder screen for comments and reviews, that's a great idea. 

As far as basing any sort of QC process on a review and comments system though, I don't think that would work well for quite a few reasons.  First in order to have any value at all you'd have to know who is leaving the comments and reviews.

If the scammers can put poor reviews on good quality products to make theirs look better, and do so anonymously, you bet they will - which pretty much kills that form of QC real quick.  Without knowing for certain who is reviewing the product and why they are giving it a good or bad review it's pretty hard to judge the review's fairness and accuracy.

Yeah, I know David *HUGS*. The way it is though if based on views, since as of right now, I can view my own crap & that view counts either logged in or not.

Somehow in trying to prevent the cheats, the good ones get punished instead.

To me, videos & artworks are different than content (as in things other people can use as opposed to look at). I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to set up a per-download-payout for content & a per-view-payout for videos/images but then I would have no programming input for that. I leave programming to my older brother. 

Problem is I can fake a download as easly as I can fake a page view - really all it is just another click that can be automated.

You might be able to implement a system like yahoo or some other sites use to prevent bots - basically it's an image file generated on the fly that requires you to type in security code.

The drawback though is that doing this one or twice is not so cumbersome, but if your downloading quite a few models this is going to get really old, really fast.

True, dial up users do get a new ip address daily, but how many dialup users are there out there?

Don't know how this is handled in other parts of the world - here in Europe most people get a new IP every day. A connection is interrupted by providers at least once a day. Even DSL-users online round around the clock are called "Dial-Up users". So we're talking about 100 million dial-up users alone in Europe, I guess.

The "second thier" model is a nice one, IMHO. Didn't say anything other. How to implement something like this should be discussed in details from persons directly involved and with enough background knowledge. 

I think the two tiered system would work, provided the QC folks would stay on top of things and respond promptly.

Shouldn't be a problem really, get a good group of 5-10 people to start with and things should go fairly quickly as far as the QC process is concerned.  Since your not reviewing all the models on the site, only one or possibly two submissions when an artist requests access to the second tier, this will keep the workload down considerably.

Then all you'd have to do is just police the site a bit and respond to any reports of possible scammers on the second tier, once a scammer is caught they loose any right to any revenue the might have made from all those phony clicks anyway.

Once word gets around the scammers will look elsewhere for an easier target, and all that will be left are the honest model makers.

The drawback though is that doing this one or twice is not so cumbersome, but if your downloading quite a few models this is going to get really old, really fast.

 If a session-id is provided the user has to identify once (entering the code). Then he may download as many as he can. If this isn't enough, identification may expire after some downloads. Similar as with a password protected site. Same concept as with "serious" porno pay sites. This guys know how something like this works :)

But if a session id is provided ala php (done some php programming myself) all you have to do is enter the code once on the first download, then setup your bot, and viola - tons of bogus downloads.  Once the session id is provided it remains until it's scheduled to time out or as long as the bot stays online generating hits.

So you either have to ask for anti bot verification every time, or at random intervals, but the intervals have to be short enough that they become annoying to the average user or a bot could very easily generate hundreds of phony downloads before it is stopped.

I'm giggling at the thought of this set up the same way as the [censored] sites, just so you know.  XD 

I do know "Gaia", which is php based, has several sorts of bot-moniters.  If you don't know how Gaia works, they give you "virtual gold" for every page you go to.  This is rife for people to abuse, obviously.  So they have bots to catch the bots, as it were.   

I don't think we need a two tier system and I don't think we need a rating system.  I have textures up here that have been downloaded over 2,000 times (or at least looked at that often) I have had people tell me how good they are and how they appreciate them but they haven't rated them. I don't mind that because I do not normally rate things either. And I think a lot of people don't really want to rate things here or at other sites. force ratings and you may get a lot of ones and not much else

 What the site does need is a team of people who are knowledgeable enough to know when something is a copyright problem and a system to stop cheats.

If you only use the number of downloads how does that help with some of the items that are not for downloading. Maybe a daily limit per person on uploading might be an idea because then people might put more than one texture in a download.

 Taking things down if they haven't been downloaded for 90 days is not a good idea either - unless the site is short of space and no-one has said that is the problem. I know that quite often I will browse for some thing for a model that is really old and probably not very popular but just for one image I need it and again I am sure there are many like me.

But if a session id is provided ala php (done some php programming myself) all you have to do is enter the code once on the first download, then setup your bot, and viola - tons of bogus downloads.  Once the session id is provided it remains until it's scheduled to time out or as long as the bot stays online generating hits.

This is *not* an issue. Experienced programmers knows this problem and how to solve it. In this case: A user history identifies anbody downloading "to mutch". There are several solutions to decide if a downloader is a bot (some based on statistics).

As I sayed before:  Details should be discussed from people involved and equiped with enough know-how. Anything other is just killing time.

They need to ask themselves first of all what it is that they want with this site. Generally if you know where you're going, you also know wich road to take. Personally I'm happy allready with free file hosting, wich is also a form of payment but I guess some might disagree with that.

This is internet and it's very young. I know, people think it's been around forever but I also know there are boys&girls out here who have seen it born. Internet, as it is today, is as leak as a sieve. Esspecially with copyright issue's and I've had this discussion before with people. You can implement all you want but the only real enforcement you have to your disposal is to throw/ban them from your site in wich they will create a whole new identity and rejoin. The same goes for security. People need to be a little bit more realistic, this is cyberspace, a two-dimensional world in wich anybody can be anybody.

A firm and strict policy wouldn't be so wrong. Internet is a bit like the wild wild west of the 21th century and all the diffrent laws can not be enforced for the simple reason that you don't really know who is behind the keyboard. You assume you know. On my own Forum I check personally who I "throw" out and believe me, that's not be cruel. That's protecting myself and the ones who really want to be there. It's alot of work, that's why it's not a big Forum...

Jake, this is your baby, this your site. Not ours. It's nice that you think of it as a communtiy and trust me, I do want to believe that. But it the back of my head I will stay on guard what I put down onto the web. That's why my social security number is a huge no-no because then I'm open to identity-theft since everything in my country is connected with that number. Over here if you have someone's social security number, you have their entire identity. But even a communtiy has a leader and sometimes they have to be strict and you are fully in your right to operate this site the way you see fit. That is with or without revenue.

If it's with revenue, pay per download would be a good idea. Maybe you need to make the site a little smaller, a little less in what you want to offer. Do you want to focus only on 3D or do you want to include 2D aswell? Art, is that really what you want? I'm just asking some questions here, not suggesting that you throw everything away. It's like I said in the beginning. What exactly do you want this site to be? If you would have a shop....what kind of a shop would you have? Something chique and fancy specialized in one thing or more like a supermarket? Diffrent goals ask for diffrent approaches. If you want to specialize in only 3D content it's going to narrow it down alot and the smaller something is the easier it is to maintain control and oversight. If you want it all then you have to accept the fact that the masses will come in and they can't be controled that easily.

I also read "login to download" and I agree with that one. It's not fullproof but it's better then nothing. You also might want to get in some real specialists when it comes to security.

Greetz from Pommerlis.

I do know "Gaia", which is php based, has several sorts of bot-moniters.  If you don't know how Gaia works, they give you "virtual gold" for every page you go to.  This is rife for people to abuse, obviously.  So they have bots to catch the bots, as it were.

I'm talking about seriously driven, big sites (Hustler in US, "Beate Uhse" in Germany for example) in a multi-billion business. Only the small ones are using a standard script made by amateurs (no deep knowledge about specific problems).

This industry has spend a whole lot of money to develop strategies and software. 

Lol.. yes, there are some techniques that can be employed, by experienced programmers but then again there are always experienced programmers on the other side of the coin looking for holes in your system, which is why I generally don't recommend any solution that is entirely software based.

I said this earlier, an easy way to drive away cheaters and frauds is to require verifiable tax information. IE: EIN, SSN, or ITIN. If these are faked, it is a federal and international law violation and has prison time attached. Since this is a site that has been generating 'royalty payments' for people, they really should be collecting tax information anyways. This would establish the second tier member system that want to paid for their 'quality' items and would easily scare away the fakes. Then, also require members to log in before being allowed to download. Views on images and video clips would have to be dealt with in a different way.

If someone in another country really wants to be paid for work 'sold' (and let's not kid ourselves, you are being paid for it) in the USA they would be required to get the proper tax information anyways. Those people would just have to learn how to deal with it. This is a US based company and they need to protect themselves. The IRS can be a mean mother f**ker when they want to be.

Well, I suppose it would be possible to implement a revenue share per download system, but personally I think you'd be better off placing most of the burden for increased security on the Admin end (and those that volunteer) than you would be on the user end.

Take myself for example.. pretty much average joe blow internet guy.  I'm out bouncing around another board when I come across some freebies offered on another website.

First few I click all take me here to sharecg - a site I'd never heard of before and one that I had no knowledge of whatsoever.  So I get curious, start poking around and viola!  Feel like I hit the jackpot as far as 3d freebies are concerned.

Now.. lets back that up a bit and say that I get here to sharecg and it asks me to register before I download anything.  This is getting much more common out there and believe me, from a user perspective it's getting to be a huge pain in the keester.

Alright, sure, if I'm leaving messages on a message base or becoming part of the community I can see you asking me for some personal information, that's all well and good.  But hell I didn't come here to fill out a bunch of damn forms, I just wanted one freebie and now I feel irritated.  Another site that's wanting me to fill out paperwork and give out information I don't like giving out, and yes my email address is something I don't like giving out till I've had a chance to get to see the site and see if it's worth giving my email address too.

I'm went through several yahoo email addresses this last year, I use them to keep my actual email address safe.  I've had to close mulitple yahoo accounts because I do a lot on the web, and after giving those addresses out to only a handful of sites they get spammed to death.  I had one account that was averaging almost 10 megs worth of email a day, and all I wanted from the site in question was a simple tutorial.

Point being, if sharecg had asked me to login and register for that first download, I'm not entirely certain I would have done it.  Granted, looking back now that I know a bit about sharecg I would consider it a no brainer, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.  But the very first time I ended up at sharecg by following a download link, I had no idea what sharecg was or what it had to offer.  I was just a guy looking for a prop file for a particular scene and I didn't want to take the time to create it myself.

Granted, ultimately this is someone elses site and they must decide how best to protect it from scammers.  But this thread was started to ask for suggestions and that's just what I did, gave them what I considered to be the best solution to the problem. 

My solution isn't perfect, no solution is, but I pretty much am following the KISS line to get here.

You need something that puts the burden on the site admins and a group of volunteers rather than something that puts a burden on the site's visitors.  It is the visitors, after all, who generate the revenue.  The easier and more friendly your site is to navigate and use, the more visitors who will come and the more who will come back.

Throw in a ton of bot verification and download security steps and you'll lose a lot of interest, which also means you lose a lot of revenue.  So, I think the proper place to put the burden for increase security is on the admin side, not on the user side. 

Now, no automated approach on the admin side is going to stop the scammers.  Unless you place the burden on the users this isn't going to happen.  You'll need to have things like bot checks and or only registered users downloading to prevent scams if the security system is to be automated, which places the burden for the additional security on the users. 

If you want to place that burden on the admin side, your going to need people to police the site.  Rating systems are great but again you run into multiple problems relying on a rating system, most of which have already been listed, but bottom line on a rating system is that it can be manipulated by the unscrupulous.

So your back to square one, which is having people police the site.  This leaves you really with two options, either verify everthing that is uploaded (such as renderosity does now) or go to a multi-tiered system.

Verfying all uploads is tough - first theres the time commitment and then theres the judgement call made on each and every item.  But eventually no matter what such a system will bottleneck your uploads and again choke off your revenue. 

No matter what sharecg decides to do I for one will remain a part of the community.  But I think any system making it more difficult for people to download content is a bad direction to go in, IMHO.  As someone else mentioned, storage space on the internet is getting less and less expensive every day.

My choice of sharecg as a hosting site was based primarily on the fact that you didn't have to sign up for an account in order to download anything.  I didn't want people who were coming here from other sites directed by me to be hassled with filling out a lot of forms.  As always, just my 2 cents worth.

Lol.. yes, there are some techniques that can be employed, by experienced programmers but then again there are always experienced programmers on the other side of the coin looking for holes in your system, which is why I generally don't recommend any solution that is entirely software based.

Experienced programmers from the other side do not spend mutch time and effort to earn a handfull dollars. There are more interesting targets out there.  If there is more than a handfull dollars in this game, the siteowner has enough money to arm his system with better weapons - up to hire real people watching and inspecting the show. To shot the script kiddies is enough for the first step back to business.

A business site shouldn't look for the best solution at all, but for the best solution solving the actual problem. From a business point of view. To mutch is wasting money, to less is dangerous for the whole business.

The thing is dadchamp, internet is not the USA, no matter wether this is a USA based company. Internet is the whole f*&$king world and that's the market they are aiming for. And being so transparant as it is with being as leak as it is there's no way in hell I'm making my social security number public.

I'm from the Netherlands, if I make my Social Security Number open to the public like, let's say I give it to someone else, then I'm comitting a crime in my country just as much as if I would fake one or steal one. It's agains the law here to give your SSN to another person. Because in the Netherlands your SSN is your identity with every single authority, not just the taxes. If someone has my SSN they can get all sort of social benefits on my name and expense since we have everything from the government like an ID-card or Passport, or social security incomes like unemployment. They arrange everyhting down here by that perticular number. Taxes in my country are not paid for small amounts, people are allowed to earn up to a single amount taxfree next to their income. It's diffrent down here. When people get their salary, income taxes are allready paid since they take it out of you paycheck before you receive your salary. We don't have to fill in taxforms unless we choose to ask money back.

Do you see my issue now? I know what you're trying to say and I understand where you're coming from but I don't have to deal with your federal laws or IRS and my own scares me enough thank you... But it's diffrent in every single country wich is the market they are aiming for. That's what you get when you are a ".com", the whole freaking world. I'm sorry, I don't mean to rant at you. It's just that I had this same discussion a while back about people placing their whole entire private life on a open forum and I had to tell them "Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore"

Stepdad, I know what you're saying and you do have a good point there. But a great benefit I think with a login is that you do have some sort of admission control and you'll get at least some sort of choice who you let in. Plus people have to want to be here and do some effort for the free stuff they're getting.

I understand your hesistance to give out information and you should keep that up. That's a healthy thought on the internet. But like I said I also have a site with an open forum, everybody can post after registering. But you can read everything before you register. That kind of open means a pain in the keester for me like all those pill and [censored] people who come in from they the USA but their IP traces back to Russia, probably with an office in Hong-Kong. I check it every day for new members and I have allreay a zillion e-mail adresses, IP's & usernames blocked and banned. Being a small forum I don't mind but if it would grow really large I might change that.

This is a commercial oriënted site with a social minded crew. Those two hardly ever rhyme but it could be done. I know I'll stay for as long as they'll have me, I'm their guest in a way with room and board rent-free.  Whatever they decide is fine by me. I'm just saying they shouldn't be scared to run a tight ship  with their rules because in the end of the day it is their ship.

Greetz Pommerlis. 

Sorry about the censored part, forgot about that USA based thingy where you cannot say certain words in public. I ment to say people from the let's have it all hang out for everybody to see industry.

 Greetz Pommerlis.

Internet or not, you are being paid by a US company and they have to abide by US tax law! And US law requires reporting of income paid to ALL people inside the US or outside the US. No one is exempt unless there are special tax agreements between the two countries and then you have to provide proof of that.  And, collection of a tax number would not be public information. It would be handled privately as any ID requirement they would ask for. So what are you afraid of? Are you one of the scammers?

My SSN is available to Jake and Dave anytime they ask for it!

Like I said before, I'm Dutch. If I give out my SSN I'm committing a felony in this country and I go to jail for that. I don't have to pay income tax to the American Government as far as I know because I haven't been paid by this company. Furthermore I'm not on their payrole a an offical employeé so which income are you talking about.

I'd gladly give any other ID that they want to see or have but not my SSN. Privately doesn't exist on the internet sweetheart, you're being very naïef. Everything you type on a forum online stays online for all eternity and any two bit hacker can get that info. I know those people, they get hired by banks and I think even the CIA has a few on their payrole. You can even get info as "how to hack a hotmail account" form the internet if you google for it. So what do mean handle it privately? Internet isn't safe enough for that, no matter how trustworthy Jake and Dave might be. The whole world is watchin' honey, not just Jake and Dave.

And then again, they may be trustworthy, they may not be. I don't know them, now do I? Have you ever met them face to face? Talked to them? Personally know them? I haven't and even if I meet someone face to face  I'm not giving a stranger, or even my family, my SSN, that is in my country considered classified info. Because like I said, the SSN over here is not a tax-number but my whole social and legal identity.

You think I'm one of the scammers? With an earning of $ 4,69 in december and $ 6,12 in January and 674 vieuws so far this month? Yeah,..right.

Greetz from Pommerlis.

I see what you're saying but I don't see a contract with my signature on it. And I think that even in the USA there would be a matter of proof, even for the IRS. And I haven't been paid yet, I'm here only two months now.

The fact that haven't asked for such information should speak on their behalf. I know it's common for USA citizens to give a SSN number for income tax, I know it has a diffrent meaning.

But here an SSN number is your whole social and legal identity. I would be open to identity theft, do you understand what that would mean if I would to take such a risk? And if I would get in that kind of serious trouble and the police here would find out I had given my SSN to someone in the USA on the internet, boy, I'd be looking trough bars on top of that.

Greetz from Pommerlis.

Quote from adp_ : "A business site shouldn't look for the best solution at all, but for the best solution solving the actual problem. From a business point of view. To mutch is wasting money, to less is dangerous for the whole business."

Fair enough, but if you make it so people have to register to download, what happens to your business?  Sure, the folks that are already here and know sharecg won't mind much.  But the folks just coming in who don't know anything about sharecg might mind a great deal.  Everything that makes it more difficult for them to download increases there annoyance level and decreases the likelyhood that they will come back and browse your site.

So what makes more sense from a business perspective?  Well, I'm sure you'll agree that casino's make money hand over fist.  Ever had a blackjack dealer demand to see 4 forms of id and have you fill out a bunch of paperwork before he'd let you in the game?

Nope.. why?  Because a casino, a business that knows a lot about security, knows that the way to do it is to put the emphasis for security on the administration side, not the client side.  If you ask for 14 forms of ID and a blood sample from everyone and compare that to a database of DNA samples from known cheats and you'll never get have to worry about getting cheated at blackjack again - of course your casino will close down shorly thereafter because all your players will simply go to a friendlier casino instead.

Now granted, Sharecg has a slightly different business model, but the principle is the same - if they want revenue from ads they need to keep the site friendly and inviting.  Hard to do when you expect people to fill out forms and jump through hoops before they are allowed to do anything.

On a site where your planning on participating in the message bases or being active on the board it makes sense to sign up for an account.  But if your just the average joe off the street who wound up here by clicking on a download link from another site (which I'd venture to say is how most of the current client base found Sharecg to begin with), it gets pretty irritating when you wind up at a brand new site with the promise of a free download, only to be told that first you need to sit down and fill out a bunch of forms.

My response?  Why?  Why should I give out a bunch of information just to download one prop file I could probably make myself?   I think you'll find a lot of other people feel the same way, that if Sharecg had not have been as easy and friendly to the downloaders they never would have stuck around long enough to find out what all it had to offer.

A guy I used t work for had what he called the "30 second" rule.  He worked a lot in sales, even started his own company.  He could sell ice to Eskimo's and have them begging him to bring a refridgerator with him on his next trip up so they'd have someplace to store them.   He used to tell me, "Look, when it comes to getting people's attention or interest you've got 30 seconds, and not one second more.  In 30 seconds time you need to form some sort of connection, something that attracts there interest.  If you haven't done that in the first 30 seconds the rest of the time you spend trying to sell them is wasted, they never started listening to you in the first place".

So honestly if sharecg wants to continue to have revenue to share I think that first 30 seconds is the key.  If they can continue to attract downloaders because the site is easy to use and friendly to the downloader they'll do well.  If they lose to many in that first 30 seconds then the site fails, and there will be no revenue to share.

Well, there's been a few sites mentioned that have similar problems to overcome, TSR, Gaia, the [censored] sites (that censor amuses me NO end!), and we have a lot of ideas here that can be made to work. 

True enough, the site belongs to the owners, and I also don't think that running a 'tighter' ship would be bad.  

I'm just curious what the owners of the site are looking at today.  :D  

Personally, I'm good with registering to download, or registering for a "quick" download, or maybe if you download, you can get a "shopping cart" to place all your d/ls into to do them all at once.  

I'm good with a return screen prompt asking you to rate your items, and I'm good with a verified Pay-pal thing.  Since there are people from all over, what is good ID in the USA wouldn't be in other countries.  

My father in law used to say that a lock wasn't to keep anyone out (a theif will pick or break it), it was to keep honest people honest.  I believe that for the most part, that the sight of security is enough to keep things even.  The people with the sledge hammers can be and should be caught and booted out.

(not just a response to Stepdad, it's the last post up :D.  I may even figure this style board out someday!) 

Let me say first that I could be wrong about any of this, but according to the user agreement section 20 (g), we're independent contractors, ie, freelancers, not employees of sharecg. Which I don't blame them for in the least from a liability and responsibility perspective. I believe this is how the various poser markets do it as well.

As freelancers, as it spells out clearly in the user agreement, and I've seen spelled out elsewhere before, the whole taxes thing is already covered by stating bluntly that it is Our responsibility to declare the relevant amounts and pay the appropriate taxes, not theirs to do the witholding thing. Which AFAIK is standard for a freelance situation. Freelancers operate under entirely different rules than normal.

I do understand what you're getting at by suggesting that everyone has to give an SSN etc, it would eliminate a number of problems. Since no one who wants to scam, would want that kind of identifier. That being said, I think you'd find rapidly that a lot of people who Aren't scammers wouldn't be willing for the following reasons:

a)because it's not legally required by the relationship, or it's illegal in their country

b) Because if sites with a heck of a lot more operational budget than Sharecg can't keep data secure, they're going to Severely doubt Sharecg's ability to do so. Identity theft is a very lucrative business these days as we all know. One hack, is all it takes.

c) That whole issue that people are told every day Never to give out that kind of information online.

What I think Would work, and no one could complain about, is requiring that people use only Verified Paypal accounts. To have a Verified status, it's required that you have verified an email, as well as a credit card or bank account. Do you think scammers will want to do that?

Both ways, have issues of course. A scammer could I'm sure easily find fake or stolen SSN's, just as they could find a fake or stolen credit card. But requiring a verified paypal account, would make a lot of people a whole lot less nervous I think.

Personally, I tend to favor the opt out or two tier system. 

Frankly I'm going to fall on the American side of not wanting to disclose my SSN for freebie income. I'm not a fraud, spammer or Scammer, but neither do I wish to open myself up for Indentity theft.

Even here in the USA it's not reccommended that you give out your SSN willy nilly because of the growing problems with Identity Theft. As has already been noted by someone else, as freelancer's it is our own responsibility to report our income, not ShareCG's as we are not Direct Employees of their business.

Frankly, the income I've made off my freebies last year doesn't even add up to a significantly reportable income amount. I wouldn't report it any more than I report income I make from a Garage Sale.

Quote: "Frankly, the income I've made off my freebies last year doesn't even add up to a significantly reportable income amount. I wouldn't report it any more than I report income I make from a Garage Sale."

Exactly In the US, you have to have a certain amount earned during a 12 month period, before you can report it to the IRS. That amount is {iirc} $600.00 or more.

I don't think the requirement of SSN's is a good idea, and I would not give mine out for anything.

I think you should have a code system were the downloady should type in the 6 character for the download to begin.

Also I think you should have a content leveling system. Because there are levels in all different types of content, and have moderators assign levels to items. Also you should have a queue for submitting items. and then assign trusted rights to trusted content developers, where the trusted developer items don't go threw queues

Also it shold be paid by flat rate per page view or download.

The code should take care of most bots and if admin has to ban the violaters.

IMHO Admin should have tried some of these steps before just telling us that slaved over real serious content just to put on this site, before just cutting us off.

Cutting items off after 20 items is a bad idea. As a content developer I was hoping to have fifty items online by the end of March. All of them high quality and developing residual income. With out the promise of some residue income I would not have wasted a hunder hour developing content that riveals products users would have to pay for. 99% of the content here was only uploaded for the thought of making a few extra bucks.

IMho this site grew faster than admin could handle, and will require more work that admin is apartently putting into it.

Also the advertising needed to be based of of monthly sponcer ship. Try getting the companies to sponser different areas. Autodesk for max content. Smith micro for poser area. pay viewer don't make serious money until they hit millions of veiws every day. Content is a targeted audiance. poser ads should have been targeted adds for other seller content. Not magazines or art schools. I know I only clicked on the adds because i was downloading.

Also a thumbnail view of items should be required. I know I got tired of searching for items because every time I clicked on an item it didn't meet my desires.

Just a last word I think the site has hope and I think admin has they're heart in the right place. It's going to require morework and extra staff.

Ah, I thought that a 1099 only became necessary if you did make 600 or more? Thanks for the info on the lack of difference, reading the info on tax stuff can make it sound differently :)

LOL and people wonder why I prefer to work for free :)

I get what your saying about controlling access, just don't think it would be a big enough benefit from the security point of view to warrant the damage it will do to the community itself.

One of the main attractions Sharecg has for me and many other content providers is that people can download without registering.  If registration was required prior to download the first time I dropped by, I probably wouldn't have done it because I had no idea what sharecg was at that point.

I got here from following a link from another website, and it was only to download a small prop file I needed for one scene.  Had the website started asking me for all manner of personal information just to download the file odds are good I wouldn't have downloaded it.

It wasn't a super high quality couldn't live without it sort of thing, just something I thought it would be nice not to have to model myself.  Since Sharecg was so easy to deal with I stuck around, got a little more familiar with the site, then I signed up and have even started providing content of my own.

But had they wanted me to register prior to downloading odds are good I wouldn't have stuck around, just wouldn't have been worth it to me at the time.  I think you'll find a lot of other people will feel the same way when the first stumble across sharecg.  Sure, some will stick around and register, but a lot will just come here with one freebie in mind, find out they have to give out their life story and fill out a bunch of forms to get it, bounce back and forth with a verification email, etc.. and run the risk of their email account being spammed back into the stone age for one file - and I think you'll find a lot of potential traffic going elsehwere.

Sure, an automated security system would be nice, I just honestly don't think it's feasible or a good idea given sharecg's stated business model.  Again, just my 2 cents worth.

Had the website started asking me for all manner of personal information just to download the file odds are good I wouldn't have downloaded it.

 "Enter your email address to receive your private access-code via email"

 isn't that hard to fill out. Even not for an impatient Poser user hunting for free crap ;)

And if it is, he will be send back to ShareCG while clicking the next download link. Over and over again. Because in a perfect world all free content is hosted by ShareCG :)

Because in a perfect world all free content is hosted by ShareCG :)

You mean it isn't yet?  XD  

Hahaha, reading all that US Tax stuff gave me a crazy idea, what with the portfolio thinger they were talking about.  CG can HIRE who they like to make content, and everyone else gets the free upload space!  

(No, I'm not serious, it just struck me as an amusing not-solution.  ;D)

In reply to:

---

If this place was working correctly it wouldn't take too long to reach that $600 amount in a years time. With my mediocre attempts at promotion I did around $200 last year. And as for the people in other countries ... try selling something at Amazon.com's CreateSpace WITHOUT providing some kind of tax information. They require it up front BEFORE you can even start trying selling anything. Business is business and the Internet is making the world smaller everyday and sooner or later ALL the barriers will fall. Be sure you not under one of them like I was ... it hurts like h#)).

---

People buy and sell things on E'Bay all day long without giving their SSN number away. I know I have. I haven't sold on Amazon so I can't speak to that site's policies.

Well another point from my standing is My main income is SSDI disability income which isn't even taxable. I can make up to $700 a month of outside income before having to report taxes and I haven't come anywhere near that sort of income here yet.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Albert Einstein

You guys are talking like your actually going to have some final say in what this site does.  Sharecg is going to do what it thinks is best regardless of what any of us thinks it should do.

The only influence we have is to stay or go.

In reply to WalkerofShadows
Just to add to the US tax side-discussion:

"For royalty income, a 1099-MISC must be generated for $10 USD or more in royalties. "

Quote from ADP: '"Enter your email address to receive your private access-code via email"

 isn't that hard to fill out. Even not for an impatient Poser user hunting for free crap ;)'

Not difficult to fill out, but not desirable either.  When you know nothing about the site that prompt might as well read:

"Enter your email address so we can sell it to every [censored] site mailing list we can find, filling your email box with a boatload of crap mail every day, so much so that the address you give us becomes useless."

This is my point.  If you don't know sharecg and you have no idea what it's about, it is relegated to the status of yet another site that wants information they really don't need for you to perform a rather simple activity.

Which leads people to wonder why they would want it in the first place, and the most jumped to conclusion will be that they are selling the email addresses for spam.  Oh, and just to head off the eventual "But you could put up a thing promising you don't do that", funny thing is it's usually the sites that make such a big deal about not selling your email address that are the worst offenders.

From Onnetz: "You guys are talking like your actually going to have some final say in what this site does.  Sharecg is going to do what it thinks is best regardless of what any of us thinks it should do."

Umm... well, I followed a link here posted by one of the admins in which he asked for ideas and discussion on what sharecg should do next in regards to revenue sharing.

I thought I was being a nice guy by offering up what I felt were good solutions to the problems to the previous revenue sharing system, and thus far I have to admit all I've really gotten is a lot of face slapping in return.

I didn't come here to start a coup and take over the board, I have no armed revolutionaries and or mercenaries hidden at a boat dock somewhere, and honestly I'm a bit taken aback by the way some people try to personalize their objections to any suggestions made for improvements in the process.

They asked for suggestions, I provided them - thought that was what they wanted.  If they hadn't have asked, I would have just kept my mouth shut and been happy.  Hope that clarifies the situation for you.

From MatrixWorks: "Any user must be registered and logged into the site for views or downloads to be payable"

I have to admit I still oppose this idea strongly, because I don' think it's going to accomplish the desired goal.  The scammers can sign up for all sorts of bogus accounts quite easily, all they need are seperate email addressess, and it's not realy difficult to setup a few hundred on yahoo, hotmail or any of another dozen places out there with free email accounts.

So requiring a login for download in and of itself doesn't really stop the scammers (though admittedly it does make there job a tad bit more difficult), all it really does is make the board far less friendly to people wandering in off the street.  I think the damage you do with that perception far outweighs any good that comes from requiring registration for download.

I think most of the rest of the ideas presented have merit, but the pay per download idea I think is not really going to have the desired effect, indeed I think over time it's going to cost the site a lot in lost revenue.

Right.. go to renderosity and you'll have to sign up for an account.  Go to download a freebie, and a lot of the links in there freebie section lead over here to sharecg, which would then ask you to sign up for yet another account, etc, ad infinitum.

Like I said, yes, requiriing people to sign up for an account will help lessen the abuse, provided you throw in a lot of bot checks and other security measures to go with it.

But lets look at the overall effect that has on your community.  Some guy follows a link here from renderosity, discovers he has to sign up for an account and does.  Then he has to fill in a security check to prove he isn't a bot.  Then he downloads his file, and at the end of all that his thought is "damn, what a pain in the butt for one file, hope it was worth it". 

Whereas that same guy shows up here at sharecg following a renderosity link and downloads his file.  Since he's done and the webpage is already open, he browses around a bit, sees all the great stuff there is here on share cg, and then gets interested.  Pretty soon he signs up, and realzing he can host stuff here for free that people dont' have to jump through hoops to download, becomes a content provider and active member of the community.

Odds are good the second never would have happened if the first part of the process had required the account information and the bot checks and all the other crap that is going to be need to make a pay per download system work.

The whole point for many of us hosting our freebies here is that you can download them without all that extraneous nonsense.  Our focus is on the clients, the folks actually downloading and using the stuff.

That is where I think sharecg's focus must remain if it's going to continue to be successful, I think if they start burdening their new vistors with a lot of extra hoopla and security checks they are going to have a lot of new users say "Nope, just isn't worth the hassle", and go elsewhere.

Make your clients happy and they come back, indeed they bring others with them.  Irritate them and they go elsewhere, it's as simple as that.  So while the account info/bot check/blood sample et all approach would work in weeding out the scammers, I think it would eventually kill the revenue sharing concept in another way, there just wouldn't be much revenue to share.

If you don't know sharecg and you have no idea what it's about, it is relegated to the status of yet another site that wants information they really don't need for you to perform a rather simple activity.

I really wonder why other internet services could be successfull if you are right.

One of the biggest security issues today is that users tend to spread their private data blindly. I'm really wonder which internet you are using.

I look forward to more and more people saying it isn't worth it 'for me' and going somewhere else. That means a bigger cut of the pie for me! Yes, I can be a  greedy B@$TARD ... go somewhere else, it's fine with me!

ADP: "One of the biggest security issues today is that users tend to spread their private data blindly. I'm really wonder which internet you are using."

The one apparently were people tend to get childish when there idea isn't considered like golden mana falling from heaven.

I've stated my case, and I don't think any fair minded reasonable person would disagree that it has a lot of validity to it.  Obviously you disagree with my approach.  But there is absolutely no need for snippy comments like this one. 

If you can't discuss this like an adult I find no value in discussing this with you at all.

Snippy? Ok, I missed to type a ;)

Another reason better have "controlled downloads": There are a lot of sites with link-lists  where you are able to download items or view images hosted on other sites (some of those sites have a good income from ads, the other site has to pay for the traffic). You aren't able to prevent this if you provide "simple access" to content. This is something well known for people dealing with things (sites) like this without the need to spend time to discuss the basics. This is why I say: Details should be discussed internally by people directly involved and prepared with basic knowledge to save time, avoiding missunderstandings and disputes.

Your arguments against registrations is valueable information anyway. Because we now know that a registration form has to be as simple as possible. 

In reply to:

---

From MatrixWorks: "Any user must be registered and logged into the site for views or downloads to be payable"

I have to admit I still oppose this idea strongly, because I don' think it's going to accomplish the desired goal.

---

Please verify who you're qouting before tacking MY name to a qoute. That idea was NOT one I gave or supported. I can't even find where I qouted it from someone else. 

I'd like to know what the site owners are doing while we're hacky-sacky-ing around ideas.  :)  I mean, they are the ones that will know what will work for what they have set up and available. 

Dad you don't have to have mentioned your situation in this thread. We're all aware of it from your other posts and you are coming across as pissed off and antagonistic whether you mean to do so or not. Regardless, I'm not here to argue with you about it that's why I edited that post.

As for Cities, states and other governments taxing twice on items. Yes it's done. Doesn't make it legal or constitutionally sound. The fact is, this country was founded because of a rebellion over double and triple taxes on merchandise, among other things, and it could bloody well happen again. Frankly I'm voting for Ron Paul and hope he destroys the iRS completely!

Apologies to Matrixworkz - that was quoted from another individual, and as long as were throwing out ideas, an easy to use quoting feature in the message base would be a godsend, this threaded thing is just to hard to follow.

As to the rest, I still maintain that Sharecg has a very different business model than "most other sites", and as such should have a different type of security.  Sites like Rendo and Daz make there money from commercial packages and as such the ease with which their freebies are downloaded is pretty much a moot point, it's not their attraction to the public.

This site's ease of accessing freebies is exactly the point, the harder you make them to access more likely it is that new users will go elsewhere and new content providers will start looking elsewhere as well.  Much like a casino, they are not the only game in town for hosting, and much like a casino, people can always find a friendlier game.

This is pretty much my last post on the subject, I don't mind honest disagreement but when people start getting trite and snotty it's time to walk away.  I've given my ideas as requested, gotten nothing in return but a lot of static and honestly I'm just tired of going around in circles about it.

Since the site admins apparently have no wish to join the discussion or indicate any preference then I'll leave it up to them how they wish to proceed. 

Just to be clear, we are silent on this issue intentionally: because we don't want to pollute the discourse with our own ideas, or which ideas we favor. We feel the best ideas from the community will come without our comment.

So, in short, we'll remain silent on the issue for a while longer. Then we'll hopefully take one of the ideas discussed here and make it into a reality.

-Jake 

Hopefully you shall, though I might point out that I would be surprised if you got much more useful discourse on the subject at this point.  The lack of moderation has allowed a rather hostile atmosphere to spring up here on the entire topic.

We've already had several comments from people just saying we should all shutup and let the admins handle it, which of course I found rather amazing considering that it was the admins themselves who asked for the ideas in the first place.

Then we have the difference of opinion that arose as to the best way to handle the situation, and again I don't mind an honest difference of opinion but the snottiness level has just gotten entirely too much for me personally.

So in short the idea factory here is closed to the public - if you'd like more of my thoughts or ideas feel free to send me a pm and I'll discuss them with you at length, but I honestly have better things to do with my time than endure cheap shots and snide comments from a hostile peanut gallery.  I gave what I had freely with no thought of reward or recognition and all I got in return was a lot of childish nonsense.  No thanks.  I doubt you'll find many others willing to discuss there ideas at this point either, not in this atmosphere.

Matrix, I didn't drag my situation in here ... you did. I kept it where was appropriate to discuss and kept it as anger towards myself and the government system that is poluted with cheaters and frauds. I could take a hell of a shot at you right now, but I won't. I think plenty of people here have your number already.

33 - I will not discuss this any further with you!

Well, great balls o' fire, can we get a recap on the idea front?  Whew.  Turn down the heat!  Or I can when my brain focusses back in.  

I'm still partial to the log in to download thing, it's no skin off of my teeth considering the site is very clearly marked and all, it's not like you're registering for yet another forum site, where it's often difficult to find the downloads, and just as often has limits on how the downloads are done.  

I'm not going to worry about taxes and that sort of thing, I'll look it up when tax time comes around and I've actually made money.  

A two tier system is an interesting concept, but I do believe there would be too many problems with it for it to work out.

Self policing for copyright is usually how I see sites run anyhow.  A report button is all you need.

Bots to catch bots:  works fine for other sites.  (Php.bb = I <3 U)

Verified pay pal is fine by me.  

Everything perfect?  Nope, never will be.  Everything works?  That's what I'm looking for.  :D 

I know I've missed stuff, but brain not working well.  What else we have?   

I'll quote from my Merry Christmas thread which I started to try bringing some light socialisation to the forums here:

In reply to:

---

All I want for Christmas is a job and for anyone with an IQ lower than 70 to DIE and rid the world of it's useless baby factories! ... kicks at the dog ... BA HUMBUG!!! >:(

---

If that's what you call keeping your anger in an appropriate area you're worse off than I thought. I was TRYING to excuse your hostility because of your posted situation, not rub your nose in it. I'm sorry you are having a hard time but you do not need to vent it all at anyone who disagrees with you. Frankly I've been in your position and when my anger filtered into the forums and I was asked to chill, I did so. All I ask is that you try doing the same.

I think we're all pretty tied to our own ideas about what will work and what won't..... and we're getting a bit ratty because we can't see why others can't see why our own ideas work.... all that is perfectly natural. There are pros and cons to every idea that anyone is going to offer up, it's up to the admins to decide wich idea has the least cons to it and implement it.

That being said, I read through this thread and the one in Open discussion and had a good think overnight about everything everyone's been saying.

I'm still tied to the pay per download way and registering at the site before being allowed to d'load too.... what's the problem with that?

Let's not forget that you have to be a member of just about every site out there before you can avail yourself of their freebies. Rendo, RDNA, DAZ,3DCommune... all the biggies and we all joined them without a murmer (I'm assuming.)

Another idea I saw mentioned was typing a number in before you can download an item (I don't know the technical term), that too seems like a good idea and will also help to weed out the naff content (as would say, a 10 second delay before you can type the number in as is done in a few other places)If somebody can't be bothered to move thier fingers over a keyboard 4 or 5 times to get a certain item, then they can't want it too badly...

Another thing that I have to admit has always puzzled me is the lack of moderators here. We badly need them. Idealy each section should have a moderator who is familiar with the genre theyre moderating... I'm not saying that the mods should necessarily decide on the quality of items, but they've always been needed here to weed out the spammers or to tell people to bundle textures etc.

Whatever is going to happen here I suggest that for their own sakes at the very least the admins should move quickly on this issue.

As the word starts to get around that there's no money to be had here the site IMO will start to find it's revenue from views slipping drasticly.

Whether we like it or not, a lot of the incentive for people to come up with new stuff has now gone, and if people start removing the items that are already hosted here, then the rot really will set in.

I'm still going to stick around for a while.... the idea of this site was a good one and I'm hoping that this mess can be sorted out quickly and relatively painlessly..

As long as this sort of hostility is allowed to continue unabated no useful discussion of anything can possibly take place.  I'm here because this is my hobby and I enjoy it.  I'm not here to put up with a load of nonsense from immature posters who have nothing better to do with their time than attack me personally simply because they disagree with my ideas.

I was asked for suggestions by the admins and gave them freely.  In response I was insulted and demeaned, and the only response from anyone here in authority was that they were not going to get involved until they felt the best ideas were presented.

Sorry, Sharecg is not getting anymore good ideas from me and probably not from to many other people, not if they are going to continue to allow two or three people to totally dominate the discussion and shout down anyone that doesn't agree with their views.

You don't ask people for help and suggestions and then allow them to be treated so ignobly.  It's very bad form, and it leads me to wonder how on earth they will ever get control of their content if they cannot even institute some common sense guidelines for how people should be treated in their own message bases.

My offer still stands to the admins here - despite everything I'm still willing to offer my assistance to them in any way I can.  But I will no longer discuss this in a public forum in which this sort of childish nonsense is allowed to continue unabated. 

Edited by Stepdad on 01/08/08 11:35 PM.

Don't stop posting your ideas, yours are just as good as anyone elses, and that goes for everyone else.

I think we all want this place to succeed, but we need to learn to listen to one another, instead of attacking each other. If you don't like what someone else comes up with, disagree, and state why, but don't resort to attacking and insulting..that goes nowhere but down.

At the Admins: I think you seriously need to get some type of moderation on this board. 

And I also think as the leaders of this community, you should be actively involved in these discussions. It might help if you were to put some of your own ideas into the mix.

And with that, The Evil Sith Queen is out.

A possible suggestion for helping with the dowloading issues. Perhaps one that is simplier than entering letters. I was roaming the net downloading stuff when I came across this little beauty - Sentinel++ - at http://dsplus.sourceforge.net/ . A free script aimed at preventing spoofing and leeching.

 To download an item, you click on the link as usual, but this throws up a new page which you need to click on to get your download. I have pop-ups blocked and I had no troubles using the feature. More info is at the addy above.

This could help if the system is changed so that it is download numbers and not page views that generate the hit count of items.

Just a suggestion. 

I can understand the pro's and cons to the "Login to download" idea.

It's a first step to security on your site but it's an effort on the surfer's part. The fact that it works for Rendo, RDNA etc. is probably because they allready have established a name for themselves. For any bussiness that's the hardest part to do. You don't want the fly buy's, you want the stayers.

Now I don't mind having to login or to register as a user. It gives me as a user the faint illusion of safety, the idea that this site is checked, looked after and screened in a way. And lately people seem to prefer that I think.

But the thing is, I know this 8 year old boy who is born in this modern world of cyberspace and he has been breathing in this digital world. he speaks the binaire language of every little gadget that can be hooked on to the web and he can hack, crack and stack anything that consists of I's and 0's. I'm proud of him but his generation does warn me though.

I can understand the hestistance, really I do. It would be lovely if internet would be the place they created it for in the first place. Open to everyone, share and share alike but humans don't work that way. And I really think Jake and Dave need to work out first what they want this site to be. Then you build around that and of course get knowedgable about the legal issue's.

Anyway jake and Dave, I wish you all the wisdom you can muster 'cause after I read this thread  you're gonna need it... Just kiddin' people.

Greetz from Pommerlis.

Moderators would be good, though there should be a clear and distinct method for discussion with them when there is disagreement and dispute. (Which face it, will happen.) This isn't difficult thing, there's guidelines for mods all across the web.

The type in a code before d/l is a good idea too, I know there's people who can get by that, but there will ALWAYS be someone that can get past things like that. The idea is to keep it to a minimum.

I'm also convinced that there will be a distinct drop in views once it becomes apparant there's no money to scam here. Ouch for the owners, but this is a good time to make sure that you're selling actual advertising veiws and not just holding the door open for some dishonest person. ;D

I think being able to show a reasonable level of security that's providing live people per view (as opposed to a bot) to the advertisers would be a nice selling point.

And finally, I have been a moderator for a few sites for a good while now, I'm not volunteering, but I will toss out the rules I've usually brought with me to sites:

#1. Respond to the POST, not the POSTER.

#2, 3, and 4, are the same.

#5. Never forget there is a person behind the post. Your manners still apply even if you never see the person.

#6. Keep to the topic.

#7. Angry posts get angry posts. Watch your "tone" as much as possible; if necessary, spell out your tone if you're not sure it's getting across. "I'm not mad, I'm just really formal" for instance.

#8. Keep It Simple. TL;DR (too long; didn't read) means you didn't get your point across.

Anyhow, not responding to any one in particular, just hitting reply on the last post of the thread! :D *Waves to Pommerlis*

Jake,

Your silents is came accross as no interest. So I stopped responding.

I hold onto the queue idea because it will slow people down on loading up junk because they know that someone/thing is going to say yea of nay. 

Also you could have a moderator rating system since they would be more critical and hopefully most truthful. Just like Cnet's download people give their reviews more wieght than users.

Just this morning I was searching for Carrara models every item was subpar. IMHO

The flat pay, can also be teired so that works the moderators think are high quality can get high per view rates.  This would also encorage developers to actually but some serious effort into their work. 

 Also I think you need to have a PRo's area, so that people know right away were the best work is hiding.

 Here' another thought that most people wont like.  Memebership with a small fee where the membership fee's can be pooled and devided up between the content providers. 

Just thoughts

suggestions:
-I seriously hope that the respect/treatment of the members is quickly addressed.. major priority
-Moderate the forum or pull it? Ask for volunteers?
-surely there is a way to accommodate artists outside the US? (taxes,etc). Other sites have achieved this..
-I've tried to look at the pros and cons from different perspectives, there's no way around it, uploads need to be moderated and approved. This addresses the copyright, quality, and cut down on the abusers/spammers. It will help artists know specifically what's appropriate content. It may take a little longer for uploads to be processed. We've had to deal with that before.. Someone mentioned volunteers, I was thinking the same thing, and if they get an additional %, that much better of an offer.
-Base payouts on Downloads, not views. Some of us check back occasionally on our uploads when someone posts a comment. Not all views are downloads.

The tiered idea..

New/newbie upload section with no payouts? Content deleted  x-amounted days after no new downloads

Pro upload section from new upload section 'graduates'.. content upgraded to Pro when content provider has x-amount of downloads, then payout?
..that gets a little tricky, factoring in what's a good 'graduate' number.  Average the high and lows of each section and decide what is ideal for Pro section amount of downloads.. ??

I like the Two Tiered idea. I insist on the moderation idea or the site will die. I think there are plenty of folks here who would volunteer to help if they got a little increased percentage in their share of revenue. That should be easy enough for a programmer to code.

I also agree there should be a bot prevention method on downloads that requires input from a live person that a script couldn't do very easily. I think it would help cut down on the script kiddies increasing their views artificially. I don't think timers on downloads are a good idea. They don't stop bots and only annoy the people coming in to the site who help generate the revenue. That would be bad.

As a newbie, myself, I really like the idea of having a newbie section and a pro section. Maybe, after finally working out all the bugs in my craft, I can finally "graduate" to pro and get a little pocket money for my work. But if a newbie isn't getting any revenue in the first place, and storage space isn't an issue, why bother deleting content after an x amount of days?

I'm an amateur, a hobbyist (though maybe, with practice, that might actually change), and there will be days, even weeks where I may not be able to make any new content to upload. In fact, I'm in one of those periods, right now. If I'm afraid of having my current content deleted if I don't upload new things every so often, wouldn't that just encourage me to post "crap" uploads just to keep my real content safe? And they will be crap because I'm too busy to be able to tend to the kind of quality work I'd prefer to at least attempt to achieve (I can't say if I'm successful, only that I tried my best).

I like the two tiered system as well. I do have a couple of suggestions for it though.

First, is that what tier you're on is invisible to anyone but admins. I suggest this for a couple of reasons. First is that it attempts to prevent an elitist attitude from being created. The second and IMO more important reason is that if the tiers are visible, it could seriously harm the downloads of those in the new/unpaid tier, because given a choice, automatically people will choose "pro" work over percieved lower quality. Which if number of downloads is going to be the requirement for graduating to pro status, then it really wouldn't be fair to make things harder in this way.

My second suggestion is that the graduating from unpaid to paid should be voluntary after the specified number of downloads is reached, not automatic. This way those who prefer not to be paid, can do so no matter what their downloads are.

I also definately agree on moderating being needed. 

WalkerofShadows: ... given a choice, automatically people will choose "pro" work over percieved lower quality...

That's very true, and something I was wondering about, myself. Having one's status as newbie or pro hidden to the public is a good idea. This way, not only do content providers get a fair chance of obtaining downloads for their posts, but downloaders won't miss out on really great downloads simply because someone is in the newbie section. Simply because someone is new to the craft doesn't necessarily mean that they lack talent in it, and they can have some really great downloads to share!

Also, if, perhaps, hiding such status is more work than is desired, and/or if admin would rather not insult those sensitive to certain labels, how about using the terms: non-profit and profit? This is a more true and accurate label, as I'm sure there are those who are professionals who simply choose not to profit off of content they provide for free. With this labelling system, even if one's tier isn't  hidden from the public, downloaders shouldn't be too heavily influenced as to which downloads to choose from. For example, I wouldn't care if someone was receiving a share of profits or not if I have a use for the freebie. But if the freebie is by someone who is labelled a "newbie," I may think the work is of a lower quality than the description or promotional picture would lead me to believe, and decide against downloading.

wooooo I like the profit/non-profit label.....definitely better than pro or newbie.....just cause you're not a newbie doesn't mean your pro......

Frankly I see no need to recategorise downloads based on the Uploader's credentials. If it's for Poser, put it in the Poser Category. Nobody needs a judgement of quality on the download to see if they want it. The thumbnail images should show whether or not the item is suitable.

If you're talking Pro content versus Amatuer, you're talking Store Front VS Freebie. This doesn't mean there can't be a two tiered payout system. I just don't think it needs to be categorised and separated.  If you want Pro status, go sell items via a storefront or talk Jake and David into adding a storefront here for professional items. Please don't muddy up the categories now that they've just gotten sorted out recently.

Me, I don't make a habit of going through the download areas here searching for stuff. I only download Items I've seen announced on sites like Renderosity or DAZ if the item suits my needs and then I usually just download directly from those sites via the links given.

I am sorry I really don't see why you need a two tier system and I don't see why you need to give tax information etc.

Or is it a way of stopping some people making money? By making restrictions and forming an elite?

What is needed and surely it is all that is needed is for someone to take responsibility for checking uploads and for the owners to tighten up security on the site. And that surely is what part of their income is for? You don't need a star system you don't need a comment system you just need better security. Maybe you need stronger rules on what can and cannot be posted.

Make it a rule that there must be so many textures in the zip file (or so many tubes etc). Make it a rule that you can only do one upload a day - that will stop a lot of people doing 50 or 60 uploads in a day. Checking on email addresses etc should stop people creating more than one account to circumvent that

 I can see the point of making people log in to download. But is everything here for download or is some of it not for download and if it isn't how do you score that for payment.

The one really really nice thing about this site is that it is easy to upload to and it is easy to download from and those are great benefits :) 

The two teired system would be better than what is here know. primarily because there is so much lower end items.

Also I don't think amount of downloads should have anything to do with it.  This should be a judgement call of the Moderator/ queue master.  Given any artist rather starting out or schooled doesn't matter as much as talent.  I wouldn't call it pro I would call them Admin Approved or spotlight items.  Pro is used to much most people don't give it as much weight as it used to get.

Limiting the amounts of uploads is counterproductive to the site. The way the site was designed for large data base. the more items the more page look ups.  The More the better.

Having the content broken up into the different sections: poser and model and stuff. Helps but that's a start. People look for the better rated items. We search on ratings and review.  On my writing sites spotlighted or admin approved items get 1000 time more hits than normal stories.

Edited by Arotech on 01/10/08 09:27 AM.

I am the same as you Matrixworks I either do a search here or somewhere like rendo to find what I am looking for here.

ratings have never come into whether I download something or not

Hello everyone.

     I thought of an interesting idea that would both reward quality content and make posting junk unprofitable, without any monitoring.  It won’t correct intellectual theft, but monitoring can work for that.  The idea is to base the payment on both downloads and views.  My idea is to square the number of downloads and then divide that by the number of views.  1000 views with 10 downloads would return one tenth of one hit.  1000 views with 100 downloads would return 10 hits.  1000 views with 500 downloads would return 250 hits.  You would have to protect the downloads from bots and cheaters, but you would discourage people posting items that don’t get a high rate of downloads.  It will also discourage people from creating misleading links to their content.  It’s not a perfect idea, but it has possibilities.  If this seems too extreme, you could always take the square root of this number. Calc(1000/10) = .316, Calc(1000/100) = 3.16, Calc(1000/100) = 31.6, and Calc(10000/1000) = 10.  This would actually be the total number of downloads divided by the square root of  the total number of views

              -David

Edited by DavidJHanna on 02/11/08 08:36 PM.

Yet another thought. (Wow two in one week! I hope I don’t make a habit of this.)

Two options we have been playing around with are password protection and having to type the text we see in a graphic image.  There is an older technology that we can modify, that just may add the security against bots, without creating any extra effort from our visitors. (I say we, because we are supposed to be a community, therefore the health of the site affects us all).Instead of having separate buttons for “donate with Paypal”, “Download” (or “View Larger” for art, or “Play Video” for animations), we simply have one large image.The image would be generated by the server, stamping the buttons in random locations.  When the visitor clicks on the image, only the location on the image is sent to the server.  If the visitor clicks on a valid area, the appropriate action takes place and the result is logged.  If the visitor clicks on a non-valid location, that is logged too.  Cheaters would be found out when the invalid outnumber the valid clicks.  The image would have to display large, but have a very small file size, to insure quick loading. 

What do you think?  I know this is possible, but do you think it would actually work to reduce bots without alienating visitors?