This is not good. Otherwise this could be a little problem which could to be hidden and solved without any public discussion. But now it became a BIG PROBLEM and a lot of people will be very disappointed and even wroth. It takes many efforts to solve it...

I mostly agree with the SD/WC stance but with these exceptions: Any product that has been purchased from Stardock that has a weather feed that doesn't work anymore should be updated to work. For example I've purchased a few of Gef's themes. Great quality and you pay for that. Those themes should be updated and anyone who bought them given the chance to get them again without cost. End of story. All free widgets/themes, tough shit. I've just gone back to windows sidebar or yahoo weather. This is unfortunate but in the grand scheme of things.....well there are a lot worse fates to suffer.

Vad_M, is it the resposibility of the WC moderators and admins to look at ever image or line of code to make sure it is correct or the author has the rights to use it?  If that were the case nothing would ever be accepted becuase not everything can be checked.

THe moderators do their best and as information becomes available (like stealing someones images or code) we act.

This really is no different from our normal policy.

1. Skinner A make a wallpaper and posts it at dA.
2. Skinner B sees it and submits it to WC.
3. User C sends a PM to a moderator telling us that there is a conflict.
4. WC moderator looks into it and acts.
   

Zubaz,I understand that. The point is,what if those logo's and links were not on the widgets/themes? You're using someone else's property with THEIR EXPRESS permission. Anytime you use Superman,Harry Potter,Batman...you've got to have permission. These widgets were created and approved with absolutely no thought or credit given back to the feed owners. And to say,"It's out of our hands" is shirking responsibility. It doesn't give ME,the customer, any confidence that Wincustomize is paying any attention.

I agree.  But this is again, and issue that you need to take up with the skinner.  The skinner is using the WC "storefont" to sell those skins.  If you bought a TV at Walmart you wouldn't go to Walmart to get it fixed.  You would go to the manufacturer, right?

I hate to say this but I am, all the discussion about right or wrong, who was paying attention and just plain wanting to place blame really doesn't mean much to me or I venture to say most of the community that have downloaded weather widgets and used them on thier desktops.  We want to be able to use them.  This thread by ID laid out how the situation is going to be handled.

Understanding that there are personal opinions as how this happened and what should be done, enough all ready.

What's being missed is a couple of us from the community have offer up our time to test the weather widgets as they get updated so they can be re-uploaded to the gallery library.  That's what we do, help one another here, or am I missing something again?

"Fan Art" falls under section 107 of the US Copyright act as derivitave works but leaves room for "Fair Use".  If a copyright holder approached us with an issue that was unclear we would resolve it.  Or policy can be found here: https://www.wincustomize.com/guidelines.aspx

Kendawg, what are you trying to accomplish?  What is your end goal?

If it's defective from the start, I take it back to Walmart -- they have a "no questions asked" refund policy.  Rarely, have I went to the manufacturer of anything I've purchased to resolve an issue.

Lantec. This isn't about perfection. This is about common sense. "We are a US company." And everything I've mentioned deals with US law. "Our policy is strictly enforced" Maybe so. But maybe your policy is not in compliance with the law. I see skinners crediting each other as it's a tight knit community. But I see little outside of that except with Stardock. This was the perfect example of what I call "Skinners law". We credit "Martin" for the script. But we fail to credit "The Weather Channel" for the feed. Skinners fulfilled the "skinner" policy of crediting each other and thats as far as it went. All I'm asking is that Wincustomize restores my confidence that they understand their own policies.

Instead of giving to the authors of WinCustomize some help with the weather widgets, you have decided to delete all of them from WC!
Is this a solution? Unbelievable!

Does anybody cares about the thousand users who used to have them in their computer desktop?

It is obvious that WC doesn't care with this solution.

In the other hand, these 10 days period until you start to delete all the weather widgets from WC are not enough during the summertime vacation, most authors are not even aware of the problem.

Please think again, you don't have to delete anything, because if a weather widget doesn't work there is no violation of any ToS/ToU in regards to weather feeds.

Almost all the weather widgets in WC don't work anymore!!!

 

Key word is 'fixed". (which is what seems to be wanted.)

Desktop X is a tool for creating widgets/gadgets/themes etc..... Stardock sells DesktopX

Sears makes craftsman tools....does that make them responsible for anything you use them to build?

Personally, a week is a very short period of time for me to redo all my themes.  Man, this is tough! Do you realize how many DX themes I have in the gallery, and all of them have a weather widget? Seems like this is short. Mine don't work anyway, so there is no TOS/TOU being broken.

It's not shirking responsibility.  When I say it's "out of our hands", that means there is nothing we can do to fix every weather related DX creation in the WC gallery.  It also means we cannot control or change what TWC has now begun to enforce. 

 

If a widget isn't working, it would never be accepted in the first place.  We dont want people downloading widgets that aren't working.  That will lead to even great confusion.  We are giving the opportunity for people to fix the issues.

Skins are never really deleted, they are just hidden from public view.  Someone can update their skin, or contact one of us and we can send them the orginal file if need be.

 

Initially all I wanted to hear was,"We screwed up. Our bad." Since then,I've heard a ton of excuses and deflecting. If you can't tell. I'm a customer. Love the products. Love the community. Love the matching weather widgets. Big disappointment to me that this had to happen. I don't like to hear from people whose work I've respected for some time now saying,"Not doing that" "That would be ugly" "To much work""If I have to do that,I'll just quit skinning" Things of that nature. It's as if everyone is at cross purposes. I guess I thought there was more passion than there is.

I didn't create this thread with the intention that a big debate occurs about the past, or every single legality when it comes to feeds and skinning.  I'm simply trying to do our best to remedy the current situation going forward.

The bottom line here is:

1. Weather-related widgets/objects will need to be updated.  We are not going to a mass delete on the 20th, but we are going to start the process of exiling broken skins. 
   
2. Updates must comply by a feeds guidelines if applicable.
   
3. We will step up moderation to make sure updates are pushed through as soon as possible.

 

 

Mine WERE working when uploaded 3 years ago.

They don't work now. So no violation.

One week is not enough time!!

 

 

Once again, we didn't have anything to do with this.  This is completely on TWC. 

Really, this is the end of it.

 

I agree with Adni18 on this. I suppose that I was under some false belief that Wincustomize would help these authors out somehow. Thats part of what I meant by cross purposes.

Zu,

I understand you and I have no any pretensions to moderators. You and other are the best no doubt!

I just wanted to say that I'm very sorry that this simple problem has not been solved earlier, without fanfare (i.e. quietly and softly)...

What would help is having a script that used METAR information (like Sysmetrix) that doesn't require licensing.

 

Edit: In case anyone is interested..... LINK

• If you update them before then: fine.
• If you update them after: fine
• If you never update them: fine

The goal here is to remove widgets that are broken to prevent users from getting somethinhg that does not work.

The week is for any artists that do not have a copy of their original widget to get it.

If you read the threads carefully, you'll see that there are some authors of weather widgets who are VERY passionate about what they're doing, are going completely out of their way to help out with the current state of things.  I hope they know they aren't lumped into the group of not impassioned ones.

Amen my friend.  I wish so too.