Contents

• Mission Statement
  
• WinCustomize's funding
  
• About User Classes
  
• About Top Skinner Rankings
  
• The Rules

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The goal of this site is to act as a portal to the customization community. It specifically does not compete with other skin sites but rather acts as a hub to enable existing and new customization/skin sites. As a hub, its job is to help direct users to the various customization sites and customization software products. 

For this reason, this site does not carry every imaginable program but instead carries the most popular ones with links to other sites that focus on carrying skins/themes for the more "niche" applications available.




This site is supported by a monthly grant from the Stardock Corporation. Stardock makes the popular customization programs WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, WebBlinds, PocketBlinds and others.  We here at WinCustomize hope that eventually the site will be self-funding through funding by the community through various mechanisms.  The site is largely independent of Stardock other than using its resources.

• Exile
  This is a user who was banned. We do not delete accounts, we exile them. Exiled users cannot do anything on the site other than download files. They can only download skins that have been rated at 7 or above.
  
  
• Visitor
  This is a non-registered user. They can only download. They can only download skins that have been rated at 7 or above.
  
  
• Citizen
  This is a registered user. 99% of users are going to be Citizens. A citizen is a member of the community. They can submit skins, download and talk on the message board. Citizens can modify their preferences to display skins of any rating or above. The honorific “Citizen” is appended in front of their name.
  
  
• Apprentice
  A citizen user who has submitted skins can be nominated to be promoted to an Apprentice. To become an apprentice one needs to be contributing to the skinning community in some way. WinCustomize is not the skinning community, helping other websites in the skinning community counts as well.  An apprentice can not only talk on the message board but can also comment on skins and the news items. The honorific “Sir” or “Lady” is appended to the front of their name.
  
  
• Journeymen
  A handful of “super-citizens” will be at this class. These are people who are significant contributors to the community. They can do everything an Apprentice can do but also rate the skins. The honorific “Sir” or “Lady” is appended to the front of their name. If you’re a journeyman, then you are one biggest contributors to WinCustomize.com.  The difference between a Journeyman and an Apprentice is that a Journeyman is contributing significantly to WinCustomize in particular as well as the skinning community in general.  A Journeymen’s skin is automatically made available upon uploading. It does not have to go through moderation first. As a result, only the most trusted users will become Journeymen because of this power.  They will also eventually have access to a special council discussion area where concerns, problems and other concerns of the skinning community can be addressed.
  
  
• Masters
  These are the “elders” of the skinning community. People who have been around for awhile.  Only a few people will be at this level. To be a Master, not only must the user be a significant contributor to the community, but instrumental to the day to day life of WinCustomize.  A Master can do everything a Journeyman can do plus they can nominate and vote on users to be promoted.  The honorific “Master” is placed in front of their name. A master has to think of WinCustomize as their home skin website.
  
  
• Moderator
  Compuserve has “Wizops”, we decided to call our moderators Wizops too. Wizops can do what Masters can do plus add/delete news items, moderate skins. One can only become a Moderator by a 3/4ths majority of the Admins. The honorific Wizop is placed in front of a Wizop. A Moderator has the ability to authorize the promotion of a citizen to an apprentice.
  
  
• Administrator
  Admins are the administrators. There will be 7 Administrators total: Alexandrie, l0c, Shoggot, Frogboy, BlackBeard, Migeleto, and Kwilas.  Any of them have the ability to promote a user up to a Journeyman.  Only a majority approval can promote someone to a Master and only 3/4ths to a Wizop.  Alexandrie and l0c will run WinCustomize on a day to day basis.  The other 5 will provide additional help and resources.  You want something changed or done, Alexandrie and l0c are the ones to talk to. They have the ability to make many changes as long as it doesn’t violate the covenant. Only 7 Admins will be active at a given time. If one person should leave, another person will be promoted from the community.

Presently, the way the rankings work is each day, a query is run through the databases to find out what users' skins, themes, etc. have the most downloads per day.  The final number is then divided by 10.  This tends to favor newer skins over older ones since newer skins tend to have a higher download per day average. But ultimately it favors the active skin authors who are contributing a lot of skins to the community.  Eventually, we will also have the top community skin authors which will be determined through Stardock's upcoming "Convergence" application that will allow users to automatically (and optionally) to send what skins and themes and icons they're using to a central database (user information is kept anonymously).  The skins and themes in use will be made available to all skin sites. The more sites your skin and theme are on, the better your ranking will be.



This site is a community site. As such, we expect users to behave with honor and integrity. Treat the person you post to or comment on a skin to as if they are sitting next to you.  Picture this place as a nice, comfortable resort surrounded by friends.

More specifically, our rules have to be about the handling of intellectual property. This site carries intellectual property in the form of skins, themes, icons, and wallpapers. Intellectual property, be it software, music, books, or skins/themes is like any other type of property. When you upload something, you are agreeing to the guidelines set below:

1. Ownership: You own the materials you upload. This cuts both ways, we assume you made what you uploaded and we will not sell your property without your permission.  You must not only own what you submit but the subcomponents of it unless you have permission from the owners of the property you are submitting. For instance, DesktopX objects are designed to be used in other people's themes. It is assumed that when you upload a DesktopX object that are giving permission to others to use them in their themes and they can therefore upload a theme tha tincludes your DesktopX object without permission. 
   
   If you upload something that is owned by someone else or contains materials owned by someone else, we have the right to delete that item without notification. For instance, if you upload a wallpaper with the Lord of the Rings logo and the owners of that logo come to us and request we remove it, we will do so.  Or if you upload a WindowBlinds skin of  some operating system and the OS vendor requests we remove it, we will do so.
   
   
2. License to WinCustomize.com: When you upload something to us, you are giving us the permission, within reason, to display your property for the promotion of this site as well as allowing us to distribute your property to others (i.e. the whole reason to upload your skin in the first place).
   
   
3. The site is free. We don't charge you to store your property, you don't charge us to display your property.
   
   
4. Liability - we are not liable for the contents of the site. We will do our best to keep the site's integrity intact but ultimately when you upload something, the responsibility is on you that you're uploading materials you own.