Normalize delayed posting of new items?

[Ethiopia]

A recent discussion brought up the subject of delayed posting. The argument is that new items shouldn't be immediately released so that the artist can make some sales before it gets Jack Sparrowed. We all know that as soon as it hits here, it's reposted EVERYWHERE making matters worse for them.

I propose that all new items be delayed for two weeks. We can still put them in the que so that a person's original post doesn't get usurped by others trying to post it later. These delayed posts should not appear in 'upcoming posts' or any other thread. This will be an incentive for folks to buy the item. If people know that it's coming they might not buy it.

I feel strongly that despite being pirates, we should still support the artists and encourage people to buy items.

[ulysses]

Agreed. To complicate matters :), I propose:

Requesters in thread get item normally
Rank 6 and get access to item as well
Rank 4&5 get access to item in a week
Rank 3&2 get access to item in two weeks
All others get access to item after three weeks
The original request filler gets first dibs on posting item to blog after 4 weeks. If he/she doesn't want to do that, then it's fair game.

This should encourage people to share more to move up in rank. Maybe @queensknight can code something to accomplish this.

[Richard Y.]

Echo the principle though it still could be finetuned.. and I believe it'll be a piece of cake for @queensknight to accomplish.

[ADAM]

I propose that any item that has been requested and filled get posted after the time limit instead of late comers having to fish for it

[Ethiopia]

This has nothing to do with requests. This is for all normal posts.
The proposal is that ALL NEW ITEMS be held for at least a week before being posted. They would be held in a que which no one would see until the time had expired and the item would then appear in the regular posts. Anyone trying to post that item would receive a notice that the item was already in the que for posting.

Again, the intention is to allow new items to get some sales before appearing here. We also know that as soon as items are posted here they are then posted EVERYWHERE else withing microseconds.

I had suggested a week, but someone in another thread suggested a month. This seems reasonable to me since the initial hysteria(?) would have died down by then. If we're going to be Jack Sparrow, we should at least be ethical about it and support the people who make this stuff.

[Frank21]

100% support from me Ethiopia. I'd say 80%-90% of PA sales occur in the first week or two so give them a chance to make some money for their work and not bite the hand that feeds us.

[gladson1976]

@ulysses .. rank is just a number that's based on the points you have.. it doesn't measure the effort you put here or the level or participation.. even if they do share something, it might now be something that they had actually bought..
.. just because I have 10,00,000 points doesn't mean that I should get first preference..

.. agree with you @ethiopia and @frank22..

[Frank21]

One's points are mostly generated through sales (sharing) so perhaps it's right that those people get first dibs on new stuff. While those re-sharing from dead-posts are equally valuable for keeping products live. These are side issues with regard to the OP's suggestion we should delay posting new items which to me seems a reasonable position.

[Ethiopia]

I sent a link to this thread to our Supreme Commander and his Deputy. Hopefully they'll agree and issue a royal edict, making it law throughout the kingdom of TheZone.

[queensknight]

The hardest (technical) part of this is likely to be determining the release date of an item, as opposed to the posting date. To be able to automatically delay postings of "new releases" we would need to be able to determine the date the item was initially released by the vendor, and that isn't information that DAZ, Rendo, etc. typically publish (because they don't want to deter people from buying items that are from 2013, thinking they're "too old", etc.).

We would not want to delay postings of items that were not "new releases", presumably--reposts of Dead Post items, posts of items that somehow never made it here while they were still "new", custom items, etc.

The poster could be asked to tick a checkbox (e.g. "Is this a new release?"), but that leaves it open to abuse by a poster who doesn't want to wait weeks (or a month) to start receiving points.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just pointing out that the process we're outlining here relies on some data we don't have ready access to.

[Frank21]

Thank you queensknigh, makes sense to me. If the process can't be automated admin will have to check, which is difficult as Daz don't/won't put the release date on their product pages.

[Niala]

The publishing date is indeed not directly displayed in the product pages by most sites, and it is a major point.But, it is an information that can be found very easily (contrary to, say, the asset size).

• At daz3D, it is in the very first lines of the "readme". The readme is displayed in the product page for people that use the "daz-deals" browser extension. For the others, it is derived from the <SKU> of the item http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/<SKU>/start an the SKU is displayed on the download page of the product, in the file name, by DIM, etc.
• at renderosity, the product pages contain a link to the readme and the release date is in the first lines of this file
• ditto for cgbytes/renderotica
• at renderhub, it is even easier. There is a frame in the product page with the "item details" that includes the release date

So the simpler is just to ask this information to the poster in the posting form.

[queensknight]

Thanks @hamster, that's helpful information 🙂 And it is "automatable" for those vendors at least, in terms of being able to scrape the info, given the SKU and vendor (or the product URL). Let me experiment with this a bit 🙂

[Frank21]

You're right Niala and I often use the Rendo readme, didn't know about the others. It probably is better to just trust the sharer's honesty.

[queensknight]

Hmmm...it's actually easier to get the info reliably by scraping. Most of the vendor sites have hidden DOM elements that contain the release date as part of the information embedded in the product pages.

Renderosity uses "rr-date", for example, while CGBytes/Renderotica uses the title element of "p_lt_zoneContent_pageplaceholder_p_lt_zoneContentBody_CGBytes_ProductDetail_lblSkuNumber" and RenderHub uses "datePublished". DAZ doesn't do this, but as @hamster points out the information is in the associated info file and can be scraped as "Release Date:".

Having to fish through Readme files for dates would be a bigger pain, as there's no consistency to the date formats, or even completeness. On Rendo, some of the Readme files say, "Copyright 05-22-2023", but others say, "(c)May,2023", or even just "(c) 2023", which is less than useful for determining a release date. Thankfully the rr-date in the DOM has the exact date, so we wouldn't need to mess with human inconsistency 🙂

[Author]

Posts