Creator Guidelines Overhaul
Hello creators!
As some of you may have noticed, over the past couple of weeks we've been completely redoing the
Creator Guidelines pages. I know the Guidelines aren't always popular: they serve a very useful purpose, and contain a lot of useful info and links to useful info, especially for newbie creators. They also let creators know what we're looking for in the moderation queue, so that uploading here isn't a game of Russian roulette - or lucky dip, whichever metaphor you prefer...
However, they have also often been very cumbersome, and overwhelming. There's a lot of information which is repeated in multiple sections, because it applies to multiple sections - but that means that creators who have previously uploaded to one section and want to move to another have had to look through all of that info again, just in case something is different. There have also often been times when we've changed a rule or a policy, but some parts of the Guidelines have been omitted when we go to update them, which has resulted in them being out of sync and inconsistent.
In an effort to change this, and make uploading here a less daunting task, we've completely re-done the format of the Guidelines, as well as made some nifty technical changes which make them easier for us to manage.
The major changes are:
One of the biggest problems with the old Guidelines was that they really were a huge wall of text. There was a reason for this, though - while few creators have ever got
everything on the big list wrong all at once, all the items on the list are things that are frequently got wrong by someone. We don't want people to be given a couple of lines of guidance and then be left to make mistakes on their own, nor do we want any requirements to only become apparent once an upload is in the queue and is getting changes required or, unfortunately, rejection messages. But at the same time, we know that the wall of text can seriously put off creators.
So, we've come to a compromise. The new Guidelines are in a much more compact format. Each item on the Guidelines is now a box, containing a short header, which explains very briefly the requirement - for example, "Good default colours", "No pay content in screenshots", etc. If the header is unclear, if you've no idea what it's talking about, or if you just need a reminder, you can click "More info" to get a dropdown, containing the full length explanation, complete with any pictures and links to tutorials.
We hope this will create a balance between providing as much information as possible for creators, and providing it in a format which is easy to read, and not too confusing or overwhelming for newbies.
We always like to encourage creators to push their limits and learn new skills, so we're always very happy to see a creator venturing into a new area of modding. However, doing so is made more difficult by the old Guidelines, and the fact that so much information is repeated. An experienced creator doesn't need to be told that they need to mark the EP requirements for their upload, or that their screenhots need to be at least 800x600 pixels - but they may need to be told, if they've never uploaded, for example, a lot before, that TS3 lots should have both the furnished and unfurnished price included in the upload text. In the past, there were really only two options - re-read everything, or just skim over it and hope you don't miss anything important.
We want to remove this obstacle, so we've marked section-specific items with an asterisk (*).
That means that if you're a complete newbie, you should still read everything - but if you're an old hand and you just need to know the requirements which are specific to this particular type of upload, you can easily pick out the items on the list which have a marker next to them, and know that those are the ones you want to be reading. We're planning to replace the asterisk with a small graphic soon, so it'll be a little more eye-catching.
This is a technical thing which is mostly for our benefit, but will benefit creators too. Previously, the Guidelines were technically very simple - just text. Now, the common items - i.e. those not marked with a section-specific marker - are templates, meaning that we have one page which just contains, for example, the "Zip,
rar or 7z" item, and when we edit that one template page, all the Guidelines pages will be updated automatically. Apart from being a lot easier on mod fingers, this means that it will no longer be possible for different areas of the Guidelines to contain conflicting information.
We have a fancy new portal page for the Guidelines. It's pretty! It's also a lot neater and better-looking than the old one, and thus makes it easier to find the right section.
Most of the sections of the Guidelines are updated now, including all of the Sims 2 sections. There are a couple which are still using the old format - they'll be converted shortly! For an example of one of the new pages see
MTS2:Creator Guidelines/Sims 3 Lots and Houseswiki - and if you want to see how it looked before, click
here. I think you'll agree that it's a huge improvement!
Happy simming, all - and I hope you're suitably excited about Generations coming out in a few days' time. Screw the age stuff, I want the spiral staircase
.
What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.