One thing we need to do in our screens is display more information on what affects what.

We're getting close to starting on re-creating WinCustomize.

Here are some basic features we want:

Users will have their own domain: User.WinCustomize.com

Their account will include things like their skin gallery, recommended skins, posts they've participated in, Skinner Groups, etc.

The main site itself will be streamlined in one way but expanded in another. Streamined in that there will only be two columns instead of 3 and less "Stuff" on the main page.  Expanded in that there will be multiple page modes. For instance, the top authors and skins will be on the "Most Popular" tab and have vastly more information and details on the top skinners and top submissions so that more people get highlighted and the most popular authors get more kudos.

Speaking of kudos, whenever someone posts or responds or is present in any way, the various awards they've won on the site and other distinctions will show up. So if you have  a featured skin, you'll get a little 16x16 medal for that. Get the most popular skin for the day, same thing, reach a certain milestone in downloads get another and so forth.

People who help others will be able to be highlighted more by admins by getting special tags by them showing that this is a "super user". This is a step beyond the regular access levels we already have.

The forums will be vastly expanded and yet kept very simple. It will function much like the JoeUser forum here. It won't LOOK like that at all. The functionality is key though as it will be different than other sites. Each higher level is a superset of the content of the more specific levels. For example, the "General" forum will have the newest articles listed from all the sub-forums. As you click on sub-forums, the topics get more specific. So if you JUST want to talk about wallpapers, no problem, you can go to the wallpaper forum. But those popular topics will also show up in their parent forums and so on.  This is the opposite of the way most forums work on most forums, sub-forums are largely useless and empty because what you post there is read by few people.

The whole site will be recoded in ASP.NET and be vastly faster than what we have today.

There will be a lot more admin and moderator tools to police. Right now we're kind of stuck with having to kick someone out entirely  with no in-between ways of warning people.

One of the tabs will be dedicated towards the software used to customize the desktop.

One of the tabs will be dedicated towards tutorials on creating stuff for the different sections.

The purchasing of premium skins and themes and suites will be much more integrated into the site and top authors will have a streamlined way of being able to offer the occasional premium skin.  But to be able to qualify for submitting premium (i.e. non free) content you have to have already contributed a lot of free content (i.e. we don't want skinning to end up a paid thing but we want authors to have a way of being able to justify their rather time consuming hobby and be able to afford new hardware and software).

WC subscribers will have a host of special features only available to them such as on-site blogging, integration into JoeUser.com onto their site, skin recommendations, and other goodies. One goody of interest is that articles on skinning, a kind of "live magazine" will be able to be done. Subscribers will be able to submit the the live WC Magazine (one of the tabs) so that others can read thoughts on skinning. Admins will still be able to moderate this to determine whether a given article is "featured" on WC Mag live as opposed to listed.

The rating system will be totally overhauled. Instead, ratings will be weighted by access level. The higher your access, the more weight your rating caries. It will be on a star system also (1 through 5 stars) instead of a point system since more people are familiar with that. Existing ratings will be modified to fit this (we track who rates what so the weighting system can be retroactively applied).

The most popular page, btw, will be tracking skins based on most popular for the MONTH, WEEK, as well as day. The Weekly most popular will be the one most highlighted instead of the daily one.

So those are some of our ideas.  Are there any features not mentioned here that you would like to see?

Some Iraqi POWs were "abused" by American soliders. Bad. Right?

But how much do we know? For all people know, these Iraqi POWs were the ones who burned those American civilians to death and then dragged them through the street and had them hung upside down from a bridge for days.

The point is, we don't know. Something clearly made these particular POWs hated beyond belief. Hated to the point where the soldiers felt an unordinary amount of freedom to humiliate these particular POWs.

That doesn't excuse what happened by any means. But the US has a very good track record for its treatement of POWs. I've seen a lot of articles expressing outrage and condemnation of the US because of this incident. Strangely, I didn't see that same indignation when the 4 American civilian contractors were brutally burned to death and hung from a bridge (for the crime of trying to set up food shipments to the city).

So don't be too quick to rush to judgement. There is more to this situation than meets the eye.

We are really looking for more feedback on the beta. We know hundreds of you have the beta, but we're not getting a lot of feedback. Especially in specifics.

We will be letting those who pre-ordered the game on its own (as opposed to getting Drengin) start getting it next week. But in the meantime, we really need your help in this. The game is going gold and we're in crunch time now (the amount we can do in 4 weeks you'll be amazed by). 

What things would you like to see that can be reasonably implemented? (i.e. don't suggest primaries or some other completely new game mechanism).  What play balancing do you think we need? Does it crash? If so, we need to know your video card and OS info and make sure you're running DirectX.

Thanks!

Saddam's gone. Which is, in my mind, the principle point of the whole matter for going into Iraq in the first place. Removing Saddam was relatively cheap in blood and treasure.

But we've stayed on to try to rebuild Iraq, a proposition that has been vastly more expensive and more bloody than the actual war was. Yesterday, a new gallup poll was released in which 57% of Iraqi's want US troops out now.  If the Iraqi's don't want us there, then I think we need to seriously look at pulling out come June 30.

For political purposes, we would put up a refferendum in which Iraqi's would vote. If they vote for the US to leave, we leave, otherwise we stay to help. We need to send a message to the Iraqi's that we're not there for our sake. We're there to try to help them. And that we don't have to stay. We lose nothing if we leave. Let them massacre each other for all I care if that's what they want. If they put up another thug that helps terrorists and puts together a WMD program, we reserve the right to come in and replace him too.

I want us to stay and help the Iraqi's. But if they don't want us there, then fine, we can leave. Let them grovel to the UN or something to put the pieces back together. We're not obligated to have our people blown up in suicide bombs or spend billions in tax dollars to build schools and infrastructure for them.

The problem I have with the anti-war crowd, particularly those who are on-line, is that I find them intellectually dishonest. When someone tries to say "Bush lied about WMD" or that the invasion of Iraq was largely because we believed Saddam had stockpiles of WMD they are really being dishonest. But dishonesty in debate is, sadly, a regular occurrence. But when it comes to blogging, blogs can be re-read from the time frame.  And those who favored going into Iraq have been consistent in the reasons why we needed to go after Iraq.

Let's recap why Americans favored going to war in Iraq:

After the first Gulf War (1991) Saddam had continually violated the terms of the cease fire. This culminated in 1998 when the inspectors were thrown out. At that point, Americans would have supported the use of massive military support to remove Saddam. But Clinton was mired in the impeachment and the issue just didn't seem imminent enough.

Then came 9/11.

After 9/11, Americans came to the realization that the United States could no longer afford a powerful open enemy in that part of the world. Saddam had a history of invading its neighbors. It had a history of trying to acquire WMD and occasionally using them on his own people.  Saddam, in short, was a ticking time bomb. He had to go.

So the US went to the UN one last time and essentially said "We need to put this guy on notice that we're not fooling around anymore. He's gotta comply with the previous dozen and a half UN resolutions or we're going to take him out." The UN passed resolution 1441. 

Most Americans, myself included, believed Saddam had stockpiles of WMD in the form of chemical weapons. We'd been told that for 10 years. But that really wasn't the issue. But few were sweating whether Saddam had mustard gas or Sarin or whatever in his inventory. The issue was what would Saddam do after the sanctions got lifted and the inspectors were gone. But 1441 would at least let us see if he had any genuine interest in cooperating with the UN.

It turned out he didn't. He screwed around with the inspectors once again. No fly-overs allowed, no talking to scientists without Iraqi officials present to intimidate them, no paperwork on where the missing WMD stockpiles had gone. And in the midst of this, Iraq continued to shoot at US and British planes patrolling the no-fly zone.

Again, Americans were faced with a choice. We could just throw up our hands and let this guy keep doing this until one day he managed to develop and smuggle a nuke or something to Al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization, or we could go and remove this guy. After all, this guy was actively paying terrorists in Israel for their efforts, it isn't a stretch to imagine Saddam providing help to those who wanted to kill Americans.

So the United States went to war with a primary and secondary goal.

The primary goal was to remove Saddam Hussein. Doing so would eliminate any stockpiles of WMD but more importantly, it would eliminate any programs he may have had to produce WMD in the future that could be provided to terrorists.  Like I said, it wasn't mustard gas that Americans were worried about, it was a future nuclear bomb or something worse that Saddam might produce in the future and turn over. In short, we would be removing a serious threat to the United States in the post 9/11 world.

The secondary goal was to establish a stable, prosperous democratic Iraq that would serve as an example to nearby countries as part of the effort to "drain the swamp" that creates the terrorists in the first place. An open, free society in Iraq might make the people of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Syria more inclined to move away from radical Islam and be more moderate.  As an added benefit, such a state would be friendly to the United States and allow it to exert pressure on the aforementioned 3 countries that produce a disproportionate amount of terrorists.

Since the war, the Kay report came out. And the report actually backed up much of what those of us who were in favor of the war believed -- Saddam was actively trying to obtain WMD and had every intention to build WMD on a large scale once sanctions were lifted. His strategy was to not have stockpiles of WMD but instead gear up towards the post-sanction production of WMD.

But many who have opposed the war, have demonstrated a dishonesty on this issue that I find staggering. They have focused on the stockpiles of WMD discussion in the Kay report and totally ignored the real issue - Saddam wanted to get WMD and was actively putting together such a program to be fully implemented once sanctions were lifted. The people who believe we should have done more to stop 9/11 suddenly turn around and believe that it was wrong to stop what could have been a far worse catastrophe 5, 10 years in the future. In other words, the fear those of us who wanted Saddam removed was totally justified. As I wrote before the war, my concern wasn't whether Saddam had chemical weapons, my fear was that it would be my son fighting on a nuclear battle field in Iraq because we failed to act now.

Here are some of my articles I wrote on the war back at the time:

https://www.joeuser.com/Articles/InanidealworldBushcouldte.html

https://www.joeuser.com/Articles/TheCaseforandagainstwar.html

https://www.joeuser.com/Articles/AmericaattheCross-Roads.html

https://www.joeuser.com/Articles/PrincipledPositions.html

https://www.joeuser.com/Articles/TheLefthaslostitsvoice.html

https://www.joeuser.com/Articles/TheDebate.html

BTW, one thing you'll get from reading those old blogs (i.e. BEFORE the war) is that I didn't even believe Iraq had any WMD at the time (I don't usually consider chemical weapons to be WMD). So as you read the articles, not only are stockpiles of WMD not an issue, I didn't even think he had WMD at the time. My concern was that after 9/11, we couldn't mess around with this guy anymore. He had shown he wanted to obtain WMD if he could and with Al Qaeda he had a delivery vehicle.

My articles are no way unique either. They mirror articles written by others at the time who supported the war. No where can I find any articles that argued that the primary or even major reason for invading Iraq was to eliminate Saddam's stockpile of WMD. The reason we removed Saddam was because we believed he was a threat that we could no longer live with in a post-9/11 world. End of story.

Those who cling to the lack of stockpiles of WMD are overstating their case and being dishonest. Sure, I thought Iraq had chemical weapons in barrels somewhere. And they might. But it wasn't something keeping me up at night. What I knew and still know is that quite a number of people over in that area of the world are trying to murder as many innocent Americans as possible. And I knew that Saddam, being an open enemy of the United States was interested in acquiring WMD destruction. Time has shown that Saddam was trying to acquire WMDs. He just didn't keep stockpiles of them, he was building the programs to produce them once sanctions were lifted. As an American, I expect my government to protect me and my family. The federal government does precious little for me given the taxes it extracts. But I expect it to do this one thing damn well. And 9/11 was the wake up call so that I could avoid having my son fighting on a nuclear battle ground in Iraq 10 years hence.

Once Saddam was toppled, the mission was accomplished. The primary goal of the invasion was completed a year ago. Now we wrestle with the secondary goal of trying to establish a stable, peaceful democracy. How that will turn out is anyone's guess. As a hawk, I'm not going to lose sleep whether Iraq ends up a democracy or not as long as it doesn't support or harbor terrorists or try to develop a WMD program. Ironically, it should be the doves hoping that the US is successful from here on out. As far as I'm concerned, our main job is done. The point of staying now is to help the Iraqi's that we have a moral responsibility to do. But that should be the argument the left is making because I'm not going to make it for them.

I won 21 to 18.

Let's face it, lots of PC users want to make Windows look like a Mac. There are all kinds of reasons for this. Some people just love Apple and want to do their part to promote the Mac -- even on their own PC. Other people just like the look and feel of the Mac but can't afford it or want the compatibilty of the PC.

Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure, some of the most popular skins and themes on the net come from people trying to make Windows feel a bit more like a Mac.

Read the full story at Wired News.

I decided to exile one of our more vocal users for a day after sending him an email. I had meant to do it last week when he got caught using a fake user to create a second account to disparage his various enemies (real or imagined). It was designed as a shot across the bow. I don't really like exiling anyone because it takes energy to do that (i.e. I don't like doing things that negative affect others) when I really have a lot of other things to work on.

Things with JoeUser.com have gone differently than we had imagined. Net communities are fairly predictable in their evolution. You attract a hard core group at the start and then you take a very very hard line relatively early on to drive off the napoleaonic wannabes. You see, in most net communities, you have people "regulars" who post often and believe that their very presence gives them "power" to dictate the rules to others. Healthy net communities discourage these people because they end up trying to build tight cliques that end up abusing their soft power on newcomers who don't fall into line.  So what we've done on our other net communities is try to discourage those kinds of people from getting too comfortable.

On WinCustomize.com, we lost about a third of the regulars in the first few months. We intentionally took a hard line on a range of issues that later on we became much softer on. I think the difference on JoeUser.com is that the authority is less delegated. On WinCustomize, there were several of us who were very publicly available to cut the would-be Napolean's at the knees. That's unlike here at JoeUser.

As I go through the forums I already see what I consider to be an unhealthy clique building. Not one particular clique but several. Over time, these cliques can exert a soft power to intimidate newcomers to the site and hence be able to mold the overall atmosphere at the site. Such cliques tend to be elitist. The same thing has gone on at our other sitmes from time to time. The difference is that there hasn't yet been a mass exodus of regulars from JoeUser. The reason this sort of thing is important is because the regulars who leave are quite certain that their departure will spell the doom of a given site that they frequent. I remember on WinCustomize the prediction that the site was going to "flop" because so many "old timers" from "the community" had abandoned the site because we would not recognize their inherent widsom and make ourselves subservient to it.

I think on JoeUser that things are much more complex because we want people to feel like their blogs are their own. They should feel comfortable to write about whatever they want. We don't want to hve to censor people....On the other hand, we (and me in particular) don't want people using our resources to trash us. Why should I put all this energy (and money) into the site so some guy can come on and harass me from blog to blog or use his own blog to trash me?  You can see the cunumdrum.

So here's my two cents (train of thought) on the matter:

1) Unless you're paying for yoru blog, you're not a customer. I'm not your servant. I don't work for you. Show some respect for those providing something to you free of charge. That respect can come in the form of simply not going out of your way to piss on the admins.

2) If you write an article and I come onto it and disagree with you, then I'm fair game. If I'm nasty in my response (in your opinion) you're free to return the favor in your response to me. You can even blacklist me from your blog if you find something I write obnoxious. You won't be penalized for blast listing me and in fact it might just be a sign of sound judgement on your part. But related to that, admins can't truly be blacklisted. It simply makes a note by the message box that this user has black listed me. I can still respond and reserve the right to in a pinch but will make an honest effort to respect your wishes.

3) I make no qualms about fairness. Use common sense. We're not on equal ground here. One's "soft power" of influence is meaningless if your opposition is an Admin. Besides that, soft power is related to the popularity of the articles. I have 4 of the top 5 most popular articles presently and 7 of the top 10. So right now the "admins" have the soft power and the hard power. So users shouldn't imagine leverage that they don't have.

4) It's not about meanness or niceness. It's about respect for one another. Respect others and you will find yourself receiving in return. Some of the best users on this site have very different philosphies than I do but they are intelligent and respectul of others and get it in return.

So that's my little rant for the evening.