If you hang out in a net community long enough, eventually you will have those who just don’t like you. The technical term I use for them are detractors and they fall into 3 categories:

• Passive detractors. These are people who, if exposed to something you write, will tend to criticize it, even “unfairly.”
• Active detractors. These are people who will go out of their way to “stalk”  you on a particular site or news group to flame you.
• Motivated detractors. These are people who dislike you so much that they are actually willing to put in effort to do you harm. They’re the guy who will contact your ISP, start a home page dedicated to attacking you, create posts and threads about you.

No matter how nice you are, no matter how pleasant you are, you will eventually have detractors if you hang out long enough. Each time you do something publicly, you are putting out what we’ll call “Karma”.  Everything you do generates both good and bad karma.

Good karma makes people like you. Bad karma makes people not like you. But everything will generate both. Even a simple “Hi everyone!” post in a thread will generate some bad karma. Why? Because there is always someone, somewhere that is going to be offended by something you write no matter how innocuous. Some people don’t like happy people for instance. Some people get mad at “noise” being posted in a thread.

The goal isn’t to eliminate bad karma. The only way to do that is to not participate. The goal is to try to control how much you put out.

Understanding communities

I’ve been involved in on-line communities for 17 years. And I mean involved as in daily postings via modem onto bulletin boards and such.  I started out on BBSes back when I was 15 years old in 1986 (300 baud modems). I have always enjoyed interacting with people around the world.

At the same time, I’ve always held strong opinions and because of constant activity for 17 years, my typing speed has slowly increased to the point that I now type 130 words per minute if I am in a hurry.

As a result, I’ve gotten my share of detractors. No one has created a website dedicated to flaming me or anything (yet) but I’ve come to understand what patterns of behavior generate detractors fastest.

Every net community has 5 basic types. (here is a link to a site that lists lots of different categories of net users but they boil down to these 5 really: http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame1.html). My type is here: http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame21.html (except I know why I get loathed on occasion! J ).

1)      The Contributor. This is the most common type of person participating in a community. They are a friendly, well adjusted people who see participating in an on-line community as an extension of their social life. Good karma and bad karma don’t affect them that much. Abrasiveness and other factors tend to slide off them pretty well.

2)      The Mover. The mover is the type of person who wants to help shape the course of events. They’re a leader of sorts but more to the point, they work to organize the community to do various things. These activities make them a natural target.

3)      The Wannabe. The wannabe might as well be called the “Anti-Mover”. They don’t really want to put in the work to be a mover but they want the respect and admiration that movers get. Therefore, they try to tear down their opponents for moral lapses (real or imagined). Those who oppose them aren’t just wrong, they’re evil.

4)      The Critic. This is the person who tends to want to criticize things or “Suggest” things all the time. They’re not trolls because they honestly want to “help” the community.

5)      The Troll.  This is a pretty universally understood term. These are the guys who see other people as part of a video game. They subconsciously dehumanize their targets. Their goal is to generate enjoyment for themselves at the expense of others.

Most people exhibit multiple traits at different times. You mix these primary colors to together and you get the couple dozen types found on the flame warriors page.

Understanding Karma

So you’ve been posting on a news group or web forum for 2 years. You’ve never flamed anyone.  You see a “flamewar” going on and you go on and try to play the roll of diplomat only to get flamed for “no good reason”. What happened? You tell yourself that it’s like interfering with two wild dogs, don’t get in the middle. But that’s not really the cause.

As mentioned in the introduction, everytime you post you generate karma. Both good and bad. And it builds up over time with other people. The problem with net communities is that they provide an incomplete picture of a person. As a result, as bad karma builds up, people will tend to ascribe to you personality traits that may have nothing to do with what you’re like as a person.

So the person who tries to peacefully resolve a dispute may get flamed because he (usually a she actually) is thought of by the regulars as being “aloof” or “holier than thou”. In this example, it might be because those who get involved in trying to resolve a net dispute may in fact come across as trying to force their belief system on others. Some people, after all, like to debate.

But let’s go with some practical data.

When you post you can break down what you write in terms of these factors that can generate bad karma:

• Abrasiveness. How rude do your writings come across to others?

• Wordy. People who write long posts tend to generate more bad karma because it subconsciously makes people think that you believe your posts are so important that they should be willing to invest significant time to read what you write.

• Special Treatment . Does your post flaunt in some way special privilidges in people’s faces? For instance, in a post I made recently on WC, my posting editor is an HTML editor. I pasted my last post right from MS Word. This had the unintentional effect of having my font larger than others. Most users only get to put in text. So I was “flaunting” my special priviledges. This will generate bad karma, especially when used frivolously. Or maybe you’re a moderator on a website. Don’t make threats or remind people that you’re a moderator unless you have to.

• Double Standards . Lots of people have a standard of behavior for themselves and one for other people. That standard is usually pretty lax on themselves and very strict on others. This can irritate people quite quickly.

• Arrogance. Do your posts imply that you are more knowledgeable than others? Do you treat those who disagree with you as being ignorant, unenlightened, or unable to comprehend your “wisdom”?

• Noise. Do your posts tend to take a thread off topic or add nothing constructive? Females tend to fall into this a lot. In the middle of a thread discussing the Presidential Race, a female is much more apt to jump in and say “Hi Bobby! How you been?”

• Do you post things on topics that you financially benefit from? Someone who sells cell phone accessories hanging out talking in a cell phone accessory forum might be quite knowledgeable but it will still generate hostility from some people (or people who are involved in making customization software for a living participating in customization forums).

• Judgmental. Do you tend to make judgments on things that you really don’t have all the information on or don’t really know what you’re talking about?

• Melodramatic. Do your posts tend to overstate the importance of the topic? Or spend a lot of time talking about how some relatively insignificant thing was the end of the world? Do you make “Goodbye” posts on websites when something on a website has offended you? Basically, are you posting to get attention or are you posting to interact with others?

In the cold hard statistical world, you can almost imagine having points assigned to each of these characteristics. Each time you post, you can almost imagine a -1 karma simply for doing anything at all and then various larger negative points if your post contains any of the above.

Repeat the cycle enough times (i.e. be active in a community) and voila, eventually a detractor is born.

And there is another factor that compounds the situation. Ideology.  Most users don’t have a hard ideology. But some people are really set off by certain things.

For instance, talk about commercial software in an open source area and the ideology multiplier really takes off. Money is often a real ideology multiplier. Some people just hate the idea of other people making money. This is particularly true of Europeans for some reason (statistically speaking, the bulk of my active detractors have, for whatever reason, been European over the years). 

But there are plenty of other ideologies. Religion. Politics. Operating Systems. Child Care. Etc.

Controlling Bad Karma

I say controlling because sometimes you just can’t avoid producing bad karma.  Or maybe you simply make the judgment that you would rather produce some bad karma than not participate.

For instance, my public activity, as myself, on our websites produces not just negative karma but probably costs sales. But I’ve made the personal decision that I would rather participate, as myself, than use an alias and lose a few customers and generate a few detractors than to hide behind an alias.  Same thing on other websites. I love talking about and making desktop enhancements and PC games so much I made those two things my career. So whenever I talk about these things on-line, I’m creating higher than average negative karma because I indirectly benefit from the topics at hand.

The same goes for other traits. Are you opinionated? I sure am. And being opinionated means you’ll generate some bad karma since you’ll get zinged for some amounts of arrogance and other traits.

The goal isn’t to eliminate, if you know what things to look for, and how to avoid offending someone’s ideology if you can, then you can keep the amount of detractors to a level you can live with.

The more negative karma your posts generate, the more important it is that you have an idea how much they do generate and who is your audience. I.e. you don’t want to turn detractors into active or motivated detractors if possible.

With these things in mind, hopefully you will find having a long term presence in a net community to be enjoyable and rewarding. I know I have. I’ve learned a lot, mostly the hard way, over the years about this kind of thing.  Hopefully you’ll find this helpful.

The public BETA 2 of DesktopX 2 is now updated. This new build has a ton of bug fixes and new features. DesktopX is part of Stardock's Object Desktop.

DesktopX is a program that extends the Windows desktop to support true objects. You can use it to have much nicer icons as well as use it to add scripted objects and such that you can download from websites such as WinCustomize, deviantART, Skinbase, and elsewhere.

https://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/odnt-july03.jpg

The August edition of WinCustomize Magazine is now out.

In this issue:

• DesktopX 2 Preview
• Article "It's a Robotic World"
• The Universal Skin Format
• LotsOfSkins Returns Notice
• August Desktop Shots
• And much more!

Visit https://www.wincustomize.com/wcmag/aug2003

State of Skinning: 2003

Is Customization growing? How do you measure that? Technological improvements? Gains in popularity? Which apps are growing in popularity and which ones are slowly losing ground?

We asked that question and to find that out, we went back and looked at WinCustomize.com's logs. Looking at the top 5 skins in downloads per category and adjusting for daily fluctuations we've nailed down which programs have gained in popularity and which ones have lost ground.

We specifically chose September 2001 because it is just before Windows XP released.  Windows XP's release has changed everything. Some programs benefited such as Windows Media Player.  Others took a beating such as ICQ because of Microsoft Instant Messenger.

We've broken this list down into 5 categories: Big Winners, Winners, Stayed the Same, Lose Ground, Lost a Lot of ground.

		The Big Winners
	CursorXP	This program wasn't available on WinCustomize in 2001 but is the second most popular "skin" to download (cursors in this case) today.
	Media Player	This program has seen the number of downloads per day increase by a factor of 10. Much of the popularity can be given to the skin design studio "The Skins Factory" for creating and releasing so many high quality skins that it's encouraged a thriving skinning community.

		Winners
	WindowBlinds	It's pretty undeniable that WindowBlinds has benefited from Windows XP. It has seen its popularity index more than double. It went from being the second most popular skin type to download to #1.
	Wallpapers	The wallpaper section has seen its popularity grow by almost exactly the same amount as WinCustomize itself has grown.
	ObjectBar	ObjectBar has never enjoyed the kind of attention the other higher profile programs have received. But it's enjoyed steady growth. Version 2.0 of it is in internal alpha and Stardock hopes to see it take on a whole new life as something vastly easier to use and to skin for and a lot more functional.
	Suites	WinStyles only has one reason to exist -- to apply suites. It doesn't skin anything. So its popularity rests on how popular the idea of putting skins and themes together into a single suite to be applied at once. It too has seen growth and with version 1.5 nearing release, it may see its growth jump.

		Stayed the same
	Icon Packages	It's probably safe to say that the high point of icon packages was long ago achieved. People have known about changing their icons for a decade now. IconPackager files were the third biggest draw in 2001 and they are the third biggest draw today.
	Litestep	Litestep is in the same position as the icon packages. It reached critical mass for an open source shell before WinCustomize even opened. It has seen its ranking relatively increase due to the decline of two once heavy hitter skinning programs. Litestep has shown lasting power.
	Winamp	Winamp has remained one of the most consistent programs on the net. Its downloads are almost exactly today as they were 2 years ago. Despite a new skinning format introduced in version 3 (which subsequently has gone back to version 2) the skins created today are much as they were then.

		Lost some ground
	NeXTStart	NeXTStart is very good at its core feature - replacing the right click menu. But during that time, competitors ranging from ObjectBar to Hoverdesk along with a resurgence in alternative shells like Aston, Talisman, and others have eaten up a lot of NextStart's user base. NeXTStart version 3 is in beta. However, the last announcement was in January of this year.
	Beatnik	Beatnik is a skinnable digital clock. It has managed to hang in there despite a great deal of alternatives and not a lot of development effort. But it has lost ground as programs like SysMetrix, DesktopX 2, and others can provide the same functionality and more with equivalent overhead.

		Lost A LOT of ground
	DesktopX	After a lot of hype, DesktopX was released in summer of 2001. Not surprisingly, it became immensely popular as people tried out what it could do. And it could do a lot of amazing, though largely useless, things. People used it to create really complex but beautiful looking themes...that didn't quite work when used. Other users made a sophisticated objects...that didn't quite work right or moved funny.  The last public update to DesktopX before the 2.0 beta was in Summer of 2002 and it's taken a toll. DesktopX was the #1 downloadable skin/theme type on WinCustomize in Sept of 2001. Today it is a distant 6th. DesktopX 2, however, looks very promising. But will Stardock be able to get the people who couldn't figure out a use for DesktopX 1 to try out DesktopX 2?
	ICQPlus	No program lost more ground than ICQ Plus. ICQ Plus is a program that skins ICQ and therefore is tied to the fate of ICQ itself. ICQ Plus is a fantastic program that works very well. Unfortunately, ICQ has lost a lot of its user base particularly to Trillian.

• OS Requirements
• Introduction
• What's new in WindowBlinds 4
• WindowBlinds 4 Overview
• WindowBlinds in Action
• Conclusions

Windows XP (version 4 for Windows 2000, Windows ME, and Windows 98 will be available next quarter)

WindowBlinds is a program that that enables Windows users to completely change the look and feel of the Windows user interface.  Windows XP comes with the ability to change its "visual style" between blue, silver, and green as well as switching to "classic" mode. WindowBlinds is the Microsoft certified way of extending Windows XP to support additional "visual styles". WindowBlinds visual styles can change virtually every aspect of the Windows graphical user interface (GUI) such as title bars, push buttons, radio buttons, the Start bar, menus, tool bars, the task pane, dialog backgrounds, and much more. It also adds additional features to the Windows operating system such as roll-up buttons, always on top buttons, URL links, MP3 players,  user control over how double clicking and right clicking on the title bar will behave, and many other functionality enhancements. And WindowBlinds 4 is able to do all this while actually increasing the performance of the Windows GUI. WindowBlinds 4 accelerates the Windows user interface both in terms of productivity gains and raw performance. Additionally, it optimizes visual styles on the fly such that they use less memory than the included Windows XP visual styles.

WindowBlinds is part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop extensions. It is also available stand alone at WindowBlinds.net.

WindowBlinds versions 1.0 through 3 were developed primarily with Windows 95, 98, and ME users in mind. Much of the code in it involved implementing features into the OS that simply did not exist. With version 4, Stardock rewrote WindowBlinds with Windows XP as the target OS. Then, working backwards, it has been redeveloping the "skinning" features that exist in Windows XP to be largely delivered to Windows 98, ME, and 2000 users.

So what's new?

WindowBlinds 4's exclusion list is tiny. Users can still exclude any program they want or have it run with specialized options.

• Essentially perfect application compatibility. Windows XP has new APIs that allow programs such as WindowBlinds to determine more easily whether a given application is "playing by the rules". This has allowed WindowBlinds to properly skin previously problematic programs.

• Vastly greater performance than available in either WindowBlinds 3 or the basic Windows XP style engine. Stardock has developed a new technology called "Smart Paint" that allows WindowBlinds to prevent programs from repainting more often then they need to. Often times, programs repaint themselves hundreds of times per second which is often unnecessary and slows down performance. The net result is that the perceived performance of applications when running WindowBlinds is noticeably faster than if one were running a basic visual style. In short, WindowBlinds accelerates the perceived performance of a skinned Windows XP.

WindowBlinds 4 is so tightly integrated into Windows XP that it can skin its command prompts. Only WindowBlinds makes this possible.

• Much more "native". WindowBlinds makes use of what is already in the system. In some ways, WindowBlinds integrates visual styles more closely with the operating system than they would be without WindowBlinds. For example, command prompts in Windows XP are now skinned if you are using the full version of WindowBlinds.

WindowBlinds skins virtually every imaginable control on Windows and even some that many thought couldn't be. And remember, it does this while increasing the performance over the basic  Windows XP visual styles.

• WindowBlinds 4 also now skins virtually every aspect of the Windows GUI that one can imagine. And in fact, the enhanced visual styles used by WindowBlinds can skin things previously not thought to be skinnable such as logon/logoff dialogs, the "please wait" dialog, backgrounds in the Control Panel and other special folders, and more.

WindowBlinds 4 includes a new configuration dialog.

• WindowBlinds also comes with a totally new, clean and easy configuration dialog. Users can still control their WindowBlinds enhanced visual styles from the display properties dialog, but the new WindowBlinds configuration makes it easy to manage dozens of skins, sort them by category, and configure it to their liking.

• WindowBlinds 4 gives Windows XP users, for the first time, a say on how big their Windows XP start bar is. Now users can set how big they want their Start bar to be.

Of course, all the features mentioned above are just what's new. WindowBlinds has a lengthy feature set that allows users to have unprecedented control over how Windows looks and feels and works. Here are some of the notabable features.

• WindowBlinds visual styles support skinning additional small aspects of the Windows XP user interface such as mouse-overs on the Start menu.

• WindowBlinds supports a feature called "Hyperpaint". This is different from "Smart Paint". Hyperpaint uses the extra video RAM on your video card to "buffer" your windows which makes moving them on screen possible without any repainting.

• WindowBlinds lets users define what double clicking and right clicking on the title bar do. This can translate into significant productivity gains for users as they can perform various actions with a single or double click to the title bar.

• Stardock Skincast is a way for users to add new visual styles to Windows right from the appearance dialog or WB Configuration dialog. It automatically downloads the week's featured visual style and installs it.

• WindowBlinds can change the color of any visual style on the fly. While there are thousands of existing WindowBlinds visual styles, this feature allows users to take those visual styles and tune them to their own tastes visually. The same is true about gamma adjustment and even gray scale. A user can even invert the colors of a visual style.

• WindowBlinds allows users to have different visual styles on different applications.

Before & After. Same applications. WindowBlinds can skin non-theme aware applications.

• WindowBlinds can skin non-theme aware applications. Windows XP is designed to only fully skin "theme aware" programs. But WindowBlinds 4 can skin even non-theme aware applications fully while still maintaining a high level of compatibility.

Over the past year, the versatility and power of WindowBlinds has been used by millions of individuals and corporations as well. Here are some examples of WindowBlinds in use in the real world...

Microsoft licensed WindowBlinds to create an X-box visual style. If you would like to try this visual style, visit Microsoft's Xbox website.

Touchstone pictures licensed WindowBlinds for the computer interface scenes in The Recruit.

nVidia licensed WindowBlinds to provide an nVidia UI for their customers. Additionally, nVidia partners such as ABit, EVGA, BFG, and others also licensed WindowBlinds to include with their video cards.

Nintendo is currently using WindowBlinds to promote the Nintendo Gamecube and their games such as Super Mario Sunchine, Pikmin, Legend of Zelda, and others.

Today, WindowBlinds has an estimated installed base of over 8 million users worldwide. It is the 22nd most popular download of all time on C-net's Download.com (the world's most popular download site) and the world's most popular desktop enhancement program. It has over 2000 visual styles (skins) created for it with new ones appearing every day from people from around the world. It is used both by consumers and corporations alike. For consumers, it lets them personalize Windows to their needs. Corporations use it for branding or to extend the Windows GUI to have additional features needed by individual companies.

Another benefit is that WindowBlinds will work on Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn" and version 4 will soon be available for Windows 98, ME, and 2000 users making WindowBlinds a universal solution for all Windows users.

Its website is http://www.windowblinds.net. It is $19.95 stand alone but is free to try with a download available on the WindowBlinds website. It is also part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements which is $49.95.

Bjorn3D has put together an article that answers the age old question: Will customizing your Windows PC slow down your computer?

To find out, he loaded up Object Desktop components such as WindowBlinds, ObjectBar, IconPackager, and WinStyles and then put on CursorXP to top it off.

He then ran it thorugha  host of benchmarks comparing it to his clean setup. Benchmarks included 3DMark, PCMark,  UT2K3, and others.

The result? No discernable performance hit.  Check out the article for yourself.

What does your desktop look like?

In our last poll we asked you what section would you like WinCustomize to add the most.  With about 1100 people voting it was pretty clear:

BOOT SCREENS: ~40%
Trillian: 22%
Other: 16%
The Rest: 24%

Many other customization related sites support boot screens. But there's a problem. Most boot screens are actually pirated software. Which is ironic because the same person who would never consider clicking on an attachment would happily replace their WINDOWS KERNEL.

The way you replace your boot screen on Windows XP is to replace the graphic images in the Windows XP kernel. So many, if not most, boot screens on various sites actually contain a copy of the Windows XP kernel. 

In a community that values intellectual property as ours does or at least says it does, we just can't reconcile this. How can we morally or ethically be against ripping while allowing people to submit files that contain the Windows XP kernel? It's in essence software piracy.

This has been a difficult decision for us because we want to serve the needs of our users and skinners. And with 40% of you wanting this section, it's pretty temping. I mean think about it, nearly half the people who responded to the poll want boot screens.

Not having boot screens hurts the popularity of our site so you can see the dilemna. 

Now, if someone knows of a way to apply a boot screen in such a way where the boot screen submitted doesn't need to contain the NT kernel please respond here and let us know. We're perfectly okay with having a boot screen section if the submitted files contain just the graphics needed to do so. Perhaps someone has written a program that can apply those images to the system.

In the meantime, we will be looking at adding other sections including perhaps a Trillian section. Are there enough Trillian skinners here interested in submitting their work to get a section going? Let us know. Thanks!

This hasn't shown up on any news sites yet that I know of but there is a really nasty worm going around the net that uses an exploit in RPC on XP. Make sure you have the latest updates to Windows XP installed or you will get zapped by this at some point.

It will cause a crash in RPC which will force your machine to reboot 60 seconds later (With a count down). It's a PITA to remove too once you get it.