Xion Skin Submission Guidelines - The Draft

[logokas]

A small modification has been made. The close button is now no longer a requirement. Too many skins would simply be rejected for a lack of one, and it's more of a luxury feature, really.

Any other bright ideas will be appreciated and weighed into the draft if they are valid.

[SLoB]

roflmao, the skin count in skins needing moderation has had a HUGE influx lol
We getting paid to review them?

[logokas]

No. This is volunteer work. You have access because you understand quality.

If you have spare time, help us out. Pick a skin, make sure it has the elements the guidelines mention, check that the preview doesn't have garbage in it, i.e. desktop icons, things that aren't actually part of the skin, and then either reject or approve.

Hell, even if you just weed out skins that you know are good, and approve them, that'll bring the count down, too.

I'm done for the day. Went through about..150 skins? Jeesh. This is gonna take some time.

[SLoB]

I was joking I saw the count at 950+ and thought blimey we need a few more hands lol

[SLoB]

Cliff, can you add in more canned responses in the drop down please?
Would be good to have a common list of faults that could be selected.

One skin I've just done needs the 1% transparent layer merged with the icon/button trick so the whole button area is clickable. This should be in the guidelines so skinners know all buttons should work as intended.

edit: better idea now I've seen the approve would be to have a list of checkboxes for common issues, then we can select those and they get added to the rejection notification
Would save the need for typing stuff out

[logokas]

I've PMed you some useful things to work with while you do this.

I also think that it's not really necessary to reject skins just because they lack a little trick that makes buttons more accessible, it's good enough it's there. Comments on the skin itself about these things works better to improve the authors' work, in my opinion. All we're doing is adhering to the guidelines and establishing a baseline quality.

Plus i really don't want to waste time explaining all these things to skinners, if they wanna learn, the forum's right here.

[Lance]

Are you guys filtering through the skins already in the database? Somebody hook me up, I'll share the load.

[SLoB]

Yea, there's a huge backlog lol Cliff will be along in his timezone soon enough to let you in Lance

[Cliff Cawley]

Yeah, we're just going through the backlog. A lot of them should be very simple 'Approve'.

I don't think we need to download and test each of them like we would for new approvals. If you see the added date was in the last week though, please do download and check the skin out.

If you want more canned responses, come up with a list and let me know and I'll add them

Lance, I'll add you

[logokas]

Someone's knocked off another 70 skins. Nice!

I've been occupied with valentine's, so I haven't had time to go through them myself. Plus Mr. Rearm is a pain in the ass, with all those skins he's made that require revising. Good god.

[SLoB]

Aye, quality over quantity

[Lance]

Got rid of about 200 yesterday. Yeah Mr Rearm ones are frustrating, so is ricogalas or wtva it is.

I typed up a couple of 'reasons' which I just copypasta every time. I obviously want to avoid hurting anybodies feelings but something had to be said for quality. Here's the two seperate things I'm using:

The quality of graphics does not meet our current standards. This could be due to unclear or missing labels, fonts, icons, or general imagery. Please review your skin and our minimum requirements and submit again.

Not all required elements are apparent in the skin. Please read the guidelines to review what must be included as a minimum.

Didn't put a lot of thought into them but whatever.

By the way, why aren't newly added skins being added to the pending list? The latest skins are flooded with crap again.

[SLoB]

Good catch Lance! Also with newly added or updated skins should they have more priority over the backlog?
To catch skins that have been rejected and now updated but mainly to get new skins that are ok up on the database sooner than the backlogs.

[Lance]

Yeah I reckon new skins should take priority over the backlog. The backlog have tons of downloads each already so may as well focus on new stuff sooner.

One thing I've noticed, when I approve a skin, the 'total skins available' doesn't seem to increase. It's gone up a bit. I dono, maybe I'm approving so little of them that it's hard to notice a change xD In fact yeah, scrap that. It obviously works. Must just be a delay.

Oh by the way Cliff, now there's a a Featured section, could you add a 'view all featured' just for the sake of consistency really. Not important though.

[logokas]

Skins available doesn't retract rejected ones currently, so the count is the same regardless.

I'd be very interested to know how many skins will remain once we're done going through all of them, though. I think about one in five reviews that I do actually get accepted. Mostly because of MrRearm missing elementary elements, so a lot of his stuff has gone back to the drawing board.

However, I have seen this system working perfectly now! There was an author trying to get a skin published in the minimalist category, and i had to reject it twice for various reasons, and third time was indeed the charm and his skin is now approved. It's nice to see the system at work.