PMBD

I googled "free sims downloads" and got the following:

#6 TSR
#8 TSR
#11 Sims Connection
#14 Buntah
#15 Exnem
#17 Buntah
#23 TSR
#28 Simslice
#31 TSR
#32 TSR
#34 Sims Connection

Free sites in the first 40 listed? Oh yeah, there were a couple: Parsimonious, Around the Sims, Objects for Sims 2, XM Sims, Those Krazy Sims, Pimp My Sims, Spirited Sims. That was it.

 :evil:

It seems google misunderstood the "free" part.

Try googling for "free sims 2 downloads and Peggy pops up 3 times in the first twenty!

That's because Peggy has "Free sims downloads" in her title line.  :roll:

Maybe Peggy etc. meant "free" as in "free-for-all" as in "windfall of ca$h"?

Now we know why there are a lot of people over at TSR.

Man, how I hate that place.  My computer hates it.  FireFox even hates it.  And IE.....well, it kills that one.

Thanks for proving my point about SEO.  Just think if we get all the really free sites out there spiffed up how much traffic we could turn away from the paysites!!!

Buntah? Twice?
Sick, sick joke, Google. No cookies for you.

Around the Sim?  How are they free if they have "donation" sets?


/end thread jacking.

On topic though...they have to find a way to reel in the morons.

Are ATS and XM Sims supposed to be free site now?  :wink:

Btw, I guess Google basically list sites using their meta tags. The sites listed above probably have the word "free" in their metatags - and they're also widely visited sites too, and this contributes to put them at the very beginning of the list.


oops, NaughtyDiamond, I didn't saw your one  :lol: .

I hate google even more than I hate TSR. And i really hate tsr

I don't know about now but it used to be that Exenem(?) would post links to her foods on MTS2 saying things like, "Inviting my friends here to download!" Not verbatim but you get the idea. So, you head over there to download and get slapped with the message that you aren't a paying member so you can't have it.

That really ticked me off.

Uh... I thought XM Sims DID go free?

No google largely ignores keywords. Sites are ranked by how many pages link to them. Thats probably how tsr got to the top

XM sims was still a paysite a few days ago

I think simplystella was referring to XM Sims releasing old pay items for free after a period of time (after they've scraped the barrel for getting the most money from it).

Well they did say that is what was going to happen, but during the time I was required to reassess them at intervals for FFSS grading (obsolete as from a few days ago) nothing had moved on that front.

So, you quit FFSS?

No, the federation quit *my* website.  I wasn't gonna give space to a community resource at my own time and expense and then get slagged off for it too, so I turned the site into something I could enjoy running.  :)

My bad, then.

Google also ranks sites based on how many hits a link gets for particular search terms.  TSR is basically an unbeatable monster when you take that into account.

Good for you. This is, after all, supposed to be a fun hobby.

I am glad you took this action instead of leaving the community all together.  I love your creations and admire your talent.  This is a game...and we should all have fun with whatever avenue we take. Excluding selling content illegally.

That's part of it.  There is a science to SEO, and most of it has to do with page content, META tags, ALT tags, H1 tags, etc.  It's not just links or META tags.  If only it was that easy!

I'm not sure what you mean.  They do continuously release the donation/submittors' items in the free section about 1-2 months after their initial posting.

Agreed!

Good for you, Inge.

When I was there a couple of weeks ago there was the news item saying something about that's what they would be doing, but there were donation sets going back over years still not free.  It was expecting them to make all but their two newest donation sets free.  Or that's what they would have had to do to qualify as a rotating paysite and be listed.

See, I didn't even know they had stuff going that far back.  I had just assumed whenever something was made free, it was newish and for donators/creators, mainly because there were a couple of hairs that came out late last year/beginning of this year that I kept an eye out for.

The latest thing released, I skimmed and saw March, thought it was March of THIS year, but it was apparently March of 05.  Wow.  So it might be bit by bit, but if it's that old, why not just release it all?

I just don't know why I managed to not notice that there was stuff in their donation section before!

What I can see is that XM didn't release a payset in 15 months, the last was released in 03/2006.
Yes, they said they would release one or two a month... and this month they released a skinset.
For me it looks like as if they are releasing the remaining sets when they didn't have enough time to create a new update, but I might be wrong.

Yes, they still have 25 sets left, and if they go on like now they will last for 12-25 months. There are still paypal buttons so that you are able to pay for these sets. So they technically are a paysite, but since they are not releasing new ones, I think of them as rather a free than a paysite.

That's part of the problem with this whole free/pay controversy.  No one can really agree on the definition of a paysite :)

I don't know.

Any content that can not be downloaded without paying someone at a site money = pay content, no matter what description is used.

Any site with content that is pay is a paysite.

Pretty simple!

The problem with that is, for example, it makes Numenor's site a paysite, and no one is willing to call it that in recognition of his work elsewhere.  It looks simple when you put it into words, it's less simple when it's time to take those words to heart.

Which site is Numenor's?

And if you can only get an item by paying, it is a paysite. That's my definition.

this also bugs me, and did even when i was a brand-new baby simmer and knew nothing about the paysite issue (erm about 4 months ago). it just didn't gel with the rest of what happens at MTS2.

numenor's website is here http://www.numenor-moddings.com/lodge.html

Numenor has the tanning bed that he gives as a gift for donators. He even updated it and sent the file out to all who donated previously.

I would say that Numenor does NOT have a paysite, and here's why:

You can get all his stuff without giving him a red cent. He asks for some donations as a thank you, but he does not restrict access to any of his package files.

That's the difference.

The tanning bed is for donors only, he makes it very clear on his site!

Let's face it, no one *wants* to call his site a paysite, even though his own words on his front page make it very clear the site fits the "agreed" definition.

I say the definition is anything but agreed.  Not only is it not agreed between different people, but individuals are even having a tussle about it within themselves.

The whole paysite debacle is eating it's own tail, if you ask me.

Then to me, Numenor has a paysite, plain and simple.  He's selling an item--making it inaccessible to anyone who doesn't give him money (until we get hold of it, of course).  

So no matter how great a modder he is, this places him in the wrong, in my eyes.  I don't see the conflict.

If the booty does not have that item, it sort of backs up my point.  Anyone reading his words on his site cannot be in any doubt that the tanning bed is a payfile.  I wonder if anyone will show him sufficient disrespect to get that file and upload it here?

I actually considered it just now, and if a peek at my bank account hadn't revealed that I'm utterly broke at the moment, I would do it in a heartbeat.  I had never been to his site before, so I didn't realize he had a pay item on it, but I would most definitely share if I had it.

And I don't consider it disrespectful to right a wrong; it's the reason I'm on this site.

I have it.

Aw, shit. I didn't see that.

I stand corrected, Inge....and I will be happy to put that in the booty.

Do know that sites...and little things like that...do slip past us. We're not playing favorites...we're just not always aware. For a long time, there WERE sites who weren't in the booty based on favoritism, but we-who-run-the-ship-now believe a pay item is a pay item is a pay item.

I have a feeling he's actually got that file there to see what happens as much as because he wants the money.  I had a strong "devils advocate" feeling when he was debating it at the FFSS :D

I'm pretty sure that his file has been there way longer than the pirates have been here, I got the original bed and then he sent out the updated version.

Heh...well, better late than never.

Seriously...I didn't even know it existed until today, or it would have been uploaded in March. Wonder what the debate will be like now....  :lol:

I agree with the definition of Paysite as any site that charges for game content, period. In my opinion, anything that is withheld for profit should end up in the booty, plain and simple. Holy Simoly's stuff is in there, despite that many people think a couple of reasonably priced donation packs aren't that great of an evil in light of the free stuff. Ren's skintones are in there, despite that Rensim is a 99% free site. Numenor should have his bed in there, I thought it was. If I turned around and made a donation set tomorrow just to cover bills, it would end up in the booty, no matter that I hang around here.

I think the distinctions we try to make have nothing to do with the booty, but with the idea that not all paysites are equally evil. Ren's three donation skintones are no match for Peggy's profiteering, and could reasonably be only for site maintenance. Simchic is pretty blatantly in this for the money, but they allow their meshes to be shared freely, so are they as bad as TSR? In that sense, I think even after all this time we're still trying to figure out who falls into what level of 'badness'. It's all illegal, but it's like trying to classify it into felonies and misdemeanors.

A rotating free schedule is still a paysite. If I go on a fansite and can't get all the pixels now unless I give you money, you are charging for content. If I give you a donation, I should get nothing. Just warm fuzzies.

Ah, but on what timescale?  I don't know if it's improved lately, but there was a time it took a few days to download something from MTS2 if you were not a subscriber

No timescale. Now means now.

I don't know how MTS2 was in the far past, as I didn't start going there until maybe 4 months ago. TSR had me thoroughly convinced that they were the only worthy Sims site back then. But now, everything on MTS2 is immediately available. I don't donate there...at least I haven't. I've just given bits and pieces to random sites.

I dont know about the main MTS2 server, because MooMoo people and people who have featured creations get put on the 'special' server. However, anyone can access that server since it's the q-express server, and it does get dog ass slow too. From what I understand, it's a site-wide problem. MTS2 probably still doesn't have the throughput to handle the traffic the site gets, or perhaps the physical servers don't have enough CPU or RAM to deal with it. I think it's been getting marginally better.

I'm not sure what you mean here, could you explain it a bit more explicitly.

I'm not a subscriber to MTS2 (I have donated no money there) but I've never had problems downloading even when I first signed up (there was never a wait), and any problems I have downloading now seem to come from high traffic on the website. As far as I know, no Sims files are kept from the free members there, although with donations you do get on a faster server (right?). According to the EULA that is perfectly fine as it is not Sims content that is being kept out of the download pool.

I agree wholeheartedly with you liegen - and once we make distinctions about "good" and "bad" paysites, they'll all creep up again - so i agree with bootying the lot.

As for MTS2 - waiting 5 minutes for a download is hardly deliberately withheld content.  And since Delphy's new upgrade, barely any waiting.

MTS2 is a stupid example. You don't have to pay for any of their content. You may have to wait for a slow-ass server, but you never have to put ANY MONEY DOWN to get what you want.

The rotating stock issue is another matter. You may not have to pay for a set today, but I may have to pay for it tomorrow. THAT is a paysite.

so wait... is http://www.lueppiline.de/indexeng.html a freesite like they say they are, and used to be a paysite, and now all their paystuff is free, or are they rotating out paystuff to free stuff, and they'll be making a new pay creation soon?  (This is the website I pulled up for my example.  I have no strong feelings one way or the other about the download's quality.)  

They say they're 100% free now, but I've seen many a paysite say they're free.   :?  :?

i'm using them as an example also cause their little linky tag thingees on the side go to places like (dun dun dun...) TSR.

It seems to be a freesite now. If it was pay in the past, I don't see any files that you have to pay for now.

Actually, as someone else pointed out, the tanning bed on his site *is* pay per download. You pay for it, you get it. And that download also happen to be the only downloadable thing on the site (or at least it was the last time I checked).
And this make Numenor' *site* a *paysite*.

Now, we know that every other work made by Numenor is avaiable for free, so I might agree that he's not a pay *creator*, cause, afterall, the 99,9% of his stuff is not pay, but still, his *site* is pay.

Just in case it wasn't clear yet, I agree with the general "If you have to pay to get 1/all contents you are on a paysite" rule.

And if you read a few more posts down, you will see that I corrected that. I not only saw his statement, which I missed the first time, but I added that set to the booty.

GRRRRrrrrrrr.

THIS is the kind of necromantic shit that drives me insane and keeps stupid debates going long after the discussion ended. READ THE WHOLE FUCKING THREAD before you post on something.

Gah.

*scared*

Anyhoo, I agree with everyone that a site where you have to pay to gain access for even a single item is a paysite and all that.

Yet, if something is on a rotation of, say, a couple of weeks or a month, sure it might be annoying that you have to wait, but I would prefer to call it something other than a paysite. No-Delay-Pay, perhaps ;) You know exactly when you can get it for free from them. It's just a matter of a short period of time. And putting that stuff in the booty would frankly be a waste of the nice people who update it's time as they would have to remove it again as soon as it was free.

Patience, padawan?

Heh, this reminds me why on my MUD we do not accept donations/fees of any kind, neither from volunteers.
It's not because of generosity, but because I have enough to deal daily with people who bitch continuously about their RIGHTS as players and complain about the (free and amatorial) service.

God(s) save us all if we also had to thank them for some lousy bucks. At least I can tell them to go to hell, suspend the service in any moment with no need to justify our actions.

Any euro I spend in this hobby returns in terms of quality of life.

Yes, Lueppi is now 100% free. Si(m) la Lueppi was a paysite, but Lueppi said she got a lot less than 20 euro through her one and only payset in more than half a year,so she pulled it and used google adds instead to finance her site (well, the booty helped a little bit with the decision...)

Her little linky tag on the right side links to linksites, not to the content on the respective sites, and so the tsr-fansite index is linked, too. And I don't think that a fansite index can harm, even if it was made by a paysites and paysites are included in the index.

At her linkpage only free sites are linked.

Yes, I know this post might sound defending. This is because Lueppi is a friend of mine, and we talked a lot about her site, her payset, the decision to pull it and how much help the adds would be.

no no, defend away!  I wasn't trying to accuse the site of lying.  I just happened to notice that note at the beginning about as special thanks last payset is now free, and I didn't know if that meant the last payset ever was free, or the last one she (?) made was free, you know?  

I think it's great that they can see how 100% free for real is a good place to be.  Hopefully other sites that only have very small amounts of paystuff will follow suit....  it's a start.   :)