Shanow: what I meant by being pulled in by the soap-operatic vitriol was that it keep me paying attention, more so than happy shiny bangles, kindness and butterflies.  As in, I don't think there's a need to nice-ify the peeps because there is something already attractive about their existing personalities.  Does that make more sense?

EDIT: Keeping people reading assists in destroying the paysites by building free site sympathies.  Obvs.

I just registered in order to offer my perspective on the stupid secrets issue.  First off, I've been lurking here for years.  I arrived via a booty reference at MTS, and was initially enticed by the booty until discovering that paysite crap is crap.  I've played the Sims since its first inception, and was registered during that primitive era at TSR, but was turned off by the endless iterations of recolored doodads.  From lurking at PMBD I learned of MATY and also SimSecrets.  I hated MATY at first, but in time, as I got used to Pescado here, I grokked MATY, and now I'm mostly okay with it.  SimSecrets, however, is a waste of time, and I have never understood anyone's fascination with it.  It's like junior high.

As far as 12s go, 12s do what they will, and it's not going to be worthwhile trying to figure out how best to deal with them.  Most will not actually read the phorum, and the ones who do will either stop or continue.  It's not really your problem. 

On the matter of selling free sites, free sites sell themselves, duh.  Honestly.  Perhaps the most useful thing to direct traffic to free sites would be a simple list page listing all free sites, and then to ensure that it will come up high in searches.  There's no need to be nice, to woo, to look pretty, etc.

The issue raised at StupidSecrets concerning ARRing is dumb, and was obviously written by a geezer.  12s and their slightly elder counterparts download bootleg movies like nobody's business, and they obviously do not give a whit about honest to goodness piracy.  To suppose that it is a negative attribute for PMBDers to ARR softwares is mistaken. 

This whole, but-how-do-the-community-leaders-think-of-us issue is a red herring.  Who cares?  They think what they think.  You do what you do.  If there is worth, there will be overlap.  Fretting about image is some corporate, manipulative, excess of time issue.  You don't want a perky image, you want hits.  If TSR Atrocities! and More TSR Atrocities! doesn't convince someone of the badness of TSR, then that person is not going to be convinced by perky pirate parrots.

I admit to being completely pulled in by descriptions of the evil TSR dramas here at PMBD--so soap-operatic, you know--and the PMBD/coconut vitriol concerning the matter hardened my own resolve (not that I ever "donated" to paysites, mind you).  In other words: more jokes about Dot's shape and more treating Johan like a stooge, please.

If this had been a nicey-nice happy flower place, I would not have lurked happily for so long.  Rather, I would have quit reading.

Keep on keepin' on, pirates.