SRS FAQ: Everything you ever wanted to know about skin submission at winamp.com

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As compiled by BullGawD & Wildrose Wally


SO YOU WANT TO PUBLISH YOUR SKIN…

HERE ARE A FEW THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

SRS FAQ: EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SKIN SUBMISSION AT www.winamp.com

Do not publish incomplete skins; every skin should at least have the Main, Equalizer and Play List skinned. Do not publish Beta versions; discuss them in Skin Love Skin love.

Carefully consider what category you want to display your skin in. It is not necessary to publish in three categories, one or two will do fine also. Skins made with skinner applications have to be placed in the Generated category and cannot be in the 3D category. A skin cannot be both in the Retro and the Futuristic category, they are opposites.

Do not publish too many skins per day. Many ratings tend to get lower and lower as skins come in from the same author. One per day would be almost perfect.

Avoid skins that already have been done by someone else, be it in a slightly different form. For example, there are more than enough skins of Homer’s brain, we don’t need any more.

When you update a published skin through a new submission, delete the old one. If you don’t, people might say they have seen that one before and not give it a second look. Why split the download count anyway between your old and new versions. You can also update your skins by using the Edit function on your skin-publishing page.

The use of multiple accounts to rate your own skins will not be tolerated. If we see anyone doing this to their skins, they will be deleted. It is fine to rate your skin once. The use of someone else’s name will result in deletion of your skins and a possible banning from this site.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO PUBLISH A SKIN? I SUBMITTED MINE LAST WEEK!

Skin publishing usually takes about 4-6 weeks, but can vary depending on database problems and reviewer availability. Keep your shorts on, and we'll get to it as soon as possible.

WHAT ARE THE SKIN SUBMISSION GUIDELINES? I DON'T SEE THEM POSTED ANYWHERE:

Though they're not posted, Nullsoft does have guidelines for the skins submitted to their site.

Objectionable Content: Nullsoft can't allow any depictions of sex, crime, or cruelty. We are not about sheltering children from the realities of this world, however we have a responsibility at Nullsoft to keep porn off of the site. Therefore we suggest that our reviewers deny skins that include animated/simulated nudity, scenes of sexual activity or crime. Similarly, we can't allow messages of hate or images of criminal activity. This can include swear words, and the worse they are, the more likely we are to deny a skin. Thus it saves us all a lot of time and pain if you simply don't submit skins that contain these types of activities.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SPORTS SKINS?

AOL owns Nullsoft, the company that publishes Winamp and upkeeps the winamp.com website. Recently (August 31ish, 2001) AOL corporate notified the Webmaster of winamp.com that they were very displeased by the fact that winamp.com allowed major league sport skins to be published on their website. A list of skins to be deleted was sent along with this message, as well as the instructions not to publish any more 'NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL or college team skins' on the site. We of the Skin Review Squad apologize to the authors of such skins, and suggest that you try DeviantArt,1001 Winamp Skins, or any other of the numerous sites that publish Winamp 2.xx skins.

WHO SAYS AOL CAN KEEP ME FROM PUBLISHING MY SKIN? WHAT HAPPENED TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH?

I say so. Well, not really, but there are two main reasons.

1) Winamp.com is the property of NS and consequently AOL. Therefore, winamp.com is technically private property, where the owner can do whatever they want. That means if they don't want your skin, they don't have to take it. They simply do out of the kindness of their hearts.

2) They don't want to get sued. You don't want to get sued. A great many Winamp skins incorporate the property of other people (team logos, corporate logos, copyrighted images, or even that cool GUI you saw over at GUIstuff). By using many of these images, you are technically violating federal and international copyright law. Now, while many of the authors/owners of these properties don't give a whit what you do on your piddly little Winamp skin, some of them do. Winamp.com utilizes a fairly lenient policy on this stuff, in that they assume that whatever images you use, you have the right to use, and remove skins only if the author complains. If the owner does complain, the skin is removed, and if the author so wishes no further skins containing his property are supposed to be published. Everybody's happy, and your ass doesn't go into hock.

WHAT ARE RIPS?

A rip is a skin that copies all of or portions of another Winamp skin. This generally makes the author grumpy. (Though not always) It is winamp.com's current policy not to publish rips. Rips can be verified most easily by publication dates on established Winamp skin websites. Though this seems rather clear cut, it can get rather messy when the ripper decides to modify the original skin some. Whether or not the skin is then a rip becomes a matter of opinion, and is decided by the members of the Skin Review Squad. Rips can be reported here, and those of you who have had a skin removed may appeal its removal here if you wish. If a skin is a rip, then it's a rip no matter where it is found. If you find a rip on another site, we suggest that you contact the administrator of that website. A more detailed breakdown of what exactly a rip is can be found at the end of this page.

WHAT THE HELL!? I GOT AN EMAIL SAYING MY SKIN WASN'T PUBLISHED!

Current reasons for rejecting skins:

Ripped Off: This skin is not an original. (This was covered above)

Objectionable Content: This skin contains controversial subject matter. (This was covered above)

Duplicate: This skin exists in the same form somewhere else on winamp.com. This often happens with newbies who think that because their skin didn't show up as soon as they submitted it that they must have submitted it wrong, or when a skinner decides to resubmit the same skin with the hopes of getting a better rating than they received originally.

16-bit *.bmp: This skin uses 16-bit bmps, which cause black or otherwise screwy screenshots. Just use whatever graphics program you own to convert all the bitmaps to 32-bit bitmaps. If you did this on purpose, please note that you did so in the description, and be aware that your skin will look funky when previewed.

Broken/Missing Screenshot: This is usually related to either 16-bit bitmaps or a FUBARed database. Either way, what it usually amounts to is a fracked screenshot, where parts of your skin look okay, but other parts.... well, just thank us that we gave you a chance to fix the problem before the general public got to see it.

Improper Installation: Used mostly for plug-ins, but sometimes we get a submission in which the author hasn't read the skin creation instructions closely enough. To have a properly compiled skin:

[*]You must have a folder containing all the files for your skin. There should be as many bitmaps in your skin's folder as there are in the base Winamp skin.

[*]They should be named with the same respective names as the base skin bitmaps. (pledit.bmp should be named 'pledit.bmp' etc.)

[*]You should then zip all the files you wish to include into a *.zip file, using a utility like WinZip.

[*]Then you need to rename the file from *.zip to *.wsz, so that myskin.zip becomes myskin.wsz.

WHAT THE HELL!? I GOT AN EMAIL SAYING MY SKIN WAS UNPUBLISHED!

It's probably a rip. Shame on you. We might also remove it if it's an exact duplicate of another. This often happens when skinners forget their original account password. We typically keep the newer version of the skin; unless they are exactly the same and the old version has more downloads. It is also possible for us to remove a skin if your screenshot gets FUBARed, though we usually don't.

WHAT IS THE SKIN REVIEW SQUAD? WHO MADE THESE PEOPLE BOSS?

The Skin Review Squad is a panel of people who were chosen from a group of volunteers by winamp.com admin. Most of them are veteran skinners, all of them use Winamp, and none of them hate you. We're here to try and help everyone by speeding up the review process, by providing fair ratings and helpful comments and by keeping an eye on the winamp.com skin world in general.

HOW CAN I GET RID OF THE SKIN REVIEW SQUAD?

You can't. If we've done something to piss you off, you can appeal by posting in here. If we don't do what you want there, and you have a valid claim, you can contact the big boss by mailing Steve at steve@nullsoft.com,and if he agrees, you'll be given your just reward and the offending member(s) will be forced to service Steve. Bitch.
I WARN YOU THOUGH: it behooves you not to use this address unless you know you are 100% Honest to God right. Else you might never have kids. Also if you email Steve, please provide all relevant CID #'s as well as a link to a thread where you have appealed whatever is rubbing you the wrong way.

WELL CAN YOU AT LEAST TELL US WHAT YOU LOOK FOR IN A SKIN THEN?

Sure.

Originality: Is this a creative design? How far did the designer push himself or herself with the content within the design? Is this submission an original or is it just a rip off of someone else's design? A skin is not unoriginal based on the subject matter. We are looking more for layout and art originality. More points are awarded to those skins that have never been done before. When there are several of the same styled skins, then they obviously are not that original. Skinner program generated skins get a low rating in this category.

Completeness: Is every window skinned? The required skinned component windows are: The Main window, Equalizer, Playlist, Minibrowser, and AVS. No points are added or removed for skinning 3rd party components, besides a glowing text review.

Cursors are not a requirement but can influence the aesthetics rating by +/- 0.5.

Functionality is also gauged in this category. Many skin designers create simply unbelievable skin designs with buttons that have no play, stop, pause symbol. That does not necessarily mean that their skin is dysfunctional. It means that it is not as user-friendly as the ones that do contain those symbols, and thus may detract from completeness.

Aesthetics: This is where your skills as an artist come in. You are reviewed in two other categories, but this category pertains to how 'good' it looks as a whole. Is the composition strong throughout each window design? How did you utilize the space throughout the picture plane? Is it cluttered? Is there too much dead space? Does the color scheme match? Do the patterns coincide with each other? If the intention was to be a three-dimensional design, does it really give that illusion? Does each window play an important role in the whole design, or are they all quite separate from one another and therefore do not work well as a whole? This aspect is most up to individual taste, but those are some of the things we look at.

If a skin is obviously a skinner (generated by a skinning tool) it's likely to get crap for a rating. That's just the way it is. It looks the same as all the other skinners out there, and often it is a crappy skin beyond that. Not saying don't make 'em. Just saying don't expect us to like 'em.

THAT PROMISED ELABORATION ON SKIN RIPS

100% straight rips - removed with no qualms.

The second kind of rip is the rip in which someone has modified some tiny aspect of an existing skin (pledit.txt color, background color, etc.) and submitted it. These changes are fine, and likely look nice, but we do not accept these skins either. They're not your work, and even if you give the author credit, it's not quite fair to him/her. Closely related are those rips where someone has found a skin (or skins) they liked, and used it as a base for their own project. (Matra II is a good example of this if you remember it - it used 3 different skins by other authors, and melded them together.) These are usually not published either.

Regardless of how clear-cut a rip is, keep this in mind:

Applying a color filter is not tangibly improving it. Skinning additional components or fixing coordinate bugs would be, and even in bug fix cases, you still may not get published.

ARE BASE SKIN VARIATIONS (COLOR FILTERS) RIPS THEN?

No. But you're only likely to get half a star for it, and if someone else has beaten you to that color, we won't have any problems removing it as a rip. This also goes for Winamp 3 base skins.

I'VE GOT A QUESTION YOU DIDN'T ANSWER HOTSHOT!

Talk to us in Skin Love.