I am not blaming them but it is the reason for the site. They are not altruistic well wishers. Let us also remember that the reason the site has been popular for people using it to store their free stuff is in part the prospect of some sort of return on it.

I think that the problem is that the site has been brought down by its popularity as they did not realise how any people would suddenly see a chance to make some money.

I found the following idea posted over at Renderosity. You might find some merit in it. It sounds helpful in anycase.

In reply to:

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How about the following to solve or address the mediocre content problem?

Require downloaders to maintain a ratio of ratings to downloads, so that they have to rate at least 50% of the number of items they download.

Require uploaders to maintain a ratio of positive ratings and ratings period, so if they upload too much that isn't viewed and rated, or upload too many items with low ratings, they lose their upload priveledges or have to take down those unviewed or low rated items?

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Rendo also limits the amount of uploads that they'll post on their site per day, that might be something helpful, too. 

Now what would be cool is if you couldn't download without giving a rating!  Comments are a little harder to get out of people, for whatever reasons.  And then establish a fixed "rating" for the ratings.  So, one star would be "It has enough merit for me to download" and five would be "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S FREE!".  

I'm interested in seeing what the site owners are considering, myself.  We're the users and we can toss out ideas, but I'd like to think the owners had at least something in mind before cancelling; and would like to know what's looking promising to them.  

Though I don't really expect to see much before Monday.  :D   

"This is similar to something that I request a while back. If an item has no views over a 90 day period it is automatically dropped from the system. This would help keep the system clean of items no one is looking at and force the uploader to evaluate the quality of what they uploaded. Broken links be da**ed ... if no one is actively looking at something, why keep the clutter around?" -David

I'm not a fan of this idea David, perhaps something along the lines of if an item with no views for 90 days be archived & only reinstated into the pay tier when an actual download occurs.

Many times quality is not the issue for no views, such as items for older "obsolete" figures or programs. 

Which is why the two tiered system.. those who don't wish to provide any additional information don't have to, they can still upload submissions and download at will just as it is now.

However those that are willing to go through a little extra verification can be eligible for revenue sharing.

True, dial up users do get a new ip address daily, but how many dialup users are there out there?

Really the IP check doesn't prevent the scammers, it just discourages them from submitting 100 different requests that the Quality Control folks would have to look at.

To even be eligible for the second tier a sample of your work would have to be reviewed first, and once you reach the second tier if you start uploading a bunch of garbage and doing all the old scams on getting extra clicks other people can report you easily to the QC folks or a second security committee if folks feel a second group would be in order for this purpose, but they can then review your submissions and if they feel it's warranted terminate your revenue sharing access immediately.

This pretty much kills the scammers in their tracks - and your right, the paypal email address is probably the best overall verification you can get, just have the site track those who have been rejected or terminated based on paypal email addressess and not allow people to keep signing up for the second tier under mulitple accounts that way.

Basically the verification is more to reduce the workload on the QC and or security folks, it doesn't catch the scammers persee, just makes it a little harder for them to circumvent the system.