I still don't get any of this. We're a policing community. We mod GTA. With police models (among other models). To have fun and enjoy ourselves. Or did I completely miss the point? 

I did not intend to attack you, but there are certain inaccuracies in your statement and I don't agree with the tone. It looks to us like there's more to the departure of certain modders, the complaints we got, some public, from the modders concerned lack of exposure of their mods on the site as the site grew and more modders joined the site.

 

The other side to this is that we haven't been approached by anyone about the issue, the only times we heard about theft was when the public accusations went around, we weren't PM'ed or contacted on Steam/Skype etc, about the issues.

Since you were contacting the modders involved, you did know about the issue. I'm not really sure why it's still needed that somebody tells you why he's posting accusations. That sounds like you were simply giving warnings without even knowing what was going on. And that obviously isn't going to work. A judge listens to both sides of the story.

 

One modder mentioned in a PM conversation I had with him that theft accusations are used as a weapon

Well, and it worked, didn't it? Staff is finally taking action now.

 

We all agree that mod theft is bad, I don't think that it is right to talk about us as people who who don't, however we are not going to remove content and apply sanctions based on claims that cannot be verified. We also want everyone to abide by the same rules, which, with some people (you aren't one of them) are not interested in doing.

 

We can debate the rules, which we have done with a selection of modders and we can do it again. However it's not acceptable to disregard the rules because you disagree with them.

Many people, even then-staff-members, tried to debate the rules before, usually without success. It's not that nobody told you it would simply be possible to remove pictures showing stolen content and deal with the member. But seeing nothing happening, don't you think that'll annoy somebody trying to protect his models? You're talking about missing respect but nobody is going to be respected if he doesn't respect others. Modders say staff isn't respecting the modding community's rules that all websites obey to and they try to find their own way to enforce these rules.

In all the years I'm actively using this website, I think I've never seen any staff member was excusing for any unjustified action, either it was ignored or talked down. New features were never included because the old way was considered bad, but not as great as the new one. We've had that discussion many times before.

 

No one was sanctioned "harshly" for actions that occurred before the public announcement made by Sam. And of the image in question relating to deco and JokerMods, as well as previous accusations against the provoker the past week (I did not say months), all of the mods were available publicly and were shown with only texture changes, but accusations of theft still ran wild. I'm sure you recognize your car with a texture change on the wheel in this picture:

http://www.lcpdfr.com/gallery/image/27328-oh-lord-jesus-its-a-fahr/

Of course I did recognize it. I'm going to repeat that it's not my intention to protect JokerMods or deco, but I'm talking about the past, I'm talking about pictures showing Kevin's Caprice bumper, Dodgeboy's Interceptor or EVI's hubcaps. We don't need to argue that wrong accusations are bad, but it didn't start out of nowhere. In the end, they just seemed to be habit, though.

 

Do you expect Sam and LMS to bug test by themselves? There were over 500 bugs and improvements reported, after it was thoroughly tested by as many available testers as possible over 6 months. While 7 of the 8 testers were on the Community Team, that's because most of the testers have been inactive for years. And even with our best efforts, while still trying to maintain order on the site that was made more difficult by the issues Sam already addressed, there were still bugs none of us had a clue about.

I completely understand that, but you need to understand me as well: LCPDFR.com is considered a modding website, that's why all mods and all modders need to be treated equally. If staff members are testing some mods as well, that's fine, but I don't think using that as an excuse to ignore a very important topic within the community for months is appropriate for such a large website.

 

You could also argue that a minority of users feel as if they "need" to "rip" the car models if they want to be on the "forefront" of modding in our community, the only unlocked new-gen cop car is a Charger, both the PIU and PIS from Ford as well as the Caprice is kept under lock-and-key by those few that have them.

"Their"(the "rippers"/"thieves") resoning could be that all they want the means to make nice police cars for other people, but they're "limited" to Crown Vics, Impalas and Tahoes and a "hand-full of lights" when "everyone else" are releasing Caprices, PIS's/PIU's and Chargers with "the latest" or "best" lights on them, why should they work on "sub-par" mods knowing that they'll "never" get access to the "hot" models?

Other modders were working hard on getting or creating those models. Many consider lots of the current vehicle mods as low quality and don't want others to ruin their work. That's one reason why people don't release unlocked models, apart from the fact you barely get any positive feedback.

 

I'm not justifying ripping or theft, nor am I saying they're right or that we're allowing,encouraging or endorsing it. Sure, there's a lot more dev resources out there now, but you are still very limited as a modder unless you can acquire "good" car and equipment models via the ethically correct way if you don't want to model, say a "correct" Whelen Liberty oredSig Valor.

The new-gen cop cars are tightly guarded by those who has access to them, as it lighting equipment. Modders has actively discouraged other modders from uploading development resources and told the same if they do upload some.

There're two types of people violating terms of use: The first one, the rippers or thieves, who claim other people's work as theirs and release it. Then, there's a second type, with people who violate terms of use because they simply want to improve their own game. They don't release anything, so nobody knows anything and no action will be taken. To be honest, I don't even care about that second type of thieves. You might want to compare that with watching music videos on YouTube without paying for the song on iTunes, you do it because you like the artist's work, not because you want fame yourself.

 

That's assuming that you don't accidentally cross paths with another modder, you're on our own if someone brands you as a thief. One of the modders we contacted ran into trouble with a model with a skin given to him by another user, unfortunately that skin used parts of third skin without permission, the rumours soon started to flow along with snarky comments about theft.

This user was lucky to have been a part of the modding community for a while and had several released mods before that incident, but it still shows how quickly attitudes change if someone sees something they thing are odd.

If a car manufactor uses incorrect parts he'll also get the blame by public, although the issue might be caused by a different company. That is a disadvantage of publishing anything.

 

Again, we're no justifying theft, ripping or any kind of unauthorized used of content. It's not my opinion or any of the CT members opinion, however we do try and look at things from every angle.

It's a large community, involving it into the editing of terms of use might be no bad idea. Simply show a submittal and ask for criticism, and most important, follow the community's advise. I've seen that work on plenty websites. You can't let 10 people decide what 100,000 would like to have.

 

I still don't get any of this. We're a policing community. We mod GTA. With police models (among other models). To have fun and enjoy ourselves. Or did I completely miss the point?

Good luck having fun when you see people claiming credit for another's work.

People get pretty ridiculous about "their" stuff. I see people who take a totalitarian view on content control almost as much of a detriment to their respective communities as the "unapologetic thieves" they're so worried about. Sharing is how a community grows, not by the masses pleading for their lords to throw a pittance down from on high.

You'd think so right? I wish this community was more about sharing, but it's not. It's a shame really. 

 

I still don't get any of this. We're a policing community. We mod GTA. With police models (among other models). To have fun and enjoy ourselves. Or did I completely miss the point?

Nah, it used to be about that. A certain few made it so it's not any longer.

Good luck having fun when you see people claiming credit for another's work.

 

For us, this as you know, is one of the biggest challenges facing us.  In just about every case where there's been an incident in the gallery - nobody actually claimed credit for the work.   If you look at the link I posted in my first post here, you'll see that it was merely an image of a car and an explosion.  Nowhere does it say that anyone is taking credit for it.

 

Despite this, everyone throws around their accusations and silly pictures.  Everyone here understands that it is 100 percent wrong to claim someone else's work as your own, but in most cases, nobody actually does that.  Whenever somebody actually claims something as their own (most of the time by uploading it to the downloads section crediting purely themself), it gets reported and gets dealt with.  I already showed a screenshot of the most recent example of this in my first post.  I'd be more than happy to present more.

 

I already said that we'd do our best to help out if someone was repeatedly posting images of models that you believed to be yours which were ripped in an attempt to taunt you, and we started an investigation into one person because of this, who has now asked for their account to be closed a day after we stepped up that investigation.  I'm not sure where the misconception that we don't do anything about plagiarism comes from, as time after time, people that wrongly take credit for the work of others are found out and dealt with.  If this wasn't the case, I'm sure BPM would still be running rampant around here, along with ANTI and whoever else.

 

I could split up the gallery so that there's a category specifically designated for releasing images of work in progress modifications if that would sort the problem.  In that section, we can apply simple rules to protect the work of others - simply by stating that all images post must reflect modifications which satisfy the following:

• The modification is created from scratch, entirely by the author.
• The modification is created by a third party, that has given their express consent for a derivative work to be produced.
• All credit is given where expected.

So if you saw one of your models in that section, we can easily take action once it gets reported to us.  The problem though is that what's to stop people posting their WIP images in the other gallery section?  Well we can make a simple rule saying that images which show the development of a modification, such as those taken from 3D modelling applications, or images which serve to promote the eventual release of a modification, such as those featuring an unreleased modification where the author states that the modification will be released, must be posted in the designated WIP section.

 

That doesn't solve the problem though, because again, most of the time nobody actually takes credit or says that anything will be released.   Again, look at the first image.  It's just a picture of a car and an explosion!

It's a large community, involving it into the editing of terms of use might be no bad idea. Simply show a submittal and ask for criticism, and most important, follow the community's advise. I've seen that work on plenty websites. You can't let 10 people decide what 100,000 would like to have.

We actually did ask people to offer suggestions and to critique us, months ago: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

 

Nobody even bothered to help, so we had to take things into our own hands, and this is what happened.

Since you were contacting the modders involved, you did know about the issue. I'm not really sure why it's still needed that somebody tells you why he's posting accusations. That sounds like you were simply giving warnings without even knowing what was going on. And that obviously isn't going to work. A judge listens to both sides of the story.

 

Well, and it worked, didn't it? Staff is finally taking action now.

 

Many people, even then-staff-members, tried to debate the rules before, usually without success. It's not that nobody told you it would simply be possible to remove pictures showing stolen content and deal with the member. But seeing nothing happening, don't you think that'll annoy somebody trying to protect his models? You're talking about missing respect but nobody is going to be respected if he doesn't respect others. Modders say staff isn't respecting the modding community's rules that all websites obey to and they try to find their own way to enforce these rules.

In all the years I'm actively using this website, I think I've never seen any staff member was excusing for any unjustified action, either it was ignored or talked down. New features were never included because the old way was considered bad, but not as great as the new one. We've had that discussion many times before.

 

Of course I did recognize it. I'm going to repeat that it's not my intention to protect JokerMods or deco, but I'm talking about the past, I'm talking about pictures showing Kevin's Caprice bumper, Dodgeboy's Interceptor or EVI's hubcaps. We don't need to argue that wrong accusations are bad, but it didn't start out of nowhere. In the end, they just seemed to be habit, though.

 

I completely understand that, but you need to understand me as well: LCPDFR.com is considered a modding website, that's why all mods and all modders need to be treated equally. If staff members are testing some mods as well, that's fine, but I don't think using that as an excuse to ignore a very important topic within the community for months is appropriate for such a large website.

 

Other modders were working hard on getting or creating those models. Many consider lots of the current vehicle mods as low quality and don't want others to ruin their work. That's one reason why people don't release unlocked models, apart from the fact you barely get any positive feedback.

 

There're two types of people violating terms of use: The first one, the rippers or thieves, who claim other people's work as theirs and release it. Then, there's a second type, with people who violate terms of use because they simply want to improve their own game. They don't release anything, so nobody knows anything and no action will be taken. To be honest, I don't even care about that second type of thieves. You might want to compare that with watching music videos on YouTube without paying for the song on iTunes, you do it because you like the artist's work, not because you want fame yourself.

 

If a car manufactor uses incorrect parts he'll also get the blame by public, although the issue might be caused by a different company. That is a disadvantage of publishing anything.

 

It's a large community, involving it into the editing of terms of use might be no bad idea. Simply show a submittal and ask for criticism, and most important, follow the community's advise. I've seen that work on plenty websites. You can't let 10 people decide what 100,000 would like to have.

 

Good luck having fun when you see people claiming credit for another's work.

 

 

Yes, we are going to take action, not jut against "thieves", but also against those that come here to start fights, advertise or otherwise behave in ways that are counter-productive to the community, including mod theft.

 

 

We knew about the issue, the "modders" knew that we knew about the issue and they knew that we were working on a solution, yet they ignored our polite requests to stop public accusations and start fights several times.

I asked  input from everyone in October about the site and what improvments we could be,noboody chimed in, nobody wanted to discuss theft or other issues on LCPDFR, nothing. I received one PM from a user that wanted to share his appreciation for LCPDFR, but that was all.

 

Many people don't release mods unlocked because they willl get comments like "This will be overused by the community" or "Average modders doesn't deserve this, you should remove it" by other modders.

 

You mention Dodgeboy's Ford PI being used without permission by "thieves", yet at least one of the "accusers" showed the same model despite "not having permission to release it": >Here, and> here's a statement form him regarding the hubcaps. Remarkably few of the modders that are "fighting" against mod theft made any accusations or remarks then despite the fact that the problem has been present for a long time.

 

The attitude some of the modders seem to be that they're above the rest, that they deserve things their way, that they deserve to "control" the modding scene. The only changes they have been willing to accept would give them more control over the modding community.

There're two types of people violating terms of use: The first one, the rippers or thieves, who claim other people's work as theirs and release it. Then, there's a second type, with people who violate terms of use because they simply want to improve their own game. They don't release anything, so nobody knows anything and no action will be taken. To be honest, I don't even care about that second type of thieves. You might want to compare that with watching music videos on YouTube without paying for the song on iTunes, you do it because you like the artist's work, not because you want fame yourself.

This is one of the biggest issues with gallery pictures - how do you distinguish between the two types? If someone wants to improve their own game and rips a model to do so, but doesn't share it with anyone, I don't think anyone sees a big issue with that. Certainly, my personal view [this is NOT an official staff position] is that what I do on my computer is no business of anyone else's, and the only time anyone else gets a say is when I start sharing things with others.

The issue with gallery images, then, is this: What happens if someone wants a particular lighting setup, rips the model and adds lights, doesn't share it with anyone else, and then sees a funny thing happen ingame and wants to share it with the gallery? What if they have a scenario they set up, and it makes a nice pic? We can all agree that they shouldn't release the ripped model for download, and shouldn't post pictures claiming credit for the original model, but do you think ripping a model taints the pictures themselves?

I still don't get any of this. We're a policing community. We mod GTA. With police models (among other models). To have fun and enjoy ourselves. Or did I completely miss the point? 

 

I can't tell you how many times I've said this or others have... evidently it doesn't work because people still act like we're tired up in a prison. It's a joke anymore.

For us, this as you know, is one of the biggest challenges facing us.  In just about every case where there's been an incident in the gallery - nobody actually claimed credit for the work.   If you look at the link I posted in my first post here, you'll see that it was merely an image of a car and an explosion.  Nowhere does it say that anyone is taking credit for it.

That would've been too simple, then. Ripping models is not really different though, those guys just hope nobody notices it and rather believe it's their work.

 

Despite this, everyone throws around their accusations and silly pictures.  Everyone here understands that it is 100 percent wrong to claim someone else's work as your own, but in most cases, nobody actually does that.  Whenever somebody actually claims something as their own (most of the time by uploading it to the downloads section crediting purely themself), it gets reported and gets dealt with.  I already showed a screenshot of the most recent example of this in my first post.  I'd be more than happy to present more.

The most recent example although is not the best example, I think. In those pictures you've linked to, no stolen mods were shown.

 

I already said that we'd do our best to help out if someone was repeatedly posting images of models that you believed to be yours which were ripped in an attempt to taunt you, and we started an investigation into one person because of this, who has now asked for their account to be closed a day after we stepped up that investigation.  I'm not sure where the misconception that we don't do anything about plagiarism comes from, as time after time, people that wrongly take credit for the work of others are found out and dealt with.  If this wasn't the case, I'm sure BPM would still be running rampant around here, along with ANTI and whoever else.

You said that now, but nobody said anything in the last months. I feel like repeating the same sentence over and over in this thread. Because there wasn't much change, the situtation got out of hand.

 

You mention Dodgeboy's Ford PI being used without permission by "thieves", yet at least one of the "accusers" showed the same model despite "not having permission to release it": >Here, and> here's a statement form him regarding the hubcaps. Remarkably few of the modders that are "fighting" against mod theft made any accusations or remarks then despite the fact that the problem has been present for a long time.

The Interceptor is a very weird topic, since everybody believed Gatekeeper was allowed to give permissions to use the model. We were able to solve it due to having independent modders and staff members. That was one of the advantages of having a small community, because staff actually knew what was going on and could interfere quickly.

 

The attitude some of the modders seem to be that they're above the rest, that they deserve things their way, that they deserve to "control" the modding scene. The only changes they have been willing to accept would give them more control over the modding community.

There are many that actually made the community to what it is now. I think you might be exaggerating a bit when saying they want to control the modding scene. Although it's obvious they'd like to have their opinion count as well. Don't you think it's understandable they like to be in the center of attention? It's the same with LCPDFR, the mod is also considered one of the modding milestones.

 

This is one of the biggest issues with gallery pictures - how do you distinguish between the two types? If someone wants to improve their own game and rips a model to do so, but doesn't share it with anyone, I don't think anyone sees a big issue with that.

Exactly, and as soon as somebody posts a picture, he's not improving his own game only.

 

The issue with gallery images, then, is this: What happens if someone wants a particular lighting setup, rips the model and adds lights, doesn't share it with anyone else, and then sees a funny thing happen ingame and wants to share it with the gallery? What if they have a scenario they set up, and it makes a nice pic? We can all agree that they shouldn't release the ripped model for download, and shouldn't post pictures claiming credit for the original model, but do you think ripping a model taints the pictures themselves?

It does, because as soon as they do that, they're not keeping it for themselves. Then, other's are going to notice and then they want action to be taken.

 

You'd think so right? I wish this community was more about sharing, but it's not. It's a shame really.

There's always the urge of having something exclusively. Actually not even a modding community but a society issue. Though, I'm not sure if it would work better to have no possibility to lock models.

There's always the urge of having something exclusively. Actually not even a modding community but a society issue. Though, I'm not sure if it would work better to have no possibility to lock models.

 

I actually think it would.  You might have noticed that Lt.Caine releases all of his work unlocked these days.  I've not been made aware of a single case where anything he released unlocked was ripped, or where someone deliberately and knowingly took credit for his work.

 

Similarly, I release all of my stuff unlocked as well, and I've never seen anything like my non-ELS lightbar conversions or ped edits ever have been claimed to have been made by someone else.

Can't we just make some agreement on the matter, stop arguing about it and continue on with our lives? This is getting a bit out of hand and I'm not sure if it's doing any good.

That would've been too simple, then. Ripping models is not really different though, those guys just hope nobody notices it and rather believe it's their work.

 

The most recent example although is not the best example, I think. In those pictures you've linked to, no stolen mods were shown.

 

You said that now, but nobody said anything in the last months. I feel like repeating the same sentence over and over in this thread. Because there wasn't much change, the situtation got out of hand.

 

The Interceptor is a very weird topic, since everybody believed Gatekeeper was allowed to give permissions to use the model. We were able to solve it due to having independent modders and staff members. That was one of the advantages of having a small community, because staff actually knew what was going on and could interfere quickly.

 

There are many that actually made the community to what it is now. I think you might be exaggerating a bit when saying they want to control the modding scene. Although it's obvious they'd like to have their opinion count as well. Don't you think it's understandable they like to be in the center of attention? It's the same with LCPDFR, the mod is also considered one of the modding milestones.

 

Exactly, and as soon as somebody posts a picture, he's not improving his own game only.

 

It does, because as soon as they do that, they're not keeping it for themselves. Then, other's are going to notice and then they want action to be taken.

 

There's always the urge of having something exclusively. Actually not even a modding community but a society issue. Though, I'm not sure if it would work better to have no possibility to lock models.

 

Everyone who accused in public were contacted about mod theft, not only to stop the accusations but to talk about the underlying issue. Very few listened but carried on doing the same thing. We did hear their opinions about the issue, but nothing changed on their side.

We gave them what you claim they wanted, to hear them out, to listen, yet a lot of them didn't care.

 

It's nice to hear that someone who is experienced in modding agree with us about the image >Sam posted here or the majority of the images that has caused accusations as no statement was made about the origin of the model(s) shown. That's what we've been saying all along.

 

 

Yes, it would be far, far easier for everyone involved if nothing was locked, mod theft certainly wouldn't be a problem if that was the case.

It would be far easier for us to enforce rules regarding correctly crediting users for their work if we can easily verify the origin of the various 3d models, cars and equipment alike than it is for us to rely on screenshots and statements about permissions.

It would also help out the community as everyone who is interested din making mods can easily access a wide array of models.

And you all wonder why when I joined this website 3 year's ago before population exploded

 

People like CJ24 EVI KevinDV stopped releasing on this website and KevinDV wanted his work taken down  -- some of the best modder's around / in gta 4 and who helped make this website popular by coming here in the 1st place cause of what it wsa 3 year's ago

 

and newer model's like Pengi SCDeputy  NickieB moved on 

 

 

Because of everything posted on that image thread, this therad  and other things going on theft drama lack of respect and action its all been covered before in this thread and other's

 

 

HEll at 1 point this community was really helpful to new modler's   now it suck's barly being able to get help with scratch modeling 2 police car's never made for gta 4 before

or

simply getting help with as some say Putting part's togther  (those people get attacked almost as harsh as mod theives) people trash the shit ut of their first model they spent god knows how much time pputting together

 

what'ss even more sad people on steam are more willing to teach and help with some1 learning to model yes i've been  messaged then his community is and this community is suppose to be close ? as every1 says it is 

 

this community almost 3 year's ago was respectful and extremely helpful towards each other not so much anymore  ( half it is all the new people joining who just have or lack respect and willingness to help ) 

Edited January 22, 201412 yr by K-9 police 9

I have to agree with nickolai b I believe the source of the problem is people not releasing the newer squad cars and there excuse is always modding theft well if these cars were released on a daily basis like the old days and unlocked then I think the problem wouldn't nearly be as bad but no those cars are so heavily guarded for some reason it just turns me off and for this reason I am losing interest in this site because its not fun anymore all I see are drama queens pointing fingers, if you want respect act maturely and report something to the site management, deal with the issues or just take your ball go home

I don't think that it would change anything if all models were unlocked. You'd have either more people simply not releasing their work or forbidding the use of it. While there's no need for ripping, there's still stealing.

I think it actually would change things. Skins don't have nearly the same degree of fighting over mod theft that models do. Probably part of that is that it's harder to rip a model, and you have to know that you're doing something the original modeler didn't want. With skins, there's nothing like that - editing a skin whose creator doesn't want it edited is no different from editing a skin released with "you can mess with this as much as you want to, just credit me".

Permissions also seem to flow more easily with skins, because again, it's just words stopping people from doing things - there's no technical discouragement. If I wanted to make something using one of your locked models, you'd have to send me the unlocked model first before I could even start. When you send me the unlocked model, you're running the risk that I'll then send it on to other people, who will assume that it's OK for them to use it. Meanwhile, you'd have a hard time stopping me from making whatever mods I wanted with it, instead of just one. That's because you rely on a technical feature to try to keep models restricted. If, in contrast, I wanted to edit your *skins*, you could easily say "Yeah, this particular thing seems OK, but ask me again if you want to make a different skin." I can't transfer your permission to other people - when receiving an unlocked model, people assume it's OK to use, but no one would accept "I got permission for this skin, and you have it too now." I may have already edited the skin, and you won't be shocked that I did so - it's not like I intentionally defeated technical measures to edit it.

Essentially, I think that if Zmodeler didn't have the feature to lock a model, people would be less obsessive about mod theft. No one would try to pretend that they could stop people editing it for personal use, and asking for permission to edit and release wouldn't be a high-trust activity (like getting an unlocked model is). It's true that the people who don't want anyone editing their models, who won't accept the risk associated with unlocked models, wouldn't make models. But I think a lot of people who release everything/most things locked would be willing to release unlocked if it were the only option. If they wouldn't be willing to, I'd have to ask why they mod, and why they release models.

Of course I did recognize it. I'm going to repeat that it's not my intention to protect JokerMods or deco, but I'm talking about the past, I'm talking about pictures showing Kevin's Caprice bumper, Dodgeboy's Interceptor or EVI's hubcaps. We don't need to argue that wrong accusations are bad, but it didn't start out of nowhere. In the end, they just seemed to be habit, though.

 

I completely understand that, but you need to understand me as well: LCPDFR.com is considered a modding website, that's why all mods and all modders need to be treated equally. If staff members are testing some mods as well, that's fine, but I don't think using that as an excuse to ignore a very important topic within the community for months is appropriate for such a large website.

 

And in the past, people were given verbal warnings in the comments section, only for them to continue on another image. When they had to be verbally warned several times on several different images, they were given a formal PM. The harshest action I recall ever taken against anyone before Sam's announcement 2 days ago was a formal warning, which is just a pop up screen that forces an acknowledgement of wrongdoing before being able to use this site.

 

The topic wasn't ignored. There was a thread from October that was already linked to, with the only reply to it being a picture message making fun of the topic. Many of the people still complaining about this site +1'd that post, instead of offering feedback on how we could improve.

 

Also, all modders are treated equally. If a modder decides to flame people, they'll be given the same punishment as a non-modder who flames that same person. The only time when the punishment differs for the same offense is when some one has been told repeatedly before, but continues to do the same action.

Of course, it's not reasonable to expect or require modders to release their models unlocked, it brings a different set of problems along.

 

It also sounds like "the modders" think that we ignored their input because we didn't use their suggestions directly. That's not true, we still use the input, the opinions and experiences you all shared when we're making decisions. Some of the feedback concerned that we haven't adapted to the shift from being mostly oriented on LCPDFR to a more general IV modding community with emergency services being the primary focus with LCPDFR the mod being a good part of that.

 

That's something we are working on changing, the upcoming forum structure will move all the modding related sections further up the broad, the download section will also get a small overhaul with new categories that makes it easier to find mods.

 

Another part of the feedback concerned the rules, the general tone among those that responded reasonably felt that our rules also hadn't adapted to the change, they were especially concerned that mod theft was not specifically prohibited or that our definition of mod theft aren't specific enough.

 

Again, that's very reasonable, we're going to make the rules a lot clearer to avoid any confusion as well as explain the consequences of breaking them,  the current rules are very ambiguous because they were made when the community was ten times smaller and vastly different than it is now, you could count the mods hosted on here very quickly three or even two years ago.

 

A new set of rules haven't been that easy for us to do, we've tried during the autumn, but the rules I ended up with were far too complicated to have any practical use. The new rules also have to take LCPDFR's core values in mind, the rules has to be fair on everyone, we can't have rules that are unenforceable or applies unreasonable restrictions on the vast majority of members that aren't doing anything wrong.

It's a lot easier than it sounds, everyone on the CT is here because we care about LCPDFR and the community we have, but we're not professionals and we've been incredibly busy for a long time, we used to be 10 mods (including management). for 100k members on the forum, the gallery, the group system and the file section to maintain. We now have 13 mods,111.827 members with more registering every day, more posts, gallery images and files posted every day.

 

Especially December was hard on us, Sam let us know that 1.0 were close to release and asked us all to do as much testing as possible. That's around the time the public accusations took off on here.

 

During the month of December we tested 1.0, we dealt with all the accusations at first, then we started a very thorough process of contacting over 20 modders for their input where we partly asked them kindly to stop the accusations, the accusations continued, albeit slightly reduced, usually one to tree fights happened every day. That's a lot of work for us, we barely had time to actually work on the issues that was brought up.

We all have real lives (with Christmas as well, not everyone could be here), the accusations that we had to intervene on, the correspondence with everyone and our own conversations about the issues, testing 1.0 and taking care of all our other CT duties while subsequently handing everything when 1.0 came out.

 

I know that the majority of the Community Team feel that the recent events haven't been fair on us, I especially think it's wrong to say that we're ignoring or not caring about the issue,we've done a lot to be as nice as possible, we understood that some people were frustrated for the reasons described above, I understand that frustration can be rushed out on the internet and we cut those involved a lot of slack when they repeatedly went against the rules and a number of personal requests to stop it. We hoped that everyone would calm down after a while.

 

We haven't changing anything concerning the issue because we simply haven't had time, we contacted the first modders on the 18th of December, today is the 22nd of January.

I really don't see why people get so worked up over a picture? I mean seriously, they haven't released it, so what is the huge deal? Now if they were to release it then that is a whole other story. Also when you release something like this to the public, you don't have really any rights to it and if you don't want this to happen then don't release it. This is really getting out of hand. 

Edited January 22, 201412 yr by Firefighter 5663

I still don't get any of this. We're a policing community. We mod GTA. With police models (among other models). To have fun and enjoy ourselves. Or did I completely miss the point? 

 

This is exactly how I feel about this whole thing. It's a VIDEO GAME. Just play it and have fun.

 

We actually did ask people to offer suggestions and to critique us, months ago: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

 

Nobody even bothered to help, so we had to take things into our own hands, and this is what happened.

 

Also THIS. You people go throwing accusations at the community team for not doing anything, yet you do nothing to help them. When they ask for your help, you don't give it. Instead you go posting idiotic memes.

 

 

The Community Team genuinely wants to make the site a better place, we all work hard every day at doing so, so please help us, you, and everyone else on the site by participating here in a respectful and mature manner so we can continue to improve the site and community.

 

 

To add to what NB said here, they "work hard every day" for absolutely nothing. There is zero reward for them. The only thing inspiring the Community Team to keep doing what they're doing is their love for this community. I think they deserve the respect they're asking for.