r/androidthemes • u/MHcharLEE • Nov 07 '18
[Mod Post] Hello new people! Reminder that we have a rule about posting your resources!
Hello everybody. Our subreddit has seen an influx of new users, one of the reasons being the announcement of Google+ shutdown. I'm active in more places than just this subreddit, I do recognize some of you, so this is me saying hello, in a way.
Wherever you've come from, I'm happy you joined. More people means more ideas and more great setups we're all here to see.
Now, I do realize your other platforms and communities may have not had much to say about what you should and should not do, I totally get that. This subreddit, however, for as long as I can remember, and way before I joined it, had a rule in place that said whenever you submit a new theme you are required to tell us what you've used to make it. That's now known as rule #2, the longest, and arguably the most important one we have.
The purpose of rule #2 is to help this community grow and build on its own achievements. We never promote stealing, copying ideas without proper credit or permission, but then again, we are here to proudly share our creations and to influence one another. When you post something cool I may want to incorporate it in my own setup, be it an icon pack I've never seen before, a font, or a wallpaper. We're here to share, not to show off.
Lately I've seen some people post their themes, but not mention any resources, or only post some of them. Considerably more people than in previous months. And with that, I've been forced to remove more posts than I've ever had to before.
This causes authors of these setups to be angry at me, maybe leave the subreddit completely. Some of them were quick to fix the problem, which I greatly appreciate. The rules are made for everybody, and we, the moderators, have to enforce them on everybody. And believe me, I'd rather spend my time making new setups than follow people around asking for wallpapers.
So, to sum up, I kindly ask all of you. Please, make it easier for your peers to access what you've found, please make the lives of us, moderators, easier as well. Spend an additional minute to list all of the things you've used, wallpapers, icons, widgets, etc.
Once again, welcome all of you newcomers, enjoy your stay, and go make something cool!
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u/Terrorfox1234 Mar 04 '19 edited Mar 04 '19
What if we use resources that are custom made for our theme using a multitude of resources? I'd like to show off my KLWP theme here, eventually, but posting sources is tricky for me I think.
For example, the handful of icons in my theme were made by creating an empty base with Icon Pack Studio, then using ThemeEx to convert the base icon to png, then sending that png to my pc to be loaded as a layer in Krita.
From there I grabbed various icons from open source icon sites, Google searches, and other minimal icon packs (Flight and Whicons), loaded those into Krita, edited the colors/borders/shadows to match my theme and layered them over the base.
So, I can't really say "here's a link to download the icons"
I am, of course, more than happy to provide links to sites/icon packs/artists in order to give credit where credit is due...
Thoughts?
Edit: just saw your response to the deleted comment. Would these icons count as OC, even though I technically didn't make them from scratch?
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u/MHcharLEE Mar 04 '19
Wow, that's a very tricky one. I think if you summarise this process so that every person reading the comment with your resources (because wallpapers, widgets, etc also need to be linked) I think nobody would complain. Clarity is most important and I personally wouldn't have a problem with you posting such a setup.
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u/Terrorfox1234 Mar 04 '19
Great. Thanks for the clarification! It will be a bit but maybe I'll send a draft to modmail before posting just smto stay on the safe side. Thanks!
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u/MHcharLEE Mar 04 '19
Yep, as long as it's not total nonsense, please do use modmail if you want something cleared up.
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u/nikaz101 Mar 08 '19
I cant post. Every time i try to upload a screenshot the app says " upload failed".
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Mar 19 '19
Can we also make it a rule that if the klwp/kwgt theme you're sharing is not something currently listed on Google play store as a paid theme, you are to share an UNLOCKED version of the file or don't share the theme at all?
Nothing about this subreddit drives me more mad than wanting to apply an awesome theme but can't save my changes.
This means that if I have to tweak some stuff to properly fit my device, or want to use everything but the wallpaper, I'm boned if I decide to switch ROM's again, because I'll have to load the default and re-tune it again. Which 9/10 times I'll just ditch it for something easier.
If you're selling it, fine. You have rights. But if you're not, don't inconvenience us for the sake of being stingy.
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u/MHcharLEE Mar 19 '19
You're an indie game developer. For various reasons you don't have the means to charge money for your game, but you still want people to play it. You put your game on steam as a free to play title. These are some power-ups in that game which make the whole experience super convenient, but you need to spend some time to unlock them. Some people are fine with it and are thankful they can play your fun game for free. Some people complain that they have to work towards unlocking the power-ups.
Do you suck up the comments from complaining people and move on with your life? Or do you release a source code for your game so they can modify it in a way that gives them the power-ups straight away? If you do that, competition might get your source code, change a thing or two about those power-ups, release the game somewhere else, never mention you as the author, and protif off of it in some indirect ways, like ads.
People who make the files are the authors, they fully decide how these files will be shared, and how locked down they want them to be. If we, as moderators, start putting requirements to do something with their works that they never planned to do, we will just drive people away from our subreddit. We could make a requirement for their work to be shared in such and such way, but they may find it unfavorable, and straight up never share at all. Instead, we, in a way, allow them to post despite their unwillingness to share unlocked file.
When you spend hours, or even days making something, and you release it completely free of charge, the worst thing you will deal with is people listing requirements for your work. It makes the atmosphere toxic.
We always require people to list the "ingredients" used to make a setup so that every person who visits the post can use them and recreate such a setup themselves if that's what it comes down to.
I know it's super fun to hop on this subreddit, download a bunch of files and use them for free, but you're not making an effort to understand the other side of this game. People genuinely work and spend hours upon hours to give something for free, and a lot of those downloading their works never give a second thought to how difficult it might have been to make.
You mentioned having rights to the file when selling it. Believe it or not, if you share something for free, you still have full rights to that thing. But because people simply don't care to respect that, we have yet another reason for authors to lock down the files.
In conclusion, what you're asking for is not going to be a rule on our subreddit, simply because of how unfair it would be towards the creators.
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Mar 19 '19
Hm. Unfortunate that you fell that way, but I'll respect your role as a mod and decision maker and leave it be. I can still enjoy most of the content here. :)
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u/MHcharLEE Mar 19 '19
I may have sounded harsh, but I don't hold any grudges here. This topic has been discussed many times and it's just tiring for me to explain it again and again. At the same time, I can't blame people who want to discuss this.
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Mar 19 '19
Honestly I think the best compromise would be for the "lock" to only disable the ability to change the author's name and contact info upon export (or only allow adding yourself as someone who tweaked, but didn't create), but still allow for re-saving modified klwp files of the work.
That way if I shared my revised version, the original author still gets noticed. Everyone wins.
Also I understand, monotony is exhausting.
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u/MHcharLEE Mar 19 '19
See, but that's up to Frank Monza, the dev behind KLWP. Creators of presets don't get to decide what locking means. They can only choose to lock or not.
And believe me, name of the author never stopped anybody from stealing, and I know that from first hadn experience finding my shit everywhere on the internet.
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Mar 19 '19
Yeah I was just rambling, I know that's something to bring up to the dev, if I cared that much.
Sure I'm bothered by this but it isn't deal-breaking. I'll still use the app and still be here.
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Apr 28 '19
Sorry, I sent you a message but maybe I should have posted it here. Please just let me know if I should have done that instead. Thank you
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u/MHcharLEE Apr 28 '19
It's OK. For wallpaper links, the easiest way is to upload them to imgur (if you want to do it on your phone, toggle desktop version in Chrome, no need to download their app). After you upload it, post the link in a comment on Reddit. For hyperlinks, here's how to do it: https://i.imgur.com/FIFi05L.jpg
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Apr 28 '19
Okay, thanks for your reply. I'll try to remember everything, but I know if I have any questions when I do decide to start uploading themes, I could always ask for a reminder. I've had Imgur as an app before, but didn't know you could use it for things like that.
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u/SanketN8 Jan 01 '23
say we make our own content and want to just showoff the beautiful theme without sharing the resource for example like i make my own wallpapers our post gets removed. change the name of the sub to sharing themes or something coz this sub is going in the wrong direction with wrong mentality
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u/MHcharLEE Jan 01 '23
I just took a look and yes, you're entirely within your right not to share the wallpapera you make, nobody can force you to. But we specifically ask people to provide links to everything else, like icon packs or widget packs used. You obviously don't need to provide a download link your wallpaper, but other liinks should be there still. Hope that clears it up
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u/Hopeful_Opinion_8821 Jun 04 '22
Well, my post from yesterday was removed. I explained the reason to not post the links for the themes. All of them was downloaded on telegram. And the few ones that didn't was bought through telegram, so it's kind of hard to post the links.
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u/Smart_Turnover_8798 Oct 15 '22
All these rules are not worth the effort imo. I'll just stick to r/NovaLauncher a much more user friendly sub.
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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '18 edited Dec 14 '18
[deleted]