As my first major plan of action as the newly appointed Gallery Director of the Application Skins and THemes galleries, I'm going to take a massive leap at the fat of the Applications Skins gallery.

All generated skins and picture skins will be deleted as of right now. As of now, pre-fab, manufactured, generated skins, picture skins, and otherwise dubiously deriven images within the application skins gallery will not be allowed in the Winamp 1, Winamp 2, or Winamp 3 sections of the Application Skins Gallery. There may be a seperate place for these in the future, but for now they are simply not permissable.

Just to be clear, when I say generated skin, I am refering to any skin that is created using a program that does little more than chop up a photo or drawing and turn it into a barely 2 dimensional skin within mere seconds. Skinner.exe being the popular term for such a program. When I use the term "picture skins" I am refering to the skins that have one picture that spans the whole, or majority of, skin over background, buttons, equalizer, sliders, or any combination of some or all of these. "Dubiously deriven" is just a nice term I use for "ripped like jeans" pictures that are of blatantly obvious pictures that are copyright infringed properties. Just to add, if you don't include the permission of another person's artwork, I can't read your mind and derive that you had permission, so it'll still be deleted.

The reasoning behind my jihad upon generated submissions is easy. There is no effort behind the creation of such skins. Any user can dlownload such a skin generator and apply their own pictures and make the skin themselves if they so desired. Therefore deviantART has no reason to host such files, if any user can create them on demand. The deletion of "picture skins" as I will continue to refer to them as, is because they are 99% copyright infingements, and we are well aware that not everyone here works for Capcom or similar companies as artists.

I also feel obligated to add the fact that you will not be banned for such uploads. The note you receive (if you do have deviations deleted) is an automated system that gives a general note with possible added notes by whoever deleted your deviation. It does say that continued defiance of the rules will result in possible bannings, but in this case, you can not be held responsible for breaking a rule that was instated after you ever uploaded the deviations. Give me a break, deviantART is trying to clean up this section like it's needed for a long time, but we are not about to become tyrannical and totally devoid of compassoin. I am here to make the Applications Skins Gallery a bit cleaner and giving a long overdue face lift. There will be things that some of you will not like about this. You can't have your cake and eat it too (as odd as that phrase is, you get the point.)

So as of right now, you can start removing any submissions you have to these sections if they were generated by a skin manufacturing program, or you can leave them there for me to delete. Either way, they will be decimated.

In addition: Anyone who has a problem with how I am handling the direction of this gallery is free to note me. Anyone who has deviations deleted, moved, or otherwise expunged Any inquiries into violations should be directed at the Help Desk. I am more than willing to help you out in any situation also, if you follow the correct channels of doing so. I am here to make your time at deviantART that of great quality and benefit to you.

Let the Jihad begin!

...again.