agreed. there also needs to be some sort of way too report design stealing. ive tried to deal w/ it once before by talking to the person who coped a design and even though it was completely obvious, its way too easy for someone to delete th design from forums and go ' no your lying i stole nothing ' or make up an excuse. if there is a system for what to do if you see a copy design (ie talk to admin, report button, ect) it wouldnt of happened...

i think this would be a big help to the site, mainly the problem is that people can go to the generator and download designs that easy. It would be a big step, but the public design files aren't really doing much good other than getting favorites for a design. I've also tried reporting design theft in the past and nothing much could be done really.... all because of the public design save system. Even then forums aren't much better, but having design theft have consequences would bring a wave of relief to the site.

Design theft may not be such a serious issue in some peoples eyes, but it is somewhat devastating in the eyes of many. To those who spend hours on one design and finally make it perfectly how they want it, only for someone else to snatch it out of the forums or generator and slightly alter the color hexes then use it to win a theme design contest or player hosted design contest, or even just claim it as their own, it is insulting, rude, against site rules, and just not fair. It takes out so much joy from this game for me when I see a case that is so obviously design theft, and nothing is done. Sometimes the offender even wins a theme (or two in the case of recent festivals....) out of stealing another players design. I as well as at least a few other players have noticed an almost drastic pick up in the cases of design theft in the past few months, and it need to somehow be monitored.

My only problem with more official punishment for design theft is two fold. One, while true design theft is something that absolutely should be stopped, it could be so easy for someone to take a similar design to one they did and say that it was stolen from them, and get that person disqualified or punished. The second is more on the admin side, with the admins needing to investigate all reports of design theft.

However, as a way to help prevent it, perhaps one way could be to make a new way of submitting designs. Since player base feedback doesn't play into which designs were picked, there could be a way to submit designs without making them public.

This wouldn't fix the issue of someone taking a design from the public saved files and using it, which is something that needs to be addressed, but it would potentially help prevent people from browsing the already submitted themes and copying them.

I know this would mean that players could no longer browse the submitted designs and get their hopes up for their favorites, which is a drawback, but if design theft is becoming a huge problem, especially if those thefts could then win and steal the prizes from the person who actually did the design, it might be something to think about.

Another way, though much harder and potentially not even possible, is to put a time stamp into the generator code. IE, when two designs are similar and submitted for design theft, then the admins could see that Design B was actually created first, and if there WAS theft, was the original one. Changing the design would change the time stamp to the current time.

For saved designs, this wouldn't really be needed, because I believe those designs already are time stamped so if a player says that a design was copied and submitted, then the one that was created first was most likely the original.

I think the time stamp idea for the generator would be a great step to stopping a lot of design theft. This is how Im interpreting what you just said, cause Im not quite sure exactly what you mean but I think its this:
Every design will essentially be tracked in a way so that the site knows and acknowledges that it used to be a different design. So Player 1 saves Design A to the public generator, and player 2 opens design A and exits a few color hexes then saves it into the generator again. It would show up as design B which was the result of player 2s editing design A, but maybe in the design url there is something linking it to design A. While this wouldnt necessarily solve design theft from forums, it could help solve design theft from the generator, which likely makes up a large portion of how design theft takes place.

Agreed. I want to get feedback on designs but I have to stuff all of mine in private...

Like I have this amazingly good drae that *so far* actually has no crticisms (yet). I want to showcase it. But....I don't want people stealing it because ei actually worked on it

I am not quite sure it can track changes, but I was thinking of something that could do that, so that things could be tracked back to the original. I just hadn't added it to my post because I am not sure how it could do that.

I was more thinking there would be a thing like 'design A has a url that includes time=&912191457 which would break down to September 12, 2019 at 2:57 in the afternoon. There could be a unique identifier to set apart ones that are done at pretty much the same time.

That way if Design Bs url has time=&912191458 then the admins would know that it was done a minute after design A.

I don't know whether this could be created in such a way to prevent players from tampering with said time stamp to make it say what they want, nor do I know if it would even really work.

but, I do agree that design theft needs to be stopped, and since it is so hard to prove design theft (as opposed to two similiar or very close ideas or maybe drawing inspiration from etc..), it might be easier to try to prevent it altogether, or at least give a way for the admins to know which design was created first.

I don't think site adims have time to do this but maybe having site mods(forum mods if this is a forum issue) would help? I saw some people bring up mods on this site and it had negative and positive reactions.
But can't you flag a post? Though I don't know what that does. . .
Overall I support and I think the punishment should be suspensions from game or forum + post removed.

If this is a generator issue I'd have mixed feelings about it. If it is then the site should remove the URL thing in generator and players should just not save designs as public since it's kind of your fault if you put your designs out there for the general public.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=80771&page=1#9 Author: Royal Time Posted: 9/14/2019 at 9:08 AM I don't think site adims have time to do this but maybe having site mods(forum mods if this is a forum issue) would help? I saw some people bring up mods on this site and it had negative and positive reactions. But can't you flag a post? Though I don't know what that does. . . Overall I support and I think the punishment should be suspensions from game or forum + post removed. If this is a generator issue I'd have mixed feelings about it. If it is then the site should remove the URL thing in generator and players should just not save designs as public since it's kind of your fault if you put your designs out there for the general public.

about the last part... saving generator designs publically is not an invitation for design theft, and being public is not a excuse for someone to steal anything. that would be like taking someone elses welcome mat off theyre front yard to decorate my own. (obv not exactly the same thing but just a analogy )