I'm still in the process of reading these New Forum Rules. Honestly, I have no idea what has changed. Perhaps some of you can comment and shed some light on it for me.

Differences I do see:

• Thread "bump" changed to 10 hour intervals [or maybe it was always 10 hours and we've just been pretending it was 6?]

• I'm pretty sure in some ways, this rule applies to Digital-Dish.com [I don't think IMVU is real happy with my site anyways.]

Offsite Linking
Any offsite link must adhere to our Terms of Service.
The following forms of links are prohibited:
- Links to commercial sites
- Direct links to competitor sites
- Links to phishing or other malicious sites
- Links to any content that is considered Access Pass or Unfit for IMVU
- Any links to pornographic or hate sites. Any instances of this type of linking may result in a permanent ban from the forums and may also include disablement of your IMVU Account.

• Pretty sure this one is new as well:

Requests for Charitable Donations
As per IMVU’s Terms of Service, requests for charitable donations are not permitted. Donation requests that benefit federally recognized 501.c3 organizations are the exception. If you feel your cause in support of a 501.c3 org should be considered, please send your request to communityteam@imvu.com for pre-approval.

So what do you all think? Anything I missed?

The Graphic Arts Services and Requests (GASR) forum is being moved as early as tomorrow, July 17th to the "social" section of the forum index. All of your bookmarks and saved links will still work - they will just be moved to what is being called "the appropriate place" by forum moderator, Ewe. Check out the discussion thread here.

What does this mean? Most importantly, it means that posts in the GASR forum will no longer count as posts made in regards to Tiers. No word if this means all previous postings this month will count or not, but from tomorrow and forward you will no longer earn points by posting in that section. It's my understanding that your current posts probably won't count.

Personally, I hope that by moving the section, we will see less spam but that's highly unlikely since it is being placed in the social section of the index. It raises a question - Are graphic artists not considered content creators? I'd like to think yes, of course they are! The dare I say unbelievably talented artists who frequent the GASR forum are in their own right, content creators and deserve to earn points based on their community participation. It's a shame they are being moved like this. I see IMVU's point of view, but it's sad.

As stated on page 2 of the thread posted by Ewe in regards to this change...

"The placement of GASR has been discussed for a long time - it is not closely enough related to Content Creating to be a Content Creator forum. When Tiers were introduced this became even more of a concern.

While some people choose to offer catalog icons and banners as pieces within their shop, this is the only loose connection to content creating this forum holds.

The primary purpose of the GASR is the trade of Art. Be it a catalog icon, avatar picture, drawing, etc, it is social. The GASR is permitted more leeway with "spam" than any of the true CC forums.

The primary purpose of having the Content Creator forums included as a possible way to earn tier points is to reward those who are helping others directly in relation to the Content Creating program.

As such, staff has finally agreed to move the GASR forum.

Now - the direct question i received was, will the posts made already go towards tiers. I cannot answer this directly, and I am not sure how long it would take to get a direct answer, but I will ask.

However, based on what knowledge I have on how the forums work, and how the tiers work, my best guess would be that no, they will not. Once the forum is moved, the posts will no longer be under the CC category, and therefore will not be included when the system collects post counts from the forums still in that category.

I understand that this may be a bummer for some, but, the GASR is not an area that is really fulfilling the purposes that were in mind when making the forums part of the tier system."

Thank you to Violated for this news tip.

The Product & Content Request Forum (also known as PACR) is a great forum where users can request specially made and often personalized items of the community - either to be submitted in the catalog by its creator, or sold in exchange for credits to the requester for their own use. It's a large money making opportunity for a lot of people within the community - especially if you are a big name developer looking to make a little cash on the side.

But at what point is enough enough? There are literally hundreds of these "file sale" threads plauging what was once the place to go to ask someone to make you a custom skin or a pair of shoes. At what point will IMVU put their foot down and give us a forum specifically for selling files? - or dare I say it... do away with file selling all together.

We saw it happen with account selling. It started off simply being frowned upon by the company and it soon lead to it being banned within the forums, causing many users to create their own off-site forums in which to sell and trade accounts with other users. Soon after, it was written in the Terms of Service that exchanging accounts was illegal. Heck now you can't even give the darn thing away!

How much longer will IMVU allow us to sell files? Time will tell I guess, but I see the end drawing very near. That's bad news for a developer like myself who makes more money these days selling files of odds, ends and whatever else to aspiring developers than I do selling products I submit to the catalog.

It's not just the hundreds of file sale threads that are the issue. As with anything great, someone has to ruin it. The trend as of late is to steal files or purchase and "edit" files only to turn around and sell them to unsuspecting customers. And we aren't just stealing from one another any more. Even big name developers have been recently discovered to be selling files made for other virtual worlds such as The Sims or Second Life. They are pulling freebie files from places like Renderosity and throwing them into nifty packages and pawning them off as their own work. Makes you wonder how much longer it'll be before we see those people with a nasty lawsuit on their hands. And it can and will happen. The websites stolen from won't care that these unsuspecting customers purchased the files from someone else. All they care about is that their work is being used illegally and they will have every right to slap a lawsuit on anyone they want.

Is PACR doomed? Is there time for us to pull our act together and save what was once an excellent business opportunity?