I lack such faith in Sims players when a download I picked randomly has over 1000 downloads and under 100 thanks.

Ahh, that's a different phenomenon, though. In that case, there are no social repercussions for NOT saying thank you. No one can whap you upside the head for not clicking an anonymous "thank you" button on a download. No sirens will sound if you download something without clicking the attached thank you button. No one will know you didn't click the button, though they might know if you did. OTOH, someone can (and likely will) whap you upside the head, at least metaphorically speaking, for not saying thank you when there is public accountability on the table. Social conditioning and societal pressures are very powerful and are largely the things that dictate how one behaves in public vs. how one will behave in private or when anonymous. It's why people who in real life are the soul of politeness and "niceness" can become complete assholes on the internet, where they're largely anonymous. Even without such extremes, people will say things when anonymous that they wouldn't dream of saying when they aren't. One need only look at a place like SimSecret or commentary on news articles to see that. Accountability is huge, and if you're putting out a piece of CC in a public place and your username is on it, then there's accountability and there are people who will take you to task for not behaving in accordance with societal rules. Thank you buttons on downloads are not subject to accountability.

Look, I'm not saying that's it's somehow bad to have a TOU that says "give credit" or that people shouldn't have such TOUs, even though I'm of the personal opinion that, with a few exceptions, TOUs for Sims stuff are silly. I'm just saying it's pretty much pointless. Pointless things aren't necessarily bad, just...superfluous. But if makes people feel better to spell this sort of thing out, fine.

Wow, this thread has run far since I last was posting...and that was just a few days ago, lol.

First, I want to say that I really hope that the OP is OK. It's hard for me to imagine what it's like to live in such a restrictive society, where looking for game content could result in serious trouble.

You were right, iCad, it was funny that Pescado's likely preference for how his files are used didn't occur to me until you pointed it out!

But I am also in the camp that generally agrees with honoring TOUs, because to me that's just respectful of the creator. Our content creators may not own their work because EA forbids it, but still, to me it's a give and take: they offer me their content for free, and I honor their wishes about how I use it or share it.

The point that no one is presumably making money off any of it is valid, but...we who are using the content wouldn't have it to enjoy if someone hadn't put time and energy into making it. So I feel like if I am flippant about creators' wishes, then I'm saying their time and energy are of no or little value. And that sits poorly with me. Rights of ownership aside, I feel like honoring a TOU is usually just a way to say hey, you gave me a gift and added value to my gaming life, and here is my respect and appreciation in return.

Granted, since I don't mod myself, I've not had to actually work with TOU's, so perhaps there's something I'm missing about them being unreasonable.


Looks like it is! Current Chinese censorship on any URL can be checked by running it through this nonprofit's site (Click on "Test URL" at the top.) I doubt they have access to the testing site in China, but it's a good resource for those outside the country.

ETA:


Hm, anyone looking for the nondeadly version is going to have a hard time. I checked (in game) MTS' archived version that HL linked and also the one from the Dropbox link given on the offsite Sims 2 wiki. Both those are deadly. Neither of those links has more than one version of the scissors, either. The offsite wiki mentions that you can get the playset on the Graveyard, though, so I suppose it's possible they have the nondeadly version on there. (Though why anyone would think that version was fun enough to look hard for, I've no idea; I guess I'm assuming the OP wanted the deadly ones.)

And editing again to add...



I love that you offered this, but I have to say I'd be pretty hesitant about recommending the download. I don't think we have enough evidence that the supposed fixes are anything the average player would actually notice, yet there's a mod involved, and a few of the objects supposedly fixed have obvious individual files in the archive whereas most don't. Despite that unusual complexity, it's clear from the thread that no real support was given for the mod---the last two questions on the thread, for example, are really good ones about how it works and how to install it right, but got zero response.

Plus, over there on Pescado's site, Pes created kind of a culture where everyone was rewarded for finding and fixing supposed Maxis fails. Of course, they did a lot of great work as a group. But I can't help but wonder how necessary or even useful some of their extremely minor fixes were, such as this one---by which I mean ones where there haven't been actually been reports that the original objects were causing any problems.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I would have a lot more reservations than usual about suggesting those to anyone and am even somewhat unwilling to call them an upgrade without more evidence---especially if the person asking only wants the scissors, when we have at least two other sources for those that work fine without apparently being modded from EA's version. Kind of an expanded "if it ain't broke..." take.