Alright, so, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really "with" the current CW marketplace. I've released a few in the past and I follow a couple of artists, but I'm not really in on the current climate regarding who's who and what's what. And in some ways, this question is pretty heavily related to that - I say this just to make it clear: I'm sure this has been asked about in the past. But I've never seen the question posted before, nor seen an official answer. So here goes...

Why is it that on-site CWs do not list the name of their creator(s)?

There are quite a few online games/communities/ect that allow for user generated content, but in every single one of them that I've seen - barring Subeta - user made content always has some way to view the name of its creator. Either a little tag in the item description or a database listing who made what. But on this site, finding out who made a CW is sometimes downright impossible, and I've always wondered... Why!?

Like, is there some actual reasoning for it, or is it just an oversight that just became "normal" after never getting changed? Is it for privacy's sake? To prevent artists getting bugged for extra copies or something? Or is it something else that I'm just not seeing?

I ask because I've often found myself looking at a CW on the site, loving the art and wishing I could find more stuff by the creator - recolours, perhaps, or a CW shop, or thread, anything. But in the end, not being sure of who made what, or even when. I have a bunch of CWs in my wardrobe right now, but I'd be hard pressed to name the authors of most of them. If I wanted more from a particular artist, I'd have to get lucky on a forum search or ask around about it. And it's made the CW market scene progressively harder and harder to get into as more and more artists show up and develop their own little privatised groups, their items only getting shared between a tiny circle of people while people like myself just end up sitting around, automatically assuming that any new CW we see in the "recently-added" section of the wardrobe is unobtainable.

Mostly, I guess, I'm just curious as to why Subeta's bucked the standard so hard when it comes to user-generated content. Or maybe this is normal and all the other places I've looked at are the weird ones? I honestly don't know. So if somebody could fill me in, that'd be nice, thanks.

You can find the user who made the item by looking at the item image. I'll use one of my own items as an example: - https://img.subeta.net/items/custom/630630_191574.gif (right click and open image in a new tab to find this)

630630 is my userID, and it's listed first in the item image url. You can find out the user by going to your wishlist and inserting the userID after .php (https://subeta.net/wishlists.php/userid/)

If we're talking about finding the artist of something, specifically, you could always ask the creator of the item (which you can find using the method above).

Sorry if this is totally not what you're looking for, but I hope I helped some. <3

Actually I had no idea about this! Cheers for the heads up. It is a bit of a clunky system for finding artists, but I appreciate knowing the trick.

My question still stands, though: Why isn't it built in at a more readily-visible level?

That's a good point. :0

I think it was an oversight if I were to guess any reason. Like no one thought it was needed? Cws were meant to be more private according to staff (you create the item, you keep some copies, you distribute them to friends, less so the 'market' aspect it has turned into) so I don't think they thought oh we need to provide other people with this information because it wasn't supposed to be attainable by others?

Often now artists don't really release things. Like sometimes yeah but a majority of the time you have designs sold or commissioned by non-artists so the releaser ends up not being the artist and sometimes things are collabs between releasers/artists. I think the system is complicated in that sense that a blurb in the item description might get too long. :X Personally I wouldn't be keen on items having that additional bit in their descriptions because it would detract from the item description I put there but I do see your point. I'd LOVE to know how many copies were released/are floating around. That would be more useful than who made or released because I could gauge the supply aspect of supply/demand. I guess it wouldn't be a perfect system because what if the user is no longer active or frozen?

Anyway, if you have items you want to know about, be sure to post on the cw discussion thread, because there are people with good memory or sleuthing skills and usually you can find out stuff you want to know about. A good chunk of releasers also do lists of private/exclusive etc. It's just a matter of finding them and then their boards.

SORRY I WROTE A WALL OF TEXT I am waiting for food in the oven and just passed the time t_t