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Old 03-23-2008, 07:39 PM   #9
Greg
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
 
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
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Yup, what Rose said. It doesn't matter how many "pay" items there are on a site; if there's at least one, it's not a "free" site.*

In the sticky thread entitled "About Additions and Corrections" it defines the type of site:
Type of Site (Enter one of options from the list below.)
  1. Free: Site does not charge money for anything and does not solicit donations.
  2. Free*: You will see a PayPal button or other request for donations on the site, but all content is available free of charge. Donations to help with the webmaster's costs are completely voluntary, the amount of money requested is reasonable, and there is no program of recurring subscription costs.
  3. Subscription: Requires paid subscription to access any part of the site, or a site that seems to exist primarily to advertise one or more subscription sites.
  4. SimsHost: Once upon a time, one of many sites you could access with a single SimsHost subscription; however, all 115 of these sites are now closed. We will be updating the Ultimate Sims List as soon as we can.
  5. Per Item: Site charges for some or all downloads. This includes "donator items."
  6. Other Pay: Site content costs money or the site solicits inordinately high "donations" but doesn't fit any of the categories above.
I don't have any way of distinguishing between sites that have a few freebies and a lot of pay items, or vice versa; so a "Free" site is one where the user will not see a single item that requires payment of any kind. I added "Free*" to distinguish those sites where there is no charge for content but that do solicit cash donations. (Sun Sims would be a "Free*" site because I do have a PayPal button up there. Not that many people pay any attention to it. )

A word of caution: Some notionally "free" sites are really just advertising for "pay" sites, and some use all sorts of techniques to lure people to sign up for recurring "donations," where people end up sending them money they don't even know about, even though they claim to be completely free. (The most extreme example that I know of is a site that tries to get you to sign up recurring "donations" of $15 a month, taken directly from your PayPal account without your knowledge.) I try to mark those as "Other Pay" sites when they are discovered.


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*I should acknowledge that the idea of a "free" site is really fiction. No matter what the site, somebody pays the bills. There are no truly "free" sites.
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