Kate answers:-

As of April 20th 2008 the Sims 2 Finds are closed: If you are looking for a quality venue for Sims 2 Finds we recommend:-

http://finds.sims2cri.com

Why have you closed the Sims 2 Finds?

The main reason is because it takes far too much time for the benefit of too few visitors. Since we opened it site traffic has gone up around 40%, despite this the number of visitors using the Finds section has not changed until early this year when it started falling from a fairly pathetic 8% down to less than 5% of our total traffic. I had always hoped that it would slowly improve over time, but we opened the section going on 2 years ago now (arguably it has has a fair chance) but has never picked up the level of interest that might have justified the extra (very tedious) work it creates. 

Due to the appalling traffic I had intended to continue with the Sims 2 Finds weekly instead of daily in the hope it might be more efficient, however, I quickly discovered that it took ALL of Friday to do a partial selection of what would normally be posted in a regular week. Needless to say, it is rare that I have an entire 20+ hours to spare on a Friday or any other day! It certainly wasn't the considerable improvement I was looking for over the 2-4 hours a day I would usually expect to spend on daily finds. I've been doing the vast majority of our Finds for some long time now so I knew after the first Friday that weekly finds were not the solution I was hoping for, especially as myself and the other Parsimonious residents are currently in the process of preparing a very large event for our 5th anniversary (due on the first weekend in July in case you were wondering).

In additon to this, and the fact that I would personally rather spend my free time making custom content, it seems lots of other websites have set up Finds sections more recently. Since we've been running our Finds area, at least 50 sites that I know of have set up their own finds listings of one sort of another, many of whom provide more extensive finds or more detailed information about them that we've been able to find time for here. In that respect alone it does seem altogether pointless us wasting our very limited time on a feature that isn't really appreciated by very many of our visitors and is so commonly available elsewhere. 

Obviously I must extend my apologies to those of you who have enjoyed this aspect of the site, it was not a decision that was taken lightly. Apologies too to the small handful of sites who seemed to appreciate having their finds posted - I hope that we have in some small way at least improved the profile of some lesser known sites along the way.

Inevitably I'm sure one or two of you may be inclined to suggest that I perhaps advertise for additional help rather than closing this feature. That has of course been considered as a possibility, but we have had several volunteers in the past who have all been and gone, some had no choice due to real life issues, but most simply found it too much - even when they shared the work with others. All in all I had long ago accepted that no one else would reasonably be willing and able to take it on - why would anyone want to slog through the Finds each day, every day, 7 days a week, 364 days a year - its not a job that comes with a salary attached and virtually no one has ever thanked us for it! Only 1 in every 5000 of our visitors ever says thank you to us for all the free custom content we provide, less than 1 in every 250,000 has ever bothered to thank us for the Sims 2 Finds. 

I am however, despite all this negativity, thrilled and delighted that our dedicated Sims 1 Scout Sandy has chosen to continue posting new Sims 1 items. I sincerely hope those of you who visit Sandy's Sims 1 finds will take a few moments out of your day now and again to stop by her guest book and say thanks for her unwavering commitment.

As mentioned at the top of this page, if you're looking for your daily fix of Custom Content community news, our recommendation is the neat and tidy finds organized by our affiliates at Sims2Cri. You will find the Finds posted under 'Finds Archive' on the left hand menu underneath the 'Home' link organized by month. 

http://finds.sims2cri.com

I'm afraid I really am not going to respond to complaints about the Finds so please don't pester me or Sandy with emails griping about this decision. We feel we have done our utmost to make this work and therefore do not deserve to be bashed by people who are too lazy to try some of many other splendid Finds and Updates listings available all over the community (if you're not too keen on our recommendation then try Googling to locate one you do like!).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Contact Information

If you wish to notify Sandy about your Sims 1 site or updates please leave a message here:-

http://www.parsimonious.org/guestbooks/guestbook_22.shtml