When I first got my printer, there was a limited number of a1 mini profiles, so I tried to give back to the community and upload a profile whenever I printed something without a profile.
My most downloaded profile, which was simply a resized dragon egg, just got taken down for being in violation. It was uploaded maybe like 2 years ago. It wasn’t in violation when I uploaded it but apparently it’s in violation now. That’s fine I guess, but they put me in negative points as I lost -365 points??
I don’t feel like that’s ok. I’m retroactively being punished for trying to give back to the community because of a new rule. Take down the profile if it’s a problem I guess, even though people obviously seem to like it, but don’t take away my few points that was earned with good intentions and without breaking any rules.
Am I the only one that feels this way? Or is this not a widespread issue?
Edit: 4.9 rating, 2k downloads, 1.1k prints. It was my favorite print in my favorite size, and I was so happy that other people enjoyed it as well based on the downloads etc.
It is a punitive response to their own failure to provide a changelog of when the rules changed, so you can’t provide evidence to the, of their mistakes.
Widespread. They are a law unto themselves as judge, jury and executioner behind closed doors without any transparency.
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I have suffered from “duplicate profile” after one of two things occurs.
I added support to a designers model for the A1 mini when it wasn’t available, my profile supported every printer, their failed to support just the A1 mini, so my profile supported more.
Then some idiot told @MakerWorld how to support all printers from any profile (me) and now the designers profile supports every printer, the same as mine does.
Now, @MakerWorld in their lack of wisdom believes I duplicated the designer’s profile and mine is now invalid. After I added support for a printer that had no support and if they had thought for a few seconds, they could have supported automatically from day one and not needed a genius like me to tell the, how!
The designer updates their profile to add features my addition added and again, due to ignorance of MakerWorld, my profile that had the extra features is seen as the usurper.
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This is an important point, all mine had a similar engagement. The users who benefited said it is great and worthwhile, how does that indicate anything other than value?
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The unwillingness of @MakerWorld to be transparent is a childish way of thinking they are important rather than the reality that they are screwing up their platform and putting people off.
When Makerworld implements certain rule changes that are retroactive, they always give users a grace period to make the upload comply to the new rules. This is written in the announcements of the rule change.
And just because it got taken down now doesn’t mean it complied before, just that no one reported the profile until now.
There’s several possibilities how this could’ve happened.
I totally agree with you, how can someone be punished for following the rules, then the rule makers change the rules they wrote and now because you did something that was within the rules at the time you are now punished for it..!! At best makerworld should have just taken your model/profile down and advised you to alter to be within the new rules..!! A lot of creators have hundreds of models and now they expect them to go through each and ever one to make sure they comply..???! The logic they are following means 99% of the worlds population are guilty of something they did before rules stopping said actions came into force..!! But please remember these printers come from a communist country and they live by a rules system like this!!
They did and even gave a grace period (around 10 days ish.) to change the upload. If the user didn’t do it and thus did not comply, then that’s on them.
The following is not directly about this, but please be aware that there is an update on model image rule that is effective Feb 5, 2026. All old models uploaded before Feb 5 must be made compliant by May 5.
It is good you chose that as an example as to my recollection, based on reply to these things, it is the first and only that stated a date (I have long campaigned for a change log, this isn’t that) and the only time any mention of any retrospective application one way or the other.
If honesty, transparency and adherence to the rules was paramount, then we would have:
A single location that denotes the rules clearly
Have this location linked everywhere, profile uploads, model uploads, main wiki page, anywhere a designer or user would interact with or need to understand what they must achieve
Includes date for all changes and which prior rules they overruled
Include if the change is retrospective
Include any grace period
Have the staff know these rules and apply them as written and not interpreted
Announce changes on the:
Designers model page
The community thing that is a cesspool of spam
The forum
Anywhere else designers should be forewarned
In system messages
As email system notifications to any user with at least one model
Add any compliance issues as reasons to report in the reporting system
If we seek a better platform where designers comply with rules, they must be clearly shared and transparently implemented by
BL and understood by those charged with compliance.
The new post you linked is a start. Yet, no changelog, no reference to what changed from previously, no linking to other rule changes, little to know public disclosure. It is mentioned in some other places, but they are the digital equivalent of scraps of paper with half-planned thoughts.
This isn’t the first time that MW provided a grace period for new rule compliance, according to my memory. However, it hasn’t been consistent across the board. My impression has been that in cases when MW didn’t give a specific compliant date, they enforced the new rule only after a long time after the announcement.
On platforms like MW, rule changes are always retroactive, even though MW probably can explicitly reiterate that everytime there is a change.
The Community Guidelines has a History section at the end of the document linking to older versions.
@MakerWorld The links to the Print Profile Guidelines and the Rating Guidelines open the latest version of these two guidelines. Is it possible to have a History section like that of the Community Guidelines to show their respective revision history?
I only imagine having to edit those 200+ models (or those who have more) when there is a hard limit on how many we can edit daily…
Makerworld’s retroactive rules make no sense, at least from a sane point of view.
But… i also hate seeing those ultra AI generated crap, so i almost understand their reasoning… almost!
I just wonder why those retroactive rules are not heavily enforced on some “creators” that use mainly AI to deceive users and are even praised by Makerworld. “Rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer” i guess is what applies here too. Oh well
So, they announce on one date telling what to do, they don’t say “retrospective” and people have to guess‽
Retrospective rules are declared, saying “others do” doesn’t mean any do, some do or all do, it is belief.
I can’t stress this enough, unless someone says something then the thing has not been said.
“We told you” holds no weight when they didn’t, hide it or decided to be opaque.
If these are rules, stop calling them guidelines. Words matter and intent is lost when using the wrong words.
Many of the guidelines can’t be reported, further implying they are not rules or enforceable.
Rules are strict, mandatory requirements with defined consequences for violations, ensuring consistency and safety
. Guidelines are flexible, voluntary recommendations or best practices that allow for interpretation and individual judgment to improve performance. Rules are binding commands; guidelines are helpful advice.
[image]Reddit +3
Key Differences:
Enforcement: Rules are mandatory and enforced; violating them often leads to penalties. Guidelines are advisory and not strictly enforced.
Flexibility: Rules are rigid and leave little room for interpretation. Guidelines are adaptable, encouraging creativity and context-specific application.
Purpose:
Rules provide structure and ensure compliance. Guidelines offer advice on how to improve or achieve better outcomes.
Context: Rules are often used for safety, security, and legal compliance. Guidelines are common in best practices, such as dietary, stylistic, or project management suggestions.
Examples:
Rule: “Employees must wear hard hats in the construction zone” (Safety compliance).
Guideline: “It is recommended to drink eight glasses of water daily” (Health advice).
Rule: “No parking 8 AM - 5 PM” (Strict regulation).
Guideline: “Please park in the designated area to keep the entrance clear” (Polite recommendation). Rules are strict, mandatory requirements with defined consequences for violations, ensuring consistency and safety
@xsynatic two of those were announced before I joined. I do not know if you are aware of this, but system messages issued before someone signs up are NOT shared with those new users.
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People can pretend that the rules are clear, but when they provide examples, they come from all over, are not centrally located, use words that do not say they are rules, fail to be referenced quickly or available to all users.
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Ignorance of their own actions doesn’t help.
Many people helped launch the A1 mini by adding profiles to models they liked that didn’t support it. After BL added the support I told them how to achieve, they then penalise the people who made sure their A1 mini had support by saying “you added a duplicate profile” when the original profile by the designer gained the support for A1 mini when they chose not to add it and someone else did, that effort penalised by stealing the points.
Instead, BL could understand this by date of upload, thank the user and disable the profile rather than accusing the benefit the user gave and taking the points earned promoting their new product after they couldn’t be bothered to support it themselves from day one, which they could as it was easy to achieve.
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Instead of pretending they do nothing wrong, ask them to fix the clear failings.
I promote what they do correctly, but I don’t pretend they get nothing wrong or that it doesn’t require fixing.
I have been asking MW to put all the rules in one central place and show all versions. They can do more but the Community Guidelines that includes many subject areas and version history is a good progress.
OP has the right to appeal. Whatever decision MW makes after that will be final. Their platform their rules.
If the rules are unacceptable to OP, then what the following user did is an option. But I will suggest OP move on and spend the time and energy on more meaningful things, such as designing more great models.
This brings another interesting and related point. I have some hot wheels parts on the backburner that I wanted to design as they don’t currently exist on makerworld. I was excited to make and share them as I think they are really cool.
There is currently lots of hot wheels prints. They are clearly allowed. But at any point in time, someone could obviously decide that hot wheels should not be allowed (ie what happened to popmart recently) and ban all of them. Then what? Not only will I be in violation and made to feel like I’ve done something wrong, I will also lose any points I earned in a legit way.
This makes me NOT want to upload any models, and frankly it takes the joy out of designing them too as sharing them is part of the fun and the motivation for putting down the effort.
I feel like makerworld and the accessibility all of this gives to “normal” people to just print straight from their phone with no knowledge is amazing, and things like this (which might seem really small to some) is really ruining the whole product.
Edit: and to be clear, I’m completely new to 3d modeling. The few simple models I’ve created have all taken a very long time to create by trial and error. I just really loved the bambu labs printers (my first 3d printer) and the simplicity of printing etc that it made me interested in partaking in the community and actually designing some items myself. I was saving up points that I could use as partial payment towards finally getting a bigger printer with an ams (I’ve got the a1 mini without ams). But now I’m not even sure if I want to continue with this interest or invest in a new printer.
Well, infringing on other’s IP is wrong, and the points earned from it won’t be considered “legit”. But many people are doing it now . Things may change if Pop Mart wins the lawsuit.
You can design models not infringing on other’s IP and upload them. Lots of people are doing it.
It’s legit as far as makerworld rules are concerned. Which is my point. I don’t know the legal details of 3d printing complimentary hot wheels parts. But makerworld is obviously enjoying and benefitting from people uploading and printing these things and not actively trying to discourage it.
They should add some clear and concise rules and enforcement then instead of taking all the benefits and then arbitrarily punishing the people that helped makerworld grow.
While that might be harder than it sounds, a first and easy step would be to simply not retroactively remove points unless there was some actual or intentional abuse of the system.
Edit: I have not created any other model or done anything to infringe on anyone’s IP. I used the hot wheels as an example as that’s the first thing I’ve wanted to do where there is a bit of a grey zone (but still clearly not discouraged as far as makerworld goes)
For the record I think that MW has the right to change their rules and pull down models and profiles that violate their new rules even if they didn’t when they were uploaded. What I don’t think is OK is to retroactively revoke points earned before they were pulled. People don’t respond well when they’re put in a position of needing to contribute content just to get back to zero like they did to me and the OP. I think MW needs to do exactly this to more people and watch people make the same choice that I did and then maybe they’re realize that’s not a good idea.
I think MW also needs to understand that not everyone makes a daily/frequent habit of checking in with any rules changes and updating their past content - not everyone treats MW points as a business (I didn’t). In my case I got a notification that a print profile was pulled and since it wasn’t my model I couldn’t find where to upload the picture. I filed an appeal and explained that I was willing to fix the profile, I just needed help figuring out where to do it (the notification I got did not explain this). Instead of being helpful they denied the appeal and refused to do anything after that. They should have realized I wasn’t trying to scam their system (and I pointed that out) and help the user comply instead of being inflexible and losing a contributor.
. Things may change if Pop Mart wins the lawsuit.