I downloaded a few free textures and 3D models yesterday, and it occurred to me that I have what I've downloaded very poorly organised.
The advantage of free stuff is it may be exactly what you want (and indeed I found the perfect wind turbine for the Alpha base) or at the very least it will save you time or $$$. But the flip side is that there are all kinds of free nowadays, and free stuff often has specific licenses, and having a large pool of free stuff not sorted by license is asking for trouble, percause you might violate the terms of the license without knowing it.
So, what I'm doing is creating a new directory structure with the top levels based on license. If I export this into Seconds, I'll add the name of the main directory they're under to the end of the name. Then, if I do use the mesh or specific textures in a comic scene, I know if I need to attribute those on the page that scene appears on. Previously at the end of a chapter I'd credit props I'd bought, and sims I'd used in SL. This is a continuation of that policy.
And why's that important? Because all this stuff is someone's visual creativeness, they put effort into what I'm using, and if they want attribution that's a fair thing to do. A good artist may "steal" from others, in that they'll redo an idea previously done, but stealing stuff from others means you're a fraud.
