"Sorry, no longer available"

[Guest Wang D. Doodle]

My curiosity is piqued when I see the prominence of "no longer available" files among the listings of the most downloaded items.For instance today (June 18), the item listed in first place among "yesterday's hot files" is no longer available. I surmise that the number-one download on a given day is probably something fairly recent and it obviously was attractive to 942 people who downloaded it. Is there any way, the day after, to find out what that file was, and why it became unavailable?My motivation is simple curiosity and yes, I know, I should get out more or fly more, but this is the sort of thing that goes through one's mind on a rainy June evening in the World's No. 1 Toys (for Big Boys) Emporium -- not F.A.O. Schwartz, but Avsim!In more general terms, is it possible for the File Library Staff to give figures or even an educated guess as to the reasons for the unavailablity of uploaded files?There have been some recent controversial authorship/copyright issues, but those must surely be extremely rare. What accounts for the majority of the withdrawals? Is it more often Avsim's choice, or the author's? I suppose that authors might withdraw a file when they supersede it with a newer version or when some bug is pointed out. What are some other common reasons for unavailability? Information would be appreciated because on some days, a significant percentage of the previous day's hot files are unavailable.Please forgive me if this is a topic that's been dealt with in the past, but I didn't know how to search for it and didn't find the answer by going back through five months' worth of topics.And it's still raining...Wang

[Guest Matt Johnson]

>For instance today (June 18), the item listed in first place>among "yesterday's hot files" is no longer available. I>surmise that the number-one download on a given day is>probably something fairly recent and it obviously was>attractive to 942 people who downloaded it. Is there any way,>the day after, to find out what that file was, and why it>became unavailable?The reasons can vary wildly. It is not practical (nor may it be legally safe) for us to publicize the names of files we have removed from our Library -- for example, if the removed file is due to a copyright violation.>My motivation is simple curiosity and yes, I know, I should>get out more or fly more, but this is the sort of thing that>goes through one's mind on a rainy June evening in the World's>No. 1 Toys (for Big Boys) Emporium -- not F.A.O. Schwartz, but>Avsim!Heh, thanks for the plaudits. :-)>In more general terms, is it possible for the File Library>Staff to give figures or even an educated guess as to the>reasons for the unavailablity of uploaded files?The usual reasons are either:* file in dispute (these are more common that you would think, unfortunately)* author supersedes an established file with a new version* author messes up the upload and asks us to remove it pending a replacement file* author retracts the file for his own reasons>Please forgive me if this is a topic that's been dealt with in>the past, but I didn't know how to search for it and didn't>find the answer by going back through five months' worth of>topics.Indeed, don't think we've ever covered this one before. Good question. :-)--M

[Guest Wang D. Doodle]

Thanks for the quick response, Matt, and for all the good work keeping the files in such good shape!Wang