Just to add my two cents in, I have one or two items that are very old content that I've been tempted to obsolete simply because of quality issues.
I know of another content creator who has obsoleted items to get rid of them however the older versions are still available on the DLS in history.
I'm not certain it is really abuse of the DLS to remove content in this way.
Cheerio John
John, I don't think the question is whether or not it's abuse to remove content through obsoleting, but more is the question of whether or not it's abuse (or just being a real total jerk) to claim you're updating an item, only to post placeholders or in the case of trainz2007, total junk.
It's kinda a case of bait and switch. In that you're being told you're getting one thing, but when you download it you find that you've got something else entirely. What's more, the way the CMP and other Content Manager systems work, if a player has the old item on their computer and they update it, then they're left with the junk on their route (as I was.)
If something is obsoleted though, from everything I've seen it would just vanish from the route. No real harm done.
Think about it like this. Imagine that one day, a software company decides that they don't like the way Microsoft is doing things. So, in protest they proclaim that they're never going to work with Microsoft again. Anyone with their program already though, should be able to use it fine. However, a couple days down the road, this small company releases an "update." Everyone has to download and install this, through their update server. Problem is once the update is installed, it renders that program they had totally useless. In fact, it not only renders that one program useless, but seven or eight more that the person didn't know the company produced.
In the end, the person who
did nothing wrong ends up punished by the software company's actions. Not Microsoft who the protest was targeted at.
In the same sense, for whatever reason trainz2007 chose to make his little protest, the fact is that
it's not hurting Auran one single bit. It's hurting the innocent users who have done not a single thing wrong. They're the ones having to fix the problems this user caused, and what's more his silence on the issue points to the probable fact that he very likely could care less about whom he hurts. Either that, or he didn't consider how many people would be affected by it, and now it's too late to turn back.