Technically, I guess I’ve been on hiatus for a while now – or at least I haven’t been doing much simming for a while – but I thought I’d best make a public announcement about it so people don’t get worried about me or think I’ve left the community or anything like that.
I know most people only come here for Sims stuff and don’t want to hear anything about the real world outside the Sims (and that some people think creators shouldn’t ever be allowed to talk about anything not strictly Sims related 😡 ), but right now I can’t just ignore the fact that there is a world outside the Sims, and it’s very, very real – and if that means I lose downloaders, then so be it. So:
Do with it as you wish. 
I’ve made a couple of changes, one concerning my policy and once concerning comments, and I decided they were big/important enough to warrant an announcement. (It isn’t anywhere near as ominous as it sounds, I promise!)
Firstly, I’ve changed my policy to allow my custom content to be converted for The Sims 3 – as in, not just for your own game (like it was before), but also to upload and to share with others. Knock yourselves out, TS3 creators!
(I still don’t want my items to be converted for The Sims 4, though – even if you create for both games – and that’s unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Sorry.)
Secondly, about commenting. You no longer have to fill out name and email to leave a comment, but can comment anonymously! The fields for name and email are still there in case you do want to fill them out, but now it’s fine to leave them blank. 😀
I’ll admit it’s a bit of an experiment. If I get flooded with spam comments, or if people do like on Tumblr and think that anon equals a free pass to be an arsehole, we’ll go back to the name-and-email route. (I’ll tell you right now that my pain threshold for arseholery is going to be low; I’m not going to waste as much as one of those flimsy little plastic spoons on that kind of crap.) But for now, the bar is open, so to speak.
See? I told you it sounded more ominous than it actually was. 🙂
With SFS still down and no news on when they might be back up, I’ve now added alternate Google Drive links to all my downloads (I hope).
In the future, all downloads will have an alternate link in addition to my usual download button. If anything, this experience has taught me how v. unwise it is to put all your eggs in one basket.
Edit, 24 Feb: SFS is back up, hooray, so now my download buttons work again. But as I said before, all future downloads will have alternate links, just to be on the safe side.
Since this is a question I’ve been asked a few times, and also something I’ve seen come up on other sites:
Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, animated objects don’t always require an NPC to run; whether they do depends on the type and complexity of the object and not just on whether or not it’s animated. Objects that move around the lot, like Rebecah’s farm animals, usually need an NPC to work, but simple animated objects like mine, that rotate/swing/rock in place, do not.
But if any object of mine did spawn an NPC (which I say again, they do NOT), I promise you it would say so very, very clearly in the upload post. I know there are creators out there who like to foist undisclosed features upon their downloaders, but I’m not that kind of creator.
Or moving file hosts, at least. 🙂
As you may have noticed if you’ve downloaded something from here recently, I’ve now joined many if not most creators in the community, and moved my files to Sim File Share.
“Silly Nix,” I hear you say, “why didn’t you do so before?” Because before, the SFS terms of use said that, if and when they closed down, they would rehost all your files, both public and private, on the Graveyard or wherever else they might see fit, and if you had a problem with this, you shouldn’t use SFS. (There was no way to opt out.)
Now, I have no problem with people doing whatever they dang well please with my files after I’ve left the community (which certainly isn’t anything I’m planning on doing any time soon, but you never know what may happen in the future, especially when you have medical issues), but as long as I’m active, I’ll be damned if I give Nysha or anybody else the right to decide where my files should or shouldn’t be uploaded. 😡 So I haven’t used SFS.
But now their ToU (yes, I know they’ve been up for a while, but I saw it only recently) say that they’ll only rehost public files, and to me this puts things in a different light. I do think SFS is a great idea for and service to the Sims community (show of hands, everybody who’s had their files removed by their file host because they haven’t been downloaded in six months? Or who’s had their host change their URLs, so you’ve had to edit every. single. gorram. link. on your blog? Yeah, me, too); it’s just the MTS-ish “you’re too stupid to make decisions about your own files” mentality I don’t care for. At all. But since private files are now exempt from rehosting (and I wasn’t planning on having my files and folders be public anyway), I felt I could start using SFS. So now I am.
This move won’t affect you, my downloaders, in any way, of course. The only difference is that you’ll be taken to a download page instead of having the files download directly, but since it’s like that for everybody who uses SFS, it’s nothing you haven’t encountered before. So download away! 
Nixed Sims 