what is SO BAD about the Sim City 4 website exchange???

[justinrpg]

I have been trying to diagnose why downloading from SC4 website doesn't work on Win 7... i told that problem on simtropolis & simpeg, all i get is people saying "if I were you, I'd stay away from that exchange... even the people on the SC4 website forum say that... what is so terrible about that exchange that everybody is telling me to stay away?? is there viruses or something?

[RippleJet]

When uploading lots to the official exchange, the upload automatically collects all dependencies for that lot with the upload.
This has the nasty effect that a small lot usually includes tens of MB of dependency packs,
and in 99% of the cases those packs are outdated ones, leading to all kinds of conflicts.

Once you start downloading from that site, you will quickly lose track of what your plugins folder(s) contain.

[north country dude]

Can I also mention that there is a lot of plagiarized content there? For example: If you search with the term "modular", one of the lots that comes up is "0Ac1-Modular Freight Yard Lead Left 3x24" submitted by one user named "whitetiger12000".

1)This is actually one of the Modular Railyard System(MRyS) lots, one of many from an eyecandy package I designed and posted to the STEX about three years ago. Without the complete package this single lot is marginally useful as a strange looking small railyard with trackage that leads nowhere.
2) The dependency list shown is incomplete.

If you search this user's (whitetiger12000) you will see one or two more plagiarized lots. Additionally, much of this user's submissions are,...well,...poor and somewhat useless.

This is just one example of the extremely poor content available there. I'm sure that there is some good content available, but the rest is useless junk.

Still, it's your choice.