RPG Maker Forums

This is sort of a rant, as well as some questions to the community, I'm just trying to find some opinions about these issues I've noticed and I'm not meaning to be harsh in any way.

So, I've been a lurker on this forum off and on for a few years, as well as others that share a RPG Maker community. I've not published any free or commercial games but I do mess with RPG Maker as a hobby off and on.Whenever I think about publishing a game though, regardless of non commercial or commercial, I think about the type of art work I want to include. I'm not an artist type, so I look to the community, or try to make minor edits where I can.

First issue: One thing that has always bothered me about the RPG Maker art community, in general, not just this forum; is that when a lot of people post custom work or edits, they often either don't post anything about crediting or licensing, or they post something vague as such as "credit me, and my edits are also based on these person(s) so credit them too." Well, if I have to credit them as well, then what was the original usages allowed by the original authors? Good luck finding it in most cases.

There's also, almost never a license placed on the work or the subsequent edits. I can understand why in some cases, because you have to also at the same time respect the copyright of Enterbrain if it's an edit of the RTP. So maybe licensing and copyrights should be discussed, with examples and guidelines, stickied somewhere.

So, question is, why doesn't the RPG Maker community hold licensing information more critical to the disclosure of the art assets that they release or edit compared to other venues such as the open source application community, or music community? It would make navigating the usage haystack so much easier if full disclosure as well as license were given. It would also nullify the need to contact authors that may not exist anymore as one could just go by the license for the resource alone.

If you're going to release artwork, scripts, etc for both free and commercial usages, why not state so and use something like https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ instead something vague such as "credit me."

Second issue, as well as question. Why does the community rely on forums, and blog formats for resource releases? Why not use a dedicated media repository such as OpenGameArt or similar media archives (with the license mentioned above) and then post on corresponding forums with a link to it? The vast majority of art work I've seen is posted on forums and blogs, and then it's linked from sites like Photobucket or other older obscure hosting sites.

Resulting problems: incredibly difficult to find and browse resources due to forum and blog formats, that being said, I applaud people like GrandmaDeb and others who have done their best to organize lists of notable authors and content. Another issue with this site and file upload format is that a lot of times linked files are deleted over time due to hosting requirements, etc, authors disappear over the years, resources are lost. For example, I've looked over this forum and other forums over time, and people's file hosting accounts have gone inactive, and large amounts of XP and Ace content have been lost. 

I'm not trying to be mean or anything by any means and considering that I'm speaking against the norm here, that it probably seems like harsh criticism. I'm simply trying to share how it looks like to me, and, that is that it seems very disorganized, non-centralized and when you're trying to find assets that can be safely used for commercial purposes, it's literally at times trying to find a needle in a hay stack. Above all however, the lack of full usage guidelines, original author trail, and proper licensing being distributed with resource releases is what bothers me the most.