What the hell is with all the traced bases? Why has DA made a SPECIFIC CATEGORY for traced bases when it goes against their own rules?
Traced bases are terrible. Just so we're clear, I'm not talking about original dolls and bases people make so people can dress up, I'm talking about traced bases specifically. These are a few arguments that I've really seen on here for traced bases, and why they are WRONG.

"traced bases/tracing help artists improve on anatomy and helps people figure out how to draw hair and clothes!"

No, they don't. Every base I've seen, the person who traced it is just tracing lines, they do not understand the structure of the person underneath, and this results in messed up anatomy for the tracing. Which, in turn, makes the base user not know any more about anatomy than the tracer did. It's like learning Japanese from a guy who only knows how to use google translate, not gonna work.

"It's good for people that have an original character, but are too lazy/bad at drawing!"

That is a very poor excuse. If you have an OC, but are too lazy to draw him/her/it, then the character clearly doesn't mean enough to you to get it out there. If you are bad at drawing, draw it anyway! Even if your drawing is bad, you still drew something, you still brought your character to life. It's all yours. If you're bad at drawing and don't want to draw it, then find another medium, like writing or sculpting (or even cosplaying)! Hell, there are artists on here that take requests, if you're too 'lazy' to draw it yourself, then have someone else draw it for you.

"it's art!"

It's someone elses art that you want to be credited for. I don't care if you took the time to trace it. It's not yours. This is just as bad as grabbing the original art and submitting it.

"but what if I just want to put clothes and hair on a doll?"

Then don't use a traced base. There are people on here that make their own dolls just so you can do that. There are people on here that even make flash dress-up games if you want to use that. If you just wanna dress up a doll and don't care about drawing/working to improve, then fine, I really don't have a problem with that, really. It's just the traced bases I have a problem with.

I think that about covers it...oh! We need to get DA to take the 'traced bases' category down permanently. It won't stop the traced bases, but it will stop people from saying "oh, it's a DA category, so it must be okay!" I can't believe that they would make an entire category that completely goes against not only the 'no tracing' rules, but also violates the 'no posting other peoples art' rule, because, no, it is not your art.
/rantrant
I probably abused those poor commas and didn't notice, if I did, I'm sorry.