I hope it’s okay for you guys that i make a poll on this subject
Actually I think it is too friendly at times when it is about critique on works. I often see threads, where artists ask for harsh critique and everyone basically only goes like “wow great!”. That’s a lot of missed opportunities for improvement.
It is a place where artists, coders, gamers, physicists and all types converge.
Blender is literally anything you can make it to be, and so are its users.
BlenderArtists.org is the sum of it’s parts, and the amount of knowledge that represents is staggering.
in the grand scheme of things, I think everyone here is trying to do the right thing, and if it becomes a negative issue, it’s just because we have a very very wide perspective range here.
I do think there are some here who would benefit from training in how to handle conflict. And conflict itself is not a bad thing, it is a chance for two parties to learn from each other, but this means that both parties will need to be open to the concept of learning from the other, myself I have quite a few opinions about the encounters I have had here with people, but I will keep them to myself to be civil.
I find it mostly like any other creative forum. If something is wonderful, people will tell you. If something is awful, people won’t. It’s not the fault of the forum, it’s the fault of people.
I think that Blenderartists is actually really friendly in comparison to most other places on the internet. As a result, you’re more likely to get honest and useful criticism than if you were to post in a larger venue like Twitter or Facebook.
I believe that a large part of this is due to the small and tightly knit community. Most new people who can come here just to spread their hostility can easily be ignored by the few dozen active members, get bored, and leave. In a more populated forum, there’s at least a couple posters amongst the hundreds or thousands (depending where you go) who aren’t willing to let these people go unignored and will usually argue until matters escalate, creating more hostility.
That plus the moderation, where I feel the mods here have a good handle on things.
Like other forums, it has good and bad threads. Sometimes you get the FFS, RTFM replies and condescending attitudes, other times, people are super helpful and guide you through the learning process. When it comes to learning, it’s easy to forget, we all started with no clue, whta we now see as blatantly obvious, is not so for others, so sometimes, we can be “well, duhhh”, or, “oh come on, a quick search will show that”.
I do a lot of public facing work and I’ve come to understand, you may have answered that question 200 times, but this is the first time that person has hit the problem. 
It is more of a personal observation, but I have found that some of the worst attitudes in the blender community tends to come from people in that rut in the learning curve. And don’t get me wrong, I know first hand how frustrating it can be to tackle learning not only blender’s UI (which some people have strong opinions on) but also learning the fundamentals of art, anatomy, architecture, animation, rigging and well the list goes on.
And sometimes I find myself asking when I see some vitriol in the community both here and in other chats is this “Is this a person who is frustrated by being in a rut and taking it out on the nearest source they can find? Are they trolling to avoid learning those daunting things such as the fundamentals?”
But on the other hand, I have also noticed that this is one community where people will take it to personal insults quite quickly when there is a disagreement, and unfortunately I’m not the only one to have noticed that, quite often I’ll see this as a subject of discussion on game dev discussion chats.
I must admit, I am very unlikely to click on a thread titles, “Why must Blender…”, or “Blender UI is annoying”, if one has a question or issue, aggressive thread title sare not likely to win support, espeically if you open the thread to find the user has 1 or two posts only.
I think the level of friendlyness or hostility is based on the topic. I have got a lot of pepper lately, for the most of this pepper have been personal “attack” on me. Even a moderator that i supposed to keep the rules here, is breaking the rules. When I then asked for something to be done with this personal attacks, even the people at the top (cgcookie people) responded in a negativ way, like they see no reason to close the thread or to ban or warn anyone. I am just telling the truth here.
There is a certain blender user that I have got a lot of help from, that I respect very much, I was acused of being a fan boy. When this is said, there are also a lot of proffesional users here, the give good advice and help. They have even responded to the “trolls” to "protect me and this other user. There have been many time lately that I have been thinking of leaving this forum for good. CGCookie have lost a customer for good.
The reason I made this poll is so that I can know if I am to sensitive maybe. I can be open to say that I have ADD and Social anxeity disorder.
So those were the results…
So yes indeed those where the result. Most people think that this is a good normal forum. but 3 said it was unfriendly, and that is 3 too many. I will not say what I think, but there are room for improvement.
^In every community, big or small, there will always be people who are unsatisfied with how things are. It’s inevitable. The most we can do for others is try to be polite and hope for the best.
I’m very disappointed that “i don’t care” didn’t end up being the top option
because honestly,
you shouldn’t care
^If you shouldn’t care, then why did you even bother to leave a comment here? Sounds to me like you do care.
I care about the fact that other people are so sensitive these days.
The majority of the people in this forum are indeed friendly, but there’s a select few that tend to cause conflict in threads and make them less productive as a result (I admit that I ended up being one of them in the past, but I’m working on being much less so).
Can this forum be more friendly and civil, absolutely, but it’s already pretty good in that area when you compare to the majority of other popular community-based sites (YouTube for instance sees profane flamewars in threads about puppies for some sad reason).
I would say that it’s fairly friendly on the surface, as the saying goes “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”.
“Don’t say nothing?” That’s a double negative, so do you actually mean that you should say something?
Yeah it’s friendly. Just play nice.
i don’t come often enough these days but I used to several years ago. Mostly, everyone behaves on a decent level and so long as you’re not a complete jerk, or out to stir up controversy for the sake of stirring up controversy, everything will be fine.