Common sense, the guide to posting posts.

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Common sense, the guide to posting posts.

Hello there, if you are reading this then you’ve successfully managed to steer your web browser to BlenderArtists.org, congratulations.

Now, as you may, or may not know, the ‘Internet’ is a great place, with freedom of speech and expression, among other things, now BlenderArtists.org resides on this thing we call the ‘Internet’, which also means, for the most part that this website also has freedom of speech and expression, this means that, unless you viciously insult another user (A person), spout religious and/ or political views, and let’s not forget posting any ‘evil’ naughtiness (Boobs etcetera), then what you post should generally be acceptable.

Now, this concept, for most people is fairly straight forward, you be polite, you be courteous and you never insult anybody, even if that person has done something which you do not like, you be a grown up and you accept what that person has said, and then you let it go, now, at some point you may feel very strongly towards what that person has said, or what that person is trying to do, well this is what you should do;

Count to ten
(1, 2, 3 ,4 ,5 ,6 ,7, 8, 9, 10)

You first think about how you feel, how it will effect you, you then be a grown up and you construct a well written sentence, which doesn’t directly, or indirectly insult that person, or any person who may be related to the issue at hand, you calmly state your opinion, and why you have that opinion, then, you simply post your message, sit back and give yourself a pat on the back, you’ve just successfully participated in a sensible, and grown up debate.

Tune in next week when we’ll take this to the next level; Replying to a reply of your original post.

2

I would post a witty comment here if i had managed to read past the first paragraph, and then skim to the counting part, and then the last sentence.

Oh well.

3

Great sentiment, I don’t post here that often but I read this site daily and I understand where you are coming from especially over the course of this past while. Unfortunately, within the relative anonymity of the net people do tend to forget their manners and make comments sometimes so rude that would probably earn them a punch to the jaw in the ‘real’ world, certainly they would where I come from anyway.

The only real answer to this issue is strong and active moderation, I think BA may be having a few issues on this side of things at the minute because I don’t nearly as much guidance or structure here any more. This is nothing in any way against you but this thread for example has nothing to do with blender news, and should not have been posted here. In saying that I have noticed of late that all sorts of erroneous threads tend to get started in the news section and it reflects the overall feeling of mayhem that sometimes prevails. Over the five or so years of my visiting I’ve also noticed that there are almost always the usual suspects involved when common sense and rational descends into childish bickering.

4

Seasner, I completely agree, it shouldn’t be posted here. But I was hoping that a few of the common individuals would read it. It won’t have any effect of course, only a strong worded message from a moderator would, perhaps.

It’s a sad thing with BA though, I’ve been using Blender a long time now and I feel sometimes as if the community, not in general, but the loud minority are who often rude and abrupt are putting a lot of very good developers and artists off coming here and helping out, which I think is solely needed for some people who really want to make a living from doing 3D and CGI in general.

I’m not sure if it’s just me but over the last few months it seems as if the community has seen fewer and fewer long time, and very knowledgeable users around, either because of the lack of moderation (Not the moderators fault) or due to the few people who think they can bitch and whine about whatever they want simply because they are on the Internet.

I use to come to this forum to learn and to find out about the latest and greatest features, but now I come here and I’m constantly seeing unrelated threads, silly complaints and just plain rudeness directed at anyone who doesn’t see things the ‘correct way’.

I apologize to the mods for this thread, it’s unrelated to Blender, but not the Blender community.

5

I completely agree with everything you have said and of course you do sum it up when you say a vocal minority. I guess the open source nature of blender sometimes also means open season, I have no doubt if people were paying for the software that there would a lot less of this behaviour, individuals don’t want to be banned from the dedicated site of a software they have paid a thousand bucks for. Generalists sites like the cg society get round this problem with a zero tolerance approach, it does draw flak sometimes with accusations of what can be seen as over zealous moderation but it really is the only solution. I think that for a short to mid term period at least, those in charge here should adopt such a policy.

6

Hey daniel,
I can see your frustration. The amount of threads and people that are rude and only seem to complain seems to grow slowly but steadily :frowning: It’s kinda sad, 'cause this is still my number 1 place I visit for blender news, discussion and artwork. To me it seems that the growing popularity attracts a bunch of people who expect a lot of blender as it ware something they paid a lot of money for, yet don’t seem to realize the amount of work that went in to the making of it.
Another thing that bothers me, is the amount of posts that are just rude, or not contributing at all. I mean posts can be harsh, but if they contain some advice or contribute in some way then it’s fine. But if you don’t have anything useful to add, then just don’t post anything, It’s not that hard really, you don’t have to respond to everything.

Oh, but on the other hand also keep in mind that blenderheads come from all over the world, and not all speak english that well, so they might come off ruder and harsher then they might intend :slight_smile:

7

You know what sucks more than this thread? BLENDER, no wonder it’s free, what a piece of crap, I would use mayo if I had 5000$…

Nah just kidding, hahaha. But I have seen quite a few threads that seem to insinuate stuff among those lines.

I love blender, I’m more comfortable modelling with blender than in maya, or 3ds max.

8

Boobs are evil? o_O
How can that be?

But seriously, I haven’t been around much lately because of SC2 so any increase in rudeness and trashtalking I’ve been missed out on.
However, I would like to add that apart from common courtesy to be polite on the forums, I would like remind you that there are a bunch of sarcastic people on these forums (and internet in general). And although sarcasm can be offensive, I think most of the time they’re just humorous in intent. So besides only thinking of how to articulate yourselves in a non-offensive way, also try to read other peoples post without assuming the worst meanings possible behind them.
With only text (and smiles) and without the body language and tone of the voice between two communicating parties, interpretation of what is meant isn’t always an easy task.

9

Blender

tencharacters

10

I must agree that more politeness would be urgently needed in this forums, especially in threads with debates and stuff.
I especially agree with your point about calmly stating your opinion. I know how easy it is to write angry posts about exactly how much someone is wrong.

Maybe we could try to make extra efforts to offend as few people as possible everytime we make a post (unfortunately we can not always please everyone).

11

I think this problem is more serious than people like to think.

If a potential developer is interested in adding to the blender code, doesn’t
know much about blender, comes here to do some research and just finds
flame wars, sarcasm and sofware bashing. What do you think that perspective developer would do?

A community reaps what it sews, if weeds are allowed to grow they will eventually suffocate
anything that is healthy and wholesome.

Just my opinion.

12

Excuse me Daniel8488, but wasn’t it you who recently made this post?

13

^^^I was away for about a year, came back and found the current state. I’ve gotten so frustrated with the forum lately that I’ve consciously made blatantly rude, thoughtless posts myself. I hang out almost exclusively in the help forums and for some reason there are a lot more first (!) posts along the lines of “I’m pissed off, I’m blocked from making my blockbuster game because this software suxxorzz. Help me now or else!11!!” Often the poster continues to be rude AFTER someone takes the time to help, or 5 minutes later posts “Where are you jerks? Help ME”. Why this sudden surge of immature users? Maybe it reflects a surge in Blender awareness, coupled with a lack of documentation for the new (beta) version? Whatever’s happening, it makes it a lot harder to be generous about helping.

14

I did indeed post that, and it was a personal reaction to the amount of arguments spouting in the thread, thankfully it turned into a thread which actually discussed some very good points and in the end produced some good ideas.

Now, since I’ve posted that, and other things, I’ve posted this for myself, and for anyone else who posts something along those lines. I should have followed my own advice, but I didn’t, I’ve learnt my lesson and the next time I’ll ignore any thread like that, or perhaps, if I have something constructive (Which I had posted a few times in that thread), I shall write a well structured response, instead of the pissed off mock/ rant that I posted.

Slightly off-topic, is anyone else having really bad connection issues with BA today? It seems to fail to make a connection every few minutes.

15

I’ve been active on this forum for 3 months now and I’ve been surprised quite a few times by threads and some of the replies. I’m almost convinced blender is becoming “cool” amongst 12 year olds who spend to much time on halo and communicating through headsets to understand the word “polite”… On the other hand, I’ve never been apart of a community so bent on helping people out! Just by going through some old threads I’ve learned 20 times more in the past 3 months than I did in the 12 months before that I used blender… makes me regret not coming on these forums sooner. Still, there is alot of sniping going on that I can’t help but notice, and I think this thread should stay up top for a little bit longer for the message to get out.

(On the off topicness, I’ve been having difficulties with BA for a couple days now… usually it won’t want to connect for about 5 minutes, then works fine the rest of the day. not my connection as I’m usually on several sites at once, the rest working fine)

16

BlenderArtists is not offical forum of Blender. If a developer wants to get information on Blender they would go to the offical site. Blender.org