I don’t know if BA is in “trouble” persay, but it’s definitely hit a rough patch.
Just a few of the major things I’ve noticed:
Little to no moderation. As you guys have already pointed out, and what little moderation there is seems to be a very “slap on the hand and send em back out” approach (Specifically I’m referring to the voluminous amount trolls that roam the wild blue yonder free as a bird) Typically I try to avoid the off topic section at a 100 meter distance at all times, however I’m aking an exception for this. Plus as you guys have mentioned the gallery is all but forgotten, but I don’t think that’s entirely the mod’s fault, for this see point #2.
Wild imbalance in skill of the users. I can’t be the only one who has seen this, but quite literally about 90% of the posts in all topics at the moment are “My First Render” or something to that effect. While this is great for expanding the blender user base, it destroys a place like this. Now it might make me a bastard and I will freely own up to it, but I don’t want to look at that, I spent my 2 years making pieces of crap, I don’t want to spend my free time looking at more, so I don’t, I work on my own project.
And while sure every once and a while you will find one of those really amazing pieces, because you happen to be in the right time and place to have it the top of your list, but thats a rarity know a days. And I’m not about to go slogging through a mile of first posters, people wanting to make the greatest game ever but they have no experiences, and stupid requests to maybe find one piece that’s worth looking at. (Yes I know I’m a bastard, get over it) But I still can’t figure out if that’s a matter of the Blender pros not posting anymore or a matter of it all getting lost in the wave of first timers.
This is going to sound weird, but I’ll explain. The view count system has been out of comission longer than I can remember at this point, while it might seem like a small thing, it is remarkably annoying and shows a general disrespect for the forum. (This is kinda tied to #1 in a way) It creates this feeling that the very infrastructure of the forum is falling apart, and that translates to the user. “Well obviously the guys running this thing don’t care, so why should I?” Like I said, it’s weird, but I feel it.
Anyways, just a few things I notice around here that keep me away.
hmm…like Inferno, I doubt BA is in real trouble - I have noticed that slow-periods go by, and this is just another…i hope lots of the sections are still fairly active, with News and Discussion and Off-Topic being the most active, and the WIP and Finished Projects too… I have noticed, however, that usually the Support section tends to be slower…I for one like being able to help people when I can, but most of the time I don’t have the necessary knowledge
as for Group projects, I have noticed a few, but not all that many - maybe most people don’t really have the time. I’m participating in one (DreamForgotten’s Zelda WIP), but it’s slowed down a lot…hopefully it can kick off again it’s fun, and I’ve learned a lot while working
edit - hmm, well, I personally try to look at people’s First Render threads, 'cause getting support and comments from other Blenderheads is always great - even when I have something in the Finished Projects that’s recent (far from being a first render, something like my Retro Flashlight), I always love to see comments and suggestions.
as for welcoming new members, I almost always do when I see a new member, or a “Hi there, I just joined”-type thread…
…but hey, we have to keep in mind that we;re all different
I haven’t really noticed anything about the Mods though, except for the Gallery…and the Post-Count thing, but that’s been mentioned several times already…
I agree, this forum seems dead somewhow. The most insteresting topics I see are either in off topic section or sometimes in news and descussion.
No one is interested in watching the work in progress or game forums. Except the few people who try to make games…or the people who post their first renders as the post above me points out. There is a lot of crap both in renders and game engine forums.
The problem with the game engine especially is that no teams are made. People try making third person action games and fps games by themself. Making any game all by yourself is very hard. And there are many areas you need to be good in. At some point the project is doomed to fail.
No one is interested in the community or what other people are making. They just want feeback on what they make, and no one is responding to new users. This forum feels very dead and the broken view counter also contributes to that feeling.
The forum feels slow and boring. That theme of the site is also very nasty. Orange and white? That feels so baaad…I would like to find a better blender community, but there isn’t any forum that is bigger than this. But this seems so dead, very frustrating…anyone who agrees?
Look at the number of members currently browsing the forum, around 70, just how it is almost every afternoon in my timezone, a far cry from the many forums that only see 10 members around at most.
Also, activity may start to pick up even more once 2.6 comes out.
A forum might have many people who “observe” it regularly, but who comment only when there seems to be something useful for them to say that has not been said already.
And-d-d-d… there will also be people who just like to talk, so that’s what they do. Even if it consists of extending a thread like “Ask the person below you,” which at the present moment has 10,671 postings and-d-d-d-d 51,145 views … placing it fairly close in front of “Universal vending machine game” with 4,891 postings but 69,133 views.
Generally, I find that BA does continue to meet its essential purpose of helping other Blender users (of whatever level-of-skill) do more and better things with Blender. So, I’d say, “all is well.” (And if you disagree with that assertion, kindly put a quarter into the vending machine and then ask the person below you. ;))
I’m quite sure that any closet masochists who want to volunteer to be a moderator of a very active public forum would promptly have their arms pulled off. (And then, maybe, they’d be given the job.)
I just thought of this reading the other posts. I believe the single biggest reason this site is feeling a little dead at the moment lies with the development of blender itself. We have now been in alpha stages for a very long time for a computer age’s speed (I know it’s beta now, not the point I’m making) and lets face it, having a program in a half(ish) working state for such a long time is going to kill a LOT of users anywhere. Frankly, I’m almost somewhat surprised that there is still as much activity as there is now.
I don’t see any easy fix around this, but I think that blender desperately needs to get out of limbo and back to full featured versions as quickly as possible before momentum slows down too much. A for profit company releasing like this would be dead by now, the users would have moved on to other applications. I’m not saying that everyone is going to leave, the nature of open-sorce and a free price tag will keep people around for a long time, but you do trade off something else. Experienced users, who use more/most of the features are hit hardest by incomplete software, and they are also the ones who will be willing to switch to a paid app first. The nitch here is experienced users that also code/develop, they are obviously a different matter. but as I see it, they should only make up part of the experienced crowd, right now they seem to be the only active high experience useres around.
I know that the release of Sintel will, like the last films, bring a sizable influx of people checking blender out. And hopefully we can follow with a 2.6 roll-out close after that… (I’m assuming that this is when we plan on getting a full feature set back, but my memory on the exact time-line is a little rusty, I suppose I should go refresh my memory on that…)
I’m curious if anybody else agrees or has something to add/change with this assessment.
ATSkill
P.S. Yeah, um, I hate to admit it, seeing as steps on the toes of many long time users, but I have to agree that the site is looking a little dated. The thing that bothers me more then anything else is the way it always stays on the left side of the browser, leaving a large ugly white space on the right. I’m I the only one with this?
A for profit company releasing like this would be dead by now, the users would have moved on to other applications.
Had to add my opinion on this.
Newtek has been currently developing a new program known as Lightwave Core for at least as long as 2.5’s been in development (look how long ago Lightwave 9.6 was released), and even then the most recent news I remember is that they’re going to make it a plugin for the old Lightwave so to keep interest alive.
Last I remember they have not gone bankrupt, also note how long the Modo users have gone without hearing a big update on the next major release or even the next minor release.
as always the usual mix of beginners and and few pro work.
but what do you expect? this is not CGTalk. Here are way to many
3d hobbiest and beginners for that level.
Till today I cannot say that I ever found a situation in which a question I had was not answered.
I basically own my knowledge of Blender to this forum.
Maybe it depends on what you expect from BA. With Blender being free you always have
the issue of a lot of 3d noobs hanging around. That is just the nature of it.
Blendernation tries to bring in some outside news. I do not know any other 3D app which
was used so much in collaborative and 3d related work then Blender.
It all has it ups and down.
I see Blendernation as a great resource for troubleshooting.
The Blender Gallery was always a mystery to my how it was managed.
I saw good work not included and it gave the feeling of a VIP club similar
to the gallery at Blender.org.
While a forum listing is nice to have a thread for that particular project I dont think it is
even a good way to present work.
For serious 3D related questions I would go anyway to a professional forum for that.
Nothing against BA but the feedback level at CGtalk is just higher if that is what you are
looking for.
I feel BA, Blender.org, and BlenderNation all need some evaluation. Blender.org seems to be to blown up in content and overlapping with other services.
BN only posts news. BA streams those news as Blender.org but host the forum.
Maybe its just that the leaders of this community are all working so hard on Durian and the massive amount of work involved in 2.5x that they don’t have the time to contribute to the general chatter of the forums.
I also think that Blender is getting so big in terms of its feature set that the discussions are spreading more thinly across the problems and triumphs of the many multiple thousands of users, and the size of the community has gotten so big that its more difficult to be noticed.
One thing that doesn’t change though…noobs stuck with rendering artifacts because they have duplicated geometry
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it seems to me that the forums needs a bit of reorganizing. could help. I mean for one thing, new members or Blenderheads always have to introduce themselves in independent threads in Off-Topic section. seems to that just doesn’t make sense, it’s not Off-Topic!
also, whenever I announce a new tutorial or whatever related to Blender, the thread often gets shifted to Off-Topic because the only other General Forum is News and Discussion (i’m not counting Python & Plugins for obvious reasons). I don’t necessarily mind, but it just doesn’t really make sense to me…anyone else ever get this?
I just think the forum needs a bit of reorganizing. might help with the slowdown, too
The amount of information and how it is presented / stored in visually not well working.
I think there is too much. Stuff like what you say should be posted in a news section
maybe with a tag system similar like BN but not on a different site.
The search system for news should also be rather tag based so you can quickly sort
things rather then just string search which often fails to narrow down results in BA.
The other problem I noticed in the past is the personal behavior of mods.
Personally I experienced being ignored with information and others were preferred.
This might also gave me the more skeptical attitude to BA BN and rather only focus
on the support area which is more community driven and not mod driven.
I cannot imagine that I approach this forum in a selfish and arrogant attitude and thus
cannot understand why I experienced such ignorance from some areas.
But it would be a major undertaking restructuring those three sites and making them
into on news, support, and product presentation site.
From my experience I noticed that many new users find the wast amount of
resources hard to analyse and cannot quickly imagine where they might find what
type of information. They need to first look through B, or BA, and BN.
No need to be dramatic, this is life- people come and go. Frequent a bar for a few years and you will see the same. This community is very active though, there is lots of new blood and some surprises from some first time posters, plus old schools guys kicking in once in a while. Obviously it will always change and have an organic structure, but as long as Blender is a great tool this site will stick around- which seems like pretty good odds.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it seems to me that the forums needs a bit of reorganizing.
Yeah, I think work in progress and focused critique should be merged. There is no point in having two sub forums that are basically for the same thing. Also a tutorial forum would be good to, where people can post guides they have made, video or text based.
It’s the same with team projects and work in progress games. Basically the same forum, a bit of reorganicing wouldn’t hurt.
EDIT: Just noticed there is a tutorial forum on the bottom, my bad.
A little bit of restructuring wouldn’t hurt indeed… Aswell as fixing certain forum bugs, like the odd behaviour of view- and reply-counts in a new thread on BA.
I really wonder about that one… How could it be that if less than quite a few post where made, the number of views is just one more than the number of posts? Really confusing…
well, why is it on the bottom of the page? seems to me it should have a brighter spotlight, since there must be a lot of people (myself included) that are always looking for good tutorials on various subjects…maybe a 1.5 Spotlight would do it :yes:
A few initial thoughts.
There are some threads that seem to not get answered but one of the problems is the large number of posts that go through these forums every day. Questions can very soon disappear off the bottom of the page. I tend to skip though the list of today’s posts to pick up some of the stragglers but many I don’t think I’m qualified to help.
Over the last few years to me there seems to have been a shift from modelling questions towards more of the game engine which I’m not able to help people with.
Some negatives of these forums:
Little engagement between the forum admins and forum users. The forum is not evolving to give users any additional benefits to hold onto them. Where are user portfolios, an active gallery, post count bug going on forever. Just check how offten admin post in these forums. One thing that works well is the top row picture and gallery at zbrushcentral users can see their images and kudos to get on the top row, an improvement to the banner on this site.
Especially in the game and team forums, negative responses to new users trying to make the next big game. A polite message putting then straight or no answer at all is that is needed, not abuse, usually from the same users who seem to have a really bad attitude.
There should be a support FAQ giving answers to common support questions. How many times do you see the same question over and over again. The same questions are starting to come up now 2.5 is in beta that were here in earlier alphas. I can guarantee the same questions will turn up when the final version is released as the vast majority of users then upgrade.
I’m getting more and more reluctant to answer questions without the effort given to add images, blends etc in posts to help me help them. This might be the sign you get when you start to move on to something else. If you look back there are names active a few years ago that are no longer posting, a natural thing as people move on. I bet there is really good art and games being made that don’t get seen here at all, if you want to push blender to the mainstream (whatever people say here I still think blender is seen as a hobbyist application) these are the people you need to show their work here so you need to give them the resources to do so.
hmm…a FAQ would definitely be cool but of course, with all the stuff we’ve been suggesting, if the Mods and Admins do decide to change anything, what gets priority? which one is most important?
reorganization?
fixing the Post-Count?
FAQ?
@Richard Marklew - lol, btw, you seem to have signed “Rochard”
Hmmm…
Richard, you just brought me an idea:
We could start a FAQ thread, where each post is a frequently asked question and a detailed answer.
When ever someone wants to know something, all you gotta do is to send a direct link to the thread or, if you are nice, even to the post with the answer
lots of the sections are still fairly active, with News and Discussion and Off-Topic being the most active, and the WIP and Finished Projects too… I have noticed, however, that usually the Support section tends to be slower…I for one like being able to help people when I can, but most of the time I don’t have the necessary knowledge 
it’s fun, and I’ve learned a lot while working
