It would be nice to get some actual examples if you make this kind of claim.
Sure,
this is an artwork that has been posted a bit sooner than few of the recent ones on the feature row, yet it did not get featured: Cyberpunk M4A1! (procedual material) despite the fact it matches, and probably even exceeds some of the stuff that has been featured recently, in terms of quality.
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I mean examples for the censorship.
That’s exactly it. I consider limiting exposure of artist’s artwork based on any other parameters than artwork quality to be form of censorship, in a context of a CG related forum.
Of course some moderation is always in order, such as excluding adult, intentionally explicit content or a significantly offensive content, which is created for the sole purpose of controversy. The example I’ve provided doesn’t fall into either of these categories.
This has nothing to do with censorship in my opinion, but more with the cultural background and personal perception.
It is well known that e.g. in the United States, showing nipples is an absolute no-go and considered as adult content. If you show nipples in many European countries, pretty much no one is going to care about it. The perception of weapons is also very different as far as I can see.
For me personally, I wouldn’t care if they were featuring great art here which contains nudity. At the same time, I would find it inappropriate to feature weapons, if it is the only subject in the picture.
I am fine if they don’t show explicit nudity, even if I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But I am not considering it as censorship at all!
The moderators decided against featuring that picture and I am sure they have their reasons. Calling that censorship is over the top in my opinion.
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Just FYI there is a forum called The Lounge that gets unlocked when you get the “Regular” badge. They discuss what gets featured in there. I don’t see anything about the gun.
I find a lot of the moderation since the move to be Kafkaesque. The autolock thing kept locking the 2.8 dev thread which was really annoying. Instead of turning it off like requested, the solution was to lock and split even more. Moving news to try to stop arguing is also a nonsensical way to handle that.
That said, I figure it’s their site to run as they please, and if I get sick of it I’ll just move on to some other place.
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@BigBlend A possible reason why you don’t find some of the activity that interested you more here may be because the news and dev discussions now mostly happen in other places (devtalk.blender.org, blender.community, Blender developers channel, Blender Today channel) which was not that much the case before.
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I think it just simply wasn’t featured because, despite the good modelling, it’s still just kind of a boring gun beauty render. I mean, there’s definitely people who appreciate this sort of thing, but like cars, it’s kind of niche.
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That may be the case, but if you look at the current featured row, the 4th feature image is just car, which you called niche too, and the renders of that car are of significantly lower quality than the example I’ve posted.
The reason I am digging into it is that I do similar type of work to that guy who made the rifle. I know how much effort and hard work went into it. I know if I was the one posting it here, and then saw it not being featured despite other, worse artworks do, I would be quite disappointed. Especially if I was under the impression that the reason for the lack of appreciation was politics, instead of quality of my work.
I would love to be proven wrong about it, and to hear/read that the moderators just missed it, or something like that.
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I wasn’t aware of this, thanks for the information!
I understand the reason why they moved the news section. But I believe it would be worth a try to move it back up again. They now have better moderation tools and it is not very likely to get the kind of “discussion” which was very common in the old forum.
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Over the top? I’d argue it fits the definition pretty well:
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It is not being suppressed at all. There is a thread in the forum about it. I would agree with you, if the thread was locked, deleted or made almost invisible in another way due to its content. But not featuring and censoring are very different!
There are some people who decide what gets featured and what not. And obviously besides the artistic qualities, they have to consider other factors as well. Those other factors are without doubt a difficult subject. I haven’t seen any signs that decisions were heavily influenced by politics at all. That’s why I am slightly confused why you seem to have this impression.
Thank you. I usually just hope something comes up in Twitter.
This one too. I didn’t mention it because I try to avoid addictive, closed source and centralized platforms (well, except Youtube)
There’s a killer robot armed with a weapon right next to it though? So it’s not like weapons don’t get featured. It’s just that the robot pic has way more character and storytelling in it than the gun render, despite the simplistic modelling.
So I guess it’s a question of whether works should be featured just on technical excellence alone.
One thing to keep in mind is that what is controversial changes radically in different parts of the world. Firearms and weapons may be a highly controversial thing in Europe, but they are celebrated as signs of freedom and as an assurance against tyranny here in the US. The moderators can’t parse through the hundreds of cultures around the world to ensure that a gallery pick doesn’t offend even one person.
As for discussions getting interesting and then locked. By many standards, watching people waste hours of their time tearing each other apart over personal opinions regarding software can be seen a ‘interesting’ the same way a violent movie keeps the audience’s eyes glued to the screen, but that doesn’t mean it should be promoted. In addition, if the thread locking was as bad as your comment suggested, the one about icons would’ve been locked weeks ago.
I’ll say this much: The moderation team keeps a pretty sharp eye on the forum and we’re always on the look out for something to be in the featured row. We each have specific biases and interests, sure, but that’s why we have an informal vote on what goes up there (that includes more than just the moderation team). If one of us doesn’t like an image/animation/project, but others do, then that thread still gets featured. And we aren’t the only ones that can nominate images for the feature row. Sometimes we miss things. If you see something you like and you think it should be up there, flag it! Use the “Something Else” option and let us know that you think it should be considered. We’ll mark it for consideration and take it from there.
In the case of that particular image, it never got suggested. I remember seeing it when it was posted, but despite the image’s quality, I didn’t personally find it compelling enough to suggest. Apparently neither did anyone else. However, if anyone had recommended it for the feature row, I wouldn’t have opposed it (I can’t speak for anyone else, though).
There’s no active censorship going on here. Just different people behaving according to their tastes. You’re welcome to flag that piece, though. If you do, I’ll be sure to add it to the suggestion list.
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That’s actually very nice response. Didn’t expect that to be honest.
I retract all I said above and apologize for my wrong assumptions.
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There ought to be some kind of thread or area for trending art. That is, art that has been getting a lot of likes per day or per view. As it is now, there’ really no way to see what people have been liking, short of going through every thread. And because the feature row can only be selected by you all, a tiny number of people and their subjective tastes are greatly influencing the site’s art sense.
This exists!
If you click on the Artwork section (or any category, for that matter), there’s a set of links at the top of the page: Latest, New, Top, and Unanswered. By default, the forum chooses Latest when you click on a category. However, if you click on Top, you get a gallery of the most recent top posts in that category (ranked by traffic, I think).
I hadn’t thought about it until you mentioned it. That’s certainly a nice way to scan through the thumbnails and see if there’s anything we’ve missed in our suggestions thread.
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