I had to delete my account over at Right Click Select after years of interactions and so many requests because the new users are just full of themselves.
My typical interaction was to offer first an addon or a workaround to get them by until their request can be addressed, and alongside that I would try to prompt them to answer more about the idea since a lot of them post up minimal explanations and few images. If something doesn’t work that way in Blender, I’d say so and offer up ideas on how to represent it closer to what they are looking for.
I got so much heat the last few months that I tried to work on ideas myself with python that it just got under my skin. New users talk to old users like they are attempting to deny their request when the site was clearly meant to flesh out the ideas fully before the devs picked up the work - and anything an addon addresses puts the devs in a closer proximity to seeing how it has been tackled prior.
If someone interacts with you, it isn’t always an attack on you or your idea. Garbage in, garbage out -incomplete ideas and straight up zero experience in Blender leads to lots of useless noise. Of the 18 suggestions I made over the last 8 years, I ended up tackling 6 of them in my own python addons and 1 recently for someone else.
I deleted my account over there because I guess I’m not cut out for the stress of it. I’m not a real dev so the new users just see me as a thorn and not a helper.
I have to ask though - are there really dev interactions with RCS at all, or was I just wasting time trying to help expand the vision of what they were asking for?
I completely understand where you are coming from, but you were not wasting your time, even if only one person was helped by your effort. I suspect that this is caused by how popular Blender has become, and how quickly it happened?
Yes and no. A lot of it is an influx on new users that are told right away that RCS is a place to put your feature requests, but they aren’t too keen on knowing how the website was intended to be used. They don’t like interactions that involve questions, only want upvotes like Reddit. I get it, but lots of that stuff will never be acted on for different reasons.
Then again, maybe I am the toxic one that is too intensely involved. Maybe this is for the best.
I do agree with several of your thoughts on RCS; i feel like it can be split into a few main groups, only 1 which perhaps has much value.
People that know how to use blender, have found a need that perhaps is a good idea.
People who have barely any idea HOW to use Blender, and are asking for a feature that basically already exists. It might be an add-on, but some get extremely angry that they’d have to install it to have the feature they want.
People who mistakenly think they’re on a tech support forum. “How do i…”
And even with experienced users on RCS, there’s an unfortunate number of 2.X veterans (many of whom appear to never have used any other 3D software) who will shoot down every idea because of their muscle memory challenges. It’s bizarre at times, some of the weird hills they will die on. God forbid some other software actually does something in a nicer way, and perhaps it would also be a nicer way in Blender…
Whatever it was intended it be, I don’t believe really is any longer.
I did notice in the last days your comments and it’s sad it had come the that.
I want to say that in the first interactions I had my fair share of inadequacy but responses from more experienced users helped me to realise that and I got a better sense of the communication standards and etiquette. So there is also an educational part in there.
But to answer you I know I saw a few of the devs comenting in the past, but I don’t think is something organised in any way and less since Pablo reduced his involvement.
The problem for some “requests” in general (not only RCS) is:
Most users do not give the context.
Some just want app B working as A.
Some do not know anything about the domain the app was made for and some established workflows (no i’m not talking about “industry standards”… see 1. )
Some to request mathematically impossible “solutions”.
Some are only there to… i don’t even know…
And finally it’s “easy” to request something when you aren’t paying for anything…
So mostly you do not know how “competent” they are. They use phrase like: this is…
ridiculous
cumbersome
obsolete
soo 90’s
…and most of them simply want a even more darker theme… or looking more like see 1.) …
Yeah, I feel that RCS is a failed initiative. It has become an endless pit of ignored proposals, some good, some bad. I understand why a dev wouldn’t want to use it (they should be the ones setting the priorities, given they’re the ones doing the work), and I see how it makes the users feel a without a proper channel to express ideas and complaints, given how useless RCS is.
I’ve seen that Godot has a different method here and it seems nice to me. They have a github repo dedicated specifically to proposals. Proposals are kept very technical and detailed (probably using git as a platform works as a first quality filter). The developers and other users engage directly with it, eventually implementing ideas that make sense or get traction. I like how it works and some of those discussions have been useful to me even if they didn’t bring to an eventual implementation.
The hardest ones to help are the ones that insist on building an entirely new system in Blender to accommodate something already possible with using an existing method in Blender now.
On the DPI thing, I learned that KeyShot has people referencing it in their baking scheme for scaling up the texel density of their object for image size related to the scene units, but that is a misnomer since it isn’t by the inch and it would make more sense to use standard image sizes and make sure the uv map is efficient.
On the Vertex Paint Alpha, I relearned how that works but then thought I was getting strung along with a screen shot of a color picker from Texture Paint mode that happened to be advertised as having been there at some point in Vertex paint mode - and then digging into the description I realized I was an idiot for not understanding the use of the alpha there - couldn’t see it til I plugged it into the shader. Still not sure about the use of the alpha requested for the color though since that mix of color is easily controlled with brush strength.
Really got a lot of the ones that just don’t want anyone commenting or asking questions as if it is a personal attack on them. I tried to adjust my dialogue but it doesn’t matter now.
That said, I saw some really cool promising work using Geometry Nodes to do some things I’ve only imagined being able to do, so there is hope eventually.
i don’t even know…
or looking more like see 1.) …