There is a difference between ‘art’ and just plain propaganda, whether that is political or religious.
isnt political and religion against forum rules? i think i read somewhere about extremeties
I wholeheartedly endorse the community producing harsh, politically charged art and pushing the artistic discussion into very uncomfortable territory. Get on that. Whining about how dull the board is right now is something else.
But, if art is not produced by the State or a corporation to further their interests at the peril of We The People, then it seems to me you end up in a debatable grey area of “what is art?”
I’ve always felt that art is often in the eye of the beholder.
As far as “propaganda” goes, there have been some classic films, murals, posters, paintings, sculptures that were intended as “propaganda” that we now consider classic works of Great Art.
The Sistine Chapel, for example, was essentially Church propaganda. However, it’s now studied in every art textbook. People travel from all over the world to see the ceiling.
Those old “Rosie the Riveter” posters were created as war propaganda during WWII to convince women to take the same steel mill, factory, and assembly line jobs their husbands had manned before being shipped out. We wouldn’t have won the war without such an effort. And those posters are now considered CLASSIC Americana.
“Uncle Sam Wants You for the US Army,” Coca-Cola Christmas commercials, Star Wars lunchboxes, all these things have found their way into Randy Newman songs and the warmest, fuzziest memories of every American for decades.
I know you British had so many similar things from WWII and countless other images and works that evoke your dearest feelings of national pride, all made by artists. Would you have told Shakespeare that his history plays were not allowed because they were “too political”? They became famous especially because they were so political. Exactly the same biting political pen that often lacerated English royalty became endeared to them, something to be memorized and never forgotten, not only for the eloquence of language, but because of the horrors that Shakespeare wanted to remind the English (and the rest of us) of for all eternity, almost a handbook for What A Good Government Ought Never To Do.
I find it odd that we simply are not even allowed to address this Movement in defense of the Right of the People to be self-governed, to speak, and to be represented by a government that is not corrupt from the bottom up.
The whole thing starts to remind me of Dobson’s famous “I know porn when I see it” quip when defending censorship.
What the hell does this have to do with the price of tea in China? ^
Political/religious threads are pointless, doing nothing but riling up people and burying more potentially interesting threads. Nobody’s mind is going to be changed, unless it is from “gee, that guy is cool,” to “gee, that guy is an idiot,” and maybe rarely vice-versa. You want to talk politics or religion, find a forum that welcomes it.
While I disagree with your sentiment, I think that that mindset demonstrates the value of having more politically charged art in the Blender community. The individual discussion is ephemeral, and swallows all the thoughts within. A piece of art survives the discussion, like a catalyst that fuels but is not consumed in a chemical reaction. Even if the debate gets locked and deleted, the art remains as a visceral reminder of exactly what feelings inspired the debate.
So I will say, while I don’t think political threads are pointless, I will say, enough talk. Let’s really offend people.
There is a difference between ‘art’ and just plain propaganda, whether that is political or religious.
If it’s a png or jpeg and contains elements other than text, it’s art, no matter the message. It’s not the art that’s “propaganda”, it’s how you look at it. Again, to quote Jon Stewart,
“Well that’s the thing about clouds. Some people look at them and see a racist hate crime, and some people see George Washington wrestling a Leprechaun.”
I am proud to have to date, two controversial renders under my belt. 
I agree. 
How can we say we have a professional blender forum if half the posts aren’t even about blender?
By my count there’s 29 sections of the forum directly related to Blender, two indirectly, and exactly one board for off-topic chat. How can you say half the posts aren’t about blender?
Also…
If it’s a png or jpeg and contains elements other than text, it’s art, no matter the message.
Possibly the most absurd definition of art to date.
Hehe. My apologies. I didn’t mean it literally. I was trying to make a point. But, since you put it that way, I suppose I thought about my post too quickly. Actually, what I was thinking was completely off-topic to this thread. So, sorry.
and also,
Possibly the most absurd definition of art to date.
Instead of saying just that, you should post useful criticism concerning that sentence.
I’m starting to sense a slight loss of cool on the thread. It’s just life, everyone.
Every time the Occupy Movement is brought up on the site, tempers seem to flare.
So, I felt that we could all perhaps use a little break.
So, in order to take a moment, reflect, and gain a little bit of perspective on our personal feelings, inter-relations, The Movement, and the issues at hand without losing our composure, I suggest we all spend a few quiet moments in viewing this fine instructional video…
http://www.putlocker.com/file/6171DAA1C36F676C#
HA! great…
Well, all political threads do too, yet “Occupy Earth” didn’t…
Actually not really.
Not changing outdated rules is either ignorance or laziness. Obeying the rules is necessary.
While I love participating in controversal topics, I do see that the usually pretty explosive temper around them seems a pretty good reason for a rule that disallows such topics.
That said,
Sounds like a pretty bad(ly explained) reason…
wasn’t the best exactly defined reason either. Though, fair enough, there already where two warnings before that and one said,
, which seems reasonable, together with the content of said two warnings.
How the thread “Occupy Earth!” went after that second warning was pretty terrible: Many of you seemed to assume that the thread already is doomed and used that to actually get away from the topic even more than it was before, rather than trying to get back on topic.
- that’s definitely a question for a private message, not for any thread.
Hmm, I’ll admit that this one is quite heavily truncated, though honestly, posts like that are exactly what starts a flamewar, “reduce intelligence” (if that’s even possible) or make us look like children.
Actually, if I was cynic, I’d ask you wether your 10 year old brother is the older one.
However, others did too, and that more civilized. And you posted an excuse, at least.
That one totally added a correcting lens on your previous post. That’s nice. Also, it’s good to see this further discussed by PM. 
That’s pretty much true. I can only agree with that whole post.
Good that you basically implicitly cleared up the quick closing with a much more detailed reason. I guess, given the situation of posts, that’s fair enough.
Epics?
Poetry?
…
Honestly, that definition of art is pretty strong on one end, excluding any form of written art while being a bit loose on the other hand.
Though, defining art clearly is beyond the scope of this thread. Maybe it’s infact beyond the scope of a whole forum.
Ok, I think that’s the main points worth quoting…
Really, I do like such discussions, though their ease of getting out of hand is a good reason why to exclude them from allowed topics.
I’d love to see more exemptions, though next time, please stay on topic after a warning tells you to do so and don’t freak out because of it.
Also, I think when I read this thread previously at an external place, unable to reply, I read something about “find yourself a forum that does allow politics” which I did miss this time.
Honestly, that’s really difficult. You’ll mostly find two cases:
Unmoderated Flamewars or heavily biased discussions with strong censorship of anything that goes in the opposite direction.
In that sense, BA has about the best moderation I’ve seen on forums on similar sizes.
The only forums that might have had even better moderation where significantly smaller than this one, with a very small userbase where everybody knew everybody else sometimes even in RL. It’s comparedly no art to moderate something like that compared to BA.
It’s basically like a small quircky village where all the people behave strange and similar but they come along at least passable and in most cases even great, while in that huge city a couple of miles away from that suffers from too many people that do not know each other and don’t care either, leading to lonelyness in the crowd, greater anonymity, lack of feeling for responsibility (sometimes seemingly including the ones that actually are in charge), and finally, increased crime rate, which further leads to stricter rules.
In a way, people can’t help but get criminal in huge cities. - To be taken with a grain of salt of course.
Good post, Kram. And yet, somehow, I still can’t shake the feeling that you may be a Vulcan…
At any rate, I agree with a lot of what you said, and what I don’t I’ll let stand anyway, mostly because I suspect you might be right.
As to the sentiment at the end, about the village and city, I guess the only way to beat a feeling of being “lost in a crowd” would be to post a lot more. Speak out. Post more art. Participate.
That’s always been the advice to people on “how to be successful on YouTube.” Participate. It’s why I post so much.
But I think it goes beyond YouTube. I think it’s the entire internet culture at large. And probably the world at large, these days.
Did you know, we just witnessed the birth of the 7 Billionth human currently living on Earth?! That’s a lot of Happy Meals.
So, the only way you can keep from being “lost in the crowd” is to participate. And, if YouTube has taught us anything, the louder and crazier you participate the better.
I think one good thing comes from it: You’re forced to improve your writing and composition skill. For an arts forum like this, you’re forced to improve your skill as an artist, programmer, animator (what have you) or quickly face a certain level of irrelevance…
I think that may be what’s leading to some of the confusion on the thread:
“Okay, so we have to do or say something crazy, frequently, and loudly, just to be noticed at all on the internet. Check. Got the rubber chickens, silly string, digital cam, and Vibro9000 in the bag.
However, now we’re not even allowed to talk about certain things on our favorite site!”
Yeah, it’s confusing.
I guess the only remedy for interesting times is to participate, but participate smarter, not harder…
Did you know, we just witnessed the birth of the 7 Billionth human currently living on Earth?! That’s a lot of Happy Meals.
Or unhappy nonexistant meals. We live on a finite planet. We are already consuming two earth’s worth of resources each year, which means there’s a good chance that baby is going hungry.
As said, I do like controversy. Don’t stop yourself from arguing if you disagree.
Me a Vulcan? o_Ô Fascinating. But nope.^^ (Can’t even do the Spock hand)
Actually, being “successful” as in known by a lot of people is determined by how much you participate aswell as how well you sell that. Applies to RL too. Get involved in stuff a lot and at least in the circles of other invovled people, you become known.
Though I don’t think, the ultimate goal is to be known well. In fact, that often comes with an unhealthy amount of pressure.
Balance is more important. Don’t become more famous than you can handle.
Though, I kept saying “balance” a couple of times now but I think I didn’t mention the need of variety.
While you don’t want to have either extreme too much, keep in mind that you can also be extremely balanced. So, while the middle is way more preferable than the extremes, it’s only the perfect average, not a perfect goal to strive for as an individual. Too little variance causes easy exploit of weaknesses, which cause imbalance in the end.
Though, just as a discussion of what’s art and what not, I fear that leads too far.
i seriously have no clue why some users just like to argue over the fact mods close down certain threads.
so what if they let a thread slide for a while then close it?
if an inflammatory conversation is not dealt with soon, it will induce septic shock later (or in non-medicine terms, the forum will have one thread where many not so nice comments with swear words will be).
the Occupy Earth thread must’ve been getting inflammatory as well as the other related threads, so the mods called the antibodies!.
now enough bickering!
come! sing a song! play a BGE game. HECK! make a BGE game! no arguing! 
I was actually quite passionate when I was stating everyone was acting like children, it was quite the exaggeration, but please look at it from my point of view (which is as follows)
In each thread that is about politics/religion people tend to only discuss whether the thread is off topic or not, not actually talking about what the original post was about (childish misdirection, or adhd) is what it seems most of the users have when this happens.
What people dont realize is that we all judge books by their covers. In fact, if a user of another program wanted to switch to blender, and decided to look at the community first, if they just so happened to open one of these threads where we all stand divided, instead of together and politically calling our differences to each other and trying to understand what each persons point of view could be, they would most likely close the thread, and go home (to their previous forum)
Although we have a great community the unproffessionalism actually adds to other forum users distaste.
Take CG Talk.com, the moment you differ from their rules, it is shut down.
Its not personal, its just they are trying to keep the threads clean and make sure all the idiocracy is out of the way.
Now if you try to talk back to the mods on this site, you are instantaneously BANNED. They use their ban hammer, and they use it well.
So from the peoples point of veiw on these more ‘professional’ sites, we seem like a bunch of misguided kids, who need someone to really set them in line.
THATS THE PROBLEM.
We have freedom on blenderartists for political debates, just as many thousands of other websites across the interwebs, BUT, we misuse it.
We start a thread, then eventually start calling each other names, or one sided. Which in turn leads of course to a CLOSED thread. Ten minutes later a thread is opened stating someones distaste in the reasoning behind shutting it down, without ever trying to find out why it was.
I understand that I have shortcomeings, such as asking way too many questions, and replying way WAY too often.
But that is nowhere near going against the owners and moderaters of a site that lets you join for FREE>
you dont pay to be here, so why complain? You really dont have a SAY in anything that goes on unless you are a moderator.
In my humble opinion, if you dont like the rules laid down by the people who work hard to maintain and keep this site running, then you should probably leave, because all your doing is pulling other people down, and into your misery
and YES I POST WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY TOO MUCH.
I understand this, and I try to stop, but when i see someone who needs help, I really want to try helping.
All in conclusion. Each person IS entitled to their opinions. But they arent entitled to voice them against someone who is only doing thier job. These people are users of blender just like you and me, and just like you and me they have opinions. The simple fact of their moderating skills should be truthful to the fact that they probably have seen where a thread will lead before, and know when to close it.
So most of the time, its better to accept it and try to reflect on why it was closed. That way you can try again in the future, and maybe the same thing wont happen
Those who dont learn from their mistakes in the past, are doomed to repeat them
these famous words really put into perspective of why these threads are even being closed in the first place.
In fact I believe these threads should be permanently BANNED. Why? because the ratio of political threads that are closed eventually, and the ones that survive and arent closed, is a VERY LARGE NUMBER.
for every politcal thread that is left open, there are 20 more that have been closed as a result of Flamewars, mistreatment of others, arguments, and eventually name calling.
This is a 3d website. Politics really shouldnt be discussed here, unless they are said with ART. That being said, i believe that politics is more of a dinner table debate, than a Professional 3d Creation softwares forum.
also i apoligize for this wall of text
It isn’t that it became inflammatory. In fact, quite the opposite: for most of it’s life, that thread was often complimented on how well-behaved it was… to the point that it became boring. So it started to slide a little into OffTopicVille, and religion was brought up eventually, but in a silly, light, and slapstick way. And then, after that, there was no way to stop the slide down into The Land of the Goofuses. I guess I blame myself, but because we had a couple of early, somewhat vague warnings, I think everyone had the same sense of frustration that there was no way it could stay open; so we all just stripped naked and played twister in the street.
The only way to deal with an absurd situation in an absurd world is to react with absurdity; anything else is absurd.
The sad part is, there was some very good writing about the future of the Global Community in the Information Age on that thread. There really was some interesting, thoughtful, hopeful, even brilliant introspection going on for the bulk of the life of the discussion.
But no, not inflammatory. That thread was about as inflammatory as an episode of Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood.
At least, it was until the Chariots of Fire with Turkey Grease showed up…
Moose, are you hoping that, if you use the Magic Word, they’ll make you Imperial Governor of Alderaan or something? 