Seeing as how an honest attempt at a constructive interaction between developers and users just went down the drain (again). I have to posit this question, do you think that it could be our problem that we have what seems to be such a mediocre interaction between the dev. team and the user base? When developers get their heads bashed in for asking questions on what the use of certain features and functions would be and the administration of this forum getting the same for at least trying to change the rules to foster improvement in such relationships?
For a while, people may have been thinking why there doesn’t seem to be a good connection and a good system of feedback and ideas that circulate between users and devs. That such a society that would foster development and tremendous improvement to Blender seems out of reach (to the point where it seems like Autodesk is able to do a better job).
Now answer this, do you think that the negativity in this community and the extreme level of pushback and threats of populist uprisings to ‘save’ Blender from ‘totalitarian’ developers may have actually had a net negative effect in how Blender is being developed, the speed of development, the quality of the tools, and the level at which said tools is exactly what the users requested? If there is a yes to any of these, than such a thing may very well stem from all of the venom that’s been thrown around at any feedback session for things ranging from the interface to compositing. In other words, the mediocre exchange of dialogue and feedback between users and developers is not the problem of Ton and co., this is our problem that we ourselves need to solve.
Now I wouldn’t be surprised that if we do our part to foster a better environment for devs. to speak their opinions and ideas for the purpose of discussion without suffering intense repercussion and wrath from the userbase, the core developers will come back to this community and allow Blender to be seen as a top-level example on how community involvement is possible and how such discussion on functionality should be done.
More likely than not, the devs. are not the problem when it comes to getting Blender to where it needs to be, we’re the problem, and we need to fix that.
Thoughts?