On the merits (or lack thereof) of harsh feedback

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

Moderation note: This topic was split from this thread in the support forums. Feel free to read that thread for context.

Never be afraid to just delete what you have and start again.

You’re right of course. But telling beginners their work is garbage is highly demotivating. The truth is most users will produce ‘garbage’ for years as they learn, but if we spit on their efforts, they won’t be motivated to continue. My comment was more about your tone, not the legitimacy of your suggestion. ‘Gently instruct’ is a useful maxim.

2

When others do a foolish thing, you should tell them it is a foolish thing. They can still continue to do it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be.

This is a public forum, not a tutoring institution, nor private training courses. If one puts their ego above their plea for help, they’re free to look for help elsewhere. If a person with more experience and knowledge provides concrete advice on one’s problem, but happens to call their progress “garbage” in the process, they should take in both, since either is useful information. If they want to know why it’s garbage they could ask or look it up themselves. Or take offense and walk away, in which case the whole ordeal turns up a waste of time on both sides.

Just browse the threads in this section and see for yourself. A “thank you” for the provided solution is not that common of a sight. But say one harsh word, all hell breaks loose. It’s nice to be nice, sure. It’s equally nice to be sincere.

3

When others do a foolish thing, you should tell them it is a foolish thing.

Certainly, I agree that we shouldn’t mislead others for the sake of being kind. But is it really too much to ask that we think about HOW we tell them?

As a high school teacher, I could be fired for calling my students’ work garbage. I’m sure I would hear about it at a parent-teacher conference at the least. And rightly so, because it has been demonstrably, emprically proven that negativity impedes learning. Most people don’t ‘rise to the occasion’ when they are put down. A student is likely to resent the teacher, resent the school and resent the subject if he receives harsh words for asking for help with his assignment.

This is a public forum, not a tutoring institution

In all walks of life, people should strive to respect the feelings of others. Doctors call this ‘bedside manner’. Normal people just call it sensitivity. They are sensitive to other’s feelings, because they actually care about people. I’m disappointed that you’re justifying rudeness on the grounds that this isn’t an exclusively educational forum. When you help someone in the support section of BA, you become a teacher in that moment. And why not strive to be a good one? Why else would you be helping?

The best way to foster learning is through ‘positive reinforcement’. It is known to be the most effective method of producing desired behavior. If someone does a good thing, reward them for it. In this case, a beginner with blender put him/herself out there by asking for help. That is positive. It deserves a reward, like kind words and gentle instruction. But what they received in this case was tactless advice.

Blender’s community is known as one of its strongest traits. People here are helpful. But if you’re helpful and rude while you’re at it, people are only going to remember the latter. We will lose people because of this - potentially great artists, coders, educators - because they got turned off from the community. I know because it happened to me while I was learning 3DS Max.

So, how about some tact? In my mother’s words which I’m sure she stole from someone else, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

P.S. - I appreciate Richard a lot. He’s obviously been very helpful to many many people. I’m not suggesting we police the forums for harsh words. I’m just saying we catch more flies with sugar. And as people interested in growing a community, we should do our best.

4

It’s easy to type things that if spoken would be fine but as written come across differently. I’m sure Richard didn’t intend harshness, but I must admit that reading this thread it came across that way somewhat. Richard is enormously helpful on this forum, and has helped me many times (and I think I’ve mostly said thank you!) so I’m sure it must be a little tiresome to answer the same simple questions (er, like the ones I post) over and over again.

Modelling in Blender, like the rest of the software, is very powerful but at first can seem daunting and methods that seem to make sense to one as a beginner are known to be unwise to more experienced CG artists. I’ve spent a lot of hours producing garbage that required throwing away and restarting. :slight_smile:

5

howtoblend, since we’re trading quotes now, I have another one for you: if you can’t say what you mean, you can never mean what you say.

There is a simple name for that ‘positive reinforcement’ you describe. Spoiling. And if you teach kids to listen to words instead of their meaning, you are a very bad teacher.

This is not a high school though. To one another, most people here are nothing but random strangers. If you take offense from random stranger’s words, you’re a fool, plain as day. If you take to heart an advice given by a random stranger, you’re also a fool. However, it’s quite easy to check if the person speaking to you actually knows what they’re talking about. And since we’re only talking about particular software here, the advice itself is easily checked without any harm being done in the process, especially if a simple thing called “common sense” is being employed. If it turns out the person actually helped you, there’s a good chance they didn’t say “garbage” to offend you either. What Richard said was that zenptiness was doing the wrong thing. That was the key point. Everything else are figures of speech used to emphasize that point. At least, that’s how I read it and would have read it were it directed at me.

This is a support section. Asking for help here is a given, not an achievement. Nothing to encourage here, except perhaps being clear and informative. We take our own time and energy to try and help people here. If that’s not appreciated - well, too bad.

I’m reporting my own post so this discussion could either be split into its’ own thread or shut down. We’re off the topic, and the answer to the original question was provided.

6

Moderation: The preceding posts in this thread were split from this discussion in the support forums. Feel free to read that thread for further context.

7

I believe Richard’s suggestion is valid in this case, we’re not even talking about full scenes or images here, just a model that the guy just started modeling.

Now it is possible that models in that stage can be fixed up and made usable for detailing, texturing, and shading, but if you have a full model filled with messy geometry, then it’s not going to look good in the final render no matter how much work you put into it.

8

And I would tell creators a very different thing: “Don’t delete anything!”

Obviously, you should strive to work as efficiently as you know how to do, but I believe that anytime you “create something,” that “something” has value, even if you do not know it at the time. Instead of physically deleting it, shove it into a “bit-bucket” folder (compress it, if you like …), and fuhgeddaboudit, but don’t delete it.

“Disk space, basically, is free (and getting cheaper).” But the product of human creativity always takes creative time, and creativity is not “a nice, linear, deterministic process.” At the point when you decide that something “is garbage,” you may or may not be correct! Therefore, do not make an irreversible decision. The mere observation that “this is not going to wind up as part of a final, delivered product” (at this time(!)), does not justify destroying it entirely.

Also: anytime you are “just foolin’ around,” keep a tape recorder running! (And, again, never discard that tape.) You will never again be able to re-create “a moment of inspiration,” nor will you even remember it for very long. Therefore, capture it, and never, ever let it go.

Every now and again, go back and re-visit “the morgue.” The place where the stuff you threw away … wound up, and is still there. (“Scout’s Honor: do not delete it now!”) You never know what you’ll (re-)discover there. It will seem to be “the work of a complete stranger.” Sometimes, “an inspired stranger.” (And, yeah, “sometimes, a clueless hack.”)

9

I agree with howtoblend and Richard, but I still can’t figure out how to fix the topology of this cube.

screen.png716×663 32.7 KB

We can all agree that there isn’t one perfect way to answer every question, but if starting over is sometimes a better way to solve a problem I think that we can also agree that my cube belongs in the trash and that no one here gets paid enough to type a 20 step process for fixing my model.

10

In this case, the dissolve tools are your friend (X-key).

11

Often (though not always) it is not necessary and sometimes it is even counterproductive to give “20 step” tutorials…

… it is imho better (especialy concerning “beginner” questions) to give the right keywords one needs to look-up a solution in the documentation and the Internet and from there learn by trial and error and/or come back with more specific questiones.

12

I remember when I was in school and a friend whom I was trying to impress, totally shot down my effort to paint a miniature. “THATS ****ING ****!” However, despite his very nasty rejection of my work, he then told me of a wonderful trick known as “dry brushing”. His further advice was to “use the right base colour for the miniature you are painting”.

Ha! For those Warhammer fans reading, I had basically made my “Genestealer” look like “Spiderman”. Looking back on it, about 25 years later, he was so right! I sucked! There after it was light and dark purples…combined with dry brushing for highlights, I became a nifty little miniature painter!

Looking back, I felt really upset because I was only working with what I had, and what I knew. No mercy was spared! But the important thing was that he gave me excellent advice which helped me to improve dramatically. Usually when starting out on a new venture I get blown out of the water for complete stupidity, but after that initial experience I quickly learn to toughen up and “read a book”…

So, don’t worry if someone says “THATS ****!” so long as they add “…and here is how to do it better.”.