Feature requests are fine. Making the same feature request in 20 threads, 90% of which are completely unrelated to that feature, is not. A great number of the users on BA don’t need to worry about these new rules; they are in place to discourage and deal with those users who habitually make every thread they enter about themselves and the issues they perceive, those who constantly derail conversations without adding any substance, and those who are just plain rude and unpleasant to other members.
As an example, a thread about Gooseberry is not the place to go and make feature requests for or complain about BGE Development. Likewise, General Discussion and Latest News aren’t the place for support questions, and Lighting and Rendering isn’t the place to ask about Rigify issues. And NONE of these places is the place to go if a user feels like belittling or threatening someone.
BA is a community. A WORLDWIDE community. That will always cause some friction and misunderstanding. But there are certain rules that are universal to good online behavior, and to general human-to-human interaction. We don’t think it is a lot to ask of our user base to keep things civil, classy, and on point. People who cannot or will not follow some very reasonable standards for forum interaction WILL face consequences if they find themselves unable to stop. But as I said before, these users likely are well aware of who they are, and for everyone else BA will just be business as usual.
I just love how so many people read this rule changes and decide to leave BA without even seeing how things go before making a decision.
Sure I agree that this type of rules are not exactly optimal for a forum but if the moderators have talked about this for months then this is probably needed.
Nobody except me said anything like that. I’ve wanted to terminate my account for a while, mostly because BA is too much of a time sink. That the new forum rules include clauses that speak to me directly makes it all the more clear that this is the thing to do sooner rather than later. I doubt you will be so lucky with any of the other candidates these rules are aimed at.
So you introduce untenable new rules and then you intend to practice selective enforcement based on entirely different criteria. That’s evil. Once again, I urge you to stop this folly.
You probably perceive this post as unpleasant. I wrote it because I actually care about these forums. Will you employ the no-quotes rule against me?
About this new rules,I don’t know if they will work,we will see.
But too many times I have been attacked only because my opinion wasn’t the same of the majority.
This is unacceptable.
To grow the forum needs also the minority, users who criticize,with an independent thought.
Well what can I say. That was really some new rules.
While I can for sure subscribe to the feeling that BA is a place with too much emotions & exaggerations, that can make some threads go ballistic. It is another thing trying to govern BA with these new somewhat subjective rules.
I am personally most alarmed with rule number 2 :
So if I understand it correctly - we (as BA users) are not allowed to talk about the whole elephant (if you catch myanalogy) but we are allowed to discuss and compare small isolated parts. If this is indeed correct I call it outright censorship of a important subject, and it is shameful that someone who is a part of a FOSS project (a user forum) wants to implement such a thing. Goes totally against the nature of FOSS as far as I understand it. I really hope it is something you just haven’t thought through.
Somehow I think it is a little peculiar that the forum rules get changed right now - when the Gooseberry project are having problems getting funded. Ton & BF had succes with funding 5 open projects. But Ton is not a god, he is (of course) only a human being like you and me. And right now it seems that his latest and most ambitious idea is not finding enough traction in the community. So it is perfectly fine to discuss : what can BF do different ?
With this in mind, rule number 1 also gets a little alarming for me (in relation to the Gooseberry threads) :
I mean, if one side is constantly repeating a point like - ‘Ton’s Gooseberry project is the best’. It should be perfectly fine for the other side to constantly complain and say - ‘No, Gooseberry is not the best way to prioritise for BF’.
To me it seems the new rules have a bias against complains vs. cheerleading. And if that is the case - that is also censorship. I hope I’m wrong.
Anyway your main goal for BA are fine :
But you can in no way do that if you begin censoring opinions or subjects. Then you just started a journey down a very unFOSS and dangerous road.
This is 100% spot on.
To me the matter is not about opinions, as every one is entitled to have his own. It’s about he way you express them. It seems that some of us take things all too personally and attack the forum user, or nit-pick about grammar or choice of words. It’s like saying “you’re fat anyway” when being short of arguments in a real physical discussion.
But you can in no way do that if you begin censoring opinions or subjects.
I genuinely don’t think it is the case.
Asking if Blender can do this or if Maya is better at that or Modo is better adapted to archviz than Blender is OK. I think these discussions are necessary in fact: we can’t develop or help develop Blender properly if we don’t have a look at the major players out there. It starts to go wrong though when people stop bringing up constructive arguments and bring futile arguments like “Maya has been used for blockbuster ‘UV-Man and the Nasty Vertex’ so it’s better” and “Blender is free, you can’t beat that huh?”. Just sterile opposition. And experience has showed that many users here don’t have the maturity to avoid these traps. And as those endless arguments usually lead to personnal resentments, they are to be avoided, simple as that.
Also, I now looked into the Gooseberry thread. And I realized, many insults there come from users who now ARE for the censorship here in this thread. That means, these people think, that insulting other users is OK, while criticising a BF project isn’t ok. Maybe I don’t understand the context, but to somebody who does come here mostly of practicla reasons to give feedback on my scripts, this seems totally wrong.
Yes, really what we don’t need here is ppl insulting other people for having different opinions.
If you want to be positive, either answer the questions people ask, or ignore them, and moderate all posts that are insulting. Counting in users who think being positive about Gooseberry is an excuse for posting insults to people who criticize or troll or also insult.
like a couple of posts I did read(didn’t read ALL). I was expecting this to be about me lol
I have made posts, while on pain killers and alcohol ( had an op or two recently) which I regretted as soon as I woke up
but at the end of the day the “new rules” are common sense, the things you learn before kindergarden (pre school/infants whatever it is where you are)
no beating the dead horse, don’t matter how many times you say if its still not right then its not right !! get over it
no “versus” if you don’t like blender then don’t use it!! simples if *** is SO much better then save up and buy it, get flamed in there forums
no quotes, this is a pet peeve of mine ( I pay for my bandwidth/woteva) might read a 3 page rant on whatever but don’t need the next 6 people to quote the whole flipping thing with a well said sir or I agree, although quotes can be usefull but only if you know a part of the answer to the rant (sorta “this bit …” I think this might help is usefull
I really don’t think this comes even close to censorship. It’s just some common sense that needs to be applied here and there.
It’s one thing to give criticism and feedback, but it’s another thing if some people drown every thread with their opinion, start insulting people and dragging the mood of an entire forum down. Of course feedback and criticism is welcome, but there has to be a way to moderate endless and pointless arguments and personal fights without everyone freaking out and crying censorship. Let’s just stay calm and keep blending!
I think this is important, complaining is very different from criticism, and much less effective.
I recall the UI debate from a while back, which also resulted in some fairly passionate discussion involving a number of divergent opinions. The difference there was that everyone put a lot of thought into it, opinions were researched and more importantly suggestions were made and there was a reciprocal dialogue with the developers. As I understand it the UI is now on the devs radar, and they have made some progress (given the current constraints) with the recent tab implementation. That’s what the community needs to be about.
Opinions are important, but only if they are well informed. I’d like to see more measured responses and a return to civil discourse.
I’m not sure we need a new rule, but I would really like it if we could cut down on thread hijacking, where someone brings up some totally unrelated topic and tries to push their own agenda. Personally I would like it if this wasn’t tolerated (you can always start your own thread).
Maybe the dead horse rule covers this, but if its a new-unrealted-topic, I don’t think it could be classed as a dead horse.
It’s also worth mentioning that, practically speaking, these rules really only have an impact on the General Forums. Just about every one of the other subforums on this site are quite pleasant and helpful. There’s just something about the General Forums where toxicity levels begin to rise. I’m hopeful that these updates can help bring the General Forums up to the level of the rest of the site.
Also, I’d like to point out that under a different team of moderators and admins, I would also be concerned about these rules. Just like a lack of guidelines and rules can lead to abuse by the site’s membership, overly vague rules can certainly be abused by rogue moderators. Fortunately, I believe that the moderation team we have here at BA is incredibly reasonable and level-headed. And it’s because we’re very aware of the our own potential for being a negative force that I’m much less concerned about these additional rules being abused.
That said, if you feel a moderator or admin is out of line, report me… erm, that moderator just like you’d report anyone else.
I think the negative reaction to the new rules might be due to some people reading it as “You can’t have a discussion/debate where you disagree with someone”, which obviously isn’t the case.
Well I surely hope that the new rules is only applying ‘some common sence’ into the threads of BA. And somehow turning down a notch the amount of emotions and one-on-one in fight. It would be nice.
But as I see it, the new rules are far too broad and vague as they stand now (especially rule 1 & 2) - and someones idea of common sense can easily be a subjective bias for others. And yes, in effect censorship.
I could - personally - easily see these new rules as a way trying to of get a more positive spin on threads concerning projects like Gooseberry. And while a positive spin is nice, a much more important thing is trying to make a thread constructive and investigating. That means that criticism/alternative views is equal important - and yes, a critical argument can be repeated (like positive ones & cheerleading).
Because, when is someone beating a dead horse ? A (pretty cynical) person could argue that supporting Gooseberry right now is beating a dead horse (I hope not), because of its lack of funding. These things are subjective.
But I of course hope, that ‘complaining about the moderators’ feedback will work as some sort of failsafe. But I’m worried.
I genuinely believe the custodians of this website are likely the most well-suited to perform the job, but isn’t the road to hell paved in good intentions?
“We won’t abuse our power. Trust us. ;-)”
It’s a little creepy to have new rules, and then say something like that.
People usually can’t handle criticism. They will always find a way to justify their actions as in “we are giving it to you for free”, “it’s free, don’t complain” and such. In this forum so tightly tied to Blender foundation you shouldn’t expect any constructive criticism as it will be automatically labeled as an attack. If something in Blender isn’t intuitive or made with the user experience in mind you should contact some important player and ask him to start a discussion over it as being a lone dog the whole pack will play safe and attack you.
For example the user experience and ease of use are tabu. Everyone knows both suck but no one will talk about it.
As for the Gooseberry project a lot of important forum users are behind it and you shouldn’t expect any criticism for it either. Character design, business model or execution doesn’t matter because not only the pack will attack you, even the top dogs will.
The line between criticism and plain trolling is really thin but communities like these are oversensitive and overreact all the time.
The amount of flatterers is impossibly high too but I’m used to it already.
( had an op or two recently) which I regretted as soon as I woke up 
