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Please let conversations happen. Stop censoring instead of moderating.


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Thank you @Icecaveman. It is certainly true that I do not comment on a great number of threads because I am very conscious of the importance of 'moderator impartiality'. I also take moderation decisions regardless of, and sometimes actively contrary to what my personal opinions may be, which I would hope shows that I respect the duty I undertake, and aim to do it fairly.

 

Like Igor, normally I would stay away from such threads as the one under discussion, or only contribute minimally, preferring instead to take the 'Johnny Depp approach' of walking calmly away from fire if you can. But of course if you are moderating, you have to read everything, so walking away isn't really a viable / responsible option ! I am not often inspired to drastic action by what I read, but I am human, and I do get worn down over time, and do accept that as a failing I should resist !🙂 

 

And so I can appreciate why you think that was overreach to lock the thread, but I would like it known that a rather considerable amount of thought over quite a lot of time went into the decision; it was not made lightly, or without a sense of regret, and nor was it done in anger, or for any personal gratification. If there was any 'sense of power' available in that move I can honestly say I didn't notice !

 

CBR

 

 

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Thanks cerbera for your work as moderator. You are making a great job. A job that very few can do for a longer time, because it comes with a lot of work and responibility and little apreciation and money. The discussion we are having here should be not about this one thread, but about what this forum is about. One can define, that this should be a forum without any politics involved. And striktly be a helpdesk to answer technicsl problems. For me this would be a place to visite only seldom. The best visible part of this forum though is the general discussion as the gossip keeps people coming. Maybe you have to change that visibility if you want to get rid of "such" general discussions. 

Last thing: It might be hekpfull if you could post your reasoning for closing a thread. I personaly could imagine, that a personal message would also have worked to calm down this thread instead of closing it.

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12 hours ago, Icecaveman said:

Practically this is how it works in the world:

 

"Toxic" = Expressing a disputing or disapproving viewpoint towards those with more power/money, or towards the consensus.

 

distorting the word to benefit certain points of view.    Oh Craig.. you so crazy with the ego and everything.

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1 hour ago, johanal said:

 

distorting the word to benefit certain points of view.    Oh Craig.. you so crazy with the ego and everything.

 

I decided awhile ago to let your endless personal attacks drift pass me. So you win. I'm "crazy ego and everything." 

 

 

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Guest Igor
4 hours ago, Jops said:

Thanks cerbera for your work as moderator. You are making a great job. A job that very few can do for a longer time, because it comes with a lot of work and responibility and little apreciation and money. The discussion we are having here should be not about this one thread, but about what this forum is about. One can define, that this should be a forum without any politics involved. And striktly be a helpdesk to answer technicsl problems. For me this would be a place to visite only seldom. The best visible part of this forum though is the general discussion as the gossip keeps people coming. Maybe you have to change that visibility if you want to get rid of "such" general discussions. 

Last thing: It might be hekpfull if you could post your reasoning for closing a thread. I personaly could imagine, that a personal message would also have worked to calm down this thread instead of closing it.

Among other things, this forum IS a place to discuss 3D in general and people have all the right to express what they think. Problem is when the same people repeat things over and over and over again which really doesn't help anyone. I have zero problems when someone is talking about companies bad practices, but when someone attacks individuals, that's a different story. We all wanna live in democracy, but we have hard time to read negative comments about a business, that doesn't care about you or us?! And this is not only about Maxon, Maxon just happen to became one of those companies people starts to dislike. Defend or attack, I really really really personally couldn't care less. If I don't like narrative, I simply skip it and seek what other people have to say, simple as that. 

I would be more happier to see people try other software's and share what they learn with everyone then to participate in those "toxic" threads. My best decision in life was when I decided to move on and start learning Houdini.  

 

34 minutes ago, johanal said:

 

 Oh Craig.. you so crazy with the ego and everything.

You see, this doesn't help and its not cool at all...

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2 hours ago, Igor said:

You see, this doesn't help and its not cool at all...

Johanal's Statement is definately a personal assault and schould be dealt with. But closing this thread doesn't punisch him, but everyone else.

I don't think that people should be punished for repeating their opinion. This can be tiering but maybe a ignore feature would help with that.

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Guest Igor
37 minutes ago, Jops said:

Jonahals Statement is definately a personal assault and schould be dealt with. But closing this thread doesn't punisch him, but everyone else.

I don't think that people should be punished for repeating their opinion. This can be tiering but maybe a ignore feature would help with that.

I think I can actually implement that ignore feature.  

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37 minutes ago, Jops said:

Jonahals Statement is definately a personal assault and schould be dealt with. But closing this thread doesn't punisch him, but everyone else.

I don't think that people should be punished for repeating their opinion. This can be tiering but maybe a ignore feature would help with that.

Punishment is not what this is about. Such actions are not meant to punish anyone, the reality is the other way around. Banning, closing threads, those actions are last measures not to punish, but to protect the very existence of the forum. Please keep in mind that attacks on people are attacks on the forum and it’s function. Regardless of all that, the owners and their appointed representatives have all the right in the world to handle these things as they see fit. 
Ignore would be a nice feature though.

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4 minutes ago, srek said:

Punishment is not what this is about. Such actions are not meant to punish anyone, the reality is the other way around. Banning, closing threads, those actions are last measures not to punish, but to protect the very existence of the forum. Please keep in mind that attacks on people are attacks on the forum and it’s function. Regardless of all that, the owners and their appointed representatives have all the right in the world to handle these things as they see fit. 
Ignore would be a nice feature though.

I find personal attacks not acceptable. Especially does a personal opinion not justify a personal attack. A decission that a company makes and that impacts someone personally can be a reason for harsh critics but does also not justify personal attacks. The line inbetween is unsharp though. The forum owner can interprete it as he wishes. As he can do with the forum what he wants anyway. I dont care how you name the reaction for that, punishment or not. My humble option is though that I prefer reactions to the originator, not to the group of wich many didn't violate anything. You have great experience with moderating a forum so i value your opinion and i think that we might not be apart that far, but of course i also have mine.

 

And for the second reason, that a discussion is turning in cyles (not stated by you). Well I didn't have this impression in this case and i would prefer this not to be a reason for closing a thread.

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  • Customer
16 hours ago, Icecaveman said:

Practically this is how it works in the world:

 

"Toxic" = Expressing a disputing or disapproving viewpoint towards those with more power/money, or towards the consensus.


A thread becomes toxic when criticism is not helpful or productive, or too harsh just because the person criticizing want's to steam off but eventually ends up getting satisfaction from keeping his/her rant going. - Last time I checked this wasn't a "steam-off psychotherapy session - rant freely" forum for unsatisfied customers. Nor it's an official place to ask for new features or improvements.
 

A thread becomes toxic when people start theorizing and accuse without real evidence. or accuse for reasons they think are worthy of accusing just to weigh in on the list of indictment as if this would somehow lead to definite justice by judgement - Try getting in the shoes of some Maxon workers in here. How would you (plural, no intention to target ICM due to quoting) feel if people talked nonsense or disparagingly about you, your work, your workplace or your company on a public forum you also were a member? I don't see any Blender, Modo, Maya or Houdini developers around here, would it be fair to have similar threads about other DCCs ? No, the eye for an eye method doesn't benefit anyone. And I've never seen a thread dedicated on criticism against Blender or Max Studio or any other DCC in this forum that would justify the sense of fairness many people invoke, which leads to the logical conclusion that people that target C4D like that are either trolls or just too emotional or C4D is not worth a dime and every other DCC is perfect, well, one of the three is definitely false. If I talked like that in a Blender forum I would get kicked out on the spot for firestarting, hate-speech or for the same reasons Cerbera closed that thread. And it's not about democracy for having a moderator do things his way in a forum. Democracy has nothing to do with the way forums are moderated. We did not elect the admins and moderators. This IS a dynasty with minimum personal freedom consequences. Take it or leave it. We don't get to vote or hold elections in here and decide about a constitution on how this forum should be run. If an Admin or Moderator deems it fit to close a thread or ban a member, he does so and there is no public discussion. If I do something wrong and get a yellow card I won't argue much about it, and if I do I will do it with a PM and I will apologize and delete any offensive/inappropriate post, I don't feel like I'm here to change things, and neither anyone else should. I repeat, this isn't democracy, we (members) don't make the rules. 

A thread becomes toxic when consecutive posts argue with each other for a very long time. - I like this forum for the fresh content it provides. And when it gets stagnant I make my own content (and receive the appreciation from others, which motivates me keeping doing so). Unfortunately from now on, until October, I will have very little time to devote in 3D and I won't be posting new content or help around. But I will still visit to get informed about news, discussions and have a look on technical problems and solutions. Seeing that 2-month old, irrelevant-to-3D thread still active just made me sick.

A tread is by definition toxic when the title is a personal statement and the text following it contains hate-speech. - This isn't Facebook for posting on the "What's on your mind" personal wall section! On that note, that specific thread wasn't just toxic it was also irrelevant to the forum. It wasn't about 3D content/news/ discussion/technical problem, it was purely a personal statement. It didn't deserve to be part of this forum! You can't just start a thread on anything you feel like talking about or want people to comment on, at least post it under the Miscellaneous category, not Discussions, having it hang on the top of the home page !

And to be honest I think Desta was clearly a troll. Whenever he commented he seemed like a person that hasn't the slightest idea about 3D graphics or C4D !

  • "Official Maxon training channel is all about rendering spheres via Redshift."
  • "There is no community"
  • "no plugins"
  • "all tutorials on youtube are outdated for years"
  • "Can u guys make something production ready like a pillow laying on a couch? 5 min task in Marvellous. But u will waste HOURS and still get nothing." - He literally provoked and insulted the talent, technical knowledge and intelligence of every single member in this forum and did it by comparing two applications dedicated on completely different fields !
  • "I'm not just a troll (at least i think so) ..." - He literally confessed being a troll (and not being sure about it) ! He didn't write "i'm not a troll" , he wrote "I'm not just a troll", as in "I'm not just a troll, I am, and more". "This isn't war, it's a special operation - Not a political post. Take my word for it and believe me."

Make your (plural, no intention to target) own conclusions about all these. You've been commenting on someone's provocative post whose purpose was to channel from your own personal dissatisfaction just to build justification upon his own opinion and feel good about it in case he ever had regrets or second thoughts. 👏 

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I dont know guys, given that we are circling back to the same arguments, I still cant believe you guys let twelve pages of an argument who pretty much started with "Maxon is BLM, LGBTi an Ukraine friendly, so im going over Blender but this is not political post", and just because it trash talked C4D, people who hate Maxon didnt even bothered with said argument even if the wording couldnt be more clear.

 

This is exactly why people like me only show up every couple of months, to see if community has improved. Sadly is not the case and I have no doubts someone will still call Cerbera "power hungry".

 

My only complain about the moderators is that I expected at least a warning for the concealed racist tone somewhere along the first twelve pages.

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It is not only lack of moderation and other mentioned stuff, CGtalk (in specific the C4D forum) died also for other important reasons.

Years ago it was a nice community full of helpful users ready to share their knowledge. In latest years it became a forum where a few people start to go systematically off topic, posting regularly only thread (like C4D VS Blender, C4D VS Modo, C4D VS the flavor of the month, Mac VS PC, and countless other toxic threads).

People simply started to look elsewhere, somewhere thay can find informations and a nice constructive community. 

It take only a few bad user to let a forum die, I've seen this many time (also on non 3D forums), and it would be nice if Core4d forum didn't end up in the same way.

Of course I'm again censorship in general, that being said I do not find "healthy" (just my very personal point of view) to post on C4D forums mainly stuff related to other softwares. I mean.. from time to time it is good to know where the competitors are, but if suddenly a C4D forum become the place to discuss mostly other stuff, then there is something wrong. I'm pretty sure that if I go on other software forums (Max, Blender, Maya, Modo or whatever) to start to post regularly C4D stuff, I'll be quickly labeled as a troll, crazy, or similar.

It is pretty simple for me, if I need info about a specific software (let's say Blender since it is "the flavor of the month") I'll go to a Blender forum, that will be surely full of people expert in that particular software, if I visit a C4D forum I expect to find mostly C4D related stuff. 

Then there are the "angry" topics (I'm not referring to anyone in particular 🙂 ), another reason why CG Talk forum died. Again.. this is my very personal opinion... if I'm not happy with a software feature set, price, or whatever, I simply express my disappointment with my money. If a software suddenly do not fit my needs anymore then my money go elsewhere.

Wining on forums is mostly pointless, it doesn't solve anything... maybe somebody may feel better knowing about other angry people sharing the same opinion, but it still do not solve anything.. Large companies do not care about disappointed users as long as their incomes are intact, but you can be sure that when they will see their money go elsewhere, then they will listen 😉 

 

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