Why is it more difficult to get feedback in threads ?
polycounter lvl 18
Has anyone else found this? I remember being a student over 10 years ago and could ask technical questions or my latest work in threads at places like polycount and would always get some kind of response within a day, often multiple responses. In the very few times I've posted this year, many times I get no answer at all.
I'm not complaining or moaning, just curious how this changed?
I'm guessing it's something to do with there being more resources that are better at catering to our needs. Back in the day (!) I would just go from CGTalk to Polycount and that was it. You had to go and FIND cool art where as now it's lined up for you. So now, I think any spare time is spent looking at what has been 'lined up' for you. So people are less likely to go through troubleshooting style forums. Also, software companies have got better at creating communities and forums so in some cases it's better to ask questions there than on a forum like this?
I think it's something along those lines?
I'm not complaining or moaning, just curious how this changed?
I'm guessing it's something to do with there being more resources that are better at catering to our needs. Back in the day (!) I would just go from CGTalk to Polycount and that was it. You had to go and FIND cool art where as now it's lined up for you. So now, I think any spare time is spent looking at what has been 'lined up' for you. So people are less likely to go through troubleshooting style forums. Also, software companies have got better at creating communities and forums so in some cases it's better to ask questions there than on a forum like this?
I think it's something along those lines?
Replies
We have subdivided into more subforums. This makes it easier for people to focus on what they're interested in, and slows down first-page churn. But it also means less eyeballs in any one section. It's a difficult balance.
I'd say be less impatient, give it a couple days. People should generally have low expectations for free tech support, replies are not guaranteed, we're all volunteers here.
Update your thread as you learn more about the problem. This will bump your thread into the Recent list, and within that subforum. It will also show people you are actively working on a solution yourself, instead of merely tossing it out there for others to work on. People dislike helping people who don't do their own research.
My apologies if you know all this already. Hopefully this will help others coming into this thread as well.
and secong a lot of peaple just replace forums for more mobile technolgy like facebook slack etc. where you can get feadback instantly and not waiting for year, forums already outdated and now only survive strongest and popular and now its looks like intel vs amd, polycount vs cgtalk
and most important thing now you cant explain what wrong in few words
technology being massive indeed
and before asking on forum you can ask google
Romantic era is over
What Dustin Brown said, just a flood of info, I try to give a little but maybe in the WAYWO threads if the op asks or links the thread, dependent on the art, but like any of my c&c grain of salt and look it up just to be safe.
^ & What Fl'ey said groups, streams, [spoiler]it is a different world now a decade later, though with the newly found ability to "h4ck" your way through an audio stream into the pc brings up some issues, unless they fixed that work around, then if it is not that one then if you are rocking an i7 they can go in through that from what i hear *Sry to slightly derail, felt it was useful info, for the new agers.*[/spoiler]
And like others have said, today we have much better documentation, thousands of hours of free educational material, better more instant communication for communities, etc.
Someone made these awhile back.
I guess in answer to why it has changed? The overall standard for 3d modelling has skyrocketed compared to 10 years ago. An average model now probably would have been cutscene quality 10 years ago, so there is a much much higher standard now than there used to be. So 10 years ago, an amazing model was much less than an amazing model now, which seems to be almost film quality. And THAT kind of level is hard to reach. As time goes on, new artists will have a harder and harder time to make a name for themselves I think.
I'm just rambling here now! I suppose in summary, what I'm trying to say is that it's very very hard to impress people nowadays. We have been spoilt by all the amazing film-like game graphics, upping our expectations to crazy levels :P
But it makes me happy that Polycount gives everyone a chance on the news page. You don't have to be film modelling level to be featured, and that is really nice.
edit:// tested the search feature and while it did a good job would love for some kind of advanced search so I could narrow down stuff more.
Edit... looks like that does a search for "environment" too.
But this critique/comment behavior just give you the feeling of making threads and post outside of the WAYWO pretty much pointless. At least for me. With those like buttons you get pretty much the same level of feedback from a post there compared to creating a own one once you start going into the valley and people stop pointing at your mistakes. Also the sheer amount of new threads drop you to the later pages in less than a day making it disapear.
The other thing is critique and comments need some level of trust between those involved. On the one hand the person writing it wants to know that it isn't wasted time and the person receiving it should trust that the other one knows what he/she is writing about. Hard to have it in a big community and you see that not depending on the skill level people that are posting here regularly get more feedback.
All of this is natural and hardly to blame on anyone, but at the same time it doesn't help make polycount a great source for feedback once you are in the valley and actually this is the spot that is by far hardest to improve and needs the most guidance. This is where 'book knowledge' doesn't help anymore until you learn to overcome mistakes that you just don't see. I guess its just not polycounts role in the community to cover this.
We have here a a great source of technical and industry knowledge as well as a chance to promote ourselves, but I don't think it can cover this issue efficiently. At least not for the 3D modelling, not sure how much traffic the other forums are facing. I can only advice people to go out there and find small groups that give feedback. The couple of hours each week I and others invest for the one I am in get most people covered and hardly anyone goes a week without c&c (not talking about '+1's). But again people there get to know each other, know what others are looking for and adjust their comments accordingly.
First group just have a time and dont know what want to make and trying a lot of thing and may be want friend inside industry
Second Group still have a time between projects but real thing they just want share experence because best way to learn teach other
thats it -)
there is alot of topics with game characters with very low skill and what comment when you seen it, learn anatomy when every book, gumroad tutorial did it, or google it and you get over9000 links go it and inside every link same and same things learn anatomy
rude but its true
and there is much new post no one have time for search
(and of course, to @Eric Chadwick : I know you're fully aware of that, since we discussed it a few times in the past and this even got some partial implementation in the form of the main forum page. Just wanted to add this topic to the discussion, as I do believe that it would improve access to all the other threads that are not pushed to the front page).
Now that said I actually believe there are a few more factors contributing to the current members' involvement with threads, I'll try to write it down later.
to be a bit more empirical, consider artstation. that would be the next step in this direction. and check how many comments they have on a post there.
people advocating easier access to the threads pictures in a discussion about low reply rate are like the NRA saying the solution to american school shootings are easier access to guns.
do you have any example of a thriving community, with a lot of posts and thought out critique, that has fast accessibilty to the pictures as a high priority? i can think of none.
i think that forcing the discussion on the user, as soon as they see the pictures, are a good thing to encourage a high reply rate. the impression should not be "wow a pretty picture" instead it should be "oh they have a discussion here about this picture someone made, i have some opinions about it, maybe i chime in". so when you separate the discussion and the picture viewing you encourage the first one more.
I totally agree that the Artstation format relying on a giant wall of pictures is not at all appropriate to generate discussion. I never pay attention to it ... and truth be told I don't pay much attention to the main Polycount landing page either, because they are both filtered by popularity/quality and that doesn't interest me. I am more interested in finding quirky/surprising stuff in unexpected places - BUT not at the price of having to click random text links.
However I believe that Thread titles + Threads thumbnails combined could potentially be a very nice solution, since a maximum amount of information is conveyed and the thread author can also ask a direct question right off the bat.
For instance the thumbnail could show a preview of a sculpt, and the title could say : "Please help me with the anatomy execution on this character". This is better than a cryptic thumbnail drop, and better than just text with no context ! This is why some subreddits are becoming so active and successful while text-only forums are going the way of the dodo.
- - - - -
[Edit] As a matter of fact, here's an example fresh from today. In tech talk there is currently a thread called "What's your style ?"
http://polycount.com/discussion/181907/whats-your-style#latest
Well, I went ahead and clicked on it expecting a discussion on art style execution, and was greeted by a picture showing ... polygon topology on what seems to be some sort of handcuff shape, with the author asking for advice on ... triangulation style. That's fine I guess, but definitely a mismatch. Had the picture showed up as thumbnail (+ title text), I would have known what I was about to get into as opposed to being puzzled hence deterred from engaging with the thread.
Now of course one could use that example to argue that thread thumbnails would reduce views, but what I mean is the opposite. Had I seen the thumbnail + text, and had the author done the effort to make the text and the thumbnail match, the whole experience would have been straightforward. I might not have clicked the thread, but that's better than being mislead by an unclear text title.
In short, in my opinion :
- Text only = current default
- Thumbnail only = less clarity than default, hence not good.
- Text + thumbnail = enhanced clarity = increased viewing experience = more potential for viewer involvement.
But of course that's all conjecture.
maybe the most efficient way of viewing pictures encourages laziness? maybe it should be a little bit hard to view a image, so you already have invested some effort and might aswell write a comment?
i honestly dont know. i just feel, all these smart ways of trying to deliver information at us now days, like sorting stuff based on popularity and views, clearly doesnt work when its about art, since its subjective. you say yourself, you are interested in finding quirky stuff and to be suprised. maybe there is not much room for that with big shiny thumbnails?
but i have to say, im not against thumbnails per see. its just i havent seen it working properly anywhere yet.
and i think that Text + thumbnail could work. but i think that maybe the interesting part would be to focus on the text.
how can it be made less random? how can it convey more information that you need? cuz a picture, especially a thumbnail, dont tell you that much. it doesnt tell you if this person is interested in critique, or want feedback to improve. maybe some sort of icon on the thread should be enabled by the poster to show twhat he/she wants? like "critique me!" or "i just want to show off
If someone comes with the intent to see pretty stuff while avoiding beginner stuff, I think it's best to give these viewers exactly what they want rather than forcing them to click at random. Random clicks will not make anyone comment more anyway, quite the opposite. After a few random and unsuccessful clicks (that is to say : not matching expectations, whatever they may be), that person will not come back. I am confident that this is why a lot of us rarely check pnp anymore. For instance I know I like to browse beginner/unfinished stuff because I find it very fresh. The current layout doesn't allow me to identify this target, and the top banners + the "good threads" previews on the main page only promote the polished stuff anyways. We end up creating precisely the situation we want to avoid.
We shouldn't value clicks per say (because, following that logic, we might as well call every thread "..." and clicks would certainly be evenly spread !). Instead I think we should make sure that the viewers get what they want, as immediately as possible - that is to say, not wasting their time.
This is why, in my opinion, the Polycount from the 2000s felt more active than today even with a member count an order of magnitude lower. It wasn't successful because it had this or that layout, or because it had this or that amount of sub sections. It was because 90% of the art belonged to a very specific category (handpainted custom player models, and the very beginning of the transition to baking) therefore every click was a win because of the very nature of the content. Now that it's not possible anymore, we need to adapt and try things out.
I hope this makes sense !
This is a really busy week for me, and I have other polycount tasks already waiting. So it may take a bit to get to it.
Keep bringing it up though, I'm not going to get sensitive about suggestions or anything. They're all meant for making things better!
i think this attitude will benefit and encourage lazy forum usage. i cant see why this isnt exactly how artstation works. minimum effort required, maximum pretty stuff to see.
i agree with @Shrike . there has to be a balance, with showing but not giving it all away.
These are honest questions, not remarks, since I haven't spent a lot of time in the 3D forum lately to observe how this might be developing since the WAYWO has stricter rules on 1 picture per post.
On another dead horse, what deters me from being more active after the forum remake is the constant inbox spam if you post a single time in a high activity thread like waywo. Thanks to 2017 and the closing of the 2016 waywo I am unshackled, but I will now never ever post in such a thread again, which really shouldnt be. Getting on polycount and seeing 100 thread messages feels like a chore. This needs to be fixed.
Vanilla refuses to fix this. This along with a few other biggies like their refusal to implement the Marmoset viewer, led us towards cutting loose, moving to self-hosting and control of the backend.
This is a major step, and will take a major amount of time and effort. We're dedicated to starting it, but each of us behind the scenes has fulltime jobs and/or responsibilities. Aging parents that need care. Etc.
We'll get there. It'll just take time.
For me personally, I've pretty much stopped browsing the 2D/3D/Anim showcase forums outside of the WAYWO thread. The reason for this is simple, there is such a huge mass of threads, that randomly clicking through to find something that interests me is not something I have time for.
I think the main goal should be increasing visibility and brows-ability, thumbnails or any sort of visual aid will help this. If more people are opening the threads, more feedback will naturally follow. I'm not going to post feedback or comments on something I don't see.
Will the best work get the most views and comments? Sure, of course, but that's not new nor is it a problem. I don't agree with any idea that seeks to equalize this by intentionally making the browsing experience more obtuse - all that will lead to is less views and interaction for all threads.