Why I removed the link to VFX Talk

While I’m at work I usually have a browser tab open with VFX Talk loaded for most of the day. I would read through the new posts each morning and reply to any that I felt I could add to in a unique way. I wasn’t as prolific as some posters but I felt I was part of the community there.

I did get frustrated with the number of posts from people that obviously hadn’t tried to find out answers for themselves. There were plenty of questions that were answered by the first hit in a Google search. But it was worth dealing with this posts to get to the stuff that was useful and interesting.

I had been away on holiday for the last 3 weeks so hadn’t been on VFX Talk but when I got home I found an e-mail with a link to this post by VFX Soldier, which links to a cached version of a deleted thread between several high-profile members of the community and the site owner, Jah.

There are a wide range of points flying around in this thread, but regardless of the opinions in the post, the fact that Jah simply bans some of the most useful members of the site because they disagree with this is crap.

Now personally I agree with Void, and the other posters arguing against Jah in this case. Jah seems to be ignoring most of the points that they are making and arguing that these posters are not contributing to the site. If this is the way that Jah feels about people who answer the questions posted on his site then I’m not going to answer any more myself.

I am not going to tell other people to boycott the site, that’s up to you. I just thought I should explain my reasons for removing the link from my links page. Even if nothing new is ever posted on the site there are still many useful threads on there, especially for beginners, but personally I need to find a new site to read while I’m waiting for my renders.