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.
Knowledge is power, and something that as you gain it you need to be able to keep your ego in check and use it wisely. The users that were banned gained their knowledge and expetise on vfxtalk over the years but due to the hard times in the industry adopted very bad stances that were poisoning the community from within.
They were banned because of their negative and damaging attitudes towards both newcomers, job posters, vfx artists in india specifically and towards the rest of the community in general. The moderators on the site had to delete many posts in order to clean the mess up.
After the banning of these users, the quality of the user experience on the site has increased significantly. New users are no longer ‘afraid’ of asking questions and job posters arent ‘afraid’ to ask for help in low cost jobs.
This has removed the general feeling of negativity that is out there towards the vfx industry in our little part of the world. We hope as more indie film makers and vfx newcomers join vfxtalk to collaborate, that they will over time replace the people who were banned, and that we can help the industry to move ahead and prosper in the hard times that it is facing.
Jah
Jah, You’re a washed up nobody. According to your lies you’re a White german with an indian mother (apparently this makes it ok to be racist) ex jamacian jail bird. Hard to believe isn’t it?
Thanks for emailing your 30,000 “members” and and letting them know about your actions. Probably the best thing you could have done against yourself. Nice one! 🙂
Jah, if you believe that posters like myself learnt everything that we knew from VFXTalk then you are deluded. I’m not saying that I didn’t learn anything there, afterall that’s the point of a forum, but it was only a small part of a wide range of education sources for me. In fact, I think the first few time I went to VFXTalk was because discussions there came up in Google searches when I was trying to find a solution to a problem I was having.
Everyone who posted on that site wanted to help the other memebers. That’s why they did it. I think most people remember that they were beginners once too. Throughout life people are more willing to help others who show evidence that they are trying to help themselves. The deluge of unhelpful questions made it much harder for the experiences user to help the beginners who were putting the effort in to learn.
Personally, one of the reason I set up this site was so I had a place to write my detailed answers to the very common questions of ‘how do I get into the industry’ and ‘should I go on the the Escape course’.
One of the biggest advantages the internet bought to the world was that people suddenly had direct access to experienced people with similar interests. Forums, like VFXTalk, provide a great platform for finding these people and hosting discussions with them, with the added advantage that others could find these discussions at a later date. Forums of any topic are most useful when the questions asked are specific and can have a definitive answer, unlike “how do I use Nuke”.
This was the main problem that a lot of the members had with some of the newer posters, who treated the forum as an easy place to spoon feed them the information that they wanted without them having to put in any effort for themselves. Why couldn’t they Google their question or looking in the index of the manual for the software they were having an issue with? That’s how everyone else would start. These unnecessary, unuseful questions were diluting the useful information available on VFXTalk.
A simple solution to this problem would have been some moderation. Which, as the owner of the site, is ultimately your responsibility. The moderation should have involved moving posts to the correct forum, deleting duplicate posts in multiple forums and point posters to discussion that already existed on the topics they were asking about. It seems though that you believe moderation entails insulting, banning and deleting.
As for your claim that members of the forum were racist, that is bullshit. There were heated debates about the industry in different countries but I never saw anything that I would have classed as racist. The only racists remarks were from you and frankly they were pretty appalling.
You say that since you have banned these ‘negative’ user the quality of the site has improved. Please quantify ‘quality of the site’ and show how you have measured improvement. You have also said in a recent e-mail that there are 30,000 members of VFXTalk. If you had asked me how many members I thought there were, based on active posters, I would have guessed about 100. These are the ones that count in my book and you have banned a large portion of them.
I completely agree with you Conrad, but I just can’t bring myself to leave VFX Talk. Reading all the crap that Jah is posting is just too damned entertaining 🙂
At this point, Jah has bascally turned into some sort of inbred puppy with brain damage. He truly has no idea when to just be quiet and stop drawing attention to himself, no matter how stupid he makes himself look. He just keeps making noise. He barks at the mailman. He barks at the wall. He barks at the clock. He barks at his own reflection in the mirror. All the time, convinced that it will make him seem powerful. Bah, I have given up on vfxtalk. As soon as somebody announces an alternative, I’m in. If that doesn’t happen soon, I may just set up forum software on my personal website.
Hey guys,
You might want to join this facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=471545845432&v=wall
I’m trying to round-up as many ex-VFXTalk members as I can, so that when the new site comes out I have a way of sending the link to them. (rumor has it that there’s a site in the works.