But why is that Aaron? It’s not the people participating in this thread — and trying to do so respectfully — that are hiding Chipp’s posts. It’s a small number of Super-Users that have been given permission to hide other users posts without any transparent indication of who is objecting or why. I created a thread about this problem, and this is exactly why.
Chipp’s posts on Blender are the most helpful and informative available on the topic. To say that including a link to (free) video content of his that directly addresses the content at hand is spam — well, WTF?
There are many SU users that are looking to incorporate Blender into their workflow as an adjunct to SU, since as Justin correctly points out, it is not a direct competitor to SU.
There is no better resource for SU users learning Blender than Chipp and the content he has created (some paid, some not). He has been generous in sharing his knowledge and experience, and has tried to respect the rules of the forum and its users.
I have a great deal of respect for Chipp for his professional knowledge, experience and skills — as well as personally for his resilience and fortitude in facing his cancer.
I also respect most of his ‘adversaries’ here for their knowledge and tremendous contributions to the forum — but not for their behind-the-scenes hall-monitoring of Chipp’s posts. They had a point when there were off-topic posts in other threads, but here — in a thread specifically created to avoid that aspect of the issue? What is it but low-grade bullying at this point?
What I object to is the passive-aggressive harassment against Chipp that has (unknown) users visiting a Corner Bar / Blender thread to prevent Chipp from talking about Blender by anonymously hiding his posts.
This is directly contrary to the reasoning that you provided for having anonymous/unexplained hiding in this thread: Question about Anonymous Flagging
As Chipp says, either ban all discussion of Blender or reign in the anonymous users who are escalating this conflict— simply because they object to Chipp’s POV.
Just to clarify, it is not moderators hiding anything. Discourse automatically hides post depending on the user being flagged. If you are in good standing and rarely get flagged and the someone chooses to flag one of your posts, it stays visible and moderators are alerted at which point we can hide, delete or ignore the flag. If you have a history of being flagged, then Discourse will hide your post once it is flagged. The moderators have the ability to unhide as not all flags (of course) are valid (at least, this is my understanding of how it works).
Keeping this in mind I will say that moderators have over turned a number of flags on Chipp’s posts (you may have seen some disappear and reappear…that was us!). We do our best to be fair and balanced with any sort of reprimands or hiding of posts. I, personally, have nothing against Chipp or Blender at all! What bothers me is when I see one user getting flagged by multiple forum members. When that happens, I will do whatever I can to help support the community as a whole while still being as fair as possible. I believe that the other moderators feel the same.
The issue is to find a solution to replace our dicontinuated "normal’ “classic” “perpetual” license. It seem that Blender is an issue, I discover since the forced subscription plan.
This is why it is useful for Sketchup users and community.
And I think, it is interesting to watch in this topic video links.
For any of those who came here to discuss Blender, here is a wonderful thread about rendering interiors using EEVEE. Eric Klein is the master at this. Once setup, these renders and animations execute extremely fast.
Just to clarify, it is not moderators hiding anything. Discourse automatically hides post depending on the user being flagged.
I’m aware of that, since it was explained after an earlier dust-up. I think that the most visible Trimble people on the forum have done a stellar job (for the most part) in keeping this forum focused on constructive discussions, as I’ve said on more than one occasion, including here: Question about Anonymous Flagging - #4 by TheOnlyAaron
I’m all for keeping things civil, and I recognize that maintaining a functioning, non-toxic forum environment in the on-line world is a rare thing — for which you (personally) and your colleagues (particularly Colin and Jody) deserve much credit, as the most forward-facing members of the SU team.
But I think you’re directing your fire against the wrong targets in this situation. There is no post from Chipp on this thread that I consider either off-topic or spam, and the contention that Jody is objecting to here was not generated by Chipp.
If Chipp is so disruptive to your eyes (not your’s personally, but the SU Team’s), then ban him.
If it’s so offensive to discuss (and advocate) for Blender on a SU-sponsored forum, then ban such discussions entirely.
But until and unless that happens: if other users object to discussions about Blender (who have no interest in Blender themselves, just animus towards Chipp) then they should just stay TF out of this thread and leave us be… put it on ‘ignore’, lower their own stress, and chalk it up to contributing to a better on-line community.
So their “opinion” dictates for the group? Honestly, if some can “flag” then others should be able to “un-flag”. On another forum where I help mod we have a voting scale. If 3 members down vote a post it gets hidden. Other members can up vote. If it stays above -3 then it stays visible. Of course admins (myself and 2 others) can override if needed. We can also see WHO has voted and how they voted. So it’s easy to see when there is a “grudge” happening.
Deciding who gets to talk and who should be silenced has no allure for me.
I think moderators should be able to handle that sort of stuff. Allowing the users to be judge, jury and executioner seems to only create more problems rather than solve them. Thanks for asking.
So to throw a spanner into the works w.r.t. the censorship (yeah, you read that right, some posts being flagged/hidden really do not offend). Like the one below for example.
Trimble is an American held company? SketchUp is property of Trimble? As an American held company does that mean that they need to abide by the laws of their country? The country that supposedly guarantees freedom of speech?
The rules were layed out in time way before the insulting posts. We are all moderators here, some take their task more strickt than others. You can’t expect @TheOnlyAaron or @jody to read all the posts when they have a full job to do elsewhere. It’s up to all of us to keep the forum civilized.
I have been following this thread with interest until the informative and interesting posts about Blender started to be flooded by OT posts, for instance rantings about the SketchUp licensing change. I feel that there are already quite enough threads discussing that, and if others feel otherwise, they should go on and start new ones instead of piggybacking on this one or others unrelated.
I did some Blender testing over a year ago but could nto get my head around it. However since I am out of work for an extended time I am giving it another shot. Its been really great so far, yesterday was the start of week 4 of my class. We have an online class every Tuesday and given a theme, then we have to start with a blank slate and make a peice by the next class.
I am quite happy with it so far and its totally replaced Keyshot in my inventory, wiah I had not just bought it as it wasnt cheap
Week 1 (Pixel Art inspired):
Week 2 (Vintage Tractor, an old Volvo in this case!):
I have a free video on it which I just shared here:
Also, there is now a nice SU import plugin that works well, too.
As far as KeyShot goes, I’ve done a good job in translating many of the materials, especially plastic, from them. They have a shadow catcher as well. I’ve been thinking of doing a KeyShot > Blender tutorial as I have found no reason to move up the the latest KS version either.
EEVEE of course is lightning fast, but if you need real glass and caustics, then Cycles works well too-- and now with full support of Optix Denoiser, it’s also really really fast. HTH.
