Why do all my posts keep getting censored?

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 2:56am

Today, after all the hubbub of the 2019 release, I posted a link to tutorials that help EXISTING SketchUp users do photoreal renderings and animations in Blender 2.8. It has nothing to do with modeling in Blender. After each deletion of my post, and without any explanation as to why, I would go to another thread I have been already active in and post again.

The fact is SketchUp does not have an embedded photoreal renderer that it ships with. So, it is up to users to either purchase a paid for plugin like VRAY or Thea or other, or to use freeware like Kerkythea and Blender. The new Blender is now easy to learn, has the exact same navigation as SketchUp and even imports the SketchUp materials correctly (though only at 100% difuse shading).

I think I’m at least owed an explanation of why SketchUp wants me to continue my existing PRO license, while also wanting to continue to censor me. I’m all ears.

Box · February 7, 2019, 3:03am

My guess would be that your posts have been hidden because members saw them as advertising. I doubt any moderators, team members or sages were involved.
The community is self regulated, meaning it only takes a few people to flag something before it gets hidden awaiting full moderation or an edit from the poster. Usually if something is checked and seen to be spam or something like that it is removed completely. Hidden generally just means a few people have reacted to it and an automated PM has been sent.

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 3:08am

So, if I understand you correctly, I can hide anyyone’s post I don’t agree with? I correctly predicted a year ago many of the happenings of today. On my YouTube channel, I have been reminded that I was correct in fortelling the lack of new features for PRO vs the more enhanced and focused directions on new business in the cloud.

I’m sure I’ve ruffled feathers. I did a video, that was allowed to “live” on this site for quite awhile extolling some of the virtues of Blender over SketchUp, while also pointing out how strong SketchUp is in areas that Blender is weak.

I think it is pretty sad when people can no longer carry on a discussion, but rather immediately go to censorship. It tells a lot about the arguments being made and the lack of critical thinking to be able to counter them. Just easier to censor it.

Box · February 7, 2019, 3:13am

No, a certain number of people need to flag it for it to be hidden, so you can’t just hide someone ‘you’ don’t agree with.

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 3:14am

Thanks for your reply. Looks like I have a few people who don’t like my criticism of SU. Oh well. Funny thing is my first post was removed in like 35 seconds after posting. Hardly enough time to read the whole thing.

indie3d · February 7, 2019, 3:24am

I think SketchUp should investigate the people who label others as spammers and censure posts. If they are abusing their power they should be reprimanded somehow.

I am part of this community and I don’t think three random people should decide what I can and cannot watch in a public forum.

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 3:30am

Yes, I agree. I have close to 10K YouTube followers, and have produced 62 free SketchUp tutorials, taking hundreds of hours to explain some of the most difficult concepts in SketchUp, and the very first comprehensive set of paid tutorials I create to help people do something (photoreal rendering) that SketchUp can’t do I get censured.

Something is wrong in this community.

indie3d · February 7, 2019, 3:43am

By the way really nice tutorial on rendering I’ll be sure to try it out.

SketchUp and Blender can be good friends!

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 3:56am

After thinking about it… I’m pretty much 100% sure the moderators killed my posts. I originally commented on the blog post which is only moderated by moderators. And it was taken down immediately.

moucon · February 7, 2019, 4:41am

With all due respect, I understand the ‘open conversation’ argument, but the truth is you have multiple posts promoting Blender in lieu of SketchUp. I’ve read some of it - and I actually downloaded/installed Blender in response - however this is a SketchUp forum, so it does not surprise me, and should be of no surprise to you - that enough people have flagged your posts that they’re now being hidden. I doubt it’s moderator censorship - I think that SketchUp users just aren’t interested in hearing more about Blender LOL. Don’t take it personally.

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 5:04am

Perhaps. perhaps. I can certainly see where SWITCHING TO BLENDER is not an option, or even wise for most SU users. I can tell you I do still love modeling in SU.

But I have a new message. One that is not about SWITCHING. It’s about using Blender 2.8 and EEVEE to only render and animate your existing models. You see, if you want to do photoreal rendering, you must do it outside of SketchUp, using mostly paid plugins, which you need to pay for each and every year.

SketchUp users don’t want to learn 100’s of key shortcuts from the old version of Blender. My new tutorials, focus on the new and 100% new interface overhaul of Blender 2.8, I’ve harnessed some of the best SketchUp artists to help put together a workflow to get in & get out from SU to Blender and back. Just renders. And Animations. Crazy fast: 15 seconds for an 8K resolution render.

I personally think this new set of tutorials is a perfect compliment and not competition. There is no way Blender can compete with SketchUp for architects and professionals like them. Layout is just too good. And SketchUp’s mighty styles are perfect for creating casual renders when you don’t want your customer to get too caught up in.

There are times when users do need to show a photoreal render. But until Blender EEVEE came out, you couldn’t cost effectively create minutes long animations.

Also, SU users don’t want to learn UV mapping. This new course allows you to texture in SU and then add some shading parameters in Blender w/out having to unwrap UVs.

This is a course to HELP SketchUp users-- in fact it doesn’t even cover modeling at all.
See for yourself:

DanRathbun · February 7, 2019, 5:10am

All that which you said there is great. Fine and dandy. There is a general “tradition” always in all of the official forums, and that is that non-SketchUp discussion either goes in Corner Bar or Extensions categories.

Forum posts accruing the requisite number of flags are not automatically deleted. They are collapsed (hidden) … BUT still available to ANYONE who wishes to read them, simply by clicking on the “temporarily hidden by the community” notice.

The “blog post” I know nothing of.

I also do not like the lack of feedback from the Discourse forum engine. It just leads to erroneous speculation. Add to this that the automated system messages are asking us to fix the posts, but yet we sometimes do not know where we’ve done (or said) wrong.

By the time I saw the post in the “What’s up with Make?” thread, it’d already been collapsed (hidden) and no more flags are allowed. BUT IF they were, I’d have also flagged it Off-Topic.

I wish the system would tell transgressors “x number of members flagged as off-topic”, … “n members flagged as spam”, … etc. It would help to know.

And this is double posting, is against the forum rules, which gives readers another excuse to flag them.

Don’t think I’m against you posting about Blender ↔ SketchUp workflow. (Because of your other thread, I took a new look at Blender and downloaded and installed v2.8 and decided to learn how to use it. Who knows I may even leave SketchUp behind myself.)

But when you hijack someone else’s topic thread for your own “campaign” it is disrespectful to the other members participating in a topic thread.

So simply being a bit more diplomatic, and creating linked threads instead of posting like that within the thread would have been much better.

In addition to the forum rules, there are even more legalistic Terms of Service for the forum, which has a clause that prohibits driving traffic to other websites.

This prohibition is the thing that someone’s advertising posts blatantly violated.
This person also started a rant thread in this category, and also blamed moderators.
This caused severe self-inflicted damage to the person’s reputation.

Box · February 7, 2019, 5:11am

Herein could be the issue, is this new course a commercial tutorial?
If so people are seeing it as advertising.

indie3d · February 7, 2019, 5:30am

I wish for the SketchUp community to embrace commercial content as a positive thing rather than spam.

We have seen this with SketchUp Extension Warehouse by allowing independent developers to sell their work.

Maybe SketchUp should expand their options for selling other products as well like tutorials, textures, 3d models, etc.

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 5:41am

Dan,

Thank you for taking the time to explain. I did not know the posts just collapsed. I really did think they were deleted, but only collapsed for me as I received some sort of email asking me to wait 10 minutes and make changes, which I couldn’t quite figure out. I sincerely thought I was only single posting as my other posts were no longer available. You straightened that out for me and I was thankful for it.

And of course you are also correct about hijacking posts-- not my intention at all. I subsequently only will post in my own threads that I start. I just now figured out how to post linked threads. Thanks for that bit of advice.

Still, the simple fact is I can and enjoy helping the community out with posts about all sorts of things-- freely. I have some of the most watched SU tutes on the web over at YouTube. I have beta tested many of the top plugins. I worked with top developers to help them refine their offerings, even helping them to build websites.

I have been with SketchUp since the very first version. THIS is the first time I have actually tried to make a single dime off of an extensive effort, which could not be made for free, but is very reasonable and helps supporters of SketchUp and Blender receive new products.

I really do think it’s news that you can use a free program like Blender 2.8 to not have to pay $700/yr to Enscape, or $700 for Vray with a dongle, or $1700 for Lumion.

This is a different message. It really is easy to just scan past it if you’re not interested. I pray it doesn’t cause too much harm to people’s eyes

chippwalters · February 7, 2019, 6:39am

I REALLY like your GIF tutorials. Thanks for sharing.

jody · February 7, 2019, 3:51pm

Hi Chipp,

While I can’t lay claim to any other flags, I was the one that pulled your 35-second old post. That post was in a 2-year-old topic about SketchUp Make and had nothing to do with that topic and read like a spam advertisement. As you can imagine, there are a lot of “official eyeballs” on the forum right now, so I just happened to be around when that popped up. I haven’t actively sought any of your additional posts, nor is anyone actively looking for topics to censor. That being said, I did notice 2 more posts of yours get flagged by the community for “Spam” and “Off-topic”.

Our moderation emails might be vague, but you should have received an email each time a post of yours was removed… if you’re not seeing those then you might want to check your spam folder. I think you might have encountered a lot of this unexpected moderation because you were opening old threads and your posts seem like ads. Hopefully you’ve found the right Category for your topic by now, but if not, we do have a Category specifically for users to post their tutorials.

It sounds like everyone in this thread is already explaining the setup but I will add, the community is intended to be civil and be an encouraging community. We invite you to share your workflows and use cases, and you can be critical of our releases, our features and of our policies but keep it civil. If you’re going to post about things unrelated to a specific topic, make a new one… make sure to post in the appropriate category (we have LOTS of Categories to choose from.)

Happy SketchUpping