A lot of new people has made the community ruder...

News & General Discussion
1

We have all rolled our eyes at posts like this:

“Me wantz make best game, you make team me for?”

We have also gocked at the posts like this:

“I need a code to import 3D models, anyone want to code one for me.”

With unity now being free there seems to be a lot more posts like this and I think we are getting fed up; however, we don’t need to be rude.

I am not new to programming, nor am I new to the forums. But I am new to programming javascript, so when I asked for help with something simple after looking for about 2 hours, someone posted “check the tutorials and stop being lazy.”

Thanks, I guess. That was helpful… kind of… not really at all…

All they had to do is say:

This function creates instances of a class…
This function is used to sort through arrays.
This function is a hit test…

And that would of been it, but instead of helping they refer me to somewhere else (which is fine) but then insult me.

I politely encourage everyone who feels obligated to be rude to stupid questions to simple ingore the post. That would take care of half the problem posts in the first place.

Second it might be nice to see a newbie section, so my genuine newbie scripting questions are scoffed at, and my work ethic made fun of.

Cheers!

2

The only thing about that is that most people wouldn’t even bother to post there. As for throwing insults, that sucks. If I find a post where it looks like the OP is actually trying to work the problem out and not just asking for someone to do their work for them, I usually try to help out the best I can. When I see, “Me and some buddies were going to make runescape 3 this weekend. Can someone post [something that requires thought] we can use?” I just skip to the next question.

3

Yeah I noticed it too, its kinda a given with all the new users since its free now.

4

Pro-tip: people are people.

I’ve seen some of what you say and I’ve seen lots of nice and friendly new people who are eager to learn and excited about creating a game they envision!

Focus on the group you wish and decide which part you’re going to help make bigger on the forum :slight_smile:

5

There were lots of complaints when 2.5 came out and brought Windows users in. Plenty don’t want nasty Windows users! But I agree people are people. More people means more… everything. Everyone wasn’t nice in the past and everyone won’t be nice in the future… more!

6

Lol @ a class system forming in the Unity community :slight_smile:

7

I have also noticed this too. It is really annoying to see very nice unity users going corrupt and rude to newbies. :frowning:

8

What I’ve never understood is why people go to the effort of writing a negative message that doesn’t directly answer the question, when they could just answer it - or not answer it…

I’ve been on this forum for years, though I haven’t posted all that much. In the past, everybody has been incredibly helpful, and in direct ways. Most of those people are still here, and I’m sure they are just as kind as they have always been, even if they did have to pay for something that is now free.

Additionally, what most of the people who make those negative comments don’t realize is that by answering every “noob” question they come across rather than redirecting it, they are actually turning this forum into a more dynamic encyclopedia than a manual could ever be. Think about it… for every “stupid” question, there are hundreds of stupid ways to ask it - and the more we have, the easier it becomes to find the answer in a way that “clicks” with your individual method of understanding.

From a personal standpoint - I am an artist. I think like an artist. I may know many technical things, and I may be pretty good at math, but I am still an artist at heart. As such, in all the years I have been on this forum, I have frequently dreaded the idea that I could post a stupid programming question and receive little more than a snide, rerouting remark in return — I have, however, never, EVER, gotten one. There has been a lot of respect on these forums in the past, and there is no reason at all that it should not continue that way.

As others have said, if you don’t feel like answering a question directly, it’s probably best that you just don’t waste your time.

Edit: Also, I agree that a forum specifically for new users would be excellent - and even if nobody else helps them out, it would still be good to give them a place to help each other.

9

I’m just glad all the noise has started to settle down over the Unity for free debacle. That seemed to bring the worst out of a lot of people (new users and old).

I think people are people, and we all have good days and bad. I try to be informative in my replies, but some days are better than others. I do tire of reading posts that either a) don’t provide enough information to understand what the person is asking or b) the answer is easily found by just reading the docs, searching the forums or going to the wiki.

Is it me, or has anyone else noticed that Unity Tech people almost never participate in the forums any more? I expected that during Unite, but that was over a week ago.

10

Maybe it’s just the sheer number of threads diluting everything; but andeee did answer one of my questions, and I saw Aras over in the 3.0 speculation thread.

11

don’t worry, all these new users will get bored pretty quickly once they realise that Unity won’t make games for them (unless there is a new version in a pipeline which does just that? :smile: )

Out of probably 1000 people who will try few will stick to it.

12

Apparently the number is closer to 15000 :lol:

13

Aras does indeed post a fair bit, particularly about shader stuff. I think it’s andeeee’s job (or at least part of it) to post on the forums, so that’s not really the same thing, as helpful as that is. :slight_smile:

–Eric

14

I think the Unity Team is busy with the next step(s) in their development and will be back. It’s easy to think since we’ve heard nothing new in a week to think the worst and get impatient. Nothing would get done if every day they had to update us with what is going on n-o-w. Besides HiggyB is on vacation if I remember by reading his signature in his posts and he’s one of the great equalizers around here.

Here it is:
“I am out of the office on vacation. I’ll be back at work on Monday the 16th, see you then!”.

If it were me you’d hear a LOT less than you do now,
it would drive me crazy trying to keep up with it all.

15

Well, that’s what UT pay me obscene amounts of money for - to do the things they… can’t…

Actually, the approach we are now following is that I patrol the forum full time, but log anything that I can’t answer or that I think would benefit from further input from the real experts. If all goes well, the appropriate expert then swoops into the thread. The idea is basically to give the developers as much time as possible to, well, develop. It takes a long time to sift through all the posts to find the ones you could respond to, if you think about it.

Having said that, there is still quite a bit of participation from all the UT staff, albeit not as much as in the past.

16

Apparently, the number is closer to 33,000! http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=36218&highlight=

HiggyB’s on vacation? Since when did UT staff start getting vacations? (Old timer joke ;), we used to comment on how much time, day or night, UT staff spent on the forums).

Thanks Andeee, hope this new strategy works.

17

Which was a part of what made Unity so attractive :wink:

18

We have just over 700 new members to the forums since the announcement, so my guess is that it will quiten down soon enough… although perhaps not to the levels we had before.

19

You might be surprised. Free tools do, no doubt, get tried by people who want everything to be easier than it is, and really don’t have the skills or commitment required. But there’s a lot of people out there who do, and may well be using tools and API’s that are a lot harder to work with than Unity. I bet a fair few will give Unity a more serious look now they can keep using it for free, and get to trial the pro features to boot.

20

I’m pretty sure the number is considerably more than that. I didn’t check the member count before the announcement, but since last Friday (when I did check the number) it’s grown about 300 members.

The total number of forum members is roughly 10,000 out of roughly 33,000 people who have downloaded Unity, less than 1/3rd. Out of 10,000 registered members, I’ve noticed that we have 300-400 members on line at any given moment. Of those, there’s probably 20-30 (guessing) new posts per hour (enough to keep Andeee busy. :wink: ).