[phreaknasty]

for the sake of the forum (since none of these seem worthy of their own thread) i've crammed three in one here, so bare with me...
--------------------------------------------
1. the forum:

dudes this forum is getting a bit overbearing. i work for an r&d group so i'm able to check the forum hourly without any compunction, but even with that much attention i'm often overwhelmed. in my mind there are a couple of easy solutions that don't require any drastic restructuring.
a) first and foremost people post alota of crap. "screw you," "my dog just gave birth," "do you like my butt," and "Hi, i'm new. My names Bob...." post those in random musings.
b) people post images they've barely put any time into. if you expect people to put time into critiquing your image(s) have the common courtesy to present an image that you've put some time into. i don't care if you suck, thats cool, your here to learn, as am i, just put more then 5 min into your image before you post it. case in point; people constantly post colorations of other peoples's art and basically all they've done is block in some colors, or they post an image with barely even an idea formulated as to what it is. dudes push yourself. go beyond were you've gone before.
c) listen. you don't learn form talking.
d) be original. there are a lot of talented artist here that we all want to get the attention of. shouting me! me! me! isn't going to work. overtime i've noticed the artists that get the most play from the big guns are the people who push themselves. post a photo-referenced image (like i have in the past) and you might get a couple of oouuus, and aaahhhhs but not much more. post something original something you've put some though and time into and you might just get lucky and get a load of quality feedback.
e) utilize restraint. if you have a question that you think might have been asked before, do a search and see if your correct rather then waste everyones time by asking it for the fifth time.
--------------------------------------------
2. wacom tablet for sale (PC and Mac):

i have a 12x12 artZ wacom tablet that i'm trying to sell. pictures of it can be found at
http://www.pixeljock.com/sijun/wacom/3-4th_shot.jpg
http://www.pixeljock.com/sijun/wacom/closeup.jpg
everything is there but the original manuals and the software. the newest software can easily be downloaded at http://www.wacom.com . the tablet its in very good condition. i've owned it for awhile but i barely ever used it since i have always had a tablet at work. in addition i'll throw in both cables so you can connect it to either a mac or a pc. since this forum is my home away form home i figured i'd offer it to you guys first before i post it on ebay. so the basic deal is that the highest offer by Monday November 06, 2000 9:00 PM PT will get the tablet as long as its a fair price. if no qualifying offers come in before that point i'll post it on ebay on tuesday where you can duke it out with the rest of them. i live in the San Francisco Bay Area. you pay for shipping. US only. please only reply by email [email protected]. don't post to the forum please.
--------------------------------------------
3. My coloration of Vortx's girl:

http://www.pixeljock.com/sijun/feng/mefeng_big.jpg

[rant off] ppphhhewww. my fingers are tired. sorry if i offended anyone with 1 or 2 (and sorry feng if i offended you with 3 ), i realize it might have come off harsher then i intended, i just care about this forum and i don't want to see it crumble under its own success. guess i'm a bit tweaked today. .

[This message has been edited by phreaknasty (edited November 05, 2000).]

[Rinaldo]

I agree with most of that no 1 stuff. I thought things were getting bad a while back but more and more people just keep coming (which is good). I think that we REALLY need to do something about getting a few more topics here. It's just going too fast. the FAQ while usefull can't hope to deal with sheer volume. I don't look at stuff these days. there's just not enought time to really have a good look. all the extra non art stuff needs to be cut. put it somewhere else. it's not like it gets much attention anyway. I don't care how good this palce is, it's not woth every waking hour of my life.

[Flinthawk]

Well, I've only been reading and posting for maybe three weeks now but I, too, have seen a lot of the stuff phreak's talking about. It sometimes seems that people are posting stuff just for the sake of posting stuff so things are going by soooo fast that nobody has the time to look and comment on everything here.

People really should spend some time on something before you post it (unless you're spooge in which case 'some time' is only around 25 minutes, heh). Like phreak said, it doesn't matter how good or bad it comes out...what matters is that you put a bit of time into something, learned everything you could from doing it and then get some solid critique on it to help you with your next project.

It probably would help if the forum was somehow split into a couple different subjects to help people get what they want or need out of this place. I just want to make sure that this forum continues to function as it was intended to do so and doesn't become one huge sea of confusion and flames that every other message board becomes. I've already found this place to be of great help to me by reading through both new posts and the very old posts by using the search engine...hopefully others are getting the same thing outta this place.

-Flinthawk

[Solitaire]

I like your Feng-girl! As to your points; see - I am a newbie just entered (guess why - the Fenggirl was announced at 3DP ), so I think it's not to me yet to judge on the manners at this board...

[phreaknasty]

rinaldo - i agree whole heatedly that the addition of more people is great. i also agree whole heatedly that something probably needs to be done to accommodate the ever expanding size of this forum.

flinthawk - good points. the concept of splitting the forum up has been a topic of discussion a couple of times... do a search on "ATN: dhabih" or maybe "ATT: dhabih," "Bizarde Gallery" and "3D forum" with "Match any of the search terms above" selected. and welcome.

my 2 cents - splitting up the forum seems a bad idea at first. however seeing the recent influx of posts and the disillusionment of a number of the forums members i think it might be useful to eventually resolve this issue if our wonderful host dhabih has the time and the interest. in my estimation the most successful splitting of the forum can only happen if each individual forum warrants it own attention. splitting off:

Tutorials and Lessons
Crits and Pimps
Draw Club
Random Musing

might make since though i know a lot of us are wary of any split. i disagree with splitting it by medium or 2D/3D though i wouldn't mind splitting of web design....

oh well, i love the forum, and even though it saps every hour of my day, i'll probably keep at it even if the tide never ceases.

[Bugscratch]

Well I haven't been on the forum for a long time and I didn't yet post a single pic. This has a reason. As long as I still know a million things that I could improve in my art, there seems to be no reason to post it for critics.
As for splitting the forum up, I don't think that would be a good idea. There would still be a lot of falsely placed stuff and it just adds the extra work of scanning through lots of different forums, while you're reading the posts in one forum, more stuff gets posted in the other forums and so on. Right now my bookmark goes directly to the Digital Art part of the forum, I don't have the time to regularly check both parts....

-bugscratch

[Jezebel]

Sorry... accidently posted twice.

[This message has been edited by Jezebel (edited November 06, 2000).]

[Jezebel]

Maybe if rather than splitting into separate forums there is something that can be done to sort the posts in the one forum now.

Maybe when a message is posted, the poster can click on a certain thing (sorta like how you do the smilies) to classify the post. Like:

-Line Drawing
-Need Crit
-Tutorial
-Question
-Link

I'm not sure how something like that can be done but maybe it's worth a try?

I know a lot of people are only interested in the posts by people like Spooge and Dhabih, so perhaps if you can sort the threads by who posted in them? For the people coming to the forum who are only interested in a few specific artists' words of wisdom this might be a way to filter the other things out.

Maybe this is getting too complicated? I dunno

-Beth

------------------
Take off your clothes. It's OK - I'm an artist.

http://div.dyndns.org/portfolio

[Starseed]

Ok, I like this subject.

Yes, it's got to that point, and weren't you all just waiting for it? All popular boards reach it . . . I've never stuck with them long enough to find out how it ended up, but I would agree that if you want to make this place the way it was before all of aforementioned 'unwanted additions' that you need to have a change.

My immediate thought, thought probably unlikely to be carried out even if it could be, is to have a text-character minimum for posts (say, 150, so it's 30 words or so) . . .

I dont think a request to have newbies post or certain types of things get posted in the other forum would work. No one would listen and you'd be perpetually repeating it and re-enforcing.

I don't know if there are any good solutions that would work without making the place really confined feeling and restricted. . .

-mt

[phreaknasty]

bug - agreed, i link in the same fashion as you. simple because i have no interest in visiting random musings. it was for that reason that i suggested categories that would warrant attention. however i fully understand and inpart agree with the arguments against splitting up the forum. however at this point a hell of alot doesn't get read as it is due to the rapid influx of posts.

jezebel - the sorting idea has come up before, and its a good one, however i don't think infopop supports it.

star - perhaps your right. maybe there isn't a decent solution.

like all posts complaining about post, this post has perhaps reached its useful end. oh well - dhabih you've created a great resource. perhaps too good . and now all i'm doing is contributing to the problem

[This message has been edited by phreaknasty (edited November 06, 2000).]