what an angry little clique of programmers.

I have been scouring the web for a few months now, slowly trying to teach myself OpenGL. And I’ve come to an astonishing conclusion when it comes to the forums here.

Most people who post here are jerks.

Of course not all. Some people just want some help programming, not some angry forum rhetoric about how double posting is bad or to get a finger shook at them for not doing enough research before posting on the board. The boards are here to help people, not to bully beginners. If you don’t like someone’s post, leave them alone if you’re not willing to help.

Originally posted by angryGLfan:
[b]I have been scouring the web for a few months now, slowly trying to teach myself OpenGL. And I’ve come to an astonishing conclusion when it comes to the forums here.

Most people who post here are jerks.

Of course not all. Some people just want some help programming, not some angry forum rhetoric about how double posting is bad or to get a finger shook at them for not doing enough research before posting on the board. The boards are here to help people, not to bully beginners. If you don’t like someone’s post, leave them alone if you’re not willing to help.[/b]

Jeez, we’ve been through this before. Please post comments like this to the beginner’s forum.

Moron.

Exactly.

I think he was being ironic…

Well, in the end it’s everyones choice if they want to be helpful or not, and if they want to be polite or not. Even if you don’t want to be helpful, you can still be polite or friendly about it - but that’s a personal choice everybody is making. Personally I think, that some people would do good to remember that they too had to start somewhere, most likely with somebody else’s help

I like to think I flame for a good reason. However, I could rightfully be accused of feeding the trolls.

I do think that this forum needs moderators. If we don’t introduce moderation, this forum will turn into a cesspool of (obviously) stupid and off topic posts. I recall that I was once flamed for flaming some retard who asked how to install the Nvidia OpenGL SDK! We need to be significantly less liberal if the forum is to be kept clear of egregious posts.

[This message has been edited by Lighthouse (edited 03-10-2002).]

double posting IS bad
it means that more people think about the same solution that others found yet in the other forum…
and its annoying to see the same posts her in gl.org,there on flipcode and dont forget the neheforum…

and i think i’m allowed to say my dislikes because i always try to help where i’m good in (mostly perpixellighting stuff and math…)

i give my best to never flame those people. but anyways, its annoying to see newby-questions here in, and crossposts…

There is a beginners forum, you won’t get ‘flamed’ there.

The pattern for beginners (and advanced) posts should be (IMHO):-

  1. I’ve read lots of books/docs on linear algebra and 3d graphics.
  2. I’ve read the opengl specs.
  3. I’ve seached using google, and google groups, for the answer.
  4. I’ve searched this forum for the answer, using its built in search mechanism.
  5. I’ve posted the question on the beginners forum, but nobody has been able to give me a satisfactory answer.

Then, and only then, should you consider posting it on the advanced opengl forum.
Otherwise, you are wasting everybodies time.
Why do you want a personal reply to your very specific question?
I’ve usually got lots of commercial work to do, and the reason I take some time to look at this forum is because I may glean some useful information out of replies, and I may be able to help someone else with a problem that I may have struggled with.
But recently, most of the questions have been from lazy, braindead gits like you - which pisses me off, because other, more advanced posts, get pushed off the bottom of the first page.

I’m glad to see that some of you have actually taken my post seriously. But biggoted responses like calling me a ‘lazy braindead git’ is a bit much. You say we waste your precious time? It sounds like you waste you’re own by respoing.

P.S.
Heaven forbid you have to scroll to the end of the page.

Perhaps this might be of some assistance. To wit:

Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we’re reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn’t really true.

What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks — they take without giving back, they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this “losers” (and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it “lusers”).

I wouldn’t call what I said “biggoted”, not if you haven’t the faintest idea what the word means.
But a lesson in English language shouldn’t be at the top of your list of things to learn - more like a lesson in linear algebra (followed by a lesson in ‘dignity’, as you appear to have none), espcially if you’re really that person who posted the question about how to get opengl to tell you if one plane is in front of another…

Your insults are useless. My dignity is strengthened by telling you how I feel. Yours is diminished by your mudslinging. I know linear algebra just fine, as well as I know my English. I used ‘biggoted’ in the sense that you call me braindead as if you understood what I was talking about. That was my first post on OpenlGL.org, and hopefully this is my last. If responding to questions wastes your time, then don’t respond. I hope your level of tact exceeds your display in this forum.

The board is certainly a lot less tolerant than it used to be. That’s unfortunate, but it’s not surprising. The number of people using OpenGL has exploded as the price of good hardware has plummetted, and whenever boards get overcrowded, things start to get nastier.

TBH, most (not all) of the “intolerant” comments I see are justified. This is the Advanced OpenGL forum, and it does get a lot of posts that are neither advanced nor anything to do with OpenGL. Sure, there are grey areas, but the existence of grey does not disprove the existence of black and white. “How do I draw a triangle?” does not belong here. “OpenGL should do sound/collision detection/input/file handling” does not belong in Suggestions. And yet we see them over and over and over again.

I don’t think anyone enjoys being harsh, but unless somebody is the board is just going to die. Off-topic posts are damaging. Beyond the obvious harm (people stop using a board once the signal-to-noise ratio drops below a certain point) there’s a vicious circle going on. The Advanced board is now so swamped with fluff that wading through it becomes a full-time job. I remember the days when you could catch up on the Advanced board in a few minutes, then go browsing through Beginners for someone to lend a hand to. Not any more. So beginners learn that the only way to get answers is to mis-post to Advanced, meaning that a) they get flamed and b) the situation gets worse.

I absolutely do not buy your “If you don’t like someone’s post, leave them alone” argument. Not for a second. It’s the same line you see on every piece of spam you get: if you’re not interested in prestigious degrees from non-accredited universities, or transferring your loan, or making big $$$ from your own home, just hit Delete. So simple. So eminently reasonable. Until you realize that this junk is taking more time than your real mail, and it’s killing the medium.

Most people who post here are jerks.

No. People are only jerks to those who don’t demonstrait an advanced knowledge of OpenGL. Remember, this is the “OpenGL Coding: Advanced” forum. You are expected to demonstrait certain aptitudes in OpenGL and 3D programming to post here.

And cross posting is silly. If you post in the beginner forum, and nobody responds after a day or so, then it may be beyond the nebulous realm of “beginner” and into the land of “advanced”. But, posting both at the same time is just trying to take more than you are giving. Your question belongs in one of the two, not both.

If you don’t like someone’s post, leave them alone if you’re not willing to help.

I, for one, can’t stand it when someone doesn’t capitalize letters properly. It improves readability by an order of magnitude. However, rather than admonishing them to capitalize next time, I simply refrain from dealing with them.

However, look at it from our point of view. All of us on the advanced forum already know OpenGL. Most of us have projects that deal very deeply with OpenGL, its extensions, lighting equations, and a large collection of other topics that are completely inappropriate for the beginner. There is a forum set aside specifically for those who are still learning the basics of OpenGL.

Us advanced people get something out of answer other advanced questions; we learn more. We don’t get much out of answering beginner questions. Even having these questions on the advanced forum is a detriment to us, because it thins out the actually advanced questions. Finding a real question on a forum populated with beginner questions is simply a pain; one that we shouldn’t have to put up with.

The only way to keep this forum for advanced questions is to admonish anyone who posts beginner questions or who crossposts to not do so. If these people are simply ignored, they may resort to multiple posts of that question or bumping their topics.

Now, being a jerk to preserve the “advancedness” of this forum is perfectly legitimate (I wouldn’t even call it being a jerk; it’s just doing what is necessary). Being a jerk just because, for example, you don’t like VisualBasic and someone is trying to make an OpenGL binding for it, is an entirely different matter; that is inappropriate.

[This message has been edited by Korval (edited 03-10-2002).]

angryGLfan,

The fact here is that you, like many people that post off-topic questions here, don’t want to follow any rules but impose yours. This is an advanced OpenGL forum. And it should be enough. People like you is why forums like this needs some kind of moderator. When you read the name of this forum “OpenGL coding: advanced” you think “Bah, the rules are the ones I want and I want people that solves my problems because facing them, or using search, or using Google, or searching an appropriate forum is too much work for me”.
And you are angry because people don’t want to follow your rules but this forum ones: “Threads about OpenGL from people with ‘some’ experience”.
People that contributes in questions or threads that fit in this forum, and people that don’t want them to be lost in the middle of many off-topic, repeated, or beginners ones have reasons to complain about them.

It’s about signal to noise ratio, really. A few years ago, when this forum was smaller, I found it a very useful tool. I learned alot from disucssions I read in the forums, and when there was a question I could answer, I was glad to “give back.”

Unfortuntaly, in the past year or so I’ve noticed that this forum has been going seriously downhill. At best, it’s a place to try to get your questions answered. However, if a majority of the posts are off-topic (yes, programming questions, questions about math, basic graphics questions are all off-topic in the Advanced OGL Coder’s Forum), then it’s impossible to use the forum as a tool to learn. It’s too time-consuming to wade through worthess posts, and worthless topics. And that’s really a pity, because this forum used to be so great.

The real problem is not that people are just too lazy and stupid to figure things out for themselves – graphics is a difficult thing and we can’t expect everyone to be Masters of the Pixel. But what gets me is when the answer is on the web somewhere (accessible via your favorite search engine), or worse ALREADY ANSWERED IN THIS FORUM! Argh.

The solution? It could be as simple as having more forums. Perhaps one on graphics programming, math, general graphics algorithms or graphics hardware (these seem to be the most frequent off-topic posts). And a meta-forum to discuss the forums (this topic would belong there, for example). Perhaps others, on vertex/fragment programming. Perhaps some FAQs, taken from the actual contests of this forum.

Hopefully, things will get better. They really couldn’t get much worse.

-Won

I certainly don’t enjoy flaming people.

But I also don’t enjoy the thought that this place could be transformed to the second gamedev.net

People are coming here for only one thing: OpenGL, either beginners or more advanced persons.
But when they come here, they find topics like these:

“[OT] this”
“[OT] that”
“If any one having polytrans v2 for max …”
“Plzzzzz, I want it …”
etc.

And many people (usually starters) don’t even try to do a GoogleSearch or the one at this board before posting a question.

Heck, it even happens that there are 2 following threads about the same topic!
I think that’s enough prove that some people don’t try to do some research by themselves.

And of course, the almighty “How to render sound with OpenGL?” or “How do I know which keys are pressed when using OpenGL?”…
People, when learning an API, you should always first learn what the name of that API means.

Oh and why do you post anonymously?

Greetings,
F. Lamer

[This message has been edited by richardve (edited 03-10-2002).]

Originally posted by angryGLfan:
Your insults are useless. My dignity is strengthened by telling you how I feel. Yours is diminished by your mudslinging. I know linear algebra just fine, as well as I know my English. I used ‘biggoted’ in the sense that you call me braindead as if you understood what I was talking about. That was my first post on OpenlGL.org, and hopefully this is my last. If responding to questions wastes your time, then don’t respond. I hope your level of tact exceeds your display in this forum.

It takes (at least) two to have a flame war. You are just as guilty as Knackered here, doing exactly what you are complaining about. It appears to me now that you started this topic just looking for a fight and not really wanting to contribute at all.

The reasonable and most effective response to a flame is to ignore it.

I agree that people that ask stupid questions (that would take 5 minutes of research to find an answer), post completely off-topic questions (e.g. “[OT] C++, fstream”), or ask me to sift through 200 lines of badly-written unformatted code to find a bug are leeches and have no intention of ever learning and contributing.

However, the reasonable and most effective response to these people is not a flame. A flame is nothing more than an off-topic temper tantrum, and no better than the post being flamed. The reasonable and most effective response to a leech is a single short polite reply explaining how the post does not belong.

My opinions are very much in line with what most of you guys said, especially I think that MikeC said it really well. However, I still think angryGLfan has a point (which though could have been expressed better). I’ve noticed myself that this forum has changed attitude a lot recently, we’re talking about the latest two or three weeks. Yes, the number of OT posts the latest weeks have been much more than usual, but I’ve mostly noticed that the number of flames have increased even more. Not only do the off topic posting guy get flamed at the first reply in the thread, but he contineously gets redicouled by lots of consecutive posters. Personally I try to keep out of those threads and if someone else have notified the OT poster that his post is OT, then I don’t see any reason to post another reply telling him that his post is OT and that he’s stupid. You can handle OT questions in good or bad manner.

Example:
Someone posts in advanced forum, “How do I find which of two planes are in front of the other?”.

Note, the guy may not realize himself that this is offtopic. It is 3d related, and he is using opengl, thus he will just feel this forum is good to post in without further thought. It’s not strictly opengl, it’s maybe not “advanced”, but what’s advanced is subjective, he maybe thinks it’s advanced and doesn’t realize that the solution lies in simle linear algebra.

So, a bad reply:
“Why do you post this kind of question in the advanced forum? It’s completely off topic. This is a forums for advanced opengl questions, not about simple linear math.”

How I would have replied:
“I don’t think this forum is the most appropriate for a question like this, but if you’re looking for a depth sorting algorithm you may want to look into BSP trees.”

Note that neither of the replies took significantly more time to write, I gave him a starting point for further investigation.

I do think that (besides less aggressive replies to offtopic questions) additional forums should be added as Won suggested, like

  • General programming
  • General 3d and algorithms
  • Math
  • 3D Hardware
  • 3D Software
    etc.

Originally posted by richardve:
But I also don’t enjoy the thought that this place could be transformed to the second gamedev.net

Hey, thats not funny. I just pray Nicole Poster never shows up here. But I do know what you mean. About the only forum there I ever visit anymore is the business forum (and I often read a few of the newest posts listed on the home page). The rest are hardly worth the time.

I’m certainly impressed with the response I’ve gotten with my post. I’m actually quite greatful. I’m a beginner; I admit. But I’m becoming interested in more advanced toppics so I journey to the “Advanced Forum” to see what it has to offer. I was just disappointed to see how many people are shunned out of it. But Jambolo and Humus have restored my faith in Human-kind. Being ‘advanced’ is subjective. If you’re a beginner, then everything is ‘advanced’. I’ve never posted on any OpenGL.org forum before this and I probably never will again. I like books better than people. I’m surprised to see how serious people are forum ediquite, and I am sorry for posting such an off topic. But it just seems so disappointing to push people aside simply because they’re beginners. I’m a new comer to OpenGL, but not to programming. I always encourage questions from strangers or friends no matter how dumb or simple it may seem to me. And I certainly wouldn’t call someone a ‘braindead git’ because I didn’t like their question. How about a point in the right direction? “Try a google search.” or “Try the Beginner Forum.” instead of calling them a moron. To Zak McKrakem: it’s not the rules that I was concerned about; I don’t put myself on a pedestal. I just don’t understand how people are so unwilling to help. If you guys don’t want these questions on the board, point the people who post them to the information they want and maybe they won’t need your help anymore: hence, they won’t post here. And to the guy that complained about my use capitalization: come on, buddy. That’s the kind of crap I’m talking about. I’m sure you understood what I was trying to say without capitalized letters. The only point I was trying to make was:

Stop complaining about other people, and lend your fellow man a hand.

If everyone is so interested in OpenGL and it’s developement, why aren’t you interested in the spread of it’s use?

I no that my ‘flame’ is no different to anyone elses flame, but mean people suck.

Sorry again for off topic material.