Its official: 3DW is full of junk??
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This was raised in another thread, and it got to ask others if they have noticed the same observation. 3D warehouse at one time or anohter was filled with wonderful models, and at one point a really reliable place to find quality products. However, recently in the last few months i have been noticing the warehouse bing inundated with content that hardly makes even the beginners cut (meaning it actually looks like something useful)
Now, i hardly even go to 3D warehouse, and have instead been purchasing my models from other sources, since i know what i am getting. Personally, i think it revolves around too many people not knowing how to use sketchup effectively. Sure, anyone can learn it, but there seems to be a small few who have mastered it, or at least have good enough knowledge on how to model.
Any thoughts on why this could be? How we can get people to model better?
Just some thoughts for you!
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@sk.lion said:
...How we can get people to model better? ...
You cannot - unless they themselves want to.
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It should be possible to have someone classify the stuff and make more clearly-defined collections containing only the good stuff. I see far too many submissions entitled something like "realy kewl detailed PC" relating to an awful PC model, that has obviously been done by someone with the ability of a 10 year old novice.
I don't want to knock kids using apps like SU and posting their results - it's really excellent, but when you have a vast repository filled seemingly with crap but containing some real gems that are beautifully-modelled, it's not surpising that people ask questions.
It isn't asking a lot to expect some sort of reasonable categorisation.When I say it should be possible for 'someone' to classify and organise content, that person should be a Google employee. Google make enough money to be able to do this without worrying at all. Hell, they can afford a whole team of people
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Personally, I think that there is still a lot of good stuff on 3Dwarehouse (I use it a lot for components). It just needs some browsing.
The rating system already filters a lot of the junk.
In addition to the 3Dwarehouse you can always go to formfonts for commercial models.I just love it that we can make use of so many resources for Sketchup.
In my modest opinion, things like 3Dwarehouse make Sketchup a unique piece of software. -
@kwistenbiebel said:
The rating system already filters a lot of the junk.
Ooh, not nearly enough, and a lot of ratings are totally unrealistic. Like any rating system the older files tend to have artificially high ratings, and newer ones unrealistically low ones.
Not nearly as good as a human rating system IMO.
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@bigstick said:
@kwistenbiebel said:
The rating system already filters a lot of the junk.
Ooh, not nearly enough, and a lot of ratings are totally unrealistic. Like any rating system the older files tend to have artificially high ratings, and newer ones unrealistically low ones.
Not nearly as good as a human rating system IMO.
I think it has something with the saying about sketchup newbies: "easy to learn, tough to master"
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You also have to realize that when the 3DW opened the free version of SU was new. Most of what was posted to begin with was by people who had purchased their version of SU before Google thus a higher quality. Now more and more GSU (free) users are posting even if the quality is not that great, just to see their work online.
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Nah, sorry Fred, it started off full of junk, and now its just getting junkier [with the odd stellar exceptions]
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I don't mind the junk. The 3DW has some nice options for organizing models; I can create a model collection with only what I want in it. And it's integrated into SketchUp. It's the rating system that has killed it for me.
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Yes, improving discoverability of good content is a big focus. We've implemented some features to help. Collections, and collections of collections, help browsing. We implemented improved search and added ratings. I agree we have more work to do. Serving up good content helps the content consumers and rewards the high quality content creators.
Scott
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Well it is good to hear you are working on it. Thanks for dropping in Scott and welcome.
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@scott said:
Yes, improving discoverability of good content is a big focus. We've implemented some features to help. Collections, and collections of collections, help browsing. We implemented improved search and added ratings. I agree we have more work to do. Serving up good content helps the content consumers and rewards the high quality content creators.
Scott
Welcome Scott. How many people work on the 3D Warehouse site?
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Hi Jim,
For competitive reasons we don't talk about team sizes. Sorry. But I can say that we have a really good team working on the 3DWH. They are passionate about improving the user experience and surfacing the best content.
Scott
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I find it increasingly hard to find anything of value. The categorization of files is exceedingly poor. I was very excited about it at first and as more manufacturers added their products. It then got a bit ridiculous, having to go through pages of fasteners that were poorly explained got tedious. The other day I entered "children" as a search string and got very little of value or of much relevance to children.
I have gotten to the point where I will only go there as a last resort.
For me, yes it is full of junk.
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Let me go get my running shoes, be right back. . . . OK, I'm back. Let me ask this, how much are you paying for the stuff you're looking for at the 3DW? Maybe you're getting what you're paying for. But with the investment of a little time and effort, perhaps you can get more than what you're paying for. And if your time is worth too much to waste it looking through stuff that you personally, individually think is junk in order to find some jewel which is the fruits of someone else's labor given to you freely, then put your money down and buy what you want from someplace selling the stuff.
Keep in mind that the stuff you see as junk is likely someone else's pride and joy. Something they put their heart and soul into. No, I don't work for Google, and I've never put anything in the warehouse, in fact I seldom go looking at stuff there. I pay for web space and have placed a number of my sketchup works on my site and you're more than welcome to them. I believe my sig line has a link to my website. But unless you're looking to build the furniture in those skippies, they probably way larger than what you want.
Everyone likes to be "published" and that is one of the things that makes the internet such an eclectic place with never a shortage of stuff to look at and learn. It's why folks with a whole ton of talent come to places like this to help us with less talent strive to improve. And they're giving of themselves freely, sometimes burning up their keyboards to be the first to respond to someone's question. Would that my employer got that sort of excitement from me when it pertained to my job.
Guess what I'm saying is don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Either take the horse or move on, but don't hold up the line of folks with horses they're willing to give away because the thorough bred you're lookin for isn't right there in the open.
Ducking and running for cover.
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Lets put it this way:
Compared to the general quality of the work available for free in the old atLast SU forum, a very large proportion of the stuff on the 3DW is junk and difficult to wade through. Sort of like wading through s___ up to your waist and rising...
The old forum had tons of really good useful work, and not much crap. No one posted mountains of fasteners or other poorly converted Autocad symbols and called it good...
Free doesn't need to mean poorly organized, difficult to search or poor quality. Its great the SU is free and it provides a great place to share your creations, but it would be nice if someone was chasing around trying to properly categorize some of the dross.
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@kmead said:
...The old forum had tons of really good useful work, and not much crap. No one posted mountains of fasteners or other poorly converted Autocad symbols and called it good...
You mean the old pro forums before the switch to groups shudders? i know what you mean, heck, the only reason why i post there was to make some announcements and such.
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If you would like to voice your opinion via on online survey, the 3D Warehouse has a User Happiness survey linked from the front page.: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/
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I personally think that the 3DW site is exactly what Google wants it to be. And yes - there is a higher percentage of junk there, as would be expected for a free software. While there are some nice collections, including those from manufacturers - it is not a professional site. I don't fault any users for the quality of what they post. I think it is great that they feel good about modeling something and sharing it, but I don't expect much from the masses that post there.
Take it for what it has become, and if you find something usefull in the time you search - good for you.
The couple of things I would like to see improved are:
1- No files should be posted without an adequate thumbnail (please - no more "ants in a blizzard" views)
2- 71,000 files name "Untitled" and counting (what - you don't like your work enough to name the file?)
3- A way for persons to filter what they see. For example, I would love to be able to block my searches from seeing content by any modeler I identify and add to an "exclude" list.Bytor
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#3 would be very cool except that folks wantingto shove the stuff you or me might find distasteful would create numerous user names to post under and we'd still see their stuff.
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