I need to get this off my chest
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Dear old faithfuls.
I'm posting this in the corner bar because this is going to sound like a drunk old man having a rant. I don't want lots of newcomers to see it, but I do want feedback from the old faithful.
So here it is. I hate what they've done with these forums. I can't stand it, and what they've done has directly impacted on me not contributing my tutorials or help for the last couple of years. I feel like I did back in 2007 when the beautiful community on the old SketchUp Pro forums died overnight.
Today I found out that there's no direct forum search and you have to use the sketchucation search bar at the top which gives you results around the whole Sketchucation website. The time before last I visited they'd locked everything and made you pay for it. There's no Pro only area -- the subforum got removed. Less and less people seem to be visiting, as can be seen from the lack of activity around the 2015 release. It seems like this place has been killed off by greed (of locking parts of the forum down for subscribers only).
What's my problem? I spend a lot of my working day researching tech topics for new books. That means I'm always on forums, sniffing around to see if communities are alive or dead. In all the years I've been doing this I have NEVER come across a locked forum like this one. It's inconceivable to me that Sketchucation should try to monetize in this way while it kills off all the philosophy of openness and willingness to share openly that forums are built on. I just can't stand it. [Edit: To clarify, here's a screenshot of what meets you at the forum index:]
Furthermore, and this is where you'll see I'm partly a bitter old fool at the end of the bar muttering to himself, I feel personally insulted and slighted by the moderators. When I announced the availability of the new version of my popular Architectural Visualization book, a book that is of specific interest to this community, they took the post down and sent me a ranty private mail asking me to pay for advertising space. I just realised while typing this that I'm still feeling wounded by this, 6 months later. Have any of us ever asked the Sketchucation folk to pay us a fee for providing our own content and advice on these forums? Do they not even understand that it is the active forum posters that keep this place alive for their benefit.
So whether I'm just a bitter fool, or whether there's really something wrong happening here, I guess you'll be the judge. As for me, I'm going to reach out to Trimble and ask them to take matters into their own hands and set up a forum for professional SketchUp users. If they do I hope some of you will come along and re-instigate some of the sharing and genuine pioneering that went on around 2007. Most of all I hope it renews my own enthusiasm for SketchUp before it's snuffed out for good.
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Who pissed in your cornflakes!!
Just because they asked you to pay to advertise something you want to make money from and you can't find your way around the site you have a rant.
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Perhaps and admin or mod will reply to this, perhaps not.
Have you had a different avatar in the past ? I am asking because I am not familiar with you in the forums.As I know and I am concerned :
You talk about sharing and contributing but you only have 135 posts(and perhaps less than a quarter are helping answers),and most of the guys that are really helping around goes from 2000 up.
I have never been offended by the moderators and I believe I have never offended one.
I have had some advertising done free on the site(in some threads of course) but I asked kindly for permissions .
Usually the books in the shop are promoted somehow on the site.
I think the forums are going alright, although there is an increasing silence because people are getting colder day by day, and because most of the daily users have become saturated with the knowledge. I am not sure the silence came with the introduction of the Premium memberships so your reasoning is implausible.
I am using that search bar and it never gave me any outside site results.Overall I think you are overreacting and I also think everything can be fixed, if any harm was done on your side by any of the moderators .
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[do I qualify as old faithful?]
Hi Rob,
There is a search....
...that uses Google Custom Search to search only the forums.
The reason it can only search the forums is because the forums and main site run on different software.
There is a separate search for the main site also. Both work.
Where's all these locked areas you mention?
We've a few private beta-testing forums requested by developers. We also have a private premium forum to share news. In fact at last count we had 22+ hidden forums where lots of things are happening. These are all community requested and driven projects that typically result in new tools and ideas for the community.
The PluginStore came from such a think-tank. Along with Vertex Tools, Artisan, BuildEdge etc...
So opening up everything would mean no focused dicussion groups between Pro users and Developers?
Our Premium forums are locked because we share early content and promotions there. There's no 'secrets' in there. The Pro discussion always happens in public.
Greed, killing, hate...
All strong words but I've yet to see where you get this from? A URL would help? Or an example?
Your book ....
So, to be clear on this.
Can you tell me what appears here....
http://sketchucation.com/emails/june-newsletter.html
...did we not, at that time deal direct with Pakt. Who had a campaign in place to market 3 books? Did we not send out 186,000 emails promoting your book?
Can you post the ranty email you received so others can read it? Along with the remaining correspondence that occurred 31 May 2014 09:20am GMT?
Or let me put it up here so it gives this discussion some added value?
I don't judge no one. And everyone is free to express an opinion.
But throwing around wild statements that have no basis isn't very endearing or part of the charm that makes this a great community.
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@rob d said:
Dear old faithfuls.
I sure fit into this category...
I've been part of the @Last community since 2004 and I've been part of SCF from the very beginning...@rob d said:
I hate what they've done with these forums. I can't stand it, and what they've done has directly impacted on me not contributing my tutorials or help for the last couple of years. I feel like I did back in 2007 when the beautiful community on the old SketchUp Pro forums died overnight.
I've been here since the very beginning and I - personally - find that this community is far more like the old @Last SketchUp forum...!
Please remember that Google closed the old forum and opened Google Groups...
Some of the "old faithfuls" then initiated the SCF...@rob d said:
Today I found out that there's no forum search and you have to use the sketchucation search bar at the top which gives you results outside the forum.
Crap... You can also use the search function...
@rob d said:
Less and less people are visiting, as can be seen from the lack of activity around the 2015 release. It seems like this place has been killed off by greed.
Are you high or something...?? Not sure what you've been smoking, but you're wrong...!!
SCF has been growing with app. 10.000 new members since October 9th, where it reached 300.000 members...The lack of activity around the 2015 release is - IMO - caused by the fact that SU2015 is far more stable and offers 64-bit...
@rob d said:
As for me, I'm going to reach out to Trimble and ask them to take matters into their own hands and set up a forum for professional SketchUp users.
Why don't you just join the official SketchUp forum...??
Sorry to be so frank, but I can't see you've been contributing much to this community...
You want to promote your books through SCF and when you do, you feel it's unfair that you need to pay for advertising...??
Tell me where do you can get free advertising... It doesn't exist...!I won't miss you...
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I see a huge link on the bottom of your post that leads to a massive advert for your book, for a person that gives nothing back to this community you certainly asking for a lot.
Greed you say, that is rich coming from you.
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I think I need to make a seagull smilie.
Handy for when people swoop in, make a lot of noise and shit on everything then bugger off leaving nothing useful behind.
That was just a random thought, nothing to do with this thread. -
I expected a big old pile-on so that's fine. I did say this was a rant, and I probably have been having a bad week, so please take what I said in that context. This is why it's in the corner bar.
By the way, I'm not claiming to be a big part of the Sketchucation community. I was a fairly big contributor in the days of the old forum, and I liked this forum when Coen was in charge. My main input to the SketchUp community has been two books, which by the way are not written for monetary gain but for the desire to give something back to the community I loved being part of pre 2007 and for a good while after (and hopefully will again). I've evangelized SketchUp in several magazine articles. I've commissioned and edited a SketchUp/Vray book. So that's a community member, maybe not as valuable as 2000+ posts on here, but we makes our choices of where to spend our time.
For a long time this forum has been the Quasi official one, and as such I just don't like that it's monetized in the way it is, and censored in the way it is. Sorry if that offends some of you. It's my opinion. Doubtless my opinions were fixed even more by the email I mentioned. I'm not going to post it up here (Richard) because it's not right to put private communication in public. What I will ask is, please don't squash well meaning community members in this way in future. Just because Sketchucation is selling its own books doesn't mean other authors can't say "Hey, here's my book. Please tell me what you think". You don't squash people who mention rendering software or paid collections of trees, so why squash me when I mention an update to my book? I had to get this off my chest because I'm sore about it and most people reading this will not know that the forum is being censored in this way.
Thanks for pointing me to the new official forums. I didn't know about that and it makes most, if not all, of what I was saying irrelevant. Apologies, I will go take a look over there.
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Not sure what to think, as I wasn't party to the conversations you've had. I don't see the problems in the forum. Is it being killed off? Less participation?
So now you want to create a pro forum. Who will be allowed in? On what criteria? Why does it have to be restricted? Are the newbies and hobbyists a problem?
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Richard said: Where's all these locked areas you mention?"
This is what I'm talking about:
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They aren't locked. They are the parent container for those sub forums.
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You're kidding me? For years I've not had access to SketchyPhysics because I thought I had to pay for it.
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Do you know where the D'oh thread is.
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@rob d said:
For a long time this forum has been the Quasi official one, and as such I just don't like that it's monetized in the way it is, and censored in the way it is.
You're mixing things up...
Even back when Coen was in charge, SCF needed an income...If Google and subsequently Trimble had sponsored SCF, I'm sure they wouldn't need to care too much about people advertising for various products...
On the other hand... If Google or Trimble were sponsors of this community, SCF couldn't claim the independence they can today...However, since SCF is a privately held community and independent from Trimble, they do need an income...
There's plenty of volunteers here, who contribute and keep this place a great place to be a member of - and they all do it without any monetary incentives...This community have expanded a lot over the years and with such a huge member base, it's not cheap...
I don't even want to guess or estimate what the expenses are for hosting this community, but I'm certain it isn't cheap, hence an even greater need to have an income...@rob d said:
Just because Sketchucation is selling its own books doesn't mean other authors can't say "Hey, here's my book. Please tell me what you think".
As far as I can see from the June newsletter as well as from the link in your signature, you can't be seriously claiming that SCF is squeezing you like a simple man...
From where I stand it looks like you're getting far more promotion than anybody else...!!
@rob d said:
You don't squash people who mention rendering software or paid collections of trees, so why squash me when I mention an update to my book?
Once again you're mixing things up...
Please tell me why you should have free advertising, while others have to pay for it...?!?
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@rob d said:
You're kidding me? For years I've not had access to SketchyPhysics because I thought I had to pay for it.
You're joking - right...
Then you shouldn't have access to the Plugin section as well...
If you can see it - you have access...
"Secret" sections are only visible for users who have been appointed to them...
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Thanks for seeing it as it is Fred.
Now I need to go to the shop in my Lamborghini to get some caviar and champagne.
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Did you get the unicorn leather upholstery for the Lamborghini Rich? Apparently twins vomit will make it supple and shine.
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It has everything you can imagine and whatever else you can dream of/up.
Sent from my
iPhone 9 -
Well, I assumed that the lock icons were part of the premium membership. Simple assumption to make though ultimately the wrong one. Were these lock icons never part of the premium package? I remember questioning it at the time and didn't get an answer to suggest they were anything else. See http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15%26amp;t=55831
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Looks like you got some good answers there, but perhaps it was assumed you were asking about the Premium forums.
When the question was asked specifically it was answered in this thread. http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=179%26amp;t=58570%26amp;p=533007%26amp;hilit=forum+locked#p533007
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