Forum biases

[Smurfie]

I came as a new member to Beyond3d as it was recommended by a fellow coder that this was a great place to read up on people's opinions about 3d card architectures and its good/bad points. This forum was also touted as a totally unbiased forum, where the people are supposedly level headed and fanboys are not tolerated. Initially, I read some good threads, but there were also some bad postings, which I took it as part of forum postings. My initial impressions were that this was a good forum.

After a few weeks as a forum member, I am beginning to seriously question this forum as an unbiased forum. My work does involve 3d programming, and our company has benefitted tremendously from Nvidia and 3dlabs support. Unfortunately, coming to this site, I would get the impression that Nvidia is the devil. What is with the fanboyism?

It appears that it is the right thing to support ATI, and also the right thing to put down Nvidia. Recently, Nvidia has done many things right, while ATI has stumbled a little. Yet this seems to stroke the ire of the forum posters here to new heights in defending their favorite red logo. I cannot believe the lengths by which many people go to defend their logo, and yet at the same time claim to be totally unbiased. This is the common slogan they often wave. "I am unbiased and anybody can see that you are biased" is the statement often heard, when the victim supposedly spouts some pro-Nvidia statement.

Now, before you flame me, I'm not some Nvidia fanatic. I was a happy Radeon 9600 user till City of Heroes refused to run with my 9600. My recent Leadtek A400 purchase allows me to enjoy my current favorite game again with good framerates. Am I a Nvidia fanboy?

In reflection, I still think this forum has good tidbits to offer. It is quick on the latest news, and I do enjoy reading those news. But would I recommend this forum to anyone as an unbiased site? Sorry, the answer is an emphatic no.

[bloodbob]

Okay these are my opinions I have NOTHING to do with running the board but since you are making the generalisation that the board is biased that reflection me. ( unfortunatly my actions can also effect the board so feel free to delete this post ).

Well exactly how do you think biasness should be treated? immediate ban? who is going to decided what is biased because those people themself could be biased could they not?

I fail to see how anyone can say any forum is unbiased as their are lots of individuals who are biased I'd like to think that anyone who says stuff the is totally and utter crap will be shot down by the people are baised the other way.

My work does involve 3d programming, and our company has benefited tremendously from Nvidia and 3dlabs support.

Now unfortunately things like this can lead to things like this

I was a happy Radeon 9600 user till City of Heroes refused to run with my 9600.

It is well known that nvidia does work with atleast one publisher to actually add bugs into games on competing hardware this sort of thing is why people give nvidia a bad name but ati is no damn saint either in my opinion. Though seeing as your company is also working with 3dlabs I'm gonna assume your company is open minded and are prepared to make their products work on a wide variety of hardware platforms.

But would I recommend this forum to anyone as an unbiased site?

Now why are judging www.beyond3d.com as biased just because some of the user on the board are biased? I don't think its fair to judge the content of a website based on opinon what idiots like me post in their forums.

[london-boy]

Beyond3d.com as a website/forum cannot be 100% responsible for each and everyone of the people posting on it. If someone is biased/troll/whatever, then there isn't much the owners of the site can do, other than ban them. In the end, this is a forum. It's a medium to show normal people's opinions. It does not convey an idea on the "maturity" or "unbiaseness" of the website itself.

And i must say, as a forum, this is the best i've ever been in, that's why i post so much in here.

[Smurfie]

Our platform of choice are the 3dlabs cards. I am not sure what is in our CAD machines currently, but we are still waiting for P10 samples.

Now, I won't know about developers intentionally putting in bugs to cripple another's hardware. It sounds unprofessional, and actually is a minus against the developer, not Nvidia. In my view as a coder, I won't go with introducing bugs which will cripple a competitor's hardware, because doing so, is a stain in my record as a programmer.

On the other hand, think of it another way. If hardware works correctly, how does code which work in 1 hardware, become bugs in another? Isn't it the hardware's fault that the code is buggy? If it works and renders correctly in 1 hardware, and fails in another, it's a hardware bug in my book, which in my company, we will log against the hardware vendor.

In terms of support, I have nothing but praises for 3dlabs and Nvidia. Seriously, their support has been great. I will not speak of ATI's support. Now, think this way. Sometimes, we run into obstacles or coding blocks which we can't quite figure out or run optimally. Where can we go for help? One is fellow programmers. Another is information sites such as Beyond3D. Last will be software or hardware vendor support. Supposing we often have 3d problems, and we don't get help elsewhere, and a particular vendor helps with the solution. If this happens often enough, are we suddenly that particular vendor's lackeys? Don't you think that with enough support from a particular vendor, our implementation might favor that particular vendor?


Now, I apologize if I might have come across harshly in my opening post. Reading it over, I did think I was showing my frustration too much. But to put you in my shoes, this was what we were up to. Our CAD work depends more on triangle and vertex calculations, rather than texture filling. Our recent work is taxing our hardware, and the current financial situation needs us to save money. Professional 3d cards are expensive. Anyone who has tried to buy a Quadro will know this. On the other hand, we have experimented successfully with Geforce 4s for our work, and although not optimal(We think this suboptimal performance is psychological), it does work. Beyond3D is supposed to be a fair and unbiased site, so this was naturally one of the sites I visited to do some data mining. I wanted to know more about the new offerings(ie X800 and Geforce 6800) and perhaps I can get my manager to consider one of these new cards. And guess what? I can hardly find anything that describes the cards capabilities well. The 3d technologies and architectures forum is drowning so deep in noise and fanboyism, I wasted a whole lot of time and got nothing. But the recurring pattern I did notice is, ATI is best, Nvidia isn't. Professing otherwise, is to invite noise(I can name one Nvidia nutcase though). That definitely frustrated me, and led to the opening post.


So what did I expect? I came into this forum expecting to find good information on 3d cards. It was touted as unbiased, and I naturally expected it to be unbiased. Since I expected it to be unbiased, I would assume that the admins or mods will frown or clamp down on extreme biases. This definitely isn't the case. Fanboys from both ATI and Nvidia camps are free to wail at each other, with the ATI camp apparently louder with larger banners. It would have been fine with me, if it was factual, but unfortunately, it isn't, rather it is nothing but noise. I need information, not noise. Going on like this, will definitely be bad for this forum's reputation, and possibly, this site's.

[Dave Baumann]

I will not speak of ATI's support. Now, think this way. Sometimes, we run into obstacles or coding blocks which we can't quite figure out or run optimally. Where can we go for help?

If you are based in Europe, have you tried contacting Richard Huddy / Code Mafia? If you need something specific for the workstation side I can provide you with the email address for the guy in charge of the group - he'd be able to point you in the right direction.

Beyond3D is supposed to be a fair and unbiased site, so this was naturally one of the sites I visited to do some data mining. I wanted to know more about the new offerings(ie X800 and Geforce 6800) and perhaps I can get my manager to consider one of these new cards. And guess what? I can hardly find anything that describes the cards capabilities well

Ummmm, forums are never really a good place for getting specific answers from general reading. Instead, start here:

ATI Radeon X800 Review (http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r420_x800/)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Review (http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/nv40/)

Then ask specific questions in the forum, you are far more likely to get a response focussed on your specific questions than just wading through general threads.

I need information, not noise. Going on like this, will definitely be bad for this forum's reputation, and possibly, this site's.

We've always had a fairly open policy on posting here and generally we hope that our readers would have enough maturity to know the lines - sadly this is not always the case, especially during pre-release "hype" periods where the quotient of fan-boys spikes considerably. Post release this tends to ebb off somewhat and the signal to noise ratio usually gets a little better.

But again, ask specific questions and you are more likely to be rewarded with the types of answers you want. Contribute yourself with valid views to assist in the signal to noise ratio.

[Reverend]

"Bias-ness", "fanboyism" will always exists in our forums. That hasn't stopped other great minds (besides yourself) like Simon Finney, Marco (MfA) and a host of others from visiting our forums every day and be able to participate in threads they like.

Asking us (B3D staff) to be ultra strict with "fanboys" is an impossibility, I'm afraid -- hey, they do contribute to our ad revenues, y'know ;) :)

[Dio]

On the other hand, think of it another way. If hardware works correctly, how does code which work in 1 hardware, become bugs in another? Isn't it the hardware's fault that the code is buggy? If it works and renders correctly in 1 hardware, and fails in another, it's a hardware bug in my book, which in my company, we will log against the hardware vendor.
If only this were true!

In the early days of 3D cards, one card played notoriously fast and loose with the DirectX specification. The result? The other card manufacturers ended up having to reproduce both driver and hardware bugs in their drivers and hardware exactly because of this view.

Manufacturers lose the #1 spot and fade... and another takes over and exactly the same thing happens again. And rinse and repeat. Refrast has tightened up the worst of this (the actual hardware inconsistencies - they were by far the biggest nightmare) but it's still a pain.

Another irritating class of bug - I saw one of these just a couple of months ago - is when some behaviour is specified as 'undefined' in a spec but developers make use of it deliberately or just don't notice. Then the undefined behaviour ends up having to stay for life - or be app-detected.

Raymond Chen's blog The Old New Thing (http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/) often gives similar anecdotes from the Microsoft point of view. His occasional justified rants about people not appreciating the amount of effort Microsoft put into backwards compatibility strike a real chord with anyone in the 3D industry. Well worth a read.

[jvd]

I'm waiting for my fav company to put out a card so i can become a fanboy . Or at least be called it for actually being one .

That word gets throw around way to much. Esp when its used to defend a persons views .

If i say something that someone doesn't like i allways get hit with the your a fan boy or your bias .

it gets old

[london-boy]

I'm waiting for my fav company to put out a card so i can become a <bleep> . Or at least be called it for actually being one .

That word gets throw around way to much. Esp when its used to defend a persons views .

If i say something that someone doesn't like i allways get hit with the your a fan boy or your bias .

it gets old

Let me guess.... PVR....?

[PatrickL]

Just would add one thing, and i dont talk about you smurfie as you just started to post here :wink:
It is not because someone is a delopper/coder (or pretend to be one) that he is immune to bias. Part of the problem recently is that some of theses supposed more knowledgeable people failed to stay neutral and stay on the technical side.

[Briareus]

Asking us (B3D staff) to be ultra strict with "fanboys" is an impossibility, I'm afraid -- hey, they do contribute to our ad revenues, y'know ;) :)

I believe people also lose interest if a forum is overly biased/has too many fanboys. Having been a reader for sometime now I can say there are times I don't visit B3d just because I don't feel like sorting through all the useless chatter and name calling. I have been a member of several forums where the biases and flame wars eventually caused good sites to disintegrate and the forums where either shutdown or 90% of the quality users were driven away.

I think it would be a benefit to B3d if some of the more over the top fanboys get restrained. I think even if people have their biases most can carry on an intelligent conversation. It is only when someone posts a zinger that everyone goes for their knives.

[pat777]

Maybe this forum needs 4x anti-biasing.

[digitalwanderer]

Personally I don't think I'm at all biased.

Opionated as hell, yes; biased, no. ;)

[pat777]

I'd admit I can be biased towards nVIDIA sometimes like in my new signature.

[Reverend]

I think it would be a benefit to B3d if some of the more over the top fanboys get restrained.
Well then, I suppose we should all be glad Doomtrooper and Hellbinder don't post very often nowadays, yes?

[digitalwanderer]

Well then, I suppose we should all be glad Doomtrooper and Hellbinder don't post very often nowadays, yes?
I dunno, Doomtrooper was alright....and I Must Admit that I Really Sort of Miss Hellbinder at Times Too. ;)

[K.I.L.E.R]

I think it would be a benefit to B3d if some of the more over the top fanboys get restrained.
Well then, I suppose we should all be glad Doomtrooper and Hellbinder don't post very often nowadays, yes?

I hope you don't hold the same opinion about me.

Why am I turning your post into a post about me? I believe I'm the centre of the universe, that's why.

[Quitch]

I think the term "fanboy" (which I'm sad to see now appears to be filtered out, something I hope which isn't a worrying indication of a policy shift) and "bias" are thrown around far too easily, especially against some people who just lack the technical knowledge to fully put their point across. Often, it is the people stepping in who cause the problem by resorting to name calling against someone who posted, and stuck by for a post or two, something that was false simply because they thought it was true.

Often it can be hard to keep up with all the developments, and name calling doesn't help anyone. As with any launch people got over excited, and some people do favour one company more than another, but that's more to do with past behaviour than anything else, and often changes over time as many of ATIs fans now were nVidia fans not that long ago, and visa versa. The people who get more het up about bias are those who have an opposing bias.

I don't think you'll find a better source of 3D know-how than at Beyond3D. That there is a noise ratio is almost reassuring, it shows that some non-techie types are hanging around. Sure, not everything we post may be pure technical gold, but we do our best, and we're as much a part of the community regardless of our knowledge.

Where appropriate, moderators have stepped in, and I like the fairly liberal guidelines that Beyond3D operates under. Often topics get themselves back on course, or find a new and interesting route to take. It also allows for endless teasing from Dave.

You also need to be careful about blaming an IHV for bugs. Just look at NWN performance. ATI took flak for that, until it turned out it was Bioware's fault. That's not always the case (the rabid reaction to Valve saying that HL2 wasn't going to run that great on GeForce 5xxx FX hardware for one), but history shows that it tends to be IHVs, and not developers, who cop the blame for bugs.

[Dave Baumann]

The word has been filtered since phpBB 2.0 was installed.

[K.I.L.E.R]

The word has been filtered since phpBB 2.0 was installed.

Does it have anything to do with me?
SIlly question, everything has to do with me. :)

[ChrisRay]

The word has been filtered since phpBB 2.0 was installed.

Does it have anything to do with me?
SIlly question, everything has to do with me. :)

I woke up today, Brushed my teeth and took a shower. It really didnt have anything to do with you though.


I promise...

[london-boy]

The word has been filtered since phpBB 2.0 was installed.

Does it have anything to do with me?
SIlly question, everything has to do with me. :)

I woke up today, Brushed my teeth and took a shower. It really didnt have anything to do with you though.


I promise...

I had a crap today, and it made me think about KILER. Hope that makes you feel better. People think about you, KILER. We care!

[Quitch]

The word has been filtered since phpBB 2.0 was installed.

Good Lord, why? It just gets spelt with an i instead.

[Deepak]

You should visit console forum... :wink: . On serious note I am surprised (read shocked) how calm it has become now. All discussions are now done peacefully in a civilized way. No more gureilla fights. :cry:

[rabidrabbit]

I think it would be a benefit to B3d if some of the more over the top fanboys get restrained.
Well then, I suppose we should all be glad Doomtrooper and Hellbinder don't post very often nowadays, yes?

I hope you don't hold the same opinion about me.

Why am I turning your post into a post about me? I believe I'm the centre of the universe, that's why.

You are the centre of the universe.
Everybody and everything is, because universe is infinite and not a 2D plane. It's like you are also the centre of the world, because earth is round.

Edit: I think a bigger problem than funbois is the constant off-topic postings.