How to handle raytracing discussion while it's platform specific to nVidia

"Conspiracy theories"? What exactly do you mean is theoretical here? That these companies exist? That their services are bought by, for instance, Nvidia?
Why would Rys involvement in any way imply that individuals with such influencing agendas cannot register here? I never questioned the moderators, why do you make that implication?
As per your original post:
There isn't? How can you tell? I sure can't. We know that these kind of promotion services are supplied and taken advantage of, so why would you assume that Beyond3D forums would be exempt?
I wasn't sure how to interpret this, it is likely how I'm reading it, but it came across to me as though you write that the forum (ownership) was influenced by corporate interests (AMD) and thus the behaviour of the mods were against Nvidia. Of which I said conspiracy theories are a terrible way to live throughout life. I've no doubt that there could be paid influencers on this forum or others and that's something as long as they are respectful and not purposefully trying to mislead people, I'm generally okay with. I think I had an issue with saying the operations of the board was under purchased influence, which you didn't imply directly, but following the thread along, I assumed you were aligned with that line of reasoning another poster suggested.
 
"Conspiracy theories"? What exactly do you mean is theoretical here? That these companies exist? That their services are bought by, for instance, Nvidia?
Why would Rys involvement in any way imply that individuals with such influencing agendas cannot register here? I never questioned the moderators, why do you make that implication?

The problem is that there is a wide grey scale ranging from dispassionate intellectual discourse via fanboyism to paid shilling. Differentiating between variants is not necessarily easy. When it comes to Nvidias RTX, this is further complicated by individuals that might be general technology enthusiasts that are excited that something graspably new is offered. So is someone who is bullish on RT an Nvidia fanboy, a paid shill, a tech enthusiast or someone who actually know what they are talking about and and believe in the technology?
The moderators will have to sort that out, but I'll submit that people who are aggressive simply make people leave the forums, rather than drive them to talk to the moderators. People with jobs, families, responsibilities in life, do not necessarily have the energy and time to prioritise these forums if the environment becomes too strident.

It's not a trivial problem. I've seen more than one qualified open forum retreat behind invitation walls, because the ones contributing signal simply got fed up with the noise. Or more typically loose their best contributors and deteriorate into irrelevance.
Rys and moderators have to be in agreement about what they want with these forums, and act accordingly.


Generally, enthusiasm isn't a problem. Not being able to handle when other people are critical of the thing one is enthusiastic about or when they just aren't as enthusiastic as one is, is a problem though. To be fair, negativity based on the company/person behind the thing instead of evaluating on the merits of the thing itself is also a problem.
 
I wasn't sure how to interpret this, it is likely how I'm reading it, but it came across to me as though you write that the forum (ownership) was influenced by corporate interests (AMD) and thus the behaviour of the mods were against Nvidia.

I'll admit I'm against nVidia, but if you were to put that statement on a logical venn diagram, that doesn't mean I'm only against them.

You probably know by now from my rants on just about everything. :yes: I just don't care enough to make a big deal of it on the forums because it's unproductive being a troll to strangers and being cynical about just about every company. :V

Besides, you'll be the lucky one to see a snarky post before it mysteriously vani- NEVER EXISTED YOU (7^3)i APOLOGIST. :V
 
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I'll admit I'm against nVidia
lol, how is that 1070 GTX performing in gears of war 4 for you again?

You probably know by now from my rants on just about everything
lol indeed. Let's continue playing that alpha title that should never had released with 2 enemy types, one of which the snakes don't even move. hahahah, mind you I never suggested ever playing brie of cheese.

but i digress, everyone should be completely guilt free to rant and rave despite about any topic, even if they are vested/not vested in it, otherwise there wouldn't be any sort of discussion at all.
 
I dont either agree on nvidia's pricing stretegy, it would be a good thing if AMD and possibly Intel could compete on all levels and have matching tech so that pricing can be on more normal levels. On the other hand without nvidia we might not see this much improvements in GPU space. One could blame the lack of competition from AMD/Intel etc for Nvidias monopoly.
 
lol, how is that 1070 GTX performing in gears of war 4 for you again?

You mean the one that has BSOD'd on me several times because Unreal Engine is shit, nVidia can't be arsed to fix it, and the developers are too busy trying to do Zod-only-knows-what in the dregs of a gloomy-ass city that can't handle the zod-awful foreign house buyers ruining local prices for everyone, and I have a lack of options because AMD has an Ancient technology that even Dr. Jackson wouldn't want because it's uncompetitive and serves to add to climate change and leads to uncompetitive pricing because capitalism to feed JHH's wardrobe and crop circles :?:

Indeed.

This is fine.

At least with Nintendo, there isn't anything shady about their cost-efficiency-first approach to HW in order to supply foam-frothing fans of the 30th Mario title, and if you complain about the HW, you're just some conservative self-serving hypocrite hoping for a bailout as they realize there is in fact no ingenious 4th dimensional chess solution for a rhyme to "orange", or in tl;dr, a short-sighted idiot.

Come at me lib-bro.

:V

Maybe I should change my name to Al B.Ran Ting like some Carmen Sandiego villain.ninja.gif

One of you might die of an aneurysm after reading this, and that's okay because you probably fought like a cow and that means it was just mad cow disease and your best friend forever was a chauvinistic pig, and in this Circus of Values nothing significant would be lost. :mrgreen:

Breathe.
 
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You mean the one that has BSOD'd on me several times because Unreal Engine is shit, nVidia can't be arsed to fix it, and the developers are too busy trying to do Zod-only-knows-what in the dregs of a gloomy-ass city that can't handle the zod-awful foreign house buyers ruining local prices for everyone, and I have a lack of options because AMD has an Ancient technology that even Dr. Jackson wouldn't want because it's uncompetitive and serves to add to climate change and leads to uncompetitive pricing because capitalism to feed JHH's wardrobe and crop circles :?:

Indeed.

This is fine.

At least with Nintendo, there isn't anything shady about their cost-efficiency-first approach to HW in order to supply foam-frothing fans of the 30th Mario title, and if you complain about the HW, you're just some conservative self-serving hypocrite hoping for a bailout as they realize there is in fact no ingenious 4th dimensional chess solution for a rhyme to "orange", or in tl;dr, a short-sighted idiot.

Come at me lib-bro.

:V

Maybe I should change my name to Al B.Ran Ting like some Carmen Sandiego villain.View attachment 2803

One of you might die of an aneurysm after reading this, and that's okay. o_O
Aaaaaaaand there goes my like just because of your Carmen Sandiego reference. ;-)
 
Since it has come up a couple of times in this thread, I thought I'd talk about where the money to run Beyond3D comes from, who runs it, and my involvement in moderation and how the forums are practically managed on a day-to-day basis.

First, the money and who runs it. Beyond3D is technically paid for by my company (GPU Tools Ltd), is completely advertising-free, and doesn't take any corporate sponsorship of any kind. The primary income that my company uses to pay for things comes from forum users in the form of subscriptions and donations, so the costs are covered by those of you kind enough to chip in. That said, biggest financial contributor is actually me, as part of my covenant as Beyond3D's owner and admin to keep the lights on for you all. Without my personal contribution as a subscriber, the Beyond3D costs to my business mean it would operate at a loss. My business pays me nothing to run or maintain it.

As for who else runs it with me, it's actually just me in my spare time. I do everything to keep the site on the Internet, from platform maintenance (host and hypervisor + VMs) to the software infrastructure and keeping it patched and up-to-date and your data safe, to the backup system, DNS, and everything else. Basically anything between your browser and Beyond3D's servers is looked after by me and me alone, and I spend ~10-20 hours a month on it in my spare time (so for free), usually very early in my morning when it's quiet and least distruptive to you all posting.

As for moderation, the team take care of that with zero input from me since I joined AMD RTG. When I joined RTG and figured out what I'd be involved in and doing for them, I took the decision not to moderate the forums any more (bar approving new account signups that get caught in the filter sometimes, when I happen to login and there's one or two to look at). The team are excellent at what they do, looking after things on your behalf without getting paid. They do it for free because they love the forums and the discussion, and they do it without any guidance from me in the last 20 months or so.

With that out of the way, here's my personal input to this thread's core topic — the difficulty of moderating polarised threads like those on PC raytracing — it's all covered by the Terms of Service and Rules. If you haven't read them before, please do. I wrote them to be nice and simple and easy to understand, with one core message: just be nice to each other.

Technical discussion on topics you don't have all of the facts to hand on are fun and why we're all here, but they can be difficult and emotional and polarising and full of opinion. So, take a breath, remember that there's a human behind the others keyboards taking part in the discussion, and be nice to each other. Even if you think the other person is so dead wrong that you can't even understand their position. Take the time to try and understand any opposing point of view, and debate it.

Graphics should be fun to discuss, in all its forms.

Anyway, hope the above clears up any weird hint that there's a monetary aspect to anything going on here, or that money somehow drives moderation. There's none of that. If you do donate (thank you if you do!) it just makes it less expensive for me to run. But even if none of you donated or subscribed then I'd still pay for absolutely everything as per my promise to you all when I entered the industry, I'd still do the hours each month to keep things secure, fast and online, and I'd continue to stay out of the moderation decisions completely and leave that to Shifty and the team.

Oh, and my employers have had absolutely no say in what happens here, and have no behind the scenes access of any kind. That was hopefully completely clear to everyone the whole time I've been employed in the industry (both at PowerVR and now at AMD), but just in case anyone wasn't clear.
 
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I'd just like to say that the suggestion from Shifty on the moderators forum is an overreaction. Also I think Rys should probably add the moderator and staff forum to exclude in similarthreadplus.
 
Forge a thousand scythes from the banhammer, reap half the forum posters. Never look back. Never argue with rules lawyers. Implement the spirit of the law, freely. Start by banning the top 100 ignored users.
 
Well Al or Brit also spent the time to remove a lot of the OT crap and reboot the existing threads. But yeah, one personality was able to significantly impact the shape the whole feel of the discussion. As a mod I've always tried to give people chances to turn around, and as a team we're mostly against major bans, but I recognise the importance now of tough-love moderation for the good of the forum and some characters clearly don't fit in and it's better to axe them as soon as that's apparent.
 
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