Hello again, friends of graphics, games, semiconductors and the merry world of high technology. A few days ago we took the decision to make the forums read only, effectively closing them, and I wanted to explain why we did that, why we've decided to reopen give it another go, and hopefully address some of the feedback we've had since we decided to go read-only. Some people don't really understand why we did it, and knowing why might help with how things go in the future.
Fair warning: this'll be an essay, as is usual for me. Please have a go getting to the end if you can.
You might remember, following the closure of the Architecture and Products sub-forum for a while last year, that we wanted to reopen it with some new guidelines for that sub-forum, recruit some new moderators to help put those new guidelines into play, and have another bash at it all. We published a draft of the new guidelines for A+P and wrote some new rules for the forums at large, and there was some good discussion on that side of things. They (hopefully!) made it clear what kind of posting culture, for want of a better word, we were looking for going forwards.
It was one that harked back to the Beyond3D of the late '90s and early noughts, where discussion was a lot more positive, more exciting, more full of wonder at what the world of real-time graphics acceleration might be like and what it might do for games and more, and more respectful of each other as humans and people. As we wrote back then, there's no reason for what we talk about here to be negative, angry, disrespectful, and where the discussion doesn't go anywhere or improve anyone's understanding of it.
Ultimately we want discussing graphics, games, semiconductors and the other things we touch on here to be fun to discuss and positive overall. There is so much that's negative and bad out there in the world, often just forced on us all whether we like it or not, that we don't need it here at Beyond3D and we actively want to avoid it as much as possible.
That gets to the crux of why we closed it. Many of the moderators have also been posters here for around 20 years, and some have been moderators for about that long too. It's a tiny team, only a small handful really active (God bless you, Shifty!), and I think it's worth pointing out what it's like sometimes for us to do that job over so long a time period. A moderator's job when they first open the tab again is to see what's been reported by the users, take care of the reports, and then take a general look at the threads and read them to see what might need looking at that hasn't been reported. Not everything gets flagged up.
That means that first interaction, before doing any posting of our own, is usually just negative, either dealing with the post reports (many of which are just baseless, with users upset that their favourite thing isn't someone else's favourite thing), or cleaning up what wasn't reported. Over a long enough timescale of having to do that every time you look, that can get to be too much, so you back away from doing it slowly but surely.
For me personally, not speaking for anyone else now, it really affected my mental health. I love Beyond3D. It's been one of the biggest pleasures of my life to keep it online, fast and usable for everyone. It was an even bigger pleasure to write for it after Wavey decided to hop over the fence to go make the things he loved to write about. That directly led to the incredible privilege of being able to do that myself, making a career out of helping to design, debug, optimise and ship graphics hardware and software technology in many forms.
Behold, a small brass trumpet. I've helped ship many GPUs or GPU IPs in my time, some of them into the most successful consumer electronics devices of all time. I've worked with dozens of talented game developers to optimise their amazing games, and helped my employers and those games developers to create graphics technologies to make those games as great to experience as possible. It's been the career I always dreamed I'd have, and Beyond3D helped get that for me. Wavey and I aren't alone in that. I know many people whose time on the forums, reading and contributing, especially back in the early days, helped them get the jobs and careers they have now.
So to love it so much, and owe it so much, means that the slow drip of negative interactions and the more sour and argumentative sentiment that's spread has been really hard to cope with. In recent years I've actively avoided even opening the tab because ultimately it just made me sad. I know that's the same for BRiT. So over the last few years we've discussed what to do.
We decided we wanted to get more help, to refresh things and keep it going and try and turn it around a bit, but the getting help bit has been tough. We wanted people to step forwards, rather than us ask, but we did do a bit of asking here and there behind the scenes to gauge interest and gently encourage. One of the themes of those discussions was folks asking if moderating maybe takes some of the love away from just being a poster. Yep. Yep yep yeppity yeppers.
And then even after the draft guidelines were published, which (hopefully) made it clear what we were looking for, the negativity carried on pretty much like nothing had happened or might happen in the future to curb it. That was hard.
So the effort just ground to a halt and eventually we fully noped out. It's my fault for not saying something, especially since we had timelines for reopening last year which I pretty much just ignored. I apologise for that. Hopefully the rambling above helps frame why, but I'm sorry nonetheless.
So now what?
Obviously you can see the forums are open again and you can post. If that's not obvious, they're open again and you can post. Go on, make a post. It'll feel really good. We (at least me, BRiT needs to work that out for himself still) want to have another go at it all.
There are new guidelines in play for A+P, and the site guidelines as a whole have been updated. They're just the state of the drafts we had at discussion time last year, and are still open to evolve as we put them in play. Because they'll take some adjustment, to both mods and posters, we'll allow for some time to make it on both sides.
I'm sorry to bang on about this next bit so much, but it's really important: the overarching things we want here are for everyone to have fun, positivity and respect for each other. Remembering that people with feelings are behind the handles we all use, and you don't know what's going on in their lives in the world around them. Please (and I'm begging now, because it's for my own benefit in small part) don't make anyone's day worse. That has to be paramount now.
As for the topics, we want a bit more depth in the more technical discussions so they can move forwards with a strong signal:noise ratio and be helpful for anyone that reads them or takes part to create them. If what you have to say is going to drop the ratio, please rethink it or maybe don't hit Post Reply at all. We also might make some changes to the structure and how things work outside of A+P as well, to help.
We will be making more use of the moderations tools at hand, including thread holidays, and full-forum holidays and permanent stoppages. We're happy to discuss any of that if it happens to you, as always.
And then the last thing before I wrap it up, on moderators to do the above. We still do need more help. We've discussed that with a handful of people already that actively want to help. We've said yes to a few of you and already added you to the roster. There won't be a mandatory Discord account needed to be a moderator, like we suggested last year, if you don't want to use it, but it'll be very helpful for more immediate actions or decision making.
We'll be actively asking people to help now, but if you want to join the moderator team ahead of being asked then let me know in a DM, and if we turn you down, please don't take it personally. Moderators that work for graphics hardware companies and games developers will be very welcome, if you're able, to bolster the ranks with subject matter experts that are in the field and can see things from a wider perspective.
Wrap up time. Thanks for getting this far, I love you heaps if you did. Hopefully the above helps you understand why we did what we did, and why it was a bit out of the blue and maybe difficult to wrap your head around. The response has been pretty overwhelming. The comments, both positive and negative, have helped me reflect a lot on what Beyond3D is, what it means to me, what it hopefully means to you all, and get the energy to reopen.
To those that asked to buy it, thanks, but it's not that kind of place. We don't have ads, and it shouldn't be business or part of someone's portfolio or anything like that. It's just a cool place for nerds to hang out and talk about graphics, games and tech, all hopefully fun and positive and more full of wonder and excitement again going forwards.
Feel free to talk about any of the above in any way that matters to you.
Fair warning: this'll be an essay, as is usual for me. Please have a go getting to the end if you can.
You might remember, following the closure of the Architecture and Products sub-forum for a while last year, that we wanted to reopen it with some new guidelines for that sub-forum, recruit some new moderators to help put those new guidelines into play, and have another bash at it all. We published a draft of the new guidelines for A+P and wrote some new rules for the forums at large, and there was some good discussion on that side of things. They (hopefully!) made it clear what kind of posting culture, for want of a better word, we were looking for going forwards.
It was one that harked back to the Beyond3D of the late '90s and early noughts, where discussion was a lot more positive, more exciting, more full of wonder at what the world of real-time graphics acceleration might be like and what it might do for games and more, and more respectful of each other as humans and people. As we wrote back then, there's no reason for what we talk about here to be negative, angry, disrespectful, and where the discussion doesn't go anywhere or improve anyone's understanding of it.
Ultimately we want discussing graphics, games, semiconductors and the other things we touch on here to be fun to discuss and positive overall. There is so much that's negative and bad out there in the world, often just forced on us all whether we like it or not, that we don't need it here at Beyond3D and we actively want to avoid it as much as possible.
That gets to the crux of why we closed it. Many of the moderators have also been posters here for around 20 years, and some have been moderators for about that long too. It's a tiny team, only a small handful really active (God bless you, Shifty!), and I think it's worth pointing out what it's like sometimes for us to do that job over so long a time period. A moderator's job when they first open the tab again is to see what's been reported by the users, take care of the reports, and then take a general look at the threads and read them to see what might need looking at that hasn't been reported. Not everything gets flagged up.
That means that first interaction, before doing any posting of our own, is usually just negative, either dealing with the post reports (many of which are just baseless, with users upset that their favourite thing isn't someone else's favourite thing), or cleaning up what wasn't reported. Over a long enough timescale of having to do that every time you look, that can get to be too much, so you back away from doing it slowly but surely.
For me personally, not speaking for anyone else now, it really affected my mental health. I love Beyond3D. It's been one of the biggest pleasures of my life to keep it online, fast and usable for everyone. It was an even bigger pleasure to write for it after Wavey decided to hop over the fence to go make the things he loved to write about. That directly led to the incredible privilege of being able to do that myself, making a career out of helping to design, debug, optimise and ship graphics hardware and software technology in many forms.
Behold, a small brass trumpet. I've helped ship many GPUs or GPU IPs in my time, some of them into the most successful consumer electronics devices of all time. I've worked with dozens of talented game developers to optimise their amazing games, and helped my employers and those games developers to create graphics technologies to make those games as great to experience as possible. It's been the career I always dreamed I'd have, and Beyond3D helped get that for me. Wavey and I aren't alone in that. I know many people whose time on the forums, reading and contributing, especially back in the early days, helped them get the jobs and careers they have now.
So to love it so much, and owe it so much, means that the slow drip of negative interactions and the more sour and argumentative sentiment that's spread has been really hard to cope with. In recent years I've actively avoided even opening the tab because ultimately it just made me sad. I know that's the same for BRiT. So over the last few years we've discussed what to do.
We decided we wanted to get more help, to refresh things and keep it going and try and turn it around a bit, but the getting help bit has been tough. We wanted people to step forwards, rather than us ask, but we did do a bit of asking here and there behind the scenes to gauge interest and gently encourage. One of the themes of those discussions was folks asking if moderating maybe takes some of the love away from just being a poster. Yep. Yep yep yeppity yeppers.
And then even after the draft guidelines were published, which (hopefully) made it clear what we were looking for, the negativity carried on pretty much like nothing had happened or might happen in the future to curb it. That was hard.
So the effort just ground to a halt and eventually we fully noped out. It's my fault for not saying something, especially since we had timelines for reopening last year which I pretty much just ignored. I apologise for that. Hopefully the rambling above helps frame why, but I'm sorry nonetheless.
So now what?
Obviously you can see the forums are open again and you can post. If that's not obvious, they're open again and you can post. Go on, make a post. It'll feel really good. We (at least me, BRiT needs to work that out for himself still) want to have another go at it all.
There are new guidelines in play for A+P, and the site guidelines as a whole have been updated. They're just the state of the drafts we had at discussion time last year, and are still open to evolve as we put them in play. Because they'll take some adjustment, to both mods and posters, we'll allow for some time to make it on both sides.
I'm sorry to bang on about this next bit so much, but it's really important: the overarching things we want here are for everyone to have fun, positivity and respect for each other. Remembering that people with feelings are behind the handles we all use, and you don't know what's going on in their lives in the world around them. Please (and I'm begging now, because it's for my own benefit in small part) don't make anyone's day worse. That has to be paramount now.
As for the topics, we want a bit more depth in the more technical discussions so they can move forwards with a strong signal:noise ratio and be helpful for anyone that reads them or takes part to create them. If what you have to say is going to drop the ratio, please rethink it or maybe don't hit Post Reply at all. We also might make some changes to the structure and how things work outside of A+P as well, to help.
We will be making more use of the moderations tools at hand, including thread holidays, and full-forum holidays and permanent stoppages. We're happy to discuss any of that if it happens to you, as always.
And then the last thing before I wrap it up, on moderators to do the above. We still do need more help. We've discussed that with a handful of people already that actively want to help. We've said yes to a few of you and already added you to the roster. There won't be a mandatory Discord account needed to be a moderator, like we suggested last year, if you don't want to use it, but it'll be very helpful for more immediate actions or decision making.
We'll be actively asking people to help now, but if you want to join the moderator team ahead of being asked then let me know in a DM, and if we turn you down, please don't take it personally. Moderators that work for graphics hardware companies and games developers will be very welcome, if you're able, to bolster the ranks with subject matter experts that are in the field and can see things from a wider perspective.
Wrap up time. Thanks for getting this far, I love you heaps if you did. Hopefully the above helps you understand why we did what we did, and why it was a bit out of the blue and maybe difficult to wrap your head around. The response has been pretty overwhelming. The comments, both positive and negative, have helped me reflect a lot on what Beyond3D is, what it means to me, what it hopefully means to you all, and get the energy to reopen.
To those that asked to buy it, thanks, but it's not that kind of place. We don't have ads, and it shouldn't be business or part of someone's portfolio or anything like that. It's just a cool place for nerds to hang out and talk about graphics, games and tech, all hopefully fun and positive and more full of wonder and excitement again going forwards.
Feel free to talk about any of the above in any way that matters to you.
I know two courses of action of thread derailment, when I notice the talk isn't in keeping with the thread title. 1) Remind people to get back on topic and invite them to make a new thread or 2) if the discussion is in depth, spawn off a new thread (a not insignificant amount of work and why we prefer people to self moderate and where sometimes Action 1 is used first). Whichever, my guiding light is always the thread title and purpose, not what I might prefer to talk about. I believe maintaining the proper structure is important.
