Architecture and Products - read-only: temporary or permanent?

[homerdog]

That’s my experience as well. The internet is a cesspool.

I don’t fault the staff for having high standards, but looking at B3D in the context of the rest of the Internet (and specifically forums like this), it feels like losing this forum is still a net negative. I do hope it returns, even if it never reaches its former glory.

 

[DavidGraham]

Permission to speak freely?
@Shifty Geezer

 

[PSman1700]

Permission to speak freely?
@Shifty Geezer

Seems that was what most are doing in this topic

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I don't know what even prompted the lock as I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

My 2 cents is that over the last 22 years of reading this forum the only thing that really changed is that over the past decade is that there's simply more people on the internet who will engage in discussions. As with virtually every other moderated discussion forum that exists, moderation itself is the death of a forum in this classical linear format, that's why the internet has popularised more community driven formats like Reddit where trash is simply downvoted into invisibility - the SNR issue mentioned previously (/r/hardware is probably one of the cleanest examples of great community-driven discussion). At the same time the linear format is much superior for discussions spanning months or years. Having lofty goals of high quality discussions doesn't work unless you pick and choose your contributors, which in that case also closes the door on any new possible contributor that might as well have something of value to add.

So the choices here is either just give up on the notion that you can moderate something into one's picture of a curated Greek forum, or just commit seppuku and close the forum. For myself I revisit here often just because of the Arch & Prod forum, and have no reason to come back if that's going to remain absent.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Not sure if this will make any difference but perhaps having subforums for each IHV like HardOP might help keep issues to a minimum.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Not sure if this will make any difference but perhaps having subforums for each IHV like HardOP might help keep issues to a minimum.

What should a discussion on architecture be? It should be looking at the different approaches of the IHVs and how the results differ. You can't do that with separate fan-clubs. The fault is not the forum organisation but the users. It seems only a tiny subset of people are capable of engaging in critical debate without getting emotionally involved with the findings of said debate.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Well perhaps we should look at past suggestions that should currently apply to forum postings.

The Seven Stages of the Fanboy Bad News Response Cycle

If you find yourself going thru 5 or more elements of the cycle for issues on a regular basis, please seek help before a mod organizes an intervention for your own good.

1). Liar!
2). You can't prove that!
3). You're just a Fanboy of competitor X!
4). Competitor X is much worse at this!

After official sources have confirmed the issue:

5). Doesn't matter!
6). No one cares!
7). It's better this way anyway!

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...ole-forum-updated-06-10-07.20585/#post-500078

 

[BRiT]

What should a discussion on architecture be? It should be looking at the different approaches of the IHVs and how the results differ. You can't do that with separate fan-clubs. The fault is not the forum organisation but the users. It seems only a tiny subset of people are capable of engaging in critical debate without getting emotionally involved with the findings of said debate.

To add to a little bit to this, just one viewpoint...

The most interesting aspects of the discussions are "Why are the results like this?" Or "What changed between architectures or products A and B?" or "How can Architecture or Product C improve?" These architectural aspects are more interesting as it has most potential for learning and expanding of knowledge.

The least interesting aspects are the actual performance once you see the initial sets of performance characteristics because once you see them the general positioning is pretty much set that way for the rest of time. This leads to much of the discussions becoming "Product X is great and Product Y is bad" with no focus on anything else.

 

[homerdog]

How did the architecture/products forums used to be organized? I know it was different but I can’t quite remember how.

 

[BRiT]

How did the architecture/products forums used to be organized? I know it was different but I can’t quite remember how.

Very foggy memory here since the last time they were organized differently feels like a decade ago. There likely was a separate forum for Architecture and one for Products. At the time a few of the discussion points were likely cross-posted and interwoven because there is the coupling of the two concepts.

Despite the sections being combined today, most of the same separation concepts still applies as there are separate threads for the Architecture Aspects and specific threads for the Products.

 

[DavidGraham]

In all of my 15 years following this great forum, I have never seen such a shameful and disgracefull moderation effort, to close an entire forum section for what? A few out of line posts? I mean seriosuly?

I will address this right now first, for those who think that this forum has hit a low point, I dare them to leave and go find a place that have such high standards like this place, reddit is a cesspool, twitter is an echocamber, other forums are foresaken except for a few old time lurkers, this is literally the best place on earth to discuss tech.

However, if the moderation effort on this forum is to silence complaints and reports, then maybe it's time to find more new moderators who have time and can exert some effort to moderate, instead of complaining about a temporary influx of user reports.

Now for the subject at hand, the fire started in the thread for 4070Ti reviews, now this is a sibjective topic, so it's natural it will be full of subjective points of view, and it's natural it's going to have some clashes of opinions, expecting otherwise is in contradiction with human nature and psychology, you may as well wish for robots to populate the forum and "behave" instead.

The thread was going well, till the end of page 5, most people were in agreement that they disliked the card, even those who prefer NVIDIA disliked the card, people went into civlized arguments about pricing, cost vs price, and price comparisons to past products, some went off topic and suggested people will flock to consoles instead (a neat theoretical idea , but has never materialized, PC gaming has always been an expensive hobby, since decades ago, if anything it has gotten cheaper and more accessible, and this applies to both software and hardware), but all members handles this diversion with elegance and moved on.

So where is the problem exactly? Problem started on Page 6, with some users sending personal attacks against other users, this encouraged other members to hurl personal attacks too, which made the situation way worse.

Now, I don't know if this isn't obvious or not, but personal attacks is the single most instigator for deteriorated, barbaric discussions on any forum, and on Beyond3D in particular, and should be avoided and handled with extreme prejudice, as it signals the discussion turning into noise, and signals that the instigator has simply no idea how to continue logical, technical and civilized discussion, he might lack data or evidence to back his claims up, so he resorts to the easiest mehtod of defense, attacking the other perosnally, either in a sarcastic or offensive manner.

If you control this you control 90% of noise here and in any other place, the earlier you handle the personal attack, the earlier you stem the tide of deteriorated discussions.

It's become blatantly clear to me right now, that you need more mods, or you need mods with more spare time to offer, because you need to handle these issues early on, and this is simply not happeneing as of right now, perosnal attacks and sarcasm linger on, then snowball out of proportions, and then get handled in such a crude way, heavy handed way, for such an insignificant matter.

I am being absolutely blunt here, because I love this place, i visit it almost everyday, and it has made me smarter and made a lot of people smarter, so please handle it the smart way that it deserves, not the dumb blunt way it has right now.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

To add to a little bit to this, just one viewpoint...

The most interesting aspects of the discussions are "Why are the results like this?" Or "What changed between architectures or products A and B?" or "How can Architecture or Product C improve?" These architectural aspects are more interesting as it has most potential for learning and expanding of knowledge.

The least interesting aspects are the actual performance once you see the initial sets of performance characteristics because once you see them the general positioning is pretty much set that way for the rest of time. This leads to much of the discussions becoming "Product X is great and Product Y is bad" with no focus on anything else.

The threads devoted to debate about architectural aspects tend to be separate and isolated from the more active threads regarding performance/positioning. In the real world product or game reviews don't stop once the "general positioning" of products is established and think discussions regarding performance aspect is important if we are to understand why one game achieves XXX fps and another gets XXX.

Is it due to changes in display drivers, stronger or weaker graphical rendering choices a development team makes, DX11 vs DX12 differences or just plain efficient/sloppy developer coding. I think these are some of the reasons people chose to participate in performance related threads. From a layman perspective it's also very informative to know the reasons why changes have occurred over time with regard to performance.

 

[Picao84]

So where is the problem exactly? Problem started on Page 6, with some users sending personal attacks against other users, this encouraged other members to hurl personal attacks too, which made the situation way worse.

Well, that tends to happen when someone's argument to keep defending the indefensible against the large majority in the end is basically that the company in question has some sort of birth right and should be venerated because they "created PC gaming". How is that a valid argument at all, even if it was true (which is not, I was gaming on a PC roughly 10 years before said company was even created)? And then someone else also entered the discussion to add nothing but a "there is nothing to see here, move along, you are just all stupid debating pricing". There is a literal agenda by some users here who over and over again introduce censure by noise creation whenever a certain company products are criticized. How can the forum work like that?? Yes, there definitely needs to be more moderation early on and I'm sorry, but bans as well because these people's posts have long been removed / edited, threads have been closed, but they are still here doing the same thing over and over again, destroying this one great place!

 

[digitalwanderer]

First rule when you're stuck in a hole, STOP DIGGING DEEPER!

 

[homerdog]

Very foggy memory here since the last time they were organized differently feels like a decade ago. There likely was a separate forum for Architecture and one for Products. At the time a few of the discussion points were likely cross-posted and interwoven because there is the coupling of the two concepts.

Despite the sections being combined today, most of the same separation concepts still applies as there are separate threads for the Architecture Aspects and specific threads for the Products.

That’s how I remember it as well. In a perfect world having them combined is better. In practice, the old way might have been better. Just looking at the first page of threads in Architecture and Products, it’s not immediately clear where the serious architecture discussion belongs. I guess the thread for Ada Lovelace architecture is this one which is inactive since November.

NVidia Ada Speculation, Rumours and Discussion

Well, I never did find a speculation thread for NVidia's desktop GPU after Ampere, so here goes: I have no idea about Lovelace versus Hopper. So I'm wondering if Hopper is solely a data centre GPU and so Lovelace is consumer/prosumer?

forum.beyond3d.com

 

[homerdog]

First rule when you're stuck in a hole, STOP DIGGING DEEPER!

This is hard to watch. I’m afraid the direction this thread has taken will only serve to justify the decision to lock the forum.

 

[digitalwanderer]

This is hard to watch. I’m afraid the direction this thread has taken will only serve to justify the decision to lock the forum.

Agreed. This isn't the place to try and defend the behavior that got the forum closed, nor is it one to complain that B3D needs more mods. This is the place to say I'm sorry if I contributed to the problem and I'll try real hard to do better in the future, that's about the best I can figure.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Agreed. This isn't the place to try and defend the behavior that got the forum closed, nor is it one to complain that B3D needs more mods. This is the place to say I'm sorry if I contributed to the problem and I'll try real hard to do better in the future, that's about the best I can figure.

I can't be certain which tread caused the issue but think it might be related to the number of "reports" Mods received from Architecture and Products.

 

[Picao84]

Agreed. This isn't the place to try and defend the behavior that got the forum closed, nor is it one to complain that B3D needs more mods. This is the place to say I'm sorry if I contributed to the problem and I'll try real hard to do better in the future, that's about the best I can figure.

I'll do one better and leave. My honest take is really that the great people who once made this place are gone and is honestly way less interesting than it was back then. It's a shame and makes me really sad, but I'm tapping out. So long and thanks for all the fish.

All the best,
Picao84

 

[homerdog]

I'll do one better and leave. My honest take is really that the great people who once made this place are gone and is honestly way less interesting than it was back then. It's a shame and makes me really sad, but I'm tapping out. So long and thanks for all the fish.

All the best,
Picao84

Nobody is asking you to leave, and I hope you don’t. There aren’t that many of us active on this forum, and we can all be part of the solution. I can think of some recent examples where I was out of line. For instance:

Nvidia's 3000 Series RTX GPU [3090s with different memory capacity]

So a "3060 M" is more clear to you than a "3060 8GB"? Why? This isn't at all what I've said. Yes. Though ideally it would be an established suffix such as “ti” so consumers understand what it denotes. 3050ti would have been a good option as stated by others. They used to have proper known...

forum.beyond3d.com

I had no business accusing anyone of arguing in bad faith. My point could have been made without the personal reference. It felt good because it got upvoted, but it was not a constructive way to handle the situation.