Before anything else, I'm so very sorry to read about your brother, @Shifty Geezer. Sending lots of love and I hope you're as OK as can be.
As for the forums, we're still working out what to do before we allow architecture and product threads to happen again. It's clear some changes need to be made.
While working out what input to give BRiT and the other mods for that, I keep thinking about what made me join Beyond3D in the first place 17 odd years ago. I now owe my career to this forum, as do many many others sprinkled far and wide across the GPU and game dev industry, so as both steward of this place, and beneficiary of its past influence, I feel a particular way about it. I also feel somewhat responsible for letting it get to this point. Here goes from that perspective.
I joined in the 00s because I love talking about graphics and wanted to learn about how GPUs work, to write about them for a website, and the people that literally made them posted here. What better place to be, right? Discussion was sometimes robust, but because the industry was tiny it was still very collegial, friendly and encouraging. The companies in play were tiny, rather than worth billions of dollars, so legal teams and politics and not much money was at stake. The inventors could talk about their inventions. Total newcomers like me could soak it up and learn immense amounts, ask questions, and even fit in after a while.
Folks that make the things we all come here to talk about are still here, but they're few, and often hide. If, like me, they're known to work somewhere that makes anything in this space, it's hard (and often completely impossible) to have a discussion the way it used to happen. Discussion isn't friendly, collegial and encouraging any more, to allow that to happen more often. It's often polarised, hard, unpleasant and completely exhausting.
Threads are brigaded. We can all see it. I can barely bring myself to read a product or architecture thread on something I had a tiny hand in helping to make in the weeks before and after a launch. The hot takes, antagonistic language, know-it-all posturing and arrogance...why would someone like me come and discuss what they made here? Those that have the guts to still do, regardless of vendor, often completely hide where they work and what they did to make something.
This is not a bitter AMDer's take either, however much anyone might want to twist it as such; I've got friends across the industry at every vendor and tons of gamedevs, and most feel the same.
Then there's the console vs PC aspect, or console vs console, or myriad other flavours of pointless tribalism that have taken root here. Why must it matter so much that anyone's favourite thing, whatever it is, be rammed down everyone else's throat to try and make it everyone else's favourite thing too?
The forums have some rules (guidelines really) which I think we could all be reminded of. We'll be reiterating these (and maybe others, or maybe reworded) before things open up again:
What it really takes to get a GPU to market successfully, warts and all, imperfect and flawed as they all are in some way, is truly amazing. I can't help but believe that if you're on the outside, as most are, that you'd have a lot more awe and wonder that they ever work at all if you knew what it took, and there'd be a lot more friendly curiosity and discussion about what they are, what they can do, and how they were made. A GPU working well, after working at all, is honestly a small miracle. That goes for games too.
GPUs are some of the most complex machines human beings have ever made, hardware and software together. They're at the heart of everything every Beyond3Der is here to discuss. These days they take high hundreds/low thousands of people working together for many years to make, end-to-end. Each one is brimmed with the hard work and passion of all kinds of people doing all kinds of jobs, big and small. It's a huge team effort for every vendor, tiny GPU or huge. We all try our level best for those years to get what we make out of the door, as best we can, for folks to enjoy as much as possible and make amazing new things with.
Back in the day you could help make something in this space and come here and discuss it, even if it didn't hit the mark, without it either being horrible to do so or having to hide while you do it. To repeat myself again, it was fun, collegial, positive and encouraging for the most part. Today it's usually not, whether it's PC GPUs, games consoles, games, or whatever else we congregate to discuss here.
I'm also very conscious that the world broadly sucks right now, and that finding positivity and fun and excitement elsewhere is hard. That makes it very hard to bring it here. The whole world is tribal and you vs them in so many ways. It makes some sense it's like that here then, and it might be hard to turn around as a result.
We've got to try though. I'm hoping everyone can think about doing their bit to try and make this a fun, welcoming, positive place to discuss graphics and graphics-adjacent aspects in all of their forms again.
Anyway, this is my personal take as long-time steward, and also as someone who now helps make some of the things that get discussed as a direct result of signing up to talk all those moons ago. Hope it's a helpful viewpoint as we discuss what happens next.
Love you all to bits
As for the forums, we're still working out what to do before we allow architecture and product threads to happen again. It's clear some changes need to be made.
While working out what input to give BRiT and the other mods for that, I keep thinking about what made me join Beyond3D in the first place 17 odd years ago. I now owe my career to this forum, as do many many others sprinkled far and wide across the GPU and game dev industry, so as both steward of this place, and beneficiary of its past influence, I feel a particular way about it. I also feel somewhat responsible for letting it get to this point. Here goes from that perspective.
I joined in the 00s because I love talking about graphics and wanted to learn about how GPUs work, to write about them for a website, and the people that literally made them posted here. What better place to be, right? Discussion was sometimes robust, but because the industry was tiny it was still very collegial, friendly and encouraging. The companies in play were tiny, rather than worth billions of dollars, so legal teams and politics and not much money was at stake. The inventors could talk about their inventions. Total newcomers like me could soak it up and learn immense amounts, ask questions, and even fit in after a while.
Folks that make the things we all come here to talk about are still here, but they're few, and often hide. If, like me, they're known to work somewhere that makes anything in this space, it's hard (and often completely impossible) to have a discussion the way it used to happen. Discussion isn't friendly, collegial and encouraging any more, to allow that to happen more often. It's often polarised, hard, unpleasant and completely exhausting.
Threads are brigaded. We can all see it. I can barely bring myself to read a product or architecture thread on something I had a tiny hand in helping to make in the weeks before and after a launch. The hot takes, antagonistic language, know-it-all posturing and arrogance...why would someone like me come and discuss what they made here? Those that have the guts to still do, regardless of vendor, often completely hide where they work and what they did to make something.
This is not a bitter AMDer's take either, however much anyone might want to twist it as such; I've got friends across the industry at every vendor and tons of gamedevs, and most feel the same.
Then there's the console vs PC aspect, or console vs console, or myriad other flavours of pointless tribalism that have taken root here. Why must it matter so much that anyone's favourite thing, whatever it is, be rammed down everyone else's throat to try and make it everyone else's favourite thing too?
The forums have some rules (guidelines really) which I think we could all be reminded of. We'll be reiterating these (and maybe others, or maybe reworded) before things open up again:
- Have a good time! The Beyond3D forums are an excellent place to discuss graphics technologies, games, consoles, handheld devices and more. Have a great time posting.
- Keep your bias in check. Bias and preference are unavoidable in a lot of cases, but rarely do they help move a discussion forwards. Talk about what you like and don't like positively, not derisively.
- If you're a shill, go away. Seriously, if you're acting on behalf of a company to overtly promote its products or rubbish the competition, please leave and find another forum to subvert.
What it really takes to get a GPU to market successfully, warts and all, imperfect and flawed as they all are in some way, is truly amazing. I can't help but believe that if you're on the outside, as most are, that you'd have a lot more awe and wonder that they ever work at all if you knew what it took, and there'd be a lot more friendly curiosity and discussion about what they are, what they can do, and how they were made. A GPU working well, after working at all, is honestly a small miracle. That goes for games too.
GPUs are some of the most complex machines human beings have ever made, hardware and software together. They're at the heart of everything every Beyond3Der is here to discuss. These days they take high hundreds/low thousands of people working together for many years to make, end-to-end. Each one is brimmed with the hard work and passion of all kinds of people doing all kinds of jobs, big and small. It's a huge team effort for every vendor, tiny GPU or huge. We all try our level best for those years to get what we make out of the door, as best we can, for folks to enjoy as much as possible and make amazing new things with.
Back in the day you could help make something in this space and come here and discuss it, even if it didn't hit the mark, without it either being horrible to do so or having to hide while you do it. To repeat myself again, it was fun, collegial, positive and encouraging for the most part. Today it's usually not, whether it's PC GPUs, games consoles, games, or whatever else we congregate to discuss here.
I'm also very conscious that the world broadly sucks right now, and that finding positivity and fun and excitement elsewhere is hard. That makes it very hard to bring it here. The whole world is tribal and you vs them in so many ways. It makes some sense it's like that here then, and it might be hard to turn around as a result.
We've got to try though. I'm hoping everyone can think about doing their bit to try and make this a fun, welcoming, positive place to discuss graphics and graphics-adjacent aspects in all of their forms again.
Anyway, this is my personal take as long-time steward, and also as someone who now helps make some of the things that get discussed as a direct result of signing up to talk all those moons ago. Hope it's a helpful viewpoint as we discuss what happens next.
Love you all to bits
, one I really haven't seen here often if ever. B3D was always my go-to place to avoid internet toxicity. It's saddening to see things go down that route. I've been mostly frequenting the console forums, but even there I remember very little platform warring compared to everywhere else throughout the years... it seems to me things maybe started to decline around the time of the current generation's launch (or is it my rose-tinted glasses?). As for PC I haven't built one in years so I was out of the loop, but catching up with the current generation of GPUs I see the same platform warring.. or vendor warring I guess 
(not to mention the perennial PC vs console, but that's a different topic).
