I guesss it's just me
by Gene Hoffman
on
May 25, 2009 at 9:29:05 pm
For many years The Cow was my Home Page, however it just seems that the forums now are loaded with questions I learned in the help docs, reading books, and video tutorials. Then there are ones that just make me shake my head. Thus, instead of professionals helping other professionals it's now Joe wanting to now how to get his bootlegged copy of AE to run on his $400 Walmart special.
I rarely come here anymore instead I use twitter, blogs and even now pay quarterly for FXphd.
While I'm grateful for all the great years of the Cow, but after spending the last hour shaking my head and posting things like look at the help docs, buy a book or take a class. I feel it's best I just stop visiting The Cow.
Re: I guesss it's just me by Dave LaRonde on May 26, 2009 at 3:49:02 pm
[Gene Hoffman]"...instead of professionals helping other professionals it's now Joe wanting to now how to get his bootlegged copy of AE to run on his $400 Walmart special...."
Farewell, Gene. I understand your sadness, and I fear I have to agree with you.
When AE was almost exclusively a professional application, the discourse was a lot better. But when Adobe started marketing to the masses, the clientele around here changed accordingly... and so did the quality of the dialogue.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: I guesss it's just me by Paul Benson on May 27, 2009 at 5:03:08 am
RTFM? What manual? ;)
I am one of those guys who reads the manual, when provided. I miss the books they used to include with the software. While the html/web version has its benefits, the physical manuals allowed me to actually read them while offline. For some reason, I just can't sit there and scroll through the weblinks or pdfs in their entirety, especially when they are scattered across different disks and in different folders.
Sorry for going off tangent; I do agree that redirecting the basic questions to the proper forum is appropriate.
Re: I guesss it's just me by Todd Kopriva on May 27, 2009 at 5:51:35 am
> RTFM? What manual? ;)
> I am one of those guys who reads the manual, when provided. I miss the books they used to include with the software. While the html/web version has its benefits, the physical manuals allowed me to actually read them while offline. For some reason, I just can't sit there and scroll through the weblinks or pdfs in their entirety, especially when they are scattered across different disks and in different folders.
You can still order a printed copy of the After Effects Help document (which goes by the name 'User Guide' in its printed form). I don't recommend it, though. I've made about 300 fixes and additions to the online version since the books were printed. If you want a hard copy, I recommend printing the PDF that you can download from the top left corner of any page of After Effects Help on the Web. You'd just be out the cost of ~400 sheets of printer paper, which is less than the cost of the printed user guide. I update the PDF version each time I update the HTML on the Web (about once per month).
It's a little frustrating for me to hear people complain about the books no longer being shipped with the software. As the person who made those books, I can assure you that you get much better and more complete information when we have an extra couple of months to work on the documents. Having the books translated, printed, bound, and put into boxes in time for the software to be put on shelves used to cut out a tremendous amount of the time that we otherwise would have had available for creating the material to help you to use the software.
By concentrating on the web and PDF versions, we can make the information better, more searchable, and more up-to-date.
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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the 'T' back in 'RTFM' : After Effects Help on the Web ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: I guesss it's just me by Paul Benson on May 27, 2009 at 9:50:26 pm
Hi Todd,
didn't mean to ding you on the lack of the manual. I have worked at major computer manufacturers and am well aware of the lead time needed for documentation, and how much better it is for the engineers to have those extra months for fixes/updates/clarifications that ultimately help the consumer.
All in all, I prefer the web based help when trying to understand an issue. As you said, it is a lot more real-time and the links are very helpful. Maybe when the 'Kindle 5' is out I'll have something easily portable, readable, and up-to-date. I do think we need to change the acronym from RTFM to RTFWP :).
Re: I guesss it's just me by Michael Szalapski on May 26, 2009 at 5:57:32 pm
I too have noticed a marked decline in recent years in the quality of questions (and responses to our answers) here on the COW. As Dave pointed out, it's because more and more people are using this and they aren't all professionals.
Two ideas
1. A "put this in the basics forum" button.
Or, more drastically
2. Perhaps we could have a RTFM button on a post. If a user posts a certain number of questions that receive a certain number of pushes of that button then they get a ban!
I dunno, just throwing out ideas.
- The Great Szalam
(The 'Great' stands for 'Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble')
No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
Re: Yes, it's all you guys. by david bogie on May 26, 2009 at 6:59:14 pm
[Gene Hoffman]"While I'm grateful for all the great years of the Cow, but after spending the last hour shaking my head and posting things like look at the help docs, buy a book or take a class. I feel it's best I just stop visiting The Cow.
"
We were ALL new to this stuff at one time or another and some of these poor souls don't ever get it. Hopefully they find a mentor or just go away.
You're just a kid. I've been around since the Cow was the WWUG and there was only one forum. Where would this place be if we all had your attitude? You have a choice to leave, participate, assist, educate, cajole, tease, harass, or embrace.
Re: Yes, it's all you guys. by Jeremy Allen on May 26, 2009 at 7:40:34 pm
While I somewhat agree with your sentiment, I don't think your attitude fosters much of a community spirit. And since you've only made 13 posts since may 2006, it doesn't seem like you've made much of an effort to help people at all. So I don't think your lack of participation will be missed here.
Re: Yes, it's all you guys. by Dave LaRonde on May 26, 2009 at 8:20:14 pm
The whole reason for an AE Basics forum is to create a place for people to ask the dumb newbie questions.
It just that those respond to such questions in this particular forum... well, they just respond instead of redirecting the questions to the proper forum, and I'm just as guilty as anyone else.
A couple of months of concerted effort would do the trick for a while, I think.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Yes, it's all you guys. by david bogie on May 26, 2009 at 8:46:45 pm
[Jeremy Allen]"While I somewhat agree with your sentiment, I don't think your attitude fosters much of a community spirit. And since you've only made 13 posts since may 2006, it doesn't seem like you've made much of an effort to help people at all. So I don't think your lack of participation will be missed here. "
Not sure who you're talking to, son.
It can't possibly be me.
Re: Yes, it's all you guys. by Adriano Moraes on May 26, 2009 at 9:51:16 pm
It was definitely not adressed to you David. It was clearly to Gene. Check his profile (13 posts). Anyone who would dare say something like that about you could only be blind or crazy!!!
I agree with you when you say what would have been of the forum if everyone had taken the easy way out.
But I also fell that the basics forum is something some people should visit more often.
Anyway.
Still love the cow. And respect all points of view here. Guess it was nice someone brought it up.
Re: Yes, it's all you guys. by Todd Kopriva on May 26, 2009 at 11:26:02 pm
As I'm sure that many of you have noticed, I tend to answer a lot of questions with a polite version of 'RTFM'. In the case of After Effects, the 'T' actually stands for Todd's, so this shouldn't come as any surprise. ;-)
One of the reasons that I do this is because I think that directing newbies off to the documentation is a good way to save the time of the experts on the forum and give them more time to sink their teeth into the juicy and interesting questions on the forum.
I always wonder why someone like Kevin or Dave or Bogie would type the same few paragraphs time after time when they could just dispense with the repetitive questions with a link (to Help or to a previous thread)... and then spend several paragraphs on someone with a problem that takes some real thought.
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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the 'T' back in 'RTFM' : After Effects Help on the Web ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Yes, it's all you guys. by Bill Kelly on May 27, 2009 at 11:19:39 am
I'm not all that active in the forum answering questions, but I do read through it almost every day, even on the weekends. I've noticed as well the increase in "noob" type questions. I say, hey, if people have questions, let 'em ask!
I would say answer the question and mention that there is a forum for beginners, and that they should direct future questions over there until they know the program well enough that they could actually come in to the main forum and answer other people's questions.
That being said, maybe there's a place for an "advanced member" forum for people that have been members here for a year or more, or can be invited in. I'm a member of a message board (sports related) that has a hidden "premium member" board that you have to be invited into, and the motto of the premium board is "The first rule of Premium --- is that you don't talk about Premium ---". Kind of like Fight Club I guess.
I found this board back when I was just a lowly editor. I got into After Effects a couple years ago kicking and screaming when they let our graphics people go. Now I actually enjoy AE thanks mainly to this forum, VideoCopilot, and a lot of practice.
As to the comment about nobody reading the manuals, I remember when I first started editing, many a day taking the Avid (and later Final Cut) manual with me to the facilities for a nice long read. Those were the days!
Re: Yes, it's all Todd's fault! by david bogie on May 27, 2009 at 2:44:47 pm
[Todd Kopriva]"I always wonder why someone like Kevin or Dave or Bogie would type the same few paragraphs time after time "
That's an easy question to answer: Attitude. It's taken me ten years to get conversational with the basics of After Effects (another decade for expressions and scripts?). For newbies to presume AE is—or should be—"easy" rankles.
However, I take supreme umbrage at the implication that Kevin, Dave and I (among others) do not often include helpful and gracious advice and assistance in our curt or enjoyably eloquent RTFM-ish responses.
Todd, bless his FAQ-oriented heart, is an Adobe employee and the Adobe logo in one's sig file carries the imprint of maintaining customer relations. This often is possible only at the expense of access to what seems to be an inexhaustible supply of grace and patience. We are glad he's here, glad his company pays for his participation, and, if interested, we can learn something from his posting style. Todd, unlike the rest of us, really doesn't have the flexibility to be an offensive jerk unless, of course, he has established an alias account.
Just point noob Qs to the COW's AE Beginner's Forum. I've been doing this for the past few months, albeit not on a consistent basis for fear of sounding like a ****head.
Let's not sweat over minor gripes as we were all noobs at one time or another. The good stuff is still here.
We've grown from one to three pretty happening AE Forums here at the COW. The new forums came about due to the large traffic and the reason for the traffic is because there is a lot of good stuff here at the COW. While we do get noob Qs here, instead of the Beginner's Forum, we still get lots of very good posts in this forum.
Also, there is still a student's version of AE so not everyone should be expected to be professionals. Pros, hobbyists and students make up the forum users. We need more of everyone and not less.
Help others when you can and point them to the Beginner's Forum is need be. And try to be nice otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of us being here.
Cheers
RoRK
broadcastGEMs - AEPro Volume 02 (Professional Adobe After Effects Project Files - Now Available). Adobe After Effects Training in South East Asia.
Re: I guesss it's just me by Mohamed Hafeez on May 27, 2009 at 3:39:14 pm
Why not have a thread called "AE for Professionals" and not allow NOOB's like us to post there. If we do then ban us.
As a AE student, COW has been such a wealth of information and for kind replies and to call a post 'Advanced' or 'Interesting' is subjective.
Not all of us are genius I guess, I read most part of the manual and missed a tiny thingy that you can see the individual layer render timings by clicking the small arrow under render queue. (This was cleared by a reply by Bill Kelly.) Not that I missed on purpose while I was reading but it just didn't strike me. :-(
For Noob's, this is such a great place to interact with professionals like you. Please continue your support.
Re: I guesss it's just me by Tom Scott on May 28, 2009 at 1:19:06 am
The current situation is that the After Effects default forum is this one. If the default were the "Basics" forum, with a separate link to the "Advanced" forum, we'd see a lot less people posting "noob" questions here. I don't blame the "noobs", I blame the current layout of the After Effects forums (or, more precisely, the links configuration).
Re: I guesss it's just me by Stuart Elith on May 28, 2009 at 1:54:59 am
I agree with this suggestion, that the naming of the default AE forum is making it seem like the obvious choice for all kinds of questions that may be better suited to the Basics forum.
Another thought I had is this : I don't visit the basics forum, so i don't know if it is well supported... if people find that the answers aren't always provided there, they will be less inclined to use it. So I am thinking for myself as much as anyone, maybe we should be making time to go there and help out the beginners who are doing the right thing in posting there...
Re: I guesss it's just me by Ron Lindeboom on May 28, 2009 at 7:05:48 pm
[Stuart Elith]"I agree with this suggestion, that the naming of the default AE forum is making it seem like the obvious choice for all kinds of questions that may be better suited to the Basics forum."
While this may make sense, it would ignore the fact that 80% of the COW's user base work with these tools for a living. There are less than 11% that are both students and educators. The balance are hobbyists.
But as I said in my other post in this thread, human nature is such that the noobs for the most part do not think that the leaders in the Basics forum are real pros -- we know, we have written many and asked why they won't post there.
The leaders in the Basics forum ARE real pros and many know an INCREDIBLE amount about After Effects. They are the people that tend to be "pre-wired" to be able to handle newbie questions and have a disposition that allows them to walk newer users through repetitive explanations until they get it.
But unfortunately, were we to set that basics forum as the starting place, the preponderance of newbies would search out the Advanced forum -- were we to add one -- and THAT is where they would post.
It's that human nature thingie, again.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Re: I guesss it's just me by Ron Lindeboom on May 28, 2009 at 6:46:51 pm
[Tom Scott]"I don't blame the "noobs", I blame the current layout of the After Effects forums (or, more precisely, the links configuration)."
Tom,
Do you know anything about human nature or do you just jump to conclusions based on your lack of evidence?
The truth is, we have tried to curtail this by having both entire basics sites (creativecalf.net -- that died because no one wanted to use it) and by having basics forums that leaders and admins moved basics posts to, to forcibly get the newb questions there. But human nature being as it is, these people regularly get incensed and take great exception to having their posts moved there. Why? Because they want the "real experts" answering their newb questions.
After all, they are more important than all the other newbs and do not want to have anyone but the advanced leaders answering them. If we were to have an Advanced forum, THAT is the forum they would post in...
We are working on breaking out the forums by TASK rather than level. Rendering in one forum; effects techniques in another; dealing with 3D layers and lighting in yet another, etc., etc. It will likely fail but it may be worth a try. We are kicking around the idea.
In the end, people like it all in one place rather than breaking it out because they don't have to go through forum after forum, as it is at adobeforums.com, etc.
Over the years, we have learned there is no perfect solution. We have tried many and it almost always comes back to what we have. It's far from perfect, but with human nature being what it is, to get it perfect would require every post being moderated and placed by admins that worked on it full time.
So, the bottomline is this: most of us look at the posts that interest us and avoid the ones that don't.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Re: I guesss it's just me by Tom Scott on May 30, 2009 at 12:55:44 am
[Ron Lindeboom]"Do you know anything about human nature or do you just jump to conclusions based on your lack of evidence?"
Actually, human nature also makes people less inclined to look for an appropriate button, when they are already in an obviously well frequented forum. There are many facets to "human nature", and while I didn't account for the one you've pointed out, you didn't account for the one I've mentioned here. I don't think anyone can factor in every individual aspect of "human nature", so please don't feel that I'm being critical.
As for a "lack of evidence", I was merely offering a suggestion/opinion (evidence is usually only required to support a statement that's declared to be fact). Keep in mind that I don't run this site, therefore I don't have all the "evidence" at my fingertips. I can only formulate my opinions based on what I can see.
I will admit, however that I didn't word my final sentence (in my other post) very well. "Blame" was an inappropriate label to use. The current layout of the forums is adequately functional, and as you've pointed out, "human nature" would negate any benefits to be gained by making changes.
In hindsight, had I possessed the vision to account for the full spectrum of "human nature", I probably would've opted out of commenting in this thread. After all, "human nature" being what it is, this particular problem is going to be hard to solve. Not that I find the "noob" posts to be that much of a hindrance to the forum.
Re: I guesss it's just me by Ron Lindeboom on May 30, 2009 at 3:06:21 am
[Tom Scott]"...while I didn't account for the one you've pointed out, you didn't account for the one I've mentioned here."
We've been doing this for 14 years now. Trust me, we have tried all kinds of things over the years.
As I said, why on Earth would we have the forum default to a basics forum when 80% of our traffic over the years is made up of people who work with the software?
Sadly, the ones who POST most frequently are the ones searching for answers. And as I pointed out, if we made an Advanced forum and set the Basics forum as the default, they'd just push on over to the Advanced forum and start there.
I wish there was an answer...
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Re: I guesss it's just me by Tom Scott on May 30, 2009 at 7:29:01 am
Yes, it seems that, human nature being what it is, there is no simple answer and my suggestion would have had little, if any advantage. I'm glad you pointed out that side of human nature that I'd overlooked. I guess, sometimes I put too much faith in people to do what's expected.
DISCLAIMER: The contents of this post are based primarily on the opinions/understanding of the author. However, commonly known facts may also be included, when relevant.
