(Updated) Well, this is clearly more than we expected! Thank you for stepping up to the plate and offering to help! With all this energy the forum will become a reality. The first publicly demanded CG forum, created by people who have been artists since the early days of CG. It has a nice ring to it. Some great ideas have already surfaced in the comments, we’ll build a place so we can go on with collective brainstorming and get the new forum up. More to follow.
We heard you loud and clear. A MU forum with real names, portfolio requirements to get posting permissions plus we have some more ideas to throw into the mix. Everyone who has posted up to this point in the “old-timers’ thread” will be invited. Now, this forum will need your help to fly.
As Igor Posavec pointed out clearly, it can only function with a team of reliable people to moderate the discussions and keep an enjoyable ambiance for everyone, as we’ve seen in the recent thread. So it’s time to raise the question: who would like to volunteer and help moderate the forum? Please leave your replies here or contact us through the “contact us” link at the top of the page.
I’m all for this; I’d be willing to do my part!
Count me in! I would be glad to help with pflow and sim based plugins sub-forums 😉
Hello Pablo,
I have mention this thing because i have a lot of experience in moderating (or keeping forums clean) in my job. I wont write much in your forum, since i do not have, as an artist, an objective distance to be reasonable and neutral.
But i can take care of a big part of cleaning and keeping forum spam-free. This is maybe the biggest issue.I know since years how to deal with all auto-bots and hijackers.
Heck, this is what i have to do all day with our forums, i surely have time to do it for maxunderground too. Save some vacation time, you can count on me.
I would be more than happy to help with moderating and spam patrol.
Hey Pablo,
I’d be more than glad to help out with moderating and spam patrolling the forums.
Count me in!
Hello!
I can’t help to moderate but the MU guys could open an paypal account for donations to help in the needs of this forum. I think a lot of people as me who couldn’t help moderate could help with funds.
Thank you!
And my axe! No seriously, I can help.
Count me in! I would be glad to help with max plugins and VfX based sub-forums
Of all the places that deserves a great forum, this is top of the list. I’d be happy to be part of it as well.
Is there some good webboard software and/or hoster that could be used easily? Maybe it’s time to set up a Paypal account so Pablo could even hand out the board set up to some IT guy to make it a smooth start…
I have an suggestion on how to control the admission to this forum.
Personally I am not that keen on the idea that a portfolio is needed to show the legitimity of potential applicants.
Lot of material is restricted from public showcasing, and more technical guys who uses Max for plugin/script development etc. don’t usually have the best visual portfolio.
I suggest, that a good bunch of the credible old timers / moderators are let in before hand, and then people can apply for membership by writing a short aplication.
– Professional past and present.
– Years of experience
– LinkedIn profile (this sort of makes the two points above obsolete)
Then the moderators can do a quick background check to verify the person and credibility. If it checks out, Welcome.
And of course – moderators can always show the door to users how misuse the privilege of the forum membership.
Count me in to help moderate the forum.
Perhaps a campaign through PayPal to collect money to pay some IT guys to set it up and integrate it smoothly into this site and at the same time update MU to have a responsive web design that works better on tablets and smartphones. Also a Facebook page would be nice so all the news on this site is being integrated with the news flow in our Facebook-feed 🙂 The design of MU is very nice, it’s just those modern web features I’m missing.
I’ll help in any way i can.
I’m in.
I’m in! Let me know how I can help.
I would be more than happy to volunteer.
Great idea, let’s do this!
Count me in as well.
@Claus: I didn’t meant a visual portfolio, but more a list of what’s been done. LinkedIn sounds like a good overview, but also Vimeo/Blogs/etc should be acceptable…
Nobody with proposals for a webboard toolkit or hoster? Propbably the better ones allow a FB integration, but I find FB to distracting usually 🙂
As for the software I suggest something that doesn’t encourage big signatures and unnecessary bloat. Maybe something like this: http://esotalk.org/forum/ (https://github.com/esotalk/esoTalk)
What forum software are you looking to deploy?
Have you looked at WordPress P2? It’s a little different from regular forums but very efficient.
If you’re thinking of a WordPress related type of forum such as bbPress or BuddyPress (which is more a social networking/community thing) you may want to get in touch with me. I have a year worth of WordPress hosting (with full caching, APC, etc) that I got received at a conference this weekend (the regular price $30/mo). I was thinking of using it to try out their service but heck, I’ll be happy to donate it to the good cause here.
@Henning: thanks for the suggestion. We’ll check it out.
@Stefan: thanks for the suggestion and the kind offer. We’ve been checking XenForo, which got some great reviews and has lots code and documentation available, but we’re open to suggestions.
This is really interesting and exciting and as I said before Max needs this, we all need this, but I just have to ask this because I’m really getting the vibe that you mainly want to create a place for the “old timer” users to hang out together again, which is fantastic, for them, but I for one(not being an old timer) was more hoping for a place that can bring together anybody with a passion for Max, no matter how long they’ve been using it, instead of only a select group of individuals who already know each other, I know you care a lot about the quality of this forum, after all you’ve maintained the quality of this blog pretty well for more than 10 years, and I’m glad that you care, but seeing how many great and seasoned individuals have already volunteered for moderation, will there still be a need for strict screening processes? I just want this forum to be as lively and as active as possible.
@DAngel: don’t worry, we are not interested in leaving good people out. And I’m not interested in deciding the rules here, either, what’s best and healthiest for the forum will be done, and it will be decided collectively.
I do believe there will be need for a screening process, though, to avoid unnecessary food-fights.
@DAngel: Of course it shouldn’t be a “home for senior citizen” only 🙂
But people should have worked with max a bit. So just some kind of examination/portfolio/cv process to keep away spammers, noobs and other plagues… I really enjoyed the old webboard a lot, it helped me to solve a lot of things back than, even by just reading…
@Pablo: Good to hear that, fair enough.
@Robert Seidel: Lol, fair enough.
All in all this is really exiting, at least for me, I hope I can be a part of this new-old community of great people.
If you still need volunteers, I would like to help.
Very excited about this – Especially…
– When people can’t hide behind an avatar and use their real name, it’s amazing how much more civil/professional they can be.
– Subscription by invitation could be a good way to introduce new members. If you personally have to vouch for someone, you tend to not invite trolls and you’re providing a reference. I’m on an e-mail list that uses this system, and it’s exceptionally effective and low noise, and it’s resulted in a large, diverse crowd of 3d pros.
– Don’t think of this an old-timers lounge. It’s just that back in the day, us old-timers had a very good system going that got tossed in the garbage by the powers that be.
– I may be too busy to moderate, but I’d happily donate 🙂
seriously, what took us so long to do this?
I’d be happy to assist Mr. Rand in watching over a simulation/plugins themed sub-forum.
I would be more than happy to help any way that i can too. I have some experience as a moderator in the Greek 3dtalk.gr forum and in the 3dsMax subsection of Luxrender.net forum.
Also besides forum moderating help, if you guys need anything from a design point of view (logo, custom art) i would be happy to help on that part too 🙂
Whatever can help, I will gladly join.
please ban animated avatars.
Please have a section dedicated to “the business” of fx
There’s forum software that allows the post author to select the answer to there question. That answer is then moved to the top.
Oh and can you cut my lawn to?
Count me in, for the european timezones, to help with moderation.
I can also flame like few trolls ever could, so in case i can help with that too. ^^
Anyone with experience of http://groups.google.com , looks quite slick but is maybe too simple?
By any means:
don’t even think about google groups.They are a slow, uncomfortable mess, with awkward frontend. Use anything, but not google groups. Never
I’m in too, I can help with moderation on a french/european timetable, as well as with donation.
@spacefrog: Ok, than please make a proposal…
I’m in if you want me to, got “some” experience with forums and user groups which might be useful
Joep
Sorry can’t really do. I got no experience with the server/maintainance/cost side of forum software. I only can report my user experience on different forum software, and Google Groups is the one that sticks out because it’s that bad.
I’m on the Unity betas, which happen to be operated via goggle groups, and it’s a pretty bad expereince. As far i remember they want to get rid of it too…
Most happy (user perspective) i would be with a phpBB/vBulletin like forum. But as i stated, i don’t have any background knowledge about the real operater benefits of any board software.
Maybe you can contact Rob Galanakis from http://tech-artists.org to share his experience with vBulletin, as he is in a similar situation and operating a forum almost by him alone ( at least thats my impression )
http://tech-artists.org/forum/member.php?3-Rob-Galanakis
What about a simple forum based on YaBB, phpBB or SimpleMachines format?
http://www.yabbforum.com/
https://www.phpbb.com/
http://www.simplemachines.org/
http://vanillaforums.com/
We should also probably start working out what the different sections would be. Here are some ideas:
-News & Announcements
-Take5
-Installation, Hardware & OS
-Scripting, SDK & Pipeline (maybe should be separate sections?)
-Modeling & General
-Rigging & Animation
-Lighting, Rendering & Compositing
-Particles, Simulation & FX
-Wishlist
-Jobs
Also, a “User Gallery” section where members can share links to their work would be good .
-tips and tricks section, always useful
@ Mitch – never use phpbb – we have it for our software forum and we just about to close the forum and never open it again.
Millions of Pakistan and China spammers and bots are bombing it each day – 70% of our traffic was yesterday caused by pakistan bot assault, creating 100s of users. We have now somehow patched it (phpbb has bad plugin support you have to program a lot by yourself) to Stop-Spam API, but if i ever come in the morning in the company again and see our PhPbb forum full of Alibabas, i will close it forever!
Meanwhile they are really clever: they copy-paste the posts from the past, mix them with the questions and answers and create really decent posts which you can not recognize as spam. Then they insert 2 weeks later the signature with he whole junk so you can’t see it.
PhPbb has very bad security and plugin support 🙁
ps. have no other better solution, i am tired of forum support and killing spam.
@Igor
This shouldn’t be a problem if the registration policy is by invite or by manual approval.
Even better might be to have no way for users to register at all. They must be “in the know” and contact one of the admins directly, who then vet that person and set up the account manually.
we killed spam to zero on our forums by changing it to a vetted login process. reading is ok, but you have to sign up and approval waits until we approve you. so far the signal to noise ratio is awesome!
cb
Agreed, manual registration is the only way to go. I imagine the first bit would be quite busy but after the dust settles I can’t imagine it being a full time job handling registrations.
Pablo is this the longest comment stream in MU history? 🙂
I like the idea! If there is any thing I can do to help let me know! (got lots of php, mysql, css, JS, etc experience)
btw, what about a stackoverflow type setup for a ‘looking for answers’ subsection? where the correct answer rises to the top of the thread.
Please also consider an ‘Ideas’ section(similar to the User Voice) where people can submit their ideas, comment about them and make polls for them.
Also an ‘Industry Reps’ section can be nice, which can serve as both a channel between the different companies to communicate with the users in a single place, and also represent their products or news about their developments to the people.
A user forum is a great idea.
I would belong to the forum
A veteran spanish user from first max versions.
@JohnnyRand: it certainly is… 🙂
@Jonathan de Blok: great idea.
@DAngel: great idea, too!