Improving GDSE

GiantCowFilms

2:44 PM

I guess after the 3D Graphics proposal failure, we don't have much choice. I doubt its actually going to work though.

Ryan

@GiantCowFilms why do you say it won't work?

GiantCowFilms

I just don't think this site will build up a large enough 3D Graphics user base to actually answer questions

its too, not the main topic, and for 3D Artists, this site is 95% noise, since there are so few 3D questions and so many other questoins

Ryan

Well if we create some proper tags then people can only look at their tags like on StackExchange

GiantCowFilms

@Ryan That still assumes that they know how to use the tag things and everything. There is just something different about having your own site

That being said, there is no harm in trying.

But I don't predict it will be any different from before the scope change.

Ryan

@GiantCowFilms I think it can be, just a quick search shows people have already been more open lately as our userbase has changed

and technology has changed too like Adobe introducing more and more 3D into their suite will help make the case for it

GiantCowFilms

2:52 PM

I guess thats true

Ryan

graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/3d

fairly recent, few downvotes. If we get people to upvote them; and get better tags on them; I think it could work

won't be overnight of course but it could

Ryan

3:12 PM

room topic changed to Growing GDSE: Discussion on graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3133/… (no tags)

Ryan

3:23 PM

I am super pinging because I'd like to get input from as many as possible on this topic, if I ping you its because we want your opinion. I don't want to ignore our existing and established base. If you're not interested then feel free to just exit the chat. Link to topic: graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3133/…

@ZachSaucier @Metis @blip @Dom @user568458 @LaurenIpsum - I know some of you still lurk and post from time to time, and don't want to make any changes to a site you all helped build without hearing from you as well. If you want to comment/listen in here or on the meta itself I'd appreciate your input.

if I missed anyone you think needs a superping because they're not as active anymore but still around let me know and I'll get their attention to.

Vincent

3:54 PM

Hey Lauren, long time no see :)

Lauren Ipsum

There isn't a damn thing we can do unless we decide, and enforce, that My Adobe Be Broke questions are no longer on-topic. That's the main reason I haven't been around much.

Hi Vincent!

Vincent

@LaurenIpsum What exactly do you mean by 'Adobe be broke' questions? The how-tos?

Lauren Ipsum

My Adobe Be Broke (Scott coined that phrase) is people asking basic to semi-basic questions about how to use a tool somewhere in the Adobe suite.

Or "I'm trying to do X basic thing in the Adobe Suite and it's not working."

GiantCowFilms

@LaurenIpsum Adobe Be Broke questions are actually quite useful. If someone is having that problem and they google it and they can find the answer on this site, that is a win!

Lauren Ipsum

It depends on what your goal for the site is, Giant Cow.

GiantCowFilms

3:58 PM

True

Ryan

@GiantCowFilms its a win-loss at best. Its just very difficult to enforce what the line between basic and not basic is

Lauren Ipsum

If you want GDSE to be a repository of basic How Do I Adobe, then sure

PieBie

@LaurenIpsum Additional issue is that new users are going to answer simple questions anyway because of the easy rep.

and because they don't know the site

GiantCowFilms

I guess my goal would be kind of the SE goal. If a graphic designer (no matter how inexperienced) is having a problem and they google it, they can find the answer hear.

PieBie

Hi everyone BTW

Lauren Ipsum

3:59 PM

But if the goal is for the site to have a wider user base and a deeper bench of knowledge, then no, many many Teach Me Simple Stuff questions don't move the site towards that goal

Ryan

I think we as a community (and especially myself because I avoid most tag editing) can really work on the tags and encourage less broad open ended tags and more specific ones. Then people can sort by the tags they like and avoid the ones they don't

Lauren Ipsum

If Ryan is looking for pure traffic, then How Do I 3D and How Do I Blender questions are fine

GiantCowFilms

@LaurenIpsum I feel like we should exclude the simple stuff. I'm embarrassed how many times I've visited some really basic programming Qs just because I forgot something. Its really handy

Ryan

like Adobe Photoshop is probably not even that useful

Lauren Ipsum

I've never sorted by a tag, TBH

GiantCowFilms

4:00 PM

@LaurenIpsum How Do I Blender should rather be on blender.se

we really have the people to answer those

Vincent

I think one of the reasons of the overflow of ABB questions is that, for lots of the basic recurring problems, we don't have good answers to close the dupes with

Lauren Ipsum

Sorry, I thought I saw that as part of the discussion above

Ryan

@LaurenIpsum and anyone else unaware

GiantCowFilms

I'm saying discounting ABB users is not a good idea.

Ryan

(I don't ignore tags because I'm a mod and think it would be irresponsible)

Lauren Ipsum

4:02 PM

I know it can be done; I've just never bothered

GiantCowFilms

It makes this site less of a useful resources

Ryan

ah okay

Cai

@Ryan How come I got a notification for that? You didn't ping me right?

Lauren Ipsum

@GiantCowFilms As I said, it depends solely on what you want the site to accomplish

Ryan

I did at first but realized it was mostly to ping people that aren't as active but still do come around so edited you out especially since you obviously saw it in meta already @Cai

GiantCowFilms

4:03 PM

@LaurenIpsum Help as many graphic designers as possible

Lauren Ipsum

I personally don't have any more time or energy to address Teach Me Adobe questions

GiantCowFilms

That was Jeff Atwoods goal with the original SE.

Cai

@Ryan Cool. That makes sense

Ryan

I don't really want to grow in a bad direction. I want to see more interesting and diverse questions and see them getting upvoted

Lauren Ipsum

If @Ryan's goal is to widen the kinds of questions which are answered, then we have to reduce the volume of "kinds of questions we don't want answered."

Ryan

4:05 PM

Its kinda always been my goal which hasn't always gone over well but with Blender getting closed it felt like a good time to make a renewed push

Vincent

I'm all for allowing the 3D Qs, now that two 3D prposals have failed

Ryan

or sorryt with 3d getting closed

Lauren Ipsum

I pop in twice or so a day and look at the first few questions, but I rarely see something interesting. When I do, I try to answer it.

Vincent

we just need to attract the corresponding crowd that can answer them

Lauren Ipsum

I'm perfectly happy to have 3D questions on the site; I personally can't help with that topic, but I don't think it's out of scope

So bringing in 3D and Blender people would address both goals: more people, different kinds of questions

Ryan

4:08 PM

There's also now Adobe Fuse and Project Felix.

On the side of people doing things for web animation we've gotten a lot of new sketch questions and I think we have a decent base already with Piebie and Zach for answering some of the CSS animation type of stuff when they have time to and its a good question

Cai

Havn't got much time for discussion but my 2c here... Trying to get rid of the "bad" questions hasn't worked, close reasons and on-topicness has been changed a bunch of times to try and address it but the crappy questions are still going to come... instead I think we need to focus on getting more "good" questions. As long as the proportion of "good" vs "bad" gets better then we're moving in the right direction

Lauren Ipsum

@Cai I agree

what people see is what people think the site is about

so if we want more "good stuff," there has to BE more "good stuff" to attract it

Cai

@LaurenIpsum exactly this

Ryan

Any ideas on how to make that more well known? Meta posts on other sites? Community Promotion Ads? Tags? Something else?

Upvoting them even if you may not understand them

Lauren Ipsum

Meta posts and ads, yes

See if we can get a Meta post on HNQs

Ryan

4:11 PM

HNQs?

Lauren Ipsum

Hot Network Questions

The sidebar thingy?

Cai

No meta posts HNQs

Lauren Ipsum

well that's annoying

That's how I wander to many other SEs

Cai

Community ads on other sites aren't a bad idea

I think we need to focus on two things... 1. better questions here, now, from existing users; then 2. getting more users

Ryan

I look at RPG.SE which I recently started visiting a little and its like night and day compared to here. I want to know how we can be more like them. They're extremely active and voting. They upvote and upvote fast, leave very well written detailed answers. Its really amazing considering how much smaller they are

Lauren Ipsum

4:16 PM

Literature has been humming along pretty well too

that's not even 100 days old yet

Ryan

Consider they have 5,800 Nice Question badges awarded. We have 852.

Lauren Ipsum

@Ryan if you want to encourage voting, make a new badge or hat or something

Ryan

@LaurenIpsum huh? are mods able to make those??

Lauren Ipsum

we're already here for the gamification, so adding a shiny new one might attract attention

Just spitballing :)

Holiday hats get lots of attention, so...

DA.

Hey all. Sorry I'm not much help at the moment. I do check in once in awhile, though!

Ryan

4:19 PM

I've done more bounties by far than anyone else on good questions. Lately I've been traveling a lot but I also haven't found many questions I even find worth bountying :\

Cai

I've been thinking for a while about doing something along the lines of this...

64

Q: How do weekly topic challenges work?

A handful of sites have conducted a variation of the "weekly topic challenge" idea. I, myself, have become quite fond of them since they do seem to be effective at increasing asking rate and can be a lot of fun. I've personally initiated challenges on several sites (most recently on History and P...

Ryan

@Cai there's been a few efforts to do that. It lasted a while at one point but then when November holidays rolled around it died and never really got going again

Lauren Ipsum

^^that's actually a good idea, I think

Ryan

18

Q: Thursday Weekly Design Challenge

On Thursdays at 15 UTC we're going to be hosting a weekly design challenge. Come in to Ink Spot A random topic will be provided for people to design on. I'll host and pick topics the first few weeks but then open it up to anyone else who wants to throw out a topic. It could be a logo, a new way...

feature-request

Lauren Ipsum

On Literature it's so-so because the topic asks you to have read certain books, and if you haven't, you're SOL

Ryan

4:29 PM

could try bringing it back or a new implementation of it

the time specification was probably a bad idea. It would probably do better if its left as "Here's this weeks challenge, its due Monday" instead so people can work on it whenever was convenient for them

Lauren Ipsum

The Design Challenge not so much, but I like the topic challenge. That's what you're trying to do, @Ryan, isn't it? get more people asking questions about 3D or what have you?

Cai

@Ryan Yeh, I'm sure it won't last forever but if we can get it going for a while that'd definitely do some good

Lauren Ipsum

there's a weekly Writing Exercise on Writers, but it's barely attended

Ryan

oooh topic challenge. that's interesting. worth a shot

Vincent

@Ryan personally, I liked the short amount of time you had. Amazed at what people could throw together in that time :)

Cai

4:31 PM

Oh right yeh, I mean a question asking challenge not a design challenge

Ryan

we've tried some topic stuff but nothing very organized: graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/671/…

Cai

(although I'm not against bringing the design challenge back too)

Ryan

And this: graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2952/…

Lauren Ipsum

hey, if people like the Design Challenge, go for it

whatever matches your Pantone

Vincent

@LaurenIpsum lol

Lauren Ipsum

4:32 PM

;)

My personal Pantone is Crushed Peony Boogers

Vincent

Whatever floats your hairboat?

Cai

Ok, well I'm gona write up a meta post tonight and see if I can get enough people on board for a topic challenge

Lauren Ipsum

go @Cai!

okay, gotta run, but thanks for the ping

Ryan

Not sure I'll have time tonight but definitely tomorrow I can work on some tag editing and making ads for the other stack exchanges. Blender and Photography have been mentioned. Where else do you all know of that people might be interested? StackExchange? Superuser? Arts & Crafts?

(I'm a little nervous about advertising on SuperUser if they come to ask basic questions or IMO even worse "style / font ID" questions that we're trying to get away from)

I hate Style Identification and Font Identification. "Whats this background called?" >.<

Vincent

second that last part ^^

Ryan

4:42 PM

@Vincent just FYI I've become more aggressive on the commented answers and will flag it "Other" leaving a note "Please post this as an answer so people can vote and comment on it"

Vincent

good one, will pick that up

Metis

5:20 PM

I have no opinion.

gandalf3

6:04 PM

@Ryan +1 from B.SE :) I do notice that you mention software support is off-topic. A good portion of B.SE questions are Blender support questions, and I think most off-topic 3D questions on B.SE are off-topic because they are support questions for other software (often importing .blends into Unity/Unreal etc.)

Though we do tend to focus on technical questions more. Would questions pertaining to more artistic decisions be on topic here? (e.g. what about something like "How can I better separate the foreground and background in this scene?")

Ryan

@gandalf3 Hi Gandalf

gandalf3

o/

Ryan

Yes you could ask that question using our "Critique Guidelines" that's actually a pretty good question. Could perhaps include what you're thinking as well but yeah that would work fairly well for a question

What you can't do is say, "How can I improve this image?"

but if you leave a clear goal like improving the separation of foreground or background then its probably okay

gandalf3

Makes sense

Ryan

On the technical stuff we're largely torn between where to draw the line as you may have read. If enough 3D people join our community and want to answer technical questions on say importing objects then I don't think our existing base would mind

But that might be something for you to post on the actual meta discussion to make sure others see your opinion and concern as someone from the 3D side

Like we have "How do I do X in software Y" all the time. Including questions about importing and exporting files and resolution and all sorts of stuff. And whether people like to admit it or not most aren't really opposed to these questions, they're opposed to not having other more interesting questions AND they're opposed to some completely opinionated line on where they find "this is a simple task" vs "this is a not simple task"

so that would probably be the same as more 3D people come over for you all to have to grapple and decide where the line is between technical support and good question on your end

gandalf3

6:20 PM

Fair enough :)

Ryan

For reference these are our critique guidelines: graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/681/…

gandalf3

Though, judging by the difference between 3D.SE and B.SE, I'm not sure a lot of us are likely to migrate over very often. I personally suspect most of our avid users are here because everything is blender-centric. I might be wrong though. At any rate, hopefully you'll start pulling in new users from 3D.SE's untapped audience.

@Ryan Thanks

Ryan

What do you all do with the models and renderings you're making? Are any of them for stuff like posters / advertisements?

gandalf3

Me? Or in general?

Ryan

6:37 PM

Both I guess

gandalf3

I've done a couple banners, and I've seen people coming through with all sorts of applications (I remember one in particular where the OP needed to render at some humongous resolution for a billboard). A lot is for animation/games, or even just stills that aren't for posters.

Ryan

And any of those that are stills should have crossover into GD especially if you all do any sort of post processing work on the rendering to finalize it

this goes two ways too. I really could be utilizing 3D in my advertisements and design work. Certainly enough that questions could be interesting between the two communities

gandalf3

Oh yes, I agree completely. I didn't mean to say B.SE people wouldn't be interested in GD.SE, just that I don't know about the 3D part of GD.SE. I imagine quite a few B.SE users would be very interested in the graphic design part of GD.SE (and quite possibly are already on both)

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