Bullying and the Unity forum community

I stopped posting work on forums because I couldn't get much "good" criticism, and by that, I don't mean positive, at all. I mean negative, but specific and constructive enough to be helpful to me. If I post something for people to critique I WANT brutal honesty, and then I filter out all the nonsensical, nonspecific, or erroneous stuff as noise, and move on with life. If anything I see too much hand holding and attempts at political correctness than I see real brutal honesty or even mildly constructive feedback. I've even asked people to explain critiques that I thought were better than most, for the few and far between times that anyone posts more than "it's good", "wow, awesome", "that's a great first attempt", "it sucks", or "cool, how'd you do that, can you make me one". Most of the time the response is, "well I don't have time to answer" or "it's self explanatory" (when it's really not), or they don't respond to my question at all, which makes the "DISCUSSION" Forum, more of a, "quickly toss out your cryptic/unsupported opinion once" Forum.

As far as the kiddies go. I think the modern child lacks a lot of personal objectivity because our entire political, social, and educational system (in the US mind you) is blatantly geared towards an "all answers and outcomes are valid and you therefore define your own reality" mantra.
This is, in my opinion, just about the opposite of what's best for kids, particularly if we plan to have future generations of people who actually learn "how to do something". Encouraging but critical is what is needed, but that seems to be a lost art in and of itself. We truly are building whole generations of glass houses.

I started making games and programming when I was quite young, and knew a lot more about programming than my 8th grade "programming teacher" who was just an English teacher who had taken a 6 week course, but I was confident in the fact that what I was doing wasn't as good or as polished as it could be, and I knew I had a LOT to learn.
I WISH I had a discussion forum, wiki documentation, and search to go to for real help and critique at that time.

The same thing goes for art. I won award after award most of the 40% of my life, in my own little microcosm, but I was very aware of the flaws in everything I did, and I don't say that out of a lack of confidence, just an ability to be objective. I wish I had the internet to get feedback from real artists at the time, or even just access to polished, professional work to compare my stuff to, let alone the ridiculous number of free tools and tutorials.

So, seeing people post "minimal effort" attempts and expect glowing praise, then getting emotional and/or being ungracious about what feedback is offered, is frustrating for me. Therefore, I mostly just don't critique at all now, because I know the "well I'm just learning YOU KNOW, I'm only 13, and you shouldn't be a h8ter" answers are shortly in the pipeline, no matter how nice I am. I also stopped posting in the scripting and external tools forums because often the questions are either a blatant case of RTFM, or posed so poorly that it demonstrates a fundamental flaw in the basic approach, so there is no way I can be of any help to them without falling down the spiral of step by step hand holding, or basically doing it for them.

Plus, the detailed responses I occasionally give, are often followed up with questions that make me wonder if the person even bothered to follow the steps I outlined, or the follow up questions continue to lack enough information for me, or maybe anyone, to help them, and seldom end in a "thank you it worked or didn't work", and thus always feel like a rude conclusion.

So maybe my larger point is: there is an etiquette and expectations that should be outlined for both sides, not just the so called "bullies".

 

Well Redbeer if you want proffessional constructive criticism then there are options like Polycount for artists and some Gamedev or other programming forums for programmers. I am pretty much sure everyone knows that. If you want something harsh said to improve your workflow there is where to post. Not to judge you , but probably you wanted something in between, and you didnt have enough guts maybe to pick either of those? I am just saying that everyone knows what is the real "proffessional constructive" side of Unity forums, people are here polite but they dont judge that much from technical view, rather they judge from player view or view from simply if they like it or not.

 

Don't ruin my dreams you glass half full person .