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This has turned into a really interesting exchange of takes I think.
I want to add that the helpfulness in the DAZ forums, both by users and moderators, is absolutely exceptional in my view. Like others here, I wouldn 't have come nearly as far with DS without the good folks in the tech threads.
And I actually like the 'What's this character/hair/skirt' threads. They helped me out personally quite a few times - it's really rather terrible if you become enamored with a certain ponytail that would suit your project just perfectly and then can't find it. Whenever I see one pop up, I check to see whether I can help (which is seldom enough ;-)). I understand they're annoying for some, but not for me.
Concerning moderation, I do believe it was too strict some time ago, to the point I asked myself whether it was worth coming in and posting at all. It felt particularly bad and even surreal in a way when all the forums were being heavily policed for any kind of political take, and at the same time, the President's Bundle was released. But things have been more relaxed as of lately, at least that's the way I feel. I also think the mods personally are doing a great job, and they don't make the guidelines of course.
Hmm maybe some people prefer to have instant communication instead. I know I do. Discord Servers are where its at :)
Thankfully I'm just following a several hundreds (I guess...) of artists there and never visit main page. Only "watched" and "watched" groups.
This! +1
Speaking of gallery, I think it's very importnat that we can't do search within it anymore.
In old gallery you could use built-in search and found renders of products that interest you - that inspired to purchase them.
What's funny is that I was just about to post a reply to the original comment that mentioned it about how intimidating and not-useful I find Discord.
Seriously, I do. It's OK as a chat interface for a conversation-size group of people, but when there's a vast, milling crowd, I stand helplessly on the sidelines and never interact and rarely find any coherent comment or conversation that's useful to me as an outsider and newbie. When I was a raw Daz newbie - as in, just installed it yesterday and "what is that?" ... "how do I do this?" the Daz forums here were a lifesaver.
If others have not mentioned it, the Reddit for Daz is actually quite friendly and well moderated without being overbearring.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Daz3D/
I like the reddit myself, I hope it gets a little more lively there. I appreciate the forum and I think the mods generally are doing a good job. But sometimes you just want discuss something in a more neutral environment.
The forums 100% have their place in the Daz universe :) I often direct people this way with specific product questions, suggestions etc.
As a side note, Discord can be overwhelming at first, especially for most of us introverts or those with learning disabilities etc. However, once you utilize the specialty help channels, and instant messaging, you realize just how valuable a resource it truly is. IMO there definitely seems to be much more activity/conversations/questions there then the forums these days.
In some of the cases on the tech tickets they are not getting all the info they need to troubleshoot some of the issues which in turns makes it really hard to figure out what's happening and need to have more people reporting it to get better information about it issue. Without all the info or not being able to reproduce it, they have no clue if it's a widespread issue or a user issue like a setting was accidentally change, and it's messing everything up. We've all had tickets that sat for a long time, but in almost all the cases, fixes were rolled out with the next general update to DS if they figured out what the issue was.
Unfortunately, it's also even more restrictive on what can be posted than this forum is, since it bans any AI (even though DAZ is now pushing their own AI), any posting of non-adult models in any situations, and merchant links can ONLY be posted by the content creator. Which probably explains why it only gets a post or two a day.
Umm... D/A was always a bit of a mess, but it blossomed originally thanks to it's general lack of restrictions and the fact that a creator could post almost anything there to get feedback without worrying about the site-owner trying to take over any rights. Unfortunately, that meant that it was doomed to go into a downward spiral the minute it was bought by WIC, the web design software company, who immediately managed to chase away a large percentage of the original user base, including most of the better known artists, via increased attempts to monetize every aspect of the site while offering relatively little financial reward to the creators in exchange. D/A's loss, Patreon/OnlyFans' gain... I still have a membership there and maintain a decent number of followers (5,300-ish) but I'd say that the number of hits that I get on the average day is about 1/4 what I saw during the pre-WIC period, and at least half of the artists that I used to follow have either shut down their accounts or simply stopped posting.
I'm kind of amazed that the galleries are even still there, given how little attention they've received over the years.
I Have a ticket where I described the issue in excruciating detail down to the line numbers in the files with the incorrect references, explained exactly how to replicate the issue, described exactly how to fix the product, and all I get are form responses every 6-8 months asking me to install some very suspicious screen recording tool to make videos for an error that doesn't need video to explain.
No, digital art is ART that uses tech... but the majority of art forms tends to use some kind of tech, even performing arts like dance and mime. Likewise, a forum is first and foremost meant to be a place where individuals can meet to exchange thoughts, and that general process hasn't changed since the word "forum" was first used in ancient Rome. What we're discussing here is a quantitive change in the general "vibe" and level of participation within these forums, which is much more a matter of how people interact than it is a function of how the forum software is written.*
*well, unless it turns out that the moderators have been replaced with AIs.
And that list could continue for a lot longer. It's quite significant that the most active thread is the store errors thread. It should be a rarity to post on there, but DAZ decision-makers have blatantly accepted this as a normal everyday occurance instead of recognizing it as a major issue, due to how frequent it is, which should be tackled as a priority to resolve or at least severely reduce. All this struggle to manage a website that sells things in 2024 - there's no acceptable excuse for it. Since the beginning of the year, certain decisions have chopped away at my passion for DAZ (e.g. new PAs joining, buying their products, and now I have a huge 'lost and found' folder full of stuff that isn't categorized. All because of DAZ's lack of planning and not caring about the customer), but now I've grown indifferent and just want to clear my wishlist before my membership expires. It's sad, because the customers are good people, the staff are good people. The decision-makers however think we'll just continue to eat up whatever they want to feed us.
...thank you, I took a little "tour" and then joined the group.
I'm on a couple "city" Reddit groups, as well as one for D&D and Shadowrun. Never thought to check if there was one for Daz.
My use of the word "tech" is ambiguous; I'm sorry about that, and I do appreciate your distinction that digital art is art that uses tech.
In no way do I want to diminish the work of artists who use tech as their medium.
I should have clarified that my use of "tech" isn't about software or even hardware. What I'm referring to is tech as a business, specifically
how it tends to operate, and how rapidly it changes. The OP said his last visit here was almost 14 years ago. In that time social media
took off- it's become the active "forum". In that time there has also been a much more focused effort to monetize just about anything that is
web-based. Both of these have had a huge effect on both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of forums, not just the DAZ ones.
As for the overall vibe of the forum, I still say this community is supportive of new users and generally positive. The atmosphere is far
from unwelcoming, which of course has nothing to do with software (at least not directly).
I would like to +1 this several thousand times. When I complain about having to go to the forums for anything resembling actual documentation, this is what I mean. I really do appreciate the high level of peer-to-peer support, but I wish I didn't have to rely upon it.
If I'm honest, I don't post in the forums very much because I feel negatively about Daz as a company -- I feel that they are moving in directions, in terms of their stewardship of the product, that are bad and will eventually sink the whole thing ... and since I now rely on Studio as my major creative tool, having it go down in flames, or change to being something that would strand my thousands of dollars of purchased resources, is a nightmare for me to contemplate. I've already made battle plans for when I have to "freeze" my version of Studio so that hopefully I can get several more years of use out of it.
Criticism of Daz is unwelcome on these forums (and I can't really fault them for that, after all, they're *product* forums owned and run by the same people who make the product -- why would they allow people throwing bricks in their own back yard?)
(NOTE: I would like to make clear that this is not a criticism of the forum moderators, who have a difficult mandate to follow and in general do it well. I mean, yes, I consider forum policy a bit too restrictive, but that's not their fault, and they have to enforce 'the law' as Daz has dictated it.)
I wouldn't mind having some instant communication about Studio, some days, but I don't know any places like that and I'm too old for Discord. To me Discord is still that place where horrible young men go to yell crude names at each other in voice chat while playing team shooters.
I have only one friend who is also a heavy Studio user (actually he's the one who got me hooked, blame him) and we mostly use private messages elsewhere.
Im old too, but I think you would be surprised how much great company you would be in. Seriously. The Daz Slackers Discord is lovely. If you dont want to chat all day long, there are still specific channels within it to ask for feedback, ask for help etc. I use Discord more as a tool and less as a cafe, but Im also trying to work lol. There are a lot of friendly, knowledgable people on there, and quite a few vendors that you can interact with.
I've been a DAZ customer since they were known as Zygote (1999). Let's just say my participation in the forums has evolved.
I don't feel the need to post much. I don't have many recent products to discuss. Sometimes I'm a bit disoriented in my thoughts.
But on the whole, I think the moderators and other forum members have tolerated me very well.
I've only recently found Discord and don't know much about finding servers of interest. I'd use it if I knew how to find it. :)
I've had a lot of bad experiences with DAZ customer service. Recently though, I had one of the best techs help me with an issue and helped in a way my old brain could understand. It was a breath of fresh air.
To me, Discord seems like several steps backwards. It reminds me of IRC. I don't want to have to send a message to a bot to join a forum. If Discord is good then I must be missing some key details.
I hope it wasn't because of me. I think you're great. I even tracked down the movie your adorable animated gif is based on and watched it. I've been trying to avoid this oncoming migraine with more caffeine than any human should ever consume, unsuccessfully. Now I'm going to be up all night wondering if I'm to blame listening to Life Of Agony's song "Bad Seed" on repeat with my head in the toilet. Hope it wasn't me. Much love to all.
I think sterility and fewer participatants is what I see now. I miss the DAZ sales where we would vote for the next day's sale item by ranking our top ten items from a list provided by DAZ. That was fun.
I think the atmoshpere is still good, but yes I can see it darker which just reflects the world around us where a VERY few people state a negative idea and it gets AMPLIFIED until the rest of us think everyone else agrees with the madness and we are a shrinking voice.
Only remedy for that is find more hopeful/joyful voices to listen to to help combat the negative and then YOU SHARE that positiveness with others. Includes others on this forum. Damn!! Now I went and spent my 2 cents for the day.
Wow! That looks amazing! Can I ask what software you used ?