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I guesss it’s just me
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.
Thanks for the good times
Gene Hoffma
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23 Replies
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Amen! At least someone has the balls to finally post this.
RTFM!!
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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.
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[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.
bogiesan
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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.
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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1 -
[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.bogiesan
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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.
Cheers.
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[david bogie] “Not sure who you’re talking to, son.
It can’t possibly be me.”Ummm, no Father, I wasn’t talking to you. I think we’re on the same team here.
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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6AE CS3
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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
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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.
Pauley (semi-advanced hobbyist)
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> 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
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