Reduser noise, Professionals, and finding the information you want

[Ryan Patch]

Hey all-

So, most of us who've been here for a while (we'll say pre-NAB 08) have been really frustrated by the immense amount of noise and generally useless blather on this forum in the last 3 months or so, significantly spiking after the Nov 13th announcements, and again after Dec 3rd. It seems most posts are complaints, mindless praise, or "hey, I'm totally new at this..." This is not necessarily all bad. We need a place to talk, meet one another, complain, praise, discuss whiskey, cigars, movies, make friends, connections, etc. It's also invaluable to have a place to say things like "I'm getting red noise in my EVF..." and have 5000 other RED users be able to help with that specific problem.

Moving forward, though, it is going to be important to move and consolidate general, accepted-as-fact (NOT disputed) information to a new place so it can be found easily. Information on the operation of the camera, equivalent of a user guide. Where there will be answers to questions like "what do I need for my full RED package?", "what's the best way to mount an EVF?" and "So, let me see if I have this workflow right..." New users start posts about these topics daily because it's so hard to wade through this forum. Searches (both on Reduser and through Google) are getting harder and harder to pinpoint information with.

So, here's what I'm proposing. A RED Wiki. Somewhere that's community-based so we can all use it and update it weekly as new workflows, equipment and techniques come to light. Not a Red Camera wiki page, but a whole Wiki just for us. I know that there are free software programs that this can be built on.

It would be difficult for RED to put out manuals for their products, as everything changes so quickly and we want them putting their energy into building new cameras. The solution is community-based support, which worked well until a few months ago. However, our community has grown too big to just have conversations about everything. We need a centralized place to consolidate information to point new users to. I believe this will really help this community function better, cleaner, and with more quality. It's still community-based and dynamic, but not quite as transient as the information on this forum.

I think the REDWiki will free THIS community up to be a specific support and discussion forum, and make the answers posted on the REDWiki be of higher quality, as it won't be the 1,000th time we've answered something.

Does this make sense to anyone else? Would anyone want to help me with this project?

I don't know how one goes about building a wiki. I know there is software out there that can help, and I'm sure it's free. I also am not a web developer. Would there be some people out there with development skills that would like to help me build a Wiki? Also, I have web developer friends who would work for cheap if we wanted to outsource it, but we would have to raise some money. We'll also need money for server space. I can donate mine to start, but eventually we'd need a real server of our own. I would love to get this project going, but don't really know where to start.

Anyone with me?

 

[Shawn Nelson]

hey hey, my posts about whiskey and cigars were properly located in 'Off Topic'!

As for specifics on EVFs, etc, we do have subforums for those things.

As for a Wiki, its a good idea, Ian Bloom started a good one, I added to it, I havent heard much in a bit. Did you support that one?

 

[Etienne Caron]

I'm with you 110%... When i was waiting for my cameras, i had all the time in the world to read everything that this forum bring and it was very usefull. But since i have them, i work 70 hours/week and dont have the energy to scan all the post.

I know that we all ask so much to Red team in the last 2 years, but it would be great if they had an official ezine (blog, whatever) that you subscribe as Red owner (or not!) and receive all the news concerning Red on set and workflow.

I guess as a multimillions dollars company, Red could hire a technical writer/journalist/whatever to write that kind of daily/weekly update ! If not, there is a market for someone else to do it...

I will pay and subscribe to that anytime !

 

[Ryan Patch]

Oh no... I was saying that the posts on whiskey and cigars are great! And we need a place for them!

Also, of course we have places on the forum for EVF mounts, etc... but I'm saying we need a place for information that doesn't need to be discussed anymore. The forums are great if you're asking an obscure question, but we don't need a thread every time someone wants a question answered about a mount, etc, that we've already been over and the answer is "standard".

Where's Ian's wiki?

 

[Desert Rune]

I cannot agree more. I haven't visited in a while but it has become a real chore to find any useful information from reduser.net. I don't know which is worse, the fanboy replies or the trollings; both of which are equally annoying.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

If a wiki can be edited by anyone, does that open up the possibility of misinformation being inserted? I'm not a Wiki guy, so I don't know all the ins and outs. But that would be my concern. Perhaps it doesn't work the way I'm thinking it does.

Overall, I agree that the forum has become very dense and sometimes difficult to navigate. Nature of the beast I think.

 

[Charles Angus]

I would definitely contribute to that. I don't mind answering questions - the first couple times!

A wiki would be great.

 

[Jim Exton]

If a wiki can be edited by anyone, does that open up the possibility of misinformation being inserted? I'm not a Wiki guy, so I don't know all the ins and outs. But that would be my concern. Perhaps it doesn't work the way I'm thinking it does.

Overall, I agree that the forum has become very dense and sometimes difficult to navigate. Nature of the beast I think.

This happens all the time with a bunch of entries. Wikipedia is notorious for not being completely accurate because of this.

 

[David Birdy]

Great points!

The Reduser is great.. It's place for many professionals from around the world to learn about new technology.

A higher level Reduser with more specific posts geared to owners may be an answer..but including everyone that wants to learn is also very important.

Reduser has certainly added/attracted clients to Red Digital Cinema and was/is in it's self a brilliant marketing tool to allow many of us to become familiar with technology we did not have in our hands, due to the waiting list.

I would give a Wiki site support, but still really enjoy logging onto Reduser....
maybe a recommended reading list sticky would be in order to see what is new in a quick glance??? Mods is that possible?

Dave

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The community wiki is something that has come up before by myself and others. I don't know if it would work, but I think it could be our best hope for creating a consolidated resource. It would take a lot of effort to keep it up to date and accurate.

As for the forum itself, it's a high-energy place. Hopefully the real names policy will control some of the bad attitude and other outbursts. But the real issue is that there will always be a certain amount of noise. The more members a community has, the greater the noise volume. It doesn't matter if we make it private, owners only, etc..

We mods walk a fine line around here. People complain about noise, but as soon as we start trimming threads, removing some of the noise and clutter, we get accused of censorship or whatnot. But I have to say that there are increased efforts already in progress to help cut some of the noise around here. And there have been several members banned lately and will probably continue to be as long as there are those with bad attitudes or those who only offer non-constructive criticism or insults. And I hope people don't start squawking about censorship either... I know it will happen, but I can hope. All I can say is that while speech should be free, most of us realize that there are certain things that should not be said in certain places. These forums are representative of RED. It's like their virtual front lobby in a way. If people want to bring their bad attitude and RED bashing to the table, they had better do it somewhere else.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

And just to clarify my point above. I was a newbie at one time too. So I appreciate that new redusers coming to the forum are trying to find their way and get as much information as possible. Sometimes this results in topics that have been answered several times. But because of the amount of material on this forum it can be tough to wade through it. The ones coming with bad intentions, that's a different story and I leave that alone. That's not my place to comment on. I'm sure those situations are being handled.

But I just wanted to say that many in this community have contributed to my learning Red, technology, filmmaking techniques, business, etc since I joined two years ago. It has been invaluable, and I'd be way behind without this place. So my hats off to all the people who have helped me, and perhaps I've been able to reciprocate every once and a while.

If there is a better way to gather the information, I'm all for it. In the meantime, I say we try to help out those who are new to Red as best we can.

 

[Sam Roberts]

It would be difficult for RED to put out manuals for their products, as everything changes so quickly and we want them putting their energy into building new cameras.

Ryan...I agree with everything in your post except this. I know you certainly aren't the first person to excuse RED's lack of documentation. But it seems to me all that is needed are customers with ring binders and online PDF manuals that can easily be updated. Download the new update print it out and remove the old page(s) from your binder and slip in the new. It is really very simple. They already do it with every new camera build. RED neeeds to hire a writer/editor in charge of all equipment and post documentation.

A centralized WIKI is a good idea though. It would also be great if we could choose only the subject headers and threads we want here on REDuser so when we hit "new posts" we only get the subjects we want and not every single one somebody has posted to. It is getting more and more difficult to find hard information among the fanboy blather and the off topic chatter.

For me I want camera technical info, product updates and Apple workflow tips. I'm not really here to socialize or take part in the frequent pissing contests.

 

[Isaac Brody]

I like this idea, a Red Wiki seems long overdue.

As for noise, give us a week or two. The noise has come from amateurs, pros, Red One and non One owners. A little self restraint is in order, and we'll nudge people when needed.

 

[Ryan Patch]

Steve-

The idea of a Wiki is that it's open to everybody. The idea behind it, though, is that there are so many people looking at it, that if misinformation (weather through vandalism or accident) is posted, it is quickly fixed. The statement that Wikipedia is "known to be" incorrect is slanted. Even the harshest critic will tell you that the major potential flaw in Wikipedia it's it's potential for bias. Fortunately, we won't be writing biographies for politicians, we'll be discussing camera specs and procedures.

 

[Paul Murray]

I am new here and spend aprox 1 or 2 hours a day reading the forum

It is all very informative but it is a little bit like panning for gold!

Find a Wiki a great idea

here is an example of how it works in the fcp world

http://www.lafcpug.org/faqwiki/index.php/Main_Page

Like seriously how about taking a few baby steps and having a section called which "post work flow is right for me"

i.e. a list of work flows with case sensitive advantages / disadvantages

I don´t even get it how many main stream work flows there are!!!

my 2 cents

Paul:cold:

p.s. also think that it would make it easier to sell RED to producers etc

it would mean saying "there isn´t really a manuel as such but, hey there is a Wiki" rather than simply there isn´t really a manuel as such but there is a think called a forum"

 

[Milan Nikolic]

Red Wiki is good idea since we all need some kind of Red knowledge sistematization. But, FAQ need to be developed constantly as well!

 

[Jonas Nyström]

Is it maybe anything which could be improved in the search engine?

It's for example quite hard (impossible?) to do search like "word+word".

 

[Martin Weiss]

There have been some attempts in the past to start a wiki or a consolidated information pool. I think they all pretty much faded away, simply because of the lack of traffic. Few people seemed to know about them, while the majority of people interested in RED end up on Reduser.

What we really need is a wiki that is a) hosted on RED and b) gets frequently announced here on Reduser and on the RED.com homepage

 

[Jonas Rejman]

This was the exact reason why I started the page "The Purgatory Magazine".

I try to collect there the most usable info, that I can remember, but a lot of it is lost somewhere in the forums.

There are a lot of other pages like mine, and I think that the biggest problem is, that they just cannot find editors, and people who take care of it. I think the great wiki from Ian had this problem. I went the lazy way, and I connect only to existing posts and discussions, and I use it for myself, if I want to remember a product or a post.

But this is far from complete, because I tried to find some more people to help, but this is quite difficult.

So I agree fully with Ryan, we need this. We need a manual, we need posts about sensonometry, greenscreen testing and workflows. Written by "pros" and not by guys who just read about the camera.

But how can we organize this in practice?

Please have look at my page. It is very simple, and it is a directory with links, mostly to reduser posts. So all the editors would have to do, is to find the info and to create links, while maintaining a good structure.

If this would be a good starting point for what Ryan is proposing, and there would be more guys who would want to look for articles and write some, I would be very happy to give you accounts. Otherwise it will probably remain what it is: my notebook :-D

Cheers

 

[David M]

The only way a Wiki would work is if there are strict limits imposed on the amount of free editing that is possible on any particular page/subject. So, anybody should be free to start a new topic, but after a certain amount of time has elapsed, the item should be reviewed by the operators of the Wiki and if it seems to be reasonably comprehensive, it should then be fenced off from any further unsupervised editing.

The Wikipedia tends to attract nutjobs who will "adopt" a certain page and thereafter revert any additions made by anybody else, no matter how accurate they might be. Other clowns can't seem to stop fiddling with grammar and sentence construction even though they clearly have no clue about either.

At the very least, there should be no simple one-click "revert" or similar functions available to anybody but the operators.