GrabCAD Community User Group

Agree wholeheartedly. I've long since stopped reading anything on GC 'cuz of the price of toilet paper these days. Takes near half-a-roll to clean the shit off my screen for 90% of the posts. GC is on the bottom of my list and remain there until my death if they don't clean up their act. I've begun to suspect the site admins R getting kickbacks from these people.

Perhaps just requiring moderator approval for the first week/day? You want newcomers or beginners to be able to ask questions. Asking questions is simply how you learn. When you're starting out and really green you won't really know yet all of the information you need to provide for someone to be able to help. That too is part of the learning process.

The new-member issue is not new here. GC is either ignoring it or do not have the resources or...

There’s already a group for France and a separate group for AutoCAD. Neither see a lot of activity. Probably not much need to delineate any further. As a relatively new member you probably didn’t know this.

Agree completely.

@Bob

I believe his point was that there are currently some restrictions on how new users can post.

If someone who is new can't create a post or ask a question then there would need to be daily/weekly threads for them to do so. GrabCAD should be a place welcoming to newcomers who have your basic "how-do-I" questions. Not being able to make a post and have to contribute someway like uploading models or answering questions would lock-out that group of people.

Worst case they could always implement community moderators like Reddit.

Now the Spammers are even sending spam mails.

BUT GRABCAD will not do anything about It.

I spoke to another long standing member yesterday and we talked about the beginning of GrabCad and how we helped people who where having problems with the software or need advice and we kindly gave it. We also posted Models to share and show what our capability's where .

Not when we go on GrabCad most of our time is reporting spam or seeing which models have been stolen or misused and we get no response from GrabCad " STAFF" I cannot remember where a spam post was taken down by GrabCad even when reported.

I would be the first to argue against discouraging new members in any way. However, I can’t remember any posts by new members that had any redeeming value for themselves or anyone else. While they need to ask questions and get help, the main problem is they don’t know enough to even ask the right questions. And they don’t stay around long enough for someone to steer them in the right direction and for them to learn from their mistakes. It happens occasionally but not very often.

I agree there should be some kind of moderation. It wouldn’t be that hard since there aren’t that many new posts. Every new post should require approval before it gets posted. If nothing else the moderator could help new users either rephrase a post or direct them to where they could better find what they are looking for. Since spammers already require intervention by an admin, this additional moderation step could save them time in the long run. It would certainly eliminate the time and frustration of the users.

Hello Bob,

I have read your posts and I find them outright disturbing.

Why does GrabCAD continue to allow new members to make posts. ???

Do you really want to live on a planet where no one is allowed to speak or have an opinion without permission?

It is strange how taking away liberty and freedom is always done from a perspective of protecting you. It is always done from the moral high ground and from the perspective of helping you.

It always starts with one small subject from a position of protecting you but then you notice the list grows dramatically with increasing intensity.

We should moderate spam,

BUT THEN WE NOTICE THIS REQUESTED MODERATION DOES NOT STOP.

We should moderate new members,

We should moderate new members with zero model submissions,

We should moderate posts that make no sense,

We should moderate posts with insufficient information,

We should moderate drive-by-posts and stupid questions,

Then we should then moderate (All) posts to the groups and question sections

YOU THEN START TO SEE A MORE HARDLINE DICTATORSHIP POSITION.

We should moderate inappropriate content, (Who decides what is appropriate and inappropriate ?) You can certainly guess it wont be you.

What started with “We should moderate new members”

quickly escalates to:

“Every new post should require approval before it gets posted.”

Moderators should forcibly rephrase a posts (obviously with the twist of helping them)

Everyone should be forced to go through a vetting process just to make sure members dont commit wrong think.

Content will be scoured for inappropriate content or opinions.

It is quite obvious to see what direction this is heading?

You notice these people always place themselves at the top of this chain with everyone else beneath them claiming everyone else is to backward, stupid or incompetent to speak or have an opinion. These people "make no sense or add anything of redeeming value", "they don’t know enough to even ask the right questions."

They are then demeaned as having the intellect of a child with remarks such as “before graduating to the adult section.”

Some people may not be as intelligent as some others. It does not mean they should be persecuted, demeaned, ridiculed or have their right to speak taken away.

Every person on this planet should answer this simple question.

What is the word that describes a group of human beings that has their liberty or freedom forcibly taken away?

The real question is, do you want to be one of them?

GrabCad is not Tweeter or Facebook, it is simply a site for professionals, students, hobbyists and businesses. I think you are overreaching.

You say Grabcad is not Tweeter or Facebook.

Maybe I am overreaching, but it is not me who is requesting a vetting process or moderation board for inappropriate requests or content or Every new post should require approval before it gets posted.

I think you are telling the wrong person Carlos.

My reply was "engineered" towards the professional and the want-to-be professionals. It is up to you how you want to interpret it, Jason.

I appreciate what you’ve said. I wholeheartedly agree. My question was meant to evoke some conversation. Both pro and con. But maybe I have failed to make a few points clear. I’m never for censorship or blocking anyone from expressing their opinion or needs. With 9 million users, it is quite apparent that many either don’t want to abide by the rules or are simply inexperienced and don’t understand what they’re doing. I truly feel the best way to help the inexperienced is with some moderation:

”If nothing else the moderator could help new users either rephrase a post or direct them to where they could better find what they are looking for.”

Over the last month or so we had one particular member that was repeatedly posting NSFW models. Again I’m against censorship. But where does GrabCAD draw the line. I’m accessing this website from work for professional purposes. The content is such that I felt compelled to avoid it because the GrabCAD website technically broke our company policies during this period of time. GrabCAD dealt with this member. Deleting the offending models. Yet they continued. Eventually GrabCAD had to ban the user altogether.

Free speech in public is one thing. But this is not the public. This is a private space. GrabCAD management has every right and responsibility to monitor and control what is posted here. To even suggest that they can’t or shouldn’t violates their freedom of speech!

People have a severely mistaken belief that privately owned websites are public spaces with free speech protected by the constitution. They are not! While censorship on many of the more modern platforms such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc are not popular ideas. It is completely legal and protected behavior.

What I find bothersome is the amount of people who ask for help in GrabCAD have little to zero experience in the CAD software they are using and expecting people on here to basically do the work for them.

Especially the ones who are doing projects for their "final exams" for a school course. That is why they have instructors at the schools to be able to answer those questions (if the instructor cannot answer the question, I would question the instructors ability to teach).

Or the people who offer to help, but then want to get paid for their time.

Hello again Bob,

From your message it appears that I did overreach and I therefore I must apologize.

From your message it appeared that you were using the excuse of spam in an attempt to force through radical extreme measures on the platform. Unfortunately, this has been done to many other platforms. For that reason, I felt I had to make a stand and point this out.

I do agree that there is a severe problem with spam and something must be done.

I have a feeling what constitutes a public / private space will be changing after what has happened in past years.  

In any case I wish you a good day Bob regards Jason.

We all started knowing nothing of CAD.

We have all joined groups on the web and then forgot them.

Just ignore them

We all started knowing nothing of CAD.

We have all joined groups on the web and then forgot them.

Just ignore them