Moho Forum

Ok so we all understand the plight of the noobie, we all started as weird little hatchlings ourselves , so this post is in no way meant to discourage or embarrass anybody.
Anyway....
There are many people here who go out of their way to help new and old users , with any task, no matter how trivial... I know I have received plenty of tips for things that on hindsight are face-palmingly simple.

It does seem however, that sometimes new users post time and time again for obvious stuff and maybe take for granted/advantage the generosity of some of the gurus, Wes Dennis ,Dale, Slow, Victor, Danny Paul et al ( apologies for any accidental oversights here)who deserve feakn medals for all the help they give out.
Often the very welcome noobs might just want to make some basic effort to find the answer without getting custom tutorials from these generous experts.

So the point is, maybe a politely worded " Before you post" sticky could be placed at the top of the general discussion to try to steer newcomers toward some basic self help before demanding answers to basic questions.
There could be a link to pages with the first baby step instructions.
I would have a shot but I clearly lack diplomacy as demonstrated here.

What do you think peeps?

Hey, my diplomacy ain't no great shakes either. Luckily this forum is active enough that I know if I lack the patience someone else will be along shortly. I tend to leave the repetitive and simpler questions for other new-ish users (or very generous pros...where does Denis find all the time?) to answer. After all, who better to understand the plight than a fellow recent newb. Many of us are just too many years removed to remember the bewildered frustration.

Part of the problem is that this forum is so active that you can often get answers faster than a search of the forum, YouTube, or the user manual...especially when you don't know the right terminology. I can't say I blame them....as long as they don't get rude. Instant gratification can be addictive.

Chucky, there are two types of newbies coming to Moho. One is experience animators that have problems with the upside down logic of Moho. They can be a pain because somethings like drawing isn't like other programs, They complain and a few ask, "What's the workaround?"

Then there is the newbies to animation. Not only they don't know Moho, but the don't know how to animate also. I'm starting to get to the point that the best answer to them is, 'Search YouTube for a video.' As synthsin75 said, the forum is so active that someone will answer. But come on, newbies stop and do the due diligence and search for the answers. Currently I'm learning OpenToonz and I haven't went on the OT forum asking questions.

Ya, I know I'm repeating you Chucky and Synth, but how many years have you guys been animating?
My first animation:

Notice it's 10 years old.
So if your new your not going to learn animation overnight.

Dale

I'm a newcomer here on this forum, and feel that this original thread is directed at that likes of new members like myself, - a forum is what it is a place where ideas and views can be exchanged. I personally have throughly researched my questions before posting, my research does not always deliver the answers sought, and the forum is a place where people in the field can give direction where the answer has not been found elsewhere. I come from a scriptwriting background, and worked with artists with egos as big as Manhattan in their respective field, drawing lines at development stage is not something I personally subscribe too, and hope the Moderators and others continue with their patience and recall their roots on the subject of animation, ( a very deep subject ) however exasperating it might seem to some.

Don't forget that certain kind of questions which, by popping up again and again, prove that the manual lacks a lot.

Yes, putting the most wanted answes into a sticky may help. At least I only have to post that one link.

slowtiger wrote:Don't forget that certain kind of questions which, by popping up again and again, prove that the manual lacks a lot.

Yes, putting the most wanted answes into a sticky may help. At least I only have to post that one link.

Yes this is true, I absolutely agree, as to the links to FAQ with the 'before you post suggestion.'
Just for stuff like, why don't my layers move? Why do my shapes have weird holes in them ( I asked all these myself , so I'm not criticising) and the like.
Some of these come up time and time again this forum is the best pace for those solutions , permanently posted.

chucky wrote:

slowtiger wrote:Don't forget that certain kind of questions which, by popping up again and again, prove that the manual lacks a lot.

Yes, putting the most wanted answes into a sticky may help. At least I only have to post that one link.

Yes this is true, I absolutely agree, as to the links to FAQ with the 'before you post suggestion.'
Just for stuff like, why don't my layers move? Why do my shapes have weird holes in them ( I asked all these myself , so I'm not criticising) and the like.
Some of these come up time and time again this forum is the best pace for those solutions , permanently posted.

How about just two threads that has just the common questions? One would be on how to use Moho and the other on animation. Each post in the thread would be how something is done. Like how to motion track in Moho and then point to a video. Or the differences of tweening and point to another video. Nothing else. No questions or comments from anyone. And of course both would be sticky's on the top of the General Moho Discussion.

Dale

Sounds like a good idea , This forum is such a great resource but sometimes the best answers get lost in the backlog and swamped by the surrounding chatter ( not that there's anything wrong with chatter) .
As you suggest the really useful stuff could get farmed back into a quarantined topic or two.
Maybe it could start as a bullet list with links to the precise post.

IMO there's a lot of valuable stuff in this forum that is still current (not just stuff that's relevant to Moho 12, but also stuff that is "timeless") -- and there's a load of stuff that is definitely past its "use by" date (as exemplified by the content in the locked Moho 5 forum) -- stuff that was a "state of the art in technique" back in the days of AS6 might have been overtaken by features in the later versions or better techniques that have been invented.

There is also a "FAQ" board that's not locked, but that hasn't been updated since 2005 - an ideal logical place for all the standard noob questions!

What I feel is missing is proactive curatorship of content -- but going through nearly 25,000 topics (containing going on 170,000 posts!) to decide what is and is not current / useful is not something I think would attract too many volunteers.

So how about a revolutionary approach -- when Moho 13 hits the streets (whenever that might be) lock and rename the "General", "How do I", "Tips", "Feature request" and "Bugs" boards (maybe scripting too??) and open up new ones -- and moderators (?) curate the truly FAQ into the (re-vitalised) FAQs???

I sometimes find it hard to quickly find info in this forum, and I wish we had a way of tagging information here. (Tagging is one of the reasons I love using Evernote for my personal notes and lists.) Of course, tagging is only useful if posters will take the time to tag stuff.

Secret: I post a lot of info is so I can narrow the searches by filtering through only my own posts--it's so much easier than searching the entire forum. Oh, yeah, and to help other users too. (I'm not totally selfish.)

last two suggestions are top notch, I reckon.
A revamped F , placed higher on the Menu board and a way to tag posts.

I don't know if there's any way of adding a rating plugin to the forum, that could be a way of making searches more effective.
Maybe we are partially enabling users too...? I was tempted to answer the question in another post about blending modes, but I think it might be more responsible to paste a link to the manual page.... but then sometimes silence is an even better motivator.