Hey. What about creating a “reddit” for Commands/Macros and scripts, maybe within this forum if possible?
A part of a forum with a table layout on which you can up or down-vote user entries, a populatity contest for commands so to speak.
I find myself discovering a lot of commands that are super useful after ages of using rhino. Maybe this cloud could help a lot of youngsters to get up to speed.
Well, I’m not fond of the popularity contest thing, but a good listing by category would be nice. There used to be a section on the Rhino Wiki for this, but it’s outdated, nobody has contributed for ages. Food4Rhino has some, but they aren’t listed by type of function. These days I think a lot of people have GitHub repos (not me tho). The main problem is having someone organize the list (potentially thousands of scripts) into something manageable, coherent and searchable.
yeah… maybe the up- and down-voting could be the self-regulating mechanism for sorting the obscure from the helpful, from the not useful at all…
otherwise someone would have to be paid to check through all the entries…
maybe democratic sounds better then popularity contest… and maybe there should be a Ranking by editors only for those who believe in the technocratic approach
I think that a simple indication of how many downloads a script has had should be sufficient, with a possibility to sort by that criteria for the users that want the “most popular” ones. “Obscure” is not the opposite of “Helpful”, a less used script may just be for specialized situations and it may be exactly what you need for a certain project, even if you won’t use it every day.
In my experience there are very, very few scripts posted here that are “unhelpful” or “bad”.
Good point. I guess the only meaningful indicator would be if someone who decided to give it a try would feed back with “Worked for me”, “didn’t do what I needed”, or “has bugs that ruined my work”. Or some such categories.
agreed 100p. i m all for the obscure, was just lazy in writing this.
maybe also a rating for reviews. like amazon. that works well, might be overkill though.
i def think there should be a editors ranking. when i check for movies or music i generally dont trust the public on recommendations but the experts…
bad scripts there are none, true, but there might be a typo or something doesnt work… thats what i meant. @AIW pointed that out just about now.
ah… and there is this beta plugin database within rhino… maybe this could also be access directly within the program.
I see two big problems with that:
A: Useful plugins are not necessary popular and vice versa
Rhino user have very different problems to solve, many of them are not even professionals.
For example tens of thousands of young architecture students value different as a hundred professional (and older) naval engineers. Even a professional architect will need to find their own valuable tools, out of the mock-ups. Casual user want one-click solutions. This is utopic and a big problem in the domain of CAD. As a consequence, filtering by a “Democratic” evaluation is not useful, since its usually based on subjective criteria (easy of use, visual appearance, one click and not innovation, functionality, workflow) . That’s at least my opinion.
B: Its free.
Come on, whats your mindset? 
You simply cannot expect any of them to be unconditional useful and bugfree. This is contradictory. Even great open source software like Blender is not made by people working for zero cash. Just download and try for yourself. This is the minimum of value someone can give in return. I never understand people complaining about something free. Even a simplistic script needs at least of 30 minutes of work and deployment. Most are made within days, weeks or even months.
And someone has not 10 minutes left for searching,downloading and executing? This common kind of thinking is at least what made me stop working for “free”.
Anyway. Food4Rhino could be better. Adding this to the forum would be beneficial. Although it might be not feasible, since “Discourse” is a third party technology.
A…
s said… there could be a tag system which solves the 1 dimensional “popular” thing, #architecture #naval #blablabla… The crux with rhino is, that sometimes you really try 100 different ways until u find the best/quickest. If you actually want to get work done it would be super helpful to rely on a community which gives you hints at the quickest approach.
B. sorry but this is stupid. you are saying just because someone puts out a script for free which doesnt work i shouldnt pin out it does not work because i hurt someones feelings? its not personal. plus its the internet, bitch. 
i like rhino. but i want point out what could be better. this thread asks for freq used commands… i guess the best way to find frequently used commands is by pooling everyones opinion. and if you poll you have the results in a spread sheet.
On A: I was not saying this. I’m skeptical that the “majority” of users value right.
Regarding B:
I think nobody is posting scripts which do not work. Its maybe not working anymore or its not what you expect or understand.
Its totally okay to comment and say its not working for you, but its the way people tell you that. A lot of people have a very negative attitude and becoming disrespectful very fast, arguing "you wasted my time, blabla " . Yes its the “internet”. But the same way you call me “Bitch” (I do understand this American Slang) this still pisses me of as a developer. What do you think is the motivation of someone posting scripts, plugins or even full programs for free on the internet? Currently little. Exposing them into a subjective ranking system is just not making it better.
a. see editors ranking… like
b. ok, so basically you are appealing to everybody to be nicer and grateful to each other. like a bitch. hahaha. come on… dont loose your sense of humor over respectful etiquette… im very grateful for all the work developers are doing.
This will be a great showcase of self-reference. It has the great danger of give some people the false sense that what a few people who frequent this newsgroups think matters a lot, or that such thinking is representative in any way, of the overal Rhino user base. This is a textbook definition of an echo chamber.
If you study just a little bit the amount of damage that the Amazon review system is doing to good work, good products, good and ethical companies; you will be shocked. Amazon reviews are the biggest scam of this decade, after Facebook.
Anika, both of those comments reflect a genuine effort on your part to help, and that’s very appreciated, but they also show a tendency to over-simplification in a effort to make a user research effort approachable, low effort and low cost. This is the reason why most companies ship junk. Why all relevant (and most important) nuance to make excellent products is lost.
Example: I bet this is the reason why some newer “modern CAD” products exist. I’m sure they have lots of data, checklists, and ranked mechanisms that assures its development team that they are working on the right things. They are victims of group-thinking, and echo-chambers. If you believed their narrative you would think all product design today is generative metal 3D printed spaghetti. And they lack the vision and the pursuit of excellence so they are confident that focusing on the trendy, the subsidized, and the popular gives them a chance to be successful.
I say, let’s focus on the excellent, not the popular. Let’s study why it’s obscure. And what needs to be done so it isn’t. Obscurity and mostly unaccessible UI is the reason why good stuff is not more successful. It’s the reason why so much mediocrity exists in tools, training, professional development, and end-results. Let’s work to end that!
G
The couple of dozen regular ‘script hacks’ who frequent this forum (myself included) have posted hundreds and hundreds of scripts here for no other motivation than to help people. Personally I don’t give a rat’s behind whether a script I post is popular or not, if it helped just one person, I’m happy. And generally, if a script posted here doesn’t work and the person who used it reports back with an error message, the scripter will continue to develop and correct the script and repost it here until it does work.
You will see the same thing happening on the Grasshopper side of the forum.
Don’t confuse this place with ‘the internet’. It may be using the 'net as a platform, but this is a privately-held forum that is sponsored by McNeel for the purposes of helping and building its user community. It has a reputation for being one of the most polite, respectful, and helpful forums that exist today. I and others like me will continue to fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.
… I just dont get how people take this so personal and get polemical. great danger? Boils down to this for me: its just about sharing neat ways of working within the software, since its the very essence of Rhino to allow this. Why shouldnt you share?
@Helvetosaur agreed. sorry for the profanity.
Nothing personal. At all.
You are also confusing constructive critical thinking with polemical.
I think sharing is great. I love this thread and the sharing part of it. And more ways of sharing to reach more people is always good. There’s no reason to have rankings that dumb-down the conversation along the way.
basically i dont understand how anybody could have anything against a place where people share and vote for good scripts, that is rate them. but i was wrong.
1st, the defense reflex against judgement is a personal issue, 2nd. tone was polemical to me.
nobody takes away the manual.
good idea to split this conv.
peace!
I’m still doing this as well. I have posted hundreds of script here (including the gh forum). My motivation primarily is the learning effect. If I post a script, I need to solve a little problem, which in return makes me better. In addition if you “explain” something, you immediately know if you understood something or not.
However, I do also expect little in return. And this is being grateful and seeing that the person actually seeing some benefit and tries to understand what is going on. If not, its not a big deal. But to be honest with you, it feels not good. I don’t know if you released a plugin or a whole program, but if you scale up the effort, all the issues are multiplied. Sure I was always saying its not the popularity, you need to address the right people, but still its questionable. Getting something for free has becoming too natural.
Because ranking is subjective evaluation. Its not helpful, and its no true motivation. Its like helping out at a
child hospice and someone giving you marks in how you useful your help is. What’s the point of this? That’s how I see it.
My motivation primarily is the learning effect. If I post a script, I need to solve a little problem, which in return makes me better. In addition if you “explain” something, you immediately know if you understood something or not.
you can do a-n-y thing in c++. the idea behind software is to tailor to a particular usage in some way, or am i wrong.
Its rewarding if one solves any problem, but thats not what its about. in my experiences with gh/rhino, (i like them very much) along the way you have too many paths to reach the destination… I quite often rely on helpful guys (ok mostly pascal) in this forum to solve a particular stepping stone issue… i think if people build neat scripts for lets say improving workflow for architectural projects (eg a wall tool), its winwin for the developers and the users alike, if they share them in a space thats easy accessible.
also: i mean the script is rated, not you as a person working at a child hospice in braunschweig. sorry if i gave that impression.
It is not what I’m trying to say. Is it my English or your English? 
I’ll try a last time 
My criticism is about the meaningfulness of such rating. Its not possible to give any constructive critic if you have no subject of comparison. And since its always a gift from a developer, it shouldn’t be rated. Maybe another analogy: Since its Christmas you probably will get presents. Would you rate the presents and give that rating list to the people who gave them to you? 
I see so much parallelism in there. But again its just my opinion. Every developer has his own motivation. Its just not always a winwin…
