The forums versus Discordance.

[Yukiko]

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and are not necessarily the opinions of anyone else but should be.

Apparently Discordance has made the forums obsolete. I do not understand this. We had an IRC channel for years and the developers still posted on the forums even though there was a "chat" service available. But now a post on the forums gets a message in Discordance but no reply on the forums. This is a problem! Doing this creates a disconnect between the two platforms. It leaves the forum thread unanswered and makes it appear to other forum readers that the post was ignored. If the post was regarding an issue, or bug, and the fix is "chatted" on Discordance then other users who might also need the fix never see it. If it is a feature request, the "chat" on Discordance leaves the thread dangling and gives the appearance that the developers are either not around any longer, or worse, are ignoring the request.

I will admit that "chat" platforms are important, or at the very least convenient, for a quick help to people but for referencing problems/solutions "chat" platforms are terrible, especially when a chat about a problem is taken to direct message where the solution to the problem is given.

If the discussion about a problem or feature request or whatever is started on the forums there should be a conversation on the forums. I am not foolish enough to suggest that Discordance chats should be copied to the forums but if they started here they should continue here. I have had two recent cases of a post on the forums that was responded to in Discordance. The forum threads, as far as the time of this post, have no response, even from the person who brought them up on Discordance. This is not necessarily a complaint about any one person but what I see as a trend. If those posts had been a problem in need of a solution only someone who just happened to be in "general" chat on Discordance would have seen the solution.

The forums provide a wealth of searchable information. I believe they are important. Maybe I am in the minority. I do not care. I still believe they are important and the conversations started on the forums should continue there.

Finally, yes, I do know it is not Discordance.

[DevGIB]

I know what you mean. I posted on the forums in the Modern Distro thread and didn't get a reply either

[DevGIB]

But in all seriousness, i think its the ease of (and i'm only speaking for myself here) i have discord running on my home pc and laptop as well as my work pc. I don't need to go to a specific website to view the discussions and response from people if they are online is almost instantaneous. Obviously to have actual discussions about certain topics with people in real time is nice, and discord technically does have a search function although i don't know how long the history is stored for. And having such quick and direct access to such a broad community (now that we have a fair few more people hanging around in discord) there are lots of people who can quickly answer individual questions and even give 1 on 1 guidance from shard developers to core developers, and if they are online at the time you can get your answer instantly.

In my opinion whats probably more needed is if we come across anything that someone needs help with resolving or whatnot, is that a review of the docs is done potentially updated as this would be the true guidance for people trying to work through their problems by themselves.

Maybe the docs system needs to be reviewed to see if we can make it easier to modify, possibly move to some sort of wiki system for the docs that way potentially anyone could submit a change and if its reviewed and confirmed that its added in. People could post code snippits etc to allow people to see different ways certain functions can be used.

I'm not trying to say that the forums are dead but i think in a world where everyone is time poor the convenience of Discord trumps

[Yukiko]

I guess my original post rambled a little bit. I am not that concerned about no replies in general. What concerns me is the disconnect when a question is asked in one platform and answered in another. I understand the convenience of chat. I use both Skype and Discord. It is virtually instantaneous, unless you live on the opposite side of the world from those with whom you are chatting and you are awake when they are sleeping

I think, as far as enhancing the docs, a wiki alongside the docs might not be a bad idea.

[DevGIB]

Having had to change the docs for the core a few times now it does feel somewhat cumbersome to update/change.

And simple things like the core changes log which you have to write in a text file then run python script. Its no wonder the core devs forget to update them

But yes i get what you mean regarding asking here and getting answered there. Once again thats probably just the convenience thing.

[Yukiko]

Isn't there a way to have the Python script run by GitHub so that you don't have to run it locally?

I have a similar complaint about having to edit XML files directly. There should be a way to make changes to the other docs and then have those changes imported into XML format.

[CWO]

We still have a Discord? I've tried to join a few times but got kicked really quickly. Figured it was probably just an experiment that was being closed.

[DevGIB]

Give it another crack. I think if you go to the chat tab on the main website it should generate you a link(provided you're logged into the forums).
We had a problem for a while with people from 4chans /pol/ joining and spamming random crap so previously yes it used to drop new comers if they weren't assigned a role by someone in the server.

I'm almost always on so feel free to jump on and send me a direct message and i can give you permissions, but now days the server config has been changed so that it shouldn't drop new people.