A forum has value

Sy

Well-Known Member
Nov 16, 2018
363
719
93
sya.li
#1
In an earlier Chief Chat, the forum was talked about, and people were encouraged to be here.

Then in a subsequent Chief Chat, there was commentary and comedy on how forums are obsolete. This is false.

Long-form writing is the only way to effectively distill time and intelligence into a concise form. With Discord, there are only useful snippets in a cloud of nonsense. Discord has the same lack of value for complex conversation as Twitter.

If this forum is not valued, then users will go to Reddit. If they're ignored here, they'll be ignored there as well. All that potential will go to waste.

I get when post volume is too high to keep up. I get when developers think they're shit hot and won't bother with their users. I got neither impression from this team.

Roughly, I think some things need to happen for a forum to be made useful to developers:

- Every single post and reply has to be read. Anything potentially useful is honed in on and clarification is asked for if needed. Those posts are categorized then either brutally summarized into a list or noted for followup. More on that later.

- The high level categories are simply "past/present/future", indicating features already-completed, being-developed, and future or unconsidered features. This obviously maps over to bug-reports, feature change-requests, etc.

- The low level categories try to funnel items down into groups of similar items, with deduplication. This evolves over time.

- Developers are regularly presented with a list of small phrases, to which each is responded to with a word or two: yes, no, being considered, undecided, in development, etc. These responses are brutally blunt so they're quick and easy for devs to offer. That language will develop over time.

- A new forum feature will exist so that such helpers can add a small dot to any posts that have been reviewed in this manner. It is annoying as hell to users to think that developers don't care about what they've written to try to improve things. A second dot would indicate something particularly interesting to the helper. It's meant to be very out-of-the-way and not obvious and interactive like a developer reply.

"But who in their right mind would read every post?" You'd be surprised. The effort could be broken up as needed, with a private back-end marker indicating that a particular person has claimed a thread. Right now, a single person could do all of it.

I could do all of it.

Without long-form discussion, all you'll have is unmanageable zero-attention-spam commentary on Discord.

Value long-form, because some people only work that way, and some people work best that way. Don't discard potential value.
 

Pandagnome

Kaiju Slayer
Fart Siege
Welcome Wagon
Happy Kaiju
Jul 27, 2016
7,730
10,079
113
Island of Tofu
#2
The forums for me is easier as i am able to keep it on, do things such as a chores and other work get back to forum knowing that i am not scrolling down to a barrage of emojis and texts and missing over +100 messages that kind of puts me off a bit.

Discord does have its place but for me i am very much enjoying returning back to the forums to type at my own pace and think things carefully.



- A new forum feature will exist so that such helpers can add a small dot to any posts that have been reviewed in this manner. It is annoying as hell to users to think that developers don't care about what they've written to try to improve things. A second dot would indicate something particularly interesting to the helper. It's meant to be very out-of-the-way and not obvious and interactive like a developer reply.
Hurrah this is good news the forum will be improved!

Value long-form, because some people only work that way, and some people work best that way. Don't discard potential value.
:cool:


@Sy I hope with all these changes that the forum becomes more valued and appreciated because this is where it started and it has different topics and good spam videos too!
 

liandri

Omni Ace
Omni Ace
Jul 29, 2016
448
1,108
93
Zone of Bones, Australia
#4
The Discord certainly has a place, but I prefer the forums more. I couldn't imagine typing out an idea for an hour, trying to make all the individual pieces work both lore-wise and game play-wise, go through the pros and cons, etc, just for it to be completely lost in people talking about drinking water and how what they did that day. Let alone follow and reply to someone else's post between all that.

While I'm sure someone In Crixa are reading the posts, probably Ronyn, and gathering information, categorising and new content consideration would probably be the hardest thing to do. For all the members on the forum, there are really only a handful who are consistently active, others like myself who come on maybe once a fortnight probably a handful more, and it piters out from there. You could add 'sticky' categories to posts sure, almost like support tickets, to let people know the status, but then comes the issue of community feedback. I suppose they could put a timed poll on the home page for certain things...

Anyway, forums are good. Agreed. I didn't see either Chief Chat because I don't really care about new skin announcements and raffles. It'd be interesting to see the VOD to gather some context. A forum is great for us, especially in this stage of development, on a technical project, more so with a community that's engaged with it. A forum for... Fall Guys or Lawn Mowing Simulator would be pointless. The audience of the game would take to Discord better, you'd just need to create the channels and tools for recording feedback.
 

ChAzZ_NuT

Kaiju Slayer
Kaiju Slayer
Jan 22, 2017
94
198
33
#6
I couldn't agree more, I think this needs to be addressed by more people. The forums allow for types of communication and thought that Discord could NEVER achieve. I think the team should be referencing forum posts, there should be more forum activity and I think we should be trying our best to draw attention and activity to it.

I also appreciate the fact that today's audience is reading less, and our attention spans are depleting. But we shouldn't be feeding bad habits, the forums are just as important as the discord. I'd actually argue they're more important.

Discord achieves sporadic, in the moment chitter-chatter and information which tends to be forgotten relatively quickly (2WeekRule). There are no grounds for topic foundations, and I'd argue that Discord-threads are not remotely as effective as the forums either.

Why're discussions forgotten about on Discord? Because the damn chat-bar scrolls up! And when I say forgotten, I'm talking about the community as a whole. Because I'm aware that the team does read feedback, but the community needs to address it too before it vanishes into Discord's void.

#Discord'sNotThePlaceForRealDiscord
 
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Silv3r Shadow

Max Kahuna
Max Kahuna
Kaiju Slayer
Jul 29, 2016
341
764
93
#8
I agree with OP and all other posts here. I also disagree with not using the forums. Not everyone uses discord. The forums was funded, why waste it. The shop portal is on here, everyone who comes to the site can see all of the updates on the forums. And everyone loves it when any dev comments on a post. I really dont see the logic in not using it. Forums have and always been a core part of online communities. Em-8er benefits from it.