#cpp forums

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

ocean talon
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In #cpp we get a lot of recurring questions and issues like someone using hot reload, not knowing how to work with quaternions, building the engine (even though that's #engine-source) so I think it would be great if a recurring issue/question is identified they get their own forum topic

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so one forum could be "math and c++", another could be "engine build set up", etc.

hardy otter
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Keep in mind a Forum would replace the Channel itself.

ocean talon
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aaaah

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I see

hardy otter
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As a Forum is a more structured approach to a Channel

ripe holly
hardy otter
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You would have to have a C++ Forum, where users would make Topics like "Hot Reload No good"

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Then others would comment in that Topic

ocean talon
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would there be a catch-all?

hardy otter
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Not unless someone makes one.

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Which is a problem we are grappling with

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Internally

ocean talon
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got it

hardy otter
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On how to handle it, so we dont lose the "culture" of what the original channel has.

full spear
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with question and answer format stuff going in the qna channel, and more discussion-y channels going in the topics forum

ocean talon
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I guess the downside is that splitting them up would also split the userbase up

full spear
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however, there is no benefit to having a topics forum versus just channels as we have

ocean talon
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how about keeping #cpp as a channel but having c++ topics separately for the common things?

full spear
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so, the middle ground could be #programming-qna, and then repurpose #cpp into just a discussion channel

ocean talon
hardy otter
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They get archived, but can be necroed, Mods can permanently Archive

full spear
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threads have an auto-archive time

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this forum is set to 3 days

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they get put into a category on the front page

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called "Older Threads"

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yeah

hardy otter
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Basically

full spear
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all the archive rules are the same

gritty gyro
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A much nicer, saner UI in my opinion. 😄

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Yeah under the hood it's very similar to threads.

full spear
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and, for what it's worth, if it's valuable to do so we can just make threads in normal channels

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the discoverability of those threads is butts tho

gritty gyro
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Yeah. I can't imagine why we'd use both.

lost quartz
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can forum posts be pinned to top?

hardy otter
weak pasture
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One forum per category? (Content creation, programming, ...)

hardy otter
weak pasture
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idk, can't you pin threads?

marsh ginkgo
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I don't see a big advantage of having the forum over just having the chat. I guess it keeps all the replies to one question in a single place, but there's no easy searchability or anything. So indeed people will just ask the same things over and over, so there's no difference to a chat, except that it is spread out and more restricting.

winged spindle
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They are thinking about replacing channels with forums for Q/A. Personally I don't see any benefit but nothing to do 🤷‍♂️

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Hopefully what comes from moderators meeting about this topic will something good, one way or another

marsh ginkgo
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the only thing it will achieve is remove the fluidity of an open chat

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It will make at least me probably definitely less inclined to answer peoples questions since they're less centralized/accessible

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also if one question triggers another, would that have to open another topic?

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imo, this is not da way for #cpp

winged spindle
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If forums would work, people would use Unreal's official forums anyway 😄

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But they say they want to experiment, I'm just bidding on it's not going to work

marsh ginkgo
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I'm sure if we took a cppoll, majority would be against

winged spindle
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This discord is blessing because:
1- Epic community team is NOT managing it
2- It's not a forum, which has an active/fluid live chat

Forum idea sucks because:
1- It's something Epic community team would do

ocean talon
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Yeah I might be misunderstanding what a forum is. I def don't want to do away with #cpp as a channel, my idea was to have "items" on discord for recurring issues like a "how to not hot reload" guide (something like hotreloadsucks.com but on this server). I don't know if these "items" are called forums, topics, threads or whatnot but I think #cpp should stay as-is and anything new should be extra functionality added on top.

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I think having discussions and conversations on the channels is part and parcel of what makes discord better and different than traditional forums on the web. It's a more social experience and not like a dry data repository of q&a, imo.

gleaming palm
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You can have discussions in the posts, live, just like normal chats

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We don't want to get rid of #cpp entirely

ocean talon
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yeah but then it's more restricting isn't it?

gleaming palm
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Why?

ocean talon
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maybe an example would help

gleaming palm
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You can device Discord channels into two categories.

  • Social
  • Q&A
ocean talon
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suppose I have a question about loadstaticobject, where do I post it?

gleaming palm
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Social is a running, fluid channel, that allows people to just chat.

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Q&A is a format of people posting questions and others answering them.

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We want Forums for the Q&A part, but keep the Social part alive.

ocean talon
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but now you're segregating things

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you can't social in q&a and you can't q&a in social

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no?

gleaming palm
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Correct

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That's the whole point.

ocean talon
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imo that's an unnecessary restriction and blocks free conversations from taking place

gleaming palm
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We shall see

ocean talon
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like... you'd be walking on broken glass every time you veer off even a little from a q&a kind of convo

gleaming palm
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It's def gonna be something that we will try out. At least partially with some channels.

ocean talon
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yeah experimenting, sure

gleaming palm
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The point is, you can go off the rails in Question Post #1

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And it won't annoy Question Post # 2

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Like, if you are helping a person in with 2-3 people and you go offtopic, it's not disruptive and I frankly don't care

ocean talon
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in the context of c++ itself, would the channel be on the level of "feedback" in the screenshot, with individual posts appearing on the level of "cpp forums" on the screenshot?

unknown.png
gleaming palm
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If it remains a totally normal channel, in addition to a more general #programming forum channel, it would be on the feedback level, like it is now

ocean talon
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so every time I want to ask something I'd have to start a post?

gleaming palm
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Honestly, not sure yet. The feature is very new and we haven't dived into every part of it and the rules that might come from it yet

ocean talon
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sure no problem

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(because if you had 1 topic for each question you'd find yourself with a thousand topics on week one)

gleaming palm
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I also don't want to break the Discord for everyone, but there is also a huge problem with questions being spammed away, people crossposting, 4 questions being solved at once in one channel, others having offtopic talks at the same time, others again have ontopic discussions but not related to any of the 4 questions

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It's like a huge mess sometimes with just the normal channels, where the only options were to cut the channels apart more. The current list of channels is huge

ocean talon
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you have too many people harold

gleaming palm
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And there are more to come, looking at the list of suggestions

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So if Forums can help this ,then I welcome them

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If they really work is something we have to test

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It's currently not about using them or not, it's about what the best approach for them is and then testing that

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If it's shite, then that's fine and we don't use it

ocean talon
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these things you mention, do you think they apply to #cpp too btw? just curious

hasty wharf
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I'm just curious how you think this helps cut down on moderation when people are going to do whatever they want to do it either spot

gleaming palm
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Honsetly, #cpp is one of many channels

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That's maybe an important channel for you, specifically, but for me it's one of many

ocean talon
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sure I get that

gleaming palm
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I'm not looking at solving something for #cpp, but for the server in perticular

ocean talon
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I have absolutely no qualms about any of the other channels getting forumized harold

gleaming palm
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Yeah I figured

ocean talon
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yeah I get you

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to be fair we don't know how it might work out

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change always looks bad at first

gleaming palm
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I would just like people to be as open to the idea of threads as they want us to open to not using them

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Instead of talking against a wall

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Eh

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Forums

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Not threads

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Man who the f thought about this naming

ocean talon
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actually

ocean talon
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yeah

gleaming palm
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Neither do we in every aspect. That's why #969360633386655744 is a start to show it off and then allow the server to think how they could work together with us

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Otherwise Roy would already have destroyed your cpp channel haha

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Threads themselves are kinda weird. The only place I used them was on our company server in the #code-reviews channel, to discuss specific reviews.

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And there I will replace the channel with a forum channel once it gets enabled for us

hasty wharf
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The irony of needing to trash the flow to fix the trashed flow for tools that are already working.

full spear
gleaming palm
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:P I know

winged spindle
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Unless you guys are not going to remove #cpp, and it's purpose for the sake of the experiment of forum idea, it's fine imo

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Since everyone will keep hanging out at #cpp no one would get answers in forums and get back to #cpp again

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What scares me is forcing people to use forums by restrictin Q/A in channels

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Because as we can see also from this convo #cpp people are not really willingly for this

valid shard
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#cpp should have a hotreload forum channel added to it

winged spindle
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Hot Reload issues will disappear over the time though, since UE5 removed it

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But still I second the idea of having hotreload post

valid shard
winged spindle
valid shard
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Well, yeah, but I dont particularly like the UI of threads and so does @gritty gyro. I would be open for threads or forum channels, but it has to be one of those.

gritty gyro
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Forum channels and threads are separate features. Forum channels do not replace threads.

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I just think they provide a better interface than threads.

full spear
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the UI for threads is pretty bad

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there are some major discoverability issues

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forum channels largely fix those issues

winged spindle
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When will you guys meet and decide upon the destiny of forums and channels?

full spear
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it's less of a meet and decide type thing

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and more of a 'when we decide on a good course of action'

hardy otter
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I think having a Forum for #cpp and then pinning a #cpp-general Topic to the top to be used as a Lounge of sorts is the middle ground here.

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It just sucks that we can only Pin 1 Topic....

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Like this of sorts.

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Q&A Topics would be added below this as normal users want to ask questions.

valid shard
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that's the simplest and probably best option 👍

hardy otter
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Alternatively, #cpp gets renamed to #cpp-lounge and then we just add a #cpp-forum 🤷

valid shard
hardy otter
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I think whatever approach ends up winning out should be the same approach we utilize for others

full spear
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I am more keen on a #programming-qna forum

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and leaving the discussion channels as discussion channels

hardy otter
swift stratus
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Not a frequenter of c++ by any means, but would also like to give my 2 cents.

Not a massive fan of the current implementation of forums, as if i liked helping in forums i would just go to one. I dont really see much of an issue with the way things are atm, so not much point in trying to fix it imo.

ashen jacinth
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I don't participate in on-going conversations as much as I'd like, more of a lurker, so I'm guessing the problem attempting to be solved here is orginization and archivability.

Whenever I search for some issue I often see multiple people that have asked before, but I always have to read along the next 10+ messages after the question to see if someone answered (often the reply to functionality isn't used as much as it should and threads aren't used much and are relatively recent).

I'm guessing forums would help with this issue, but I'm also concerned about what others have stated regarding organic conversations, in-the-moment chats and emerging questions.

Sidenote: Discord search often times breaks completely for me as soon as I search for 3 words or more.
Maybe an alternative solution for my particular issue searching problem is for Discord to improve the search to also search around messages for the search query instead of a single message must include the entire query.
Often times people post multiple messages for a single sentence...

gleaming palm
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In terms of finding relevant information about the question you found, forums definitely would help, yes

sly spear
sly spear
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Huh, I only thought of processing text but it'd have to process images too. Hmmm.

weak pasture
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On the 9fans discord we have a bot with a newuser command. There could be a bot with a hotreload command, for example

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Maybe one that just posts hotreload.sucks or whichever page it was

winged spindle
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Actually

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Having a hotreload command is a great idea

quiet acorn
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I'm not a huge fan of forums as it tones down some of the realtime nature of normal channels. The primary issue I see with cpp isn't interleaving conversations (which does happen, but it's rarely an issue imo) but just the lack of a good place to leave common answers. Pins kind of suck for this task as they aren't searchable in and of themselves and most people forget they even exists.
Some sort of common programming FAQ forum might be an interesting experiment. More of a place to leave common useful information than a place to ask questions - that said, I have no idea how you'd enforce such a thing.

weak pasture
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!rtfm !docs !learnunreal !lmgtfy

swift stratus
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just look at the documentation for text box widget

Text Box
Text Box

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isnt there one thats just
// A co-routine.

lost quartz
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smol data tables

winged spindle
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A meme guide for #cpp would be a good forum post

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And as for the Q/A thingy, I still cant see any really active #cpp people liked the idea of having forums for that. I'm really wondering how will that end up after mods decide something

swift stratus
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I think very few people like the idea tbh

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idk how to describe it but it feels like it takes away from the community aspect

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feels too official

keen abyss
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I've thought for a while now the solution was just to have one of those "I accept the rules in order to enter the channel" prompts to be adapted to #cpp, except instead of a list of rules it's a 10-item checklist like "Did I compile with the editor open?", "Have I closed the error list and looked at the output pane instead?", "Am I debugging in DebugGame Editor with the symbols installed?", etc.

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And yeah, I think @swift stratus is right, #cpp has a cozy balance of topicality and memery — interrupting any of the latter to answer a C++ question when one is posted — which it might be unfortunate to upend.

swift stratus
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i feel like even having a thread of common issues won't help, a large portion will still just ignore reading it and post their issue

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does this current way of doing things sometimes drown out a question, sure, but it does no harm to post it again if it gets buried

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and you are always gonna get those forum threads like "how do i compile" spammed a million times, which is a lot worse than having it as a singular message in the chat

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tl;dr please dont try to turn the discord help into something it isnt

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the forums already exist

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no point redoing them

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(and sometimes the chaos can be fun)

quiet acorn
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My thought is having a forum where each topic is a separate common issue. Yes, people don't search for this stuff first but it makes it easier to link to something well thought out as a common answer.

ocean talon
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yeah that's what I was trying to convey

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#cpp for whatever it is today and common answers in cpp-forum-common-repo-depot

full spear
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that is server wide

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maybe just a "Programming Topics" channel in addition to all the other channels

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specialty features, specific useful repositories, etc can go in there

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maybe we dont replace any channels

quiet acorn
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I think that's what GB and I are suggesting.

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Personally I think something that's just a static list of resources isn't all that useful... but at the same time such a channel/forum doesn't really make sense if anyone can post to it - I'd like to see something curated so as not to mirror what #cpp already is.
That said, I'm not sure how that'd work technically.

hardy otter
swift stratus
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i do agree with a forum for common issues

hardy otter
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Leaving everything else as is

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At least seeing how that goes

swift stratus
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like

  • hot reload
  • dont let the squiggly lines scare ya
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and then leave the actual help channel as is

ocean talon
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and every time someone is caught hot reloading they have to donate $5 to the UE4 Slackers Benevolence Fund

swift stratus
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And $5 to my emergency noodle fund

weak pasture
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On the 9fans discord we also have some kinda archive channel with messages that shouldn't be cluttered with discussion. It's just like a bigger readme of resources, similar to what pins should provide. I personally don't like the pin interface in discord (you have to actually click the pin to see the pins. Would be good to have some indication that there's unread pins for you, at least)

full widget
# full spear maybe just a "Programming Topics" channel in addition to all the other channels

I'd like to xnd this idea. I think the forum feature is giving us what we wanted from threads, but I don't think we should replace #cpp.

Adding a "Programming Topics" forum would give us a nice place to stash that common info for things like Quats, Hot Reload, Intellisense, Debugger Setup, etc.

Then we could just point people to those topics from #cpp when they come up.

For most help though, the conversational nature of a chat is just way better than a forum in my opinion and I don't think anywhere near as many of us will "hang out" in a forum channel.

As it is, the number of channels causes some people to only ever visit a handful of them.

swift stratus
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i agree with this

gleaming palm
full widget
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🙂

hardy otter
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I dont want to replace #cpp either. I think this will apply to any other area we want to introduce Forums to that are heavily social in nature.

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I advocate for simply adding a Forum to each of our existing Categories.

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See how they go.

full widget
hardy otter
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Probably just the Q/A related ones

full widget
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or did you mean "General" "Content Creation" etc

hardy otter
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Content Creation
Programming
Devops
UI
Platforms

full widget
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I was thinking channels at first which would be too much imo

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glad I was just misunderstanding

hardy otter
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Even if we were to just start with a Forum in Content Creation and Programming, see how they are received.

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The other Categories may not have high enough traffic to warrant it?

full widget
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since we also have a game-jam chat

hardy otter
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There are a lot of areas they make sense in, we are trying to take it slow, add them were it makes sense once we fully understand how they will get used and also whether our community wants them.

gleaming palm
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Honestly, there have been so many different ideas being wrote down now and discussed here and there We probably need to visualize an approach once, so everyone knows what we are talking about. Seems like a lot of people have still 0 clue what our itentions are (which is our fault I guess).

weak pasture
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I guess you want community-managed topic-bound communication channels?

gleaming palm
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Ah we kinda want both? I guess?

Discord is a chat and a lot of people use it just because of that. It's fast, you can instantly see responses and even casually discuss something, which you can't do with more post&refresh solutions like AnswerHub and Forums.

However, some of the things we do here on Unreal Slackers aren't suited for a Chat. Such as keeping track of helpful resources or allowing users to ask questions and making sure discussions and answers around those questions don't mix up.

Now, that's what a Forum is useful for. With Discord especially since the Threads in Discord's Forums are actually just chat channels. So the communication can still be very fluent and quick.

This doesn't mean that we want to take away the chat channels for e.g. #cpp .
We are trying to figure out how to get the best of both worlds. Have a chill chat (even with questions fwiw) in #cpp , but also allow users to go through a more forum like approach for pure Q&A/Support stuff.

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Now, if these Forums are actually the solution or if no one will use them is something no one can really answer. Even if #cpp lovers love to talk the idea of forums down, trying to speak for thousands of users.
We don't really want to enforce Forums, we want to see if we can upgrade the experience. If it fails, then it fails and we can at least say we tried.

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And that's also not a #cpp only question. This goes for all channels and topics currently existing and yet to be created.

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It's the same process we went through with Threads (not Forum Threads), but where we quickly decided that they are so garbage that we don't want to use them.

weak pasture
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I'd love if people would just look in the forums for common questions and discuss it there (or even find their solution immediately without searching a full channel cluttered with all discussions about all topics)

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and, that we the users can refer other users to these discussions

gleaming palm
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Maybe. With Tags then to identify the subtopics

valid shard
# hardy otter

I think this remains the best option, it could be tried starting today

hasty wharf
# gleaming palm Honestly, there have been so many different ideas being wrote down now and discu...

If only there was a format, online even, that could house all these ideas in a running commentary, where people could start new topics and have the conversation shielded within that topic group -- allowing other's to quote parts and add more information.

Now imagine a place where the chat is more frenetic, and everyone just blasts things into the screen and they fly by.

One would say, almost half a decade ago, gee whiz, this frenetic one is great for connection, but not so much for information retention and LONGER conversations about it without repeats!

One would also say, gee whiz, this slow forum style chat is great to share knowledge and bring it to the forefront when new people show up, but it sure doesnt help get interaction up!

The third guy, the engineer in the corner, laughing at all the stupid, is mumbling something about "best tool for the problem at hand".

weak pasture
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You know that xkcd comic about irc? The one where all people have their whole existence in some kinda cloud and one guy still communicates using irc?

gleaming palm
hasty wharf
gleaming palm
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Oh no, I didn't think anyone would end up reading it. But you may as well write one.

ocean talon
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this post has disappeared from the "hot list" on the left tab - is this intentional or a discord bug?

unknown.png
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ah nvm it just came back

marsh ginkgo
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I think if you post in a channel it just follows it for a set amount of time and then auto unfollows it?

weak pasture
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yeah, I think there is something like that

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admins can set the amount of days

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also I think it's not really unfollow, but it's not listed in the overview after some time of silence

gleaming palm
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It's the auto archive feature although archiving is the wrong word. It just marks it as sort of inactive/old/not having received a post for a longer while.

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It keeps your channel list smaller

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I think it's set to 3 days and resets when there is a post

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If you scroll down on your phone you find the older Posts section

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Active 3 days ago so it think we set it to 3 days, yeah

red plank
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I did not read everything, but from that what I read the problem seems to be that forums remove the traditional chatty like thing like how it is now. Couldn't the problem be solved by just pining a "Chat" post where people can chat and ask simple questions and the more complex ones get redirected into their own post?

winged spindle
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In the end, mods convinced forums should not replace channels for QA

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So it will be similiar to what you said, more or less

gleaming palm
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In one way our another

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But we also said we don't want to remove the chats, but rather add forums on top of them

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We haven't really tackled the Forum situation any further. People are busy atm with their non-Discord Slacker Lives

valid shard
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What's been waited on? Why is a #cpp forum not created yet?

marsh ginkgo
valid shard
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that's not the reason

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What's the status on forums @gritty gyro?

gritty gyro