Jasper would like to have (much) less channels on the server

[rigid obsidian]

please discuss pros and cons, im just creating this post for him 🙂

things being discussed/mentioned so far

• dont tell people to move their question to channel x
• merge reaction-roles with welcome (not sure if that will work or will reset stuff, but we could try that)
  - move voice channels down
• move server related channels down
• remove gp-github
• keep #questions, remove questions-forum
• keep questions-forum,remove #questions
• merge gp-news with announcements (probably not due to serverwide ping)
• job-posting situation (caio/dragon)
• perhaps remove codereview?
• remove high-level (perhaps even techniques) / conversations could happen in #general or #engine-dev
• remove gpu-compute?
  - channel/category order
• merge #related-servers with #welcome-and-rules
• update channel descriptions

needs refinement, needs discussion/consensus

[carmine elbow]

thanks! i can move here now

so, my big pet peeve is shutting down a discussion to ask people to move somewhere else because it's off-topic, because i feel it kills momentum in conversations

[rigid obsidian]

i agree, and as i said somewhere else, i am working on it (as in trying to ignore those seemingly unrelated questions especially in opengl), as this is addressed to me

[carmine elbow]

and i also think we might have more interesting discussions involving more people if we had less channels to check and keep up with

oh it's not an only you thing, i've seen this many times before 🙂

[quiet grail]

should general be merged with off-topic then or nah

alot of topics in general can just unknowingly spiral into other topics

[carmine elbow]

i think that's a good thing when that happens

[rigid obsidian]

we did have a lot of noise in more ontopicisms back when, thats when dedicated api channels were created

[carmine elbow]

i do like the API channels, but i think #questions and #1019726067851862097 mostly supplanted them

[rigid obsidian]

yeah im also not happy with questionsforum, we could experiment with making questions invisible and see if the forums makes more sense as it keeps questions separate perhaps, or other way around and get rid of the forum

[quiet grail]

yes but then the momentum in the convo gets killed when "move to #off-topic" happens cuz no one wants to switch channels xd

[rigid obsidian]

that rarely happens tho

[carmine elbow]

yeah, don't do that then

[jaunty skiff]

I'm somewhere in between in this. Having more topic-specific channels is probably a good thing for someone like me who doesn't necessarilly care to be flooded with long discussions about things not in my interests .... but as I said I do agree that moderation doesn't have to be too too strict in keeping tangential discussions off a channel.

[carmine elbow]

let the conversation go in whatever direction

[jaunty skiff]

at least up to a length

[carmine elbow]

i think it can also be daunting if someone joins and doesn't where to post

[west pagoda]

With more general channels you also get the effect of having long conversations that dissuade newer or other people from starting another different convo. They just see the channel is busy and usually don't bother

[rigid obsidian]

a lot of discussions also end up in stupid bikeshedding or overloading the beginner asking a shrimple question, with AAA-techniques nobody asked for

[jaunty skiff]

yes, I'm often put off by channels with tons going on in them

[quiet grail]

bikeshed is a weird name xd

[jaunty skiff]

I think most of the channels make it obvious what they are about. In some cases the channel names could be improved I guess?

[rigid obsidian]

it was meant to be a joke to run for a week, its the former c-cpp channel

[quiet grail]

ah xd

[buoyant walrus]

general could be graphics-general

[carmine elbow]

if I'm looking for my help with my OpenGL shadow mapping, do i post in #questions , #1019726067851862097 , #the-bug-collective , #graphics-techniques , #opengl , #general or #engine-dev

or whatever #archived-high-level means

[jaunty skiff]

isn't that implicit in a server about graphics programming ?

[west pagoda]

Imo, it should be acceptable to ask in whichever one of those, apart from showcase ofc where it's in slow mode. Then just answer the question and in the end mention that maybe #opengl would be a better fit for the future

[quiet grail]

well yes but as i said, in most discord servers "general" is meant as a channel for mostly any topic, so it can be confusing to new users

[buoyant walrus]

It wasn't obvious to me at first, because most servers I go to use "general" to mean "off-topic"

[quiet grail]

yea

[rigid obsidian]

#questions is pretty much at the top in the help category of the server channels

[jaunty skiff]

I didn't know that, I'm not very familiar with discord conventions

[carmine elbow]

i think #general and #engine-dev are the most similar tbh

i dont even know what #archived-high-level is, ive never clicked on it before

doesnt have a topic either

[jaunty skiff]

surely engine-dev is very specific...

[rigid obsidian]

i also agree that #archived-high-level and #graphics-techniques should be at least one channel, if not merged into #general altogether

[white tree]

ye high level is very seldom used

[quiet grail]

update channel descriptions

[analog jewel]

high-level was a renamed channel when 'asm and below' and 'c and above' existed

[rigid obsidian]

ye was about to say

[carmine elbow]

gotcha

i'm relatively new here

[rigid obsidian]

and there was a lot specific conversation about those back when

[jaunty skiff]

oh I want an asm channel! :)

[rigid obsidian]

: )

[west pagoda]

High level to me means something that is architecture mostly, not even close to code. So maybe a topic could help

[rigid obsidian]

(ill pin the initial message as a placeholder for future channel list, once we find a consensus)

[white tree]

imo high level really doesnt make much sense anymore, but techniques does

[twin maple]

I don't see why we should remove channels unless they are very dead

if someone wants channel gone they should mute it

[white tree]

It makes sense to have as few as possible

For newcomers and regulars alike

[analog jewel]

Flashbacks of previous admin who removed channels willy nilly

[carmine elbow]

i tend to archive and throw at the bottom of the list

read-only but still visible just in case someone wants to reference a convo from them

[rigid obsidian]

we have that/can do that

[white tree]

We do have a recycling bin ye

Anyways, bit of a different topic

[west pagoda]

Maybe it's more of an introduction issue? Discord has the introduction / new user onboarding feature and it can be used to point new users to the categories for help / api discussions / techniques / offtopic

[rigid obsidian]

people tend to not read at all, and just click popups away

this welcome thing is also super limited (i played with it)

[carmine elbow]

that's a bit of a different thing

[rigid obsidian]

yeah

[carmine elbow]

i also want less channels because i think we'll see more conversations overall

[little narwhal]

should just get rid of #anime, no need for it :P

[carmine elbow]

every other discord server is already #anime

[jaunty skiff]

you can't keep the weebs out man :)

they're native to discord

[outer oracle]

Honestly I think that these categories aren't optimized in terms of organization

[analog jewel]

"we built this city, we built this city on a-ni-me"

[outer oracle]

You have to go to the bottom to get to off topic lol

[quiet grail]

ye

[carmine elbow]

channel order is something you could play around with more yea

[quiet grail]

off-topic should maybe be moved closer to general

so that people dont have to scroll to the bottom of the list to get there

[analog jewel]

something something thats by design something

[outer oracle]

Anything voice channels should be floored to the bottom as its an unspoken rule

[rigid obsidian]

for those suggesting different ordering... please create a mockup of sorts in detail rather than list/mention individual channels in single messages scattered around

[white tree]

Hmm never heard of this, interesting

[rigid obsidian]

we moved them up to encourage more vc akchually

[carmine elbow]

my preferred server mockup

[rigid obsidian]

thats fair tbh

[quiet grail]

also, why are #1019722539116802068 and #wip and #showcase three different channels

[west pagoda]

But in this case if a chat is ongoing I will 99% of the time not try to start a new one.

[rigid obsidian]

historically grown

[quiet grail]

m e r g e

[outer oracle]

1. SERVER
2. HELP
3. API
4. DISCUSSIONS
5. RENDERING
6. MISCELLANEOUS
7. COMMUNITY CONTENT
8. CAREER
9. TEAM-EFFORT
10. CAREER
    Feel free to input

[jaunty skiff]

11. CAPS LOCK

[quiet grail]

dont yell bro

[analog jewel]

all different purposes

[outer oracle]

Bruh all the categories are upper case fight me

[quiet grail]

they're extremely similiar

[rigid obsidian]

bb has a point wrt #wip and #1019722539116802068

[analog jewel]

wip is the 'single channel' version of yourprojects

[quiet grail]

ah well yea i guess

but showcase and your-projects dont make sense

[analog jewel]

so yes, in that sense they are similar. WIP is more for one-off's while your-project is more for continuous posting

[rigid obsidian]

#showcase is the pool for our monthly pick of showcase of th month (which is dead for a while now, but we have something in the worx to resurrect that)

[west pagoda]

Project forums are great if you have some people already following your project. If the post is okd enough very few new people see it sadly.

[white tree]

My suggestions:

• remove #archived-high-level
• maybe remove #code-review (hasnt seen much use, could use #questions )
• remove #gp-github
• #retro ???
• merge #graphics-news and #announcements , they dont really need to be separate imo

[analog jewel]

showcase is much more 'heres a really pretty graphics video/screenshot' vs "here is a whole-ass project"

[west pagoda]

No access

[quiet grail]

but you showcase both

[rigid obsidian]

#1087212625022169098 is not public yet (and is supposed to replace #job-postings)

[whole barn]

leak detected

[analog jewel]

I thought announcements was for mod only posting while gp-news was for everyone to post the going ons in graphics?

[white tree]

Oh, lol

Then nevermind that one

[white tree]

Ye but you could just merge them innit

[little narwhal]

not really, #1019722539116802068 is kinda just a space to post random stuff about your project and talk to people about it while you're working stuff out

[analog jewel]

I mean, kinda. Do you go through individual 'your-projects' threads to look at what people have done?

[outer oracle]

to be renamed #news cuz I didn't know what gp meant lol

[analog jewel]

fair, merging gp-news and announcements isn't bad

[white tree]

Server announcements by mods, gp announcements by all

[outer oracle]

deccer no sp4nk me

[whole barn]

I find the showcase, wip, and project threads to be different enough to warrant being separate

People tend to use all three pretty well

[white tree]

Yeah I think that works fine

[quiet grail]

ig

[analog jewel]

That has been the consensus last time people brought it up.

[little narwhal]

surely #gp-github could be yeeted

[west pagoda]

Yes, can't say that about question forums though. Feels like very low usage

[outer oracle]

yeah I dont care about star feed lol

[white tree]

Right ye lemme add that to mine and not credit you and stab you 15 times

[whole barn]

It is? I answer several questions there a week

[carmine elbow]

I think a lot of the server related stuff could at least be moved down to the bottom, #report-spam doesn't need to be the first thing someone sees

[whole barn]

Although usually all from one person lol

[carmine elbow]

I think #reaction-roles can now be merged into #welcome-and-rules ? I haven't messed around with the Discord thing for that though

[jaunty skiff]

how does gp-github works? I never opened it until now

[outer oracle]

spam

[rigid obsidian]

its just a webhook from github basically, we have an organization with projects in it, like resources website/showcase;)/ our server mascot model/scan and the deccer cubes ofc

[little narwhal]

come at me, the bri'ish background gives me +5 to stab resistance

[west pagoda]

Idk to me it feels very closed off that when answering a q I like, but when trying to find someone to answer your question it feels buried

[whole barn]

To be fair discoverability is poor

[white tree]

Damn it, I forgot my loicense at the missus, foiled again

[jaunty skiff]

aah I see, I didn't know there was an organization

[outer oracle]

Good thing as an american I have +5 gun attack 🇺🇸

[whole barn]

I only answer them because for some reason I get mobile push notifications when someone makes a new thread

[little narwhal]

also #archive-voice could probably go since discord has the built in voice text channels now

[whole barn]

Imo rather than remove channels it would make more sense to sort them into categories that are more likely to be collapsible. For instance I always collapse the "server" category because there's rarely anything there that I want to browse unless something new was posted

[white tree]

Oh, good shout

[outer oracle]

its ass though

[rigid obsidian]

see #welcome-and-rules

[whole barn]

The voice channels section could be moved to the bottom too since they're rarely used

[little narwhal]

also maybe merge #reaction-roles and #welcome-and-rules, could just put the roles in a message in there

[outer oracle]

Probably should add a channel per gpu. i.e. RX 6900x, RX 6900xt, RTX 3080, RTX 3080 ti, and support gpus made from 2012. This comes from corporate. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

[rigid obsidian]

gp-news is writable by everyone, announcements isnt, i wouldnt wnt to make the latter writable for everyone though, as thats the only channel which allows server wide ping, BUT, what could work is when people want to post news, they could contact mods/admins to post it, like we used to do with gp-resources, to keep offtopic out, gp-resources is writable by mvp

[white tree]

Ye, but this could change

[carmine elbow]

Is #graphics-news different than #graphics-resources ?

[outer oracle]

yea

[white tree]

gp-resources is useful stuff you should look at

[river hull]

can I vote to delete the anime channel

[white tree]

Gp-news is new stuff you should look at

gp-resources being essentially a "best of"

[carmine elbow]

I think that could be much clearer

[white tree]

And gp-news being about more "hey this happened/is happening"

[rigid obsidian]

naming things is hard, but we be open for better names ofc

[outer oracle]

Deleting #anime is too mean. Could probably just call it something so everyone can enjoy its presence. i.e. weebs-r-us

[west pagoda]

Maybe #gp-finds and #graphics-resources ?

[white tree]

Aka, "Nvidia announced a new architecture!" -> gp-news
"A quick guide to rtx cores" -> gp-resources

[river hull]

I can't properly describe the particular lel that comes from seeing a completely unrelated programming server needs to have a weeb containment zone for some reason

[west pagoda]

gp-news to me means gigantic events more than "hey found this cool article"

[little narwhal]

okay basically here's what i think:

• yeet #gp-github
• combine #welcome-and-rules and #reaction-roles
• delete #anime
• put #d3d11-tutorial-wip behind a role
• maybe yeet #related-servers? could combine with #graphics-resources or something. issue is neither are very searchable
• delete #archive-voice
• say goodbye to #vr-ar again, it's just not active enough :(
• delete #anime

[river hull]

high level, low level, and gpu-compute seem wicked useless to me

they're like general or questions but with more tumbleweeds rolling by

[white tree]

gpu-compute is active

[jaunty skiff]

vr-ar should be its own thing, even if it's low volume

[river hull]

oh I don't read it

lang dev I don't check but it's somewhat active right

[whole barn]

Yeah vr-ar was deleted last time I found that to be kind of a shame because it's a major topic in GP and occasionally someone does have a question about it

[west pagoda]

Yeah d3d11-tutorial channels can be easily behind a role. Didn't think about hiding channels behind roles

[whole barn]

It also has some good resources in the chat history that you can search for

[river hull]

it's a bit of an odd one out considering its neither GP or PP but it's used and its there

[white tree]

Thank you for your contribution, please walk behind the barn and look at the sunset for a sec

[carmine elbow]

love when nerds have a "touch grass" war on the discord app

[little narwhal]

ripping up fistfuls of grass and eating them to prove i have a life rn

[river hull]

yeah but at least my grass file is recently updated

[white tree]

These are good tho, I agree with most of these

[carmine elbow]

anyway my main goal is encouraging conversation

[white tree]

Like all saboteurs

[little narwhal]

the truly controversial move would be to delete #frogshed-𓆏

[whole barn]

I guess I don't see why removing channels does that, people are pretty good about choosing the right place 90% of the time

[white tree]

Big Frog is too powerful, we can't

[rigid obsidian]

- dont tell people to move their question to channel x
- merge reaction-roles with welcome (not sure if that will work or will reset stuff, but we could try that)
- move voice channels down
- move server related channels down
- remove gp-github
- keep #questions, remove questions-forum
- keep questions-forum,remove #questions
- merge gp-news with announcements (probably not due to serverwide ping)
- job-posting situation (caio/dragon)
- perhaps remove codereview?
- remove high-level (perhaps even techniques) / conversations could happen in #general or #engine-dev
- channel order
- merge #related-servers with #welcome

is what i have so far, compiled from the stuff above, perhaps each doot should be discussed and voted upon with a proper amount of attendance

[river hull]

personally there are some channels with stuff that's half-relevant to stuff I know about/am interested in but I don't bother checking because the post rate is too low

high level and low level are chief among those

[west pagoda]

And in those 10% maybe there can be more tolerance to not move the discourse in the correct channel ASAP

[whole barn]

That's how it already is though

[river hull]

also the questions section is too high up and I almost never bother scrolling that high

[safe cairn]

My opinion is that there are too many channels yet I can’t think of a single one that this server would be better without

[white tree]

Code review is a shame, I had high hopes

[quiet grail]

i want to post a arrangement suggestion but

i feel like i will spam the whole channel xd

[little narwhal]

yeah i think #archived-high-level and #archived-low-level are just too vague, they just serve as second spots for some occasional conversations that would probably just be had elsewhere

[river hull]

I remember questions was down low last year

[quiet grail]

where do i post it

[rigid obsidian]

go for it bb

[river hull]

it was under discussions I think

[carmine elbow]

tbh i see a lot of interesting stuff in #hardware that i think would be better served in #general

[river hull]

I think hardware is well contained for its post rate

[whole barn]

Yeah hardware has a lot of traffic

[safe cairn]

maybe some of those discussions channels since i never go in those

[rigid obsidian]

here

[river hull]

its pretty popular and on topic more often than not

[whole barn]

It's not like it's difficult to discover for those that want to take part

[white tree]

Personally I really dont care about most hardware discussions so I have it muted

[whole barn]

me too

[carmine elbow]

i just mean i see a lot of good graphics stuff in there

[quiet grail]

you sure?

[river hull]

I read it but I don't understand it

[rigid obsidian]

https://tenor.com/view/community-ken-jeong-ben-chang-ill-allow-it-allowed-gif-4468552

[carmine elbow]

i dont care about hardware discussions but there's plenty of graphics in there

[quiet grail]

my arrangement suggestion:

Server
    #welcome and #reaction-roles merged --> #welcome
    #announcements
    #related-servers
    #suggestions
    #report-spam
    #gp-github | gone
Help
    #questions
    #questions-forum
    help-desk renamed --> helpdesk
API
    #directx
    #opengl
    #metal
    #vulkan
    #webgl
    #webgpu
    #glide removed maybe?
Rendering
    #ray-tracing
    #software-rasterization
    #techniques
    #vr-ar
Community-Content
    #showcase
    #wip
    #your-projects
    #experiments
    #gp-resources
    #gp-news
Discussions merged with Miscellaneous
    #general renamed --> #graphics-general
    #off-topic
    #bikeshed renamed to something perhaps?
    #engine-dev
    #gpu-compute
    #code-review
    #lang-dev
    #mathematics
    #hardware
    #anime gone?
    #high-level gone?
    #low-level gone?
    #gaming
    #frogshed
    #bot-commands
Career
    #career-advice
    #job-postings
    #resume-review
Team-Effort
    #d3d11-tutorial-wip renamed --> #d3d11-tutorial
    d3d11-tutorial-wip-talk renamed --> #d3d11-tutorial-vc
Voice-Channels
    #voice
    lounge-1
    lounge-2

this might be a bit too radical but what are your thoughts

[white tree]

Hmm I see

[safe cairn]

why don’t you setup a system where people can have reaction roles for the channels they want access to

[river hull]

voice at the bottom is def a good idea

[river hull]

would that really server a purpose tho

[carmine elbow]

i might merge the Rendering and Misc sections too

[little narwhal]

#bikeshed gone

[river hull]

I like lurking pretty much everything

[rigid obsidian]

the misc channels like anime/frog/gaming will most likely not be deleted

[west pagoda]

Maybe people don't read the intro and end up not knowing that channels are locked behind roles, so they just see 4-5 of the always visible ones

[quiet grail]

isnt that just off-topic

[rigid obsidian]

people started wars over not having offtopic related channels

[white tree]

bikeshed gone
Going straight for the jugular I see

[river hull]

yeah you need containment boards

[whole barn]

Bikeshed serves its purpose imo

[carmine elbow]

i use public transit

[quiet grail]

idk whats the purpose of bikeshed

[river hull]

to store your bike

[rigid obsidian]

hehe

[quiet grail]

true

[little narwhal]

it is the lifeblood of this server, the very thing that powers us
honestly though it's basically halfway between general and halfway between off topic

[white tree]

Bikeshed is useful and a core part of the server

[west pagoda]

To contain the very passionate convos about small details

[rigid obsidian]

bikeshed was the c/cpp channel

[jaunty skiff]

right ... but what is it now ? :)

[river hull]

it's the channel where you stay up to date with the C++ standard

[carmine elbow]

i think #bikeshed-😇 is a good channel, you know what i would name it? #general-2

[whole barn]

It's for vaguely on-topic programming discussion that doesn't really fit anywhere else

[river hull]

including the most important section, the opinion section

[white tree]

A long, long time ago, before I even joined

[rigid obsidian]

i keep fighting for years to have it renamed back to c/cpp since bikeshed was just to be a tempname for a week back in 2019

[carmine elbow]

i dont think thats a good name for what it is

[whole barn]

I think it serves its purpose better as a general bikeshedding channel than just a c/cpp one

[jaunty skiff]

having a C/C++ channel in a graphics programming discord makes sense to me, I don't see why not

[river hull]

bikeshed's honestly a gem

[white tree]

Never heard of this, thats hilarious

[carmine elbow]

other servers tend to have a "#general-2" which is usually somewhere between gen and off-topic

[river hull]

like unironically its nice to have a channel that's herded into being programming on topic but slightly unordered and shitposty

[carmine elbow]

that's my home in a lot of places

[river hull]

yeah but the name bikeshed has kultur and klass

and history

[quiet grail]

💀

[rigid obsidian]

its also kinda wellknown amongst the regulars, but i also hear you

[river hull]

yeah, the solution as always is to lurk moar

[rigid obsidian]

its usually just ~50 people who keep the server alive, alot people come and go, just saying

[whole barn]

Idk I look at pretty much all the channels in this server and they all seem to fill a useful niche

[jaunty skiff]

bikeshed to me means nothing, I would never have imagined what it is about

[quiet grail]

yea

[whole barn]

It's an old engineering meme

[white tree]

#general-2 sounds like a very bad idea to me tbh, bikeshed is fine, it's become a thing, and it's the one channel where people can be a bit trolly in a socially acceptable way

[quiet grail]

the channel description doesnt really help

lmao

[jaunty skiff]

I guess I'd have it pegged as the "useless conversation about meaningless details" channel just going by the name

[carmine elbow]

tbh i'd put bikeshed higher, closer to general

[river hull]

I only learned what bikeshed means from this server but its that uniqueness that is worth holding onto

[whole barn]

I doubt anyone reads channel descriptions, they read the channel name and then lurk to see what people discuss in there

[carmine elbow]

don't squash it between #anime and #frogshed-𓆏

[quiet grail]

really?

[whole barn]

Channel descriptions are almost completely invisible

[west pagoda]

#experiments is really underused :(

[whole barn]

I forget they even exist

[rigid obsidian]

sticky messages would be much more helpful than channel topics, but meh

[carmine elbow]

i try to read channel descriptions, but people forget to fill them in

[rigid obsidian]

ill add it on the list to update descriptions

[white tree]

This is where I would put my experiment

If I had one!

[whole barn]

Idk I agree that there are a lot of servers and sometimes scrolling them is a little annoying but I also can't really think of any problems the server has that would be solved by changing the number/names of the channels

[quiet grail]

i slightly changed it

[river hull]

just keep this at the ready

[whole barn]

People generally default to discussions/questions and start conversations elsewhere when appropriate

[quiet grail]

the order would

[whole barn]

What would it do

[west pagoda]

Yeah I agree that there are maybe 1-2 channel pairs that could be condensed into single channels but I wouldn't touch most of them

[quiet grail]

make it easier for newcomers to get used to the layout of the server and talk in the appropriate channels

[carmine elbow]

i'd probably get rid of #gpu-compute too

[rigid obsidian]

same

[quiet grail]

no

[carmine elbow]

gpu-compute isn't a small graphics topic, it is graphics

[jaunty skiff]

comp.graphics.api.opengl represent

[rigid obsidian]

there is a dedicated cuda server for this kind of stuff

[quiet grail]

oh

but

its related to graphics programming

[rigid obsidian]

no clue why i am in their moderation team

[river hull]

there's a dedicated vulkan server therefore the vulkan channel should be deleted

[quiet grail]

^^

[rigid obsidian]

hehe

[whole barn]

That channel is pretty active sometimes, it tends to be about GPGPU algorithms like parallel reduction and hardware performance details

[carmine elbow]

i guess i keep thinking "thats what every other channel is about"

[rigid obsidian]

its a fair point

[carmine elbow]

hardware performance details should be on-topic everywhere in graphics discord

[quiet grail]

maybe it should be renamed to #cuda

[rigid obsidian]

no

[whole barn]

I don't really find this to be an issue because someone who wants to paste a question immediately can just paste it in #questions, and someone who wants to lurk to understand what goes where can do that

[rigid obsidian]

then then opencl people freak out, been there done that

[river hull]

yeah it has a weird name but I see the line of reasoning

[quiet grail]

the 1.7 opencl people

🚎

jk

[carmine elbow]

i see the line of reasoning but i also see it as reductive. i use parallel reduction and bitonic sort quite often as a general tool in my graphics work

[jaunty skiff]

GPU hardware performance details are probably not very interesting in software-rasterization

[carmine elbow]

they would be if you're talking about nanite in #software-rasterization 🙂

[rigid obsidian]

adjusted the list (see pins)

[west pagoda]

If general becomes too encompassing I can see situations of long convos discourage new conversations instead of promoting them

[whole barn]

I kind of agree that the #retro channel is sort of superfluous, no offense to Nuclear but I would be shocked if a single other user ever needed that channel

[whole barn]

There are already occasionally conversations that step on each other

Having the glide reaction role is fine because it doesn't affect anyone

But the channel is just taking up space

[quiet grail]

yea but like its not a bad thing

oh i forgot soemthing in the list i think

[whole barn]

And unless another glide user comes and wants to discuss with Nuclear, there's not a single on-topic use for it really

[carmine elbow]

tbh i think it'll be a very good thing that there are enough active conversations in all the places we have conversations for

[whole barn]

Are there not though? This server is quite active, I am usually reading it all day long

[jaunty skiff]

even if its scope is expanded to cover other dead APIs too ? I don't know, I didn't advocate for a glide channel, but I like that it exists now, even if it's very low volume :)

[carmine elbow]

again, this is why i prefer places with general and general-2. you tend to see more people interacting in more conversations rather than pigeonholing themselves into the few places they check

[quiet grail]

fixed

[whole barn]

People don't tend to use them though, it would be better to just have a thread for your project or discuss questions in general rather than add another low-volume channel that only contains very specialized information

[carmine elbow]

even #opengl vs. #webgl is kinda debatable right now tbh

[rigid obsidian]

i concur

[outer oracle]

javascript gl makes delicious

[quiet grail]

theres no opengl es channel xd

[whole barn]

That's a tough one because most people who use desktop GL aren't really familiar with webgl's limitations

But yeah I agree they could potentially be merged

[outer oracle]

But yeah no need to tear up which is which

[carmine elbow]

clearly we need a #lwjgl channel

[rigid obsidian]

no jwiggle channel

[whole barn]

I muted webgl out of frustration at Synchronizer's insanely cursed project

[rigid obsidian]

lol

[outer oracle]

lwijgle

[rigid obsidian]

dont remind me

[carmine elbow]

Can someone help me with my raymarching

[river hull]

I think the webgl people are probably happy they're not condemned to #opengl

[rigid obsidian]

😄

[whole barn]

lmao

[river hull]

aka #C++help

[whole barn]

The thing is people like this will do this regardless of how well the channels are set up

[rigid obsidian]

c++ help has calmed down after we moved questions up the ladder

[carmine elbow]

oh yeah i know

[whole barn]

That was insanely effective

[rigid obsidian]

indeed

[river hull]

oh is that why it's up there

[carmine elbow]

yeah i should spend more time in #questions / #1019726067851862097

i just feel bad answering questions in the forum that are days old

[river hull]

yeah thats one thing I was thinking

[whole barn]

Yeah #questions was put first to catch more noobs

[river hull]

its too high up for regulars to scroll

[outer oracle]

Yeah questions definitely deserves higher ordering

[river hull]

or maybe I'm just lazy

[rigid obsidian]

vertical screen solves that problem 🙂

[outer oracle]

just as long as 'where can I talk' is relatively up high

[whole barn]

Yeah the scrolling to #questions is a little annoying tbh but it's worth it I think

[river hull]

its even higher because I have a lot of project threads listed

and those are the real gold

[whole barn]

To quarantine noobs there

[outer oracle]

Even with some stuff collapsed,,, lol

[rigid obsidian]

what we also could do...

• keep help as its own category... as a deterrent for schoolkids who need their shit done
• move discussions category up too
  have general-1 and general-2 (works well on busy servers too) and keeps different conversations apart
• api category
• rest...

[jaunty skiff]

I don't understand the general-1 general-2 dichotomy

[river hull]

its not busy enough for 2 generals though

[jaunty skiff]

what should go in which ?

[river hull]

yeah I always thought that was weird

[rigid obsidian]

27" 1440x2560 my dude

[carmine elbow]

if there's a conversation in #general you start a new one in #general-2

[white tree]

I really dont get the general2 thing

Threads

[rigid obsidian]

threads are not visible enough

[carmine elbow]

that's not what threads are good for

[quiet grail]

yes but threads get flooded by other messages

that are not in thread

[rigid obsidian]

or we make general a forum channel ;P

[whole barn]

no lol

[quiet grail]

xd

[outer oracle]

single monitor, as my second monitor doesn't have the proper fitting for my gpu and I can't shell out the money rn

[rigid obsidian]

virtual dextop 🙂

[river hull]

lock every channel, delete all the messages, and replace it with a single message linking out to a phpbb forum

[rigid obsidian]

threads really suck on discord

[whole barn]

I think if anything the scrolling problem is mitigated by sorting the categories by traffic, so that you don't have to scroll as far for most discussions

[quiet grail]

^^

i agree

[rigid obsidian]

im not concerned about any scrolling problem

[quiet grail]

but pls put voice-channels down

[rigid obsidian]

ye

[outer oracle]

I am

[rigid obsidian]

we could rename bikeshed into general-2 tbh

[carmine elbow]

my mockup:

SERVER:
welcome / rules
announcements
no clue about related-servers
the rest (suggestions, report-spam) all get moved to the bottom in a META category

QUESTIONS stays where it is

DISCUSSIONS
general
bikeshed
offtopic
engine-dev
graphics-techniques
ray-tracing
software-rasterization
vr-ar
lang-dev
mathematics
hardware
anime
frogshed
gaming
art

COMMUNITY
graphics-news
graphics-resources
showcase
wip
experiments
your-projects
code-review

API stays as-is (maybe archive #webgl)

VOICE moves here

META
bot-commands
report-spam
suggestions

[rigid obsidian]

and move it up to general, while renaming general general-1 as well

[quiet grail]

i agree

[whole barn]

why, I don't really understand the benefit

[quiet grail]

or graphics-general

[river hull]

it would lose all its soul

[quiet grail]

graphics-general is for more on topic graphics stuff

[carmine elbow]

i dont mind bikeshed as long as it's closer to general/offtopic

anyway i might have forgotten a couple in there

[whole barn]

I like it although I would move less on-topic channels like anime, frogshed down lower

[river hull]

also come to think of it

[whole barn]

Maybe lang dev too

[quiet grail]

what about glide

[river hull]

gpu-compute and techniques have a lot of crossover and techniques is kinda proportionally low traffic

[rigid obsidian]

langdev is def offtopic material

[carmine elbow]

please move bikeshedding to #bikeshed-😇

[quiet grail]

also

dont move meta below voice

xd

[river hull]

yeah voice should go at the very bottom

[carmine elbow]

yeah i sort of intend for RT/sw rast/vr-ar/gpu-compute to moved into techniques

[rigid obsidian]

hmm

[carmine elbow]

i'm split on that one

[jaunty skiff]

that's way too broad

[quiet grail]

what about team-effort, rendering, career

mine was more specific and no pin 😭

[outer oracle]

How dare you pin his mockup but not mine

[whole barn]

SW rasterization definitely deserves its own channel

[river hull]

yeah

[jaunty skiff]

raytracing, software rast, and vr-ar certainly needs to be their own channels

[whole barn]

It's pretty separate from normal GP

yeah raytracing too

Pretty different disciplines

[river hull]

the rendering subsection is pretty well split atm

[whole barn]

I think low-level deserves to stay too, even if it's in the off-topic category. Nothing in graphics programming is really that low level so it's technically not on topic but the people on this server have enough low level knowledge that it's still a good resource to ask such questions

I agree high-level can go

[loud wolf]

one thing is "this subject is unique enough that warrants a separate channel" and another different thing is the subject having traffic enough to warrant its own channel

[whole barn]

Both are worth considering imo

[carmine elbow]

i dont know if i agree with rendering being split out like that but also those places arent my home

[jaunty skiff]

yes, but remember channels are also useful for filtering topics people don't care about

it's not just about volume

[loud wolf]

if there is low traffic enough it's not like they'd be having a different conversation anyway

[river hull]

plus the low traffic channels are usually higher quality for regulars

[carmine elbow]

because, like, why not #postprocessing and #shadows and #ai-upscaling

[rigid obsidian]

there was traffic enough to warrant their existence - once at least

[whole barn]

Low volume + separate topic -> new channel
high volume + similar topic -> new channel
low volume + similar topic -> no new channel

[rigid obsidian]

that is perhaps not a bad idea

[carmine elbow]

i think it's a terrible idea!!!!

[rigid obsidian]

😛

[carmine elbow]

to me they're all "graphics"

[loud wolf]

me too lmao

[rigid obsidian]

yeah

[quiet grail]

we are seeing multiple ideologies manifest here 🚎

[river hull]

I need a channel for every different tonemapping technique

and then an additional channel to argue about which one is best

[loud wolf]

i mean if people dont want to participate in talks they dont care about. just make graphics-1, graphics-2 and graphics-3 and fuck it

[blazing widget]

Just keep the channels I'm active in and remove the ones I don't visit

[loud wolf]

if one is busy with AR talk

they can go to other channel

[carmine elbow]

yeah this is my preferred approach

[carmine elbow]

sounds good, let's remove #anime

[jaunty skiff]

sounds horrible

[river hull]

anime sticks out like a sore thumb

[loud wolf]

noo my weekly Skip to Loafer shilling

[whole barn]

Just mute it

[quiet grail]

graphics programming is just a very wide topic

[blazing widget]

I didn't even know that's a channel

[jaunty skiff]

I would certainly be put off by long discussions about things I don't care about. topics are useful as a filtering mechanism.

[river hull]

I think I muted it within minutes of joining

[quiet grail]

you can add a million different channels probably

[river hull]

but its existence made me do a double take along with a "lol of course"

[whole barn]

That sounds super disorganized, I would say 3/4 of the channels have a pretty well-defined scope of subject matter and a group of regulars that frequents them

[rigid obsidian]

it was hard enough to get rid of memes spread across the server

[quiet grail]

#pygame channel when

thats graphics programming too smh

[whole barn]

#engine-dev in particular has quite an ecosystem of people who are working on or like to discuss all game/engine dev stuff that's not strictly graphics-specific

[quiet grail]

xd

[carmine elbow]

#engine-dev talks about graphics a lot though

[whole barn]

It's a catch-all for like network programming, asset management, open-world graphics/resource streaming, etc

ECS

etc.

That's the last one I would disband personally

[loud wolf]

numbered channels basically put the flow of the conversation above all. which i dont think it's a bad thing

[river hull]

yeah, engine dev is pretty convenient since its the context that a lot of people are doing their graphics around, perhaps even the majority here

[carmine elbow]

i didn't suggest to disband it

[river hull]

the real question is, does anyone check PP

[whole barn]

The conversations flow pretty well as it is though, I don't really see a visible problem on this front

[loud wolf]

always check your PP, that's what my urologist says

[carmine elbow]

the only physics programmers i know are graphics programmers (ex-physics programmers)

[rigid obsidian]

just embrace the "move x to channel y" : p

[quiet grail]

is #d3d11-tutorial-wip still alive

[whole barn]

There are a few catch-all channels like #general and #engine-dev that dominate most of the general conversations

[loud wolf]

life is good, but it can be better.

[whole barn]

Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good though lol

[carmine elbow]

yeah i think #engine-dev is the closest candidate for a gen-2

[quiet grail]

life could be a dream life could be a dreammm

[rigid obsidian]

server insights also suck ass

[whole barn]

This works fine when it's invoked, which is pretty rare

[river hull]

the best part about graphics programming is that it doesn't literally explode and fly everywhree if you do it at a subpar level

[quiet grail]

#music channel would be awesome

[whole barn]

I see one "move to channel x" every two weeks or something and I read pretty much every single message that is posted on this server

[whole barn]

we have one

#897562204122021968

[river hull]

the music thread in off topic is good enough

[whole barn]

It's a thread

[quiet grail]

bruh

[river hull]

something something lurk moar

[carmine elbow]

aka #post-some-music-links-here-that-nobody-will-click-on

[whole barn]

The thread is fine

[carmine elbow]

lol

[whole barn]

That's actually a pretty good summary though

[loud wolf]

not even a historic graph?

[whole barn]

general, questions, GL, engine dev, in that order, cover most of the general-purpose discussion

[rigid obsidian]

#1019722539116802068 is pretty much just someonesomehwere, jaker, domeboy and i

[carmine elbow]

anyway i'd be fine keeping #ray-tracing / #vr-ar in my mockup, i was maybe a bit aggressive in culling them. though i might merge them into the Discussions category

[river hull]

a lot of people read the project threads, interesting

[carmine elbow]

i cant post my projects (until my game gets announced)

[river hull]

though that's also literally a graph of channels by verical distance

[rigid obsidian]

unfortunately no, just super less than barebone, even mircstats back when had more

[loud wolf]

okay that's just awful on their part

they most certainly have this data at hand

[carmine elbow]

never interact with apps

[loud wolf]

and graph libs are dime a dozen these days

[rigid obsidian]

this makes more sense, sorted by amount of messages

[loud wolf]

and what's at the bottom?

[analog jewel]

the irony of every one of these discussions about which channels to remove is that we inevitably will get people asking for the same channels again. (vr being the prime example)

[quiet grail]

#carl-log

[loud wolf]

... or upload the CSV lol

[jaunty skiff]

vulkan people seem deep in discussion trying to figure out why that API sucks so much ?

[loud wolf]

just dont listen to them

[whole barn]

I think a reordering is what's warranted here, not any major culling of channels

(if anything)

[quiet grail]

damn

[white tree]

Ye tbh a lot of these discussions boil down to "I dont use X, why is it even there", and then the people who use X arent there

[carmine elbow]

i want a culling but i'll take a reordering to start with def

[quiet grail]

vulkan is nice tho

[whole barn]

Putting bikeshed in "discussions" and then moving discussions to underneath "help" would make a big difference I think, since most of the highest trafficked channels will be near the top

[carmine elbow]

yeah, my mockup merged rendering / discussions / misc and moved it above community

[whole barn]

even without changing that much though

[rigid obsidian]

i agree

[quiet grail]

channel order idea:
Frog
#frogshed-𓆏

Useless-Stuff
#welcome-and-rules
#announcements

Talking
#graphics
#bikeshed-😇

[whole barn]

lol

[carmine elbow]

my mockup was just a sketch btw, if i missed a channel it was by accident. i think i realized now it also left out #gaming

[blazing widget]

^ This is good to know. Any removed channels should be one of the bottom ones

[jaunty skiff]

if rendering gets merged with discussions, which I don't have strong feelings for or against, techniques should be renamed "rendering-techniques" to make it more obvious what it's about

[carmine elbow]

even if it doesn't get merged i think a rename would be appreciated

[river hull]

gaming and art discussion are also interesting ones

[blazing widget]

I don't think anyone is expecting it would be knitting techniques

[carmine elbow]

oh yeah i meant to put art-discussion in community

[river hull]

they're like 50% off topic 50% user-perspective analysis

[whole barn]

I don't read #gaming but #art-discussion is decent in its current state even though it's low volume

[river hull]

knitting is basically rasterization on a non-flat surface

therefore it is on topic

[quiet grail]

#sdl

[rigid obsidian]

@white tree @analog jewel do you want to have this discussion addressed at the next meeting or is it in order to apply some things already.... or gve more people a chance to hop on to this first

[jaunty skiff]

terrible rasterizer, leaves too many holes

[quiet grail]

deccer what is carl log

[analog jewel]

I think having more discussion is good

[river hull]

its just hardware accelerated dithering

[rigid obsidian]

bot log

[analog jewel]

https://tenor.com/view/llamas-with-hats-carl-gif-11198275

[quiet grail]

@grave burrow

[rigid obsidian]

yes

[quiet grail]

mobile driver

[whole barn]

Just don't do anything too drastic to start, I think an easy first step would be to put the team-effort and voice-channels sections last, collapsed sections take up a lot of room still

[blazing widget]

For a second I thought that's also a channel

[rigid obsidian]

thats what i wanted to do demon

[whole barn]

And then maybe put #bikeshed-😇 in Discussions and move Discussions up higher

Small steps to start with

[carmine elbow]

updated my mockup, hopefully it has all the channels now

i didn't touch CAREER because it sounds you already have a plan for that

[river hull]

inb4 the mod meeting completely upturns the results of the thread ||inb4 it gets dominated by the lurklord mods and 180'd to be off topic centric||

[rigid obsidian]

nah

[carmine elbow]

tbh, i have a hesitation around #graphics-techniques because i don't directly understand how that's different from #general

like, what is graphics programming server for if not discussing rendering techniques

[rigid obsidian]

i want more transparency and more power to the peeps when it comes to the server 🙂

[river hull]

techniques (the way I use it) is to ask really high level questions about rendering that goes higher above anything you'd discuss in a single API and too bigbrain to throw into questions

[whole barn]

Based on lurking it seems more like the actual visual techniques rather than graphics infrastructure

[river hull]

that's why I'd merge it with gpu compute

[whole barn]

Like the recent discussion in there was about tonemapping

[carmine elbow]

i tend to see a lot of that in #general and #engine-dev too

[river hull]

yeah, stuff like tone mapping, compute culling, OIT

[carmine elbow]

i did a deep dive into tonemapping recently, i could probably contribute lol

[rigid obsidian]

perhaps we can divert that techniques/highlevel stuff into general, as its also a general gp topic

[carmine elbow]

that's what i keep saying lol

[rigid obsidian]

yeah

[river hull]

I think that'd water it down with low engagement discussions

and newfellas who will post about their chatnft project because they didn't lurk enuf

[rigid obsidian]

also true

alot of this stuff is historically grown

[whole barn]

General does tend to be pretty low density conversation

Techniques is more focused

Even though technically it might make sense to merge them topic-wise

[rigid obsidian]

we could dry run that, and hide techniques/highlevel for some time

[carmine elbow]

tbh i would have loved to contribute to a tone mapping and compute culling conversation. both things are literally some of what our team is working on right now

[blazing widget]

I want to discuss interesting rendering techniques, general is far from that

[carmine elbow]

i didn't know to look there though

[river hull]

yeah I am kinda worried about the impending quality drop of even experimenting with that lol

[whole barn]

Don't you see that there are unread messages there though

[river hull]

especially since it's been confirmed questions is a noob trap

[whole barn]

Unfortunately discoverability on discord is always pretty low

[carmine elbow]

there are too many channels to check!!!

[river hull]

bro if its such a big deal make a suggestion about changing it

[loud wolf]

#general-1 #general-2 and deliver us from this pain

[whole barn]

Please no

[whole barn]

I mute the channels that are of legitimately low interest to me and then just keep up with the rest, which is pretty easy since they're often low volume

[river hull]

"if only this server was built with 6001 generals, when will they learn"

[whole barn]

Marking the server as read to clear all the current notifications makes it a lot easier to keep track of what's new

[blazing widget]

You can also outright hide muted channels

[carmine elbow]

please tell me which channels should i pay attention to

i thought the general graphics programming discussion was happening in #general of the graphics programming discussion server, but apparently it's in #graphics-techniques

[jaunty skiff]

doesn't it just depend on your interests?

[whole barn]

That's sort of up to your preference, idk how to recommend any over the others

[blazing widget]

Mute the entirety of the discussions category, basically

[river hull]

#graphics-techniques , #vulkan, #engine-dev , are my top

you definitely shouldn't avoid #graphics-techniques if you know your shit

(which you do)

[carmine elbow]

i avoided #graphics-techniques because i didnt know how it was different from #general

it seemed like "less active #general "

[whole barn]

I mute SW rasterization, lang dev, metal, webgl, webgpu, and anime, and everything else I read

Muting those means there's generally nothing that gets posted that isn't of potential interest to me

And you can always skip over off-topic/general if the volume is too high

Since mostly that's just people shooting the shit

do you just never look at the channel even when there's a discussion going on there or something?

judicious use of muting and regularly marking the server as read makes it easier to stay up on which channels have activity

usually #graphics-techniques is empty so if there's something there I always look, whereas off-topic I might not care to go read all the history

The lower traffic channels tend to have more interesting stuff in them when they do have traffic

[river hull]

yeah thats what keeps techniques in my top, it's one of the highest quality/effort channels even though its low traffic and I don't post there often

[carmine elbow]

i'm saying, we have:
#general - general graphics programming discussion
#engine-dev - general high-level graphics architecture programming discussion (e.g. asset loading / streaming)
#graphics-techniques - advanced general graphics programming discussion (e.g. tonemapping, compute culling)
#gpu-compute - advanced general graphics programming discussion
#archived-high-level - ???

yeah clearly i need to interact with #graphics-techniques more

[rigid obsidian]

highlevel is on the list, for possibly removal

[whole barn]

high level is meant for like general programming/software/CS discussion above the level of assembly, but I agree it should be chopped

[river hull]

#general has the #general effect, every server in existence has a general, regardless of what you can logically conclude about what it should be it'll be the initial landing point for people to low effort post

[ornate estuary]

High level is unused much on the limited time I'm here

[rigid obsidian]

topics there could go into engine-dev or general

[whole barn]

or bikeshed yeah

[rigid obsidian]

yep

[carmine elbow]

yeah, maybe expecting #general to be useful is my fault

[whole barn]

engine-dev is really just like applications-of-graphics, mostly gamedev

It's really quite separate

It's usually like "how do I make graphics like rimworld" or something

[blazing widget]

Imo #general, #off-topic-🐸 and #bikeshed-😇 is where you go to if you feel like talking to people right now, while the rest of the channels are better for keeping up with content you find more interesting than general banter.

[rigid obsidian]

i also kindof expect general to be more ontopic related, but its quite often also offtopic

[ornate estuary]

Yeah, but interesting questions happen there too, like the 28473772 th question about ecs

[whole barn]

Lmao yeah

[river hull]

I can't imagine what is both general and GP ontopic

[whole barn]

But it's a very effective trap for all such questions since a lot of people are here to write engines and games from scratch

[river hull]

if it's GP I can probably bucket it better than general

[ornate estuary]

Yeah

[whole barn]

Engine dev is my favorite channel tbh that's where the interesting discussions about the intersection of graphics + AI/networking/physics/codebase arch take place

[river hull]

yeah

I also slept on gaming for a while but at times that's also gameplay/game analysis

which also seems to cover a lot of GP generalposting

[rigid obsidian]

a bunch of posts in #1019722539116802068 is my home, and also engine-dev, and i will reduce presence in opengl

[blazing widget]

Maybe #general should be renamed? Something like #chat or #general-chat?

[whole barn]

engine dev actually I would say is the best place for code architecture discussion in general to go

[ornate estuary]

I would say bunch all off topic channels into an off topic category, and include general on it

[carmine elbow]

merge #general and #off-topic-🐸 at that point lol

[blazing widget]

Not disagreeing there

[river hull]

I think general being a weird limbo channel is almost a necessary sacrifice

[ornate estuary]

Yeah

[whole barn]

agreed

[carmine elbow]

i was hoping #general would be general GP but if we think it's mostly off-topic, then that sounds good to me

[river hull]

I was thinking that too, but the main point I have against it is that off topic is stinky and general is a landing point

[whole barn]

It's always going to be a catch-all including questionably relevant discussion

[river hull]

though I think it could work either way

[blazing widget]

It can't be imo, the server is too big for that

[ornate estuary]

General is our honey trap to those stinky cryptobros

[carmine elbow]

in servers that skew younger, #off-topic-🐸 is for awful memes and #general is for off-topic chat

[ornate estuary]

Scammers

[rigid obsidian]

technically we are "big" but we are not really, we are roughly 40-50 maybe 60 people at max, who actively talk

[outer oracle]

I am for a place where I can be semi off topic

[carmine elbow]

that place apparently exists it's called #bikeshed-😇 and i should participate in it more

[ornate estuary]

Yes

[river hull]

yeah general being off topic makes a lot of sense but I do have that worry that the landing channel/the most familiar regular channel to new users is an off topic one

so that's a pretty tough spot to work around

[ornate estuary]

U need more reasons to waste time hehehe

[river hull]

I dunno what woudl be best to direct new users to land to

[carmine elbow]

i mean just looking at what was in posted in #general, there was someone posting about inverse-transpose matrices

so you know, not a bad start

[outer oracle]

I, too, waste exp on runescape

[rigid obsidian]

there is another "danger" with merging general into offtopic, newcomers will just spam with meme bs

[river hull]

yeah I think it's actually fine split as is

[carmine elbow]

yeah having general and off-topic both be sacrificial is something i'm ok with

[ornate estuary]

Yes

[carmine elbow]

with #bikeshed-😇 being the real secret offtopic

[rigid obsidian]

nooooooooooooo 😄 its for fights between c++ and c++ god damnit

[river hull]

part of lurking moar is finding the right channels to post in

(sorry you failed at it and needed the instruction manual :^) )

[whole barn]

general, bikeshed, offtopic do a good job at providing 3 levels of off-topicness

[ornate estuary]

I'm not too comfortable posting funni images in general, but off topic is fine

[whole barn]

I think this reduces the odds of someone feeling comfortable spamming truly off-topic BS

[blazing widget]

Merge general and offtopic, but bring back #memes

[rigid obsidian]

hard no

[jaunty skiff]

RTX ON/RTX OFF memes

[rigid obsidian]

had those too when rtx came out

[river hull]

yeah its pretty great

[carmine elbow]

i found #engine-dev just fine but apparently i missed #graphics-techniques

[loud wolf]

you'd have found it just fine if it was called #general-2 smh

[carmine elbow]

i still stand by my mockup though

[river hull]

but so would the scammers

[ornate estuary]

I wonder how many questions will be diverted if we have engine specific channels

[river hull]

we do, it's the project section

[loud wolf]

unity or UE? interesting question

[whole barn]

to be honest I don't think I've ever really seen engine-specific questions in here

[ornate estuary]

Yes

[rigid obsidian]

nobody here really likes unity, besides 2 people actively using it

[ornate estuary]

Yeah

[river hull]

same, I've seen lots of people talking about what other engines do, which is really interesting

[whole barn]

most people here are terminally ill NIHers

[river hull]

but no one has asked about them

[loud wolf]

because we dont have channels for it

[carmine elbow]

i still maintain my stance of less channels overall

[jaunty skiff]

my kind of place

[ornate estuary]

Anyway I'll leave so u guys have clearer convo

[loud wolf]

this is how we end jasper suggestion. start with suggesting culling channels, and end up with more than we began with

[river hull]

honestly it feels like this server stumbled upon a surprisingly good pattern overall for a programming server, it could be so much worse

[whole barn]

False lol because other topics that don't have channels just end up spammed in the wrong place

[loud wolf]

nah but i have seen a few UE questions

[whole barn]

The order matters more than the existence of the channel imo

[loud wolf]

just a few though

[rigid obsidian]

yeah

[whole barn]

The #opengl experiment is a shining star of an example of all this

[carmine elbow]

hopefully one day we can delete #opengl

a glorious future

[rigid obsidian]

: D

when i moved to vulkan, sure

[jaunty skiff]

over my dead body

[carmine elbow]

#opengl-please-switch-to-dsa-before-posting-in-here

[whole barn]

#opengl used to be spammed constantly with "how does a linker work" questions and as soon as #questions was moved to the top it instantly stopped completely

So imo ordering channels is a more effective tool than anything

[river hull]

I like tabbing from the vulkan channel to opengl now and then because its quite the contrast

[loud wolf]

when we delete #opengl then beginners will be like "how do i do graphics?"
"just read vkguide4 here in this link and come back in 5... no, 6 months. good luck"

[rigid obsidian]

we will divert to the OpenGL discord server

[whole barn]

New people basically read straight down the list linear-probing style and just ask in the first channel that seems vaguely relevant

[rigid obsidian]

yeah

[ornate estuary]

Lock channel then just post the link

[whole barn]

Except for that dude who just posted his instagram graphic design picture in #ray-tracing for some reason lol

[rigid obsidian]

but you get that anywhere

[carmine elbow]

tbh i still think there's too many places to post a graphics question

[whole barn]

#questions

[carmine elbow]

i'm too old for that

[river hull]

I think that too is a necessary evil to get a better hit rate on your question

I also asked a question there like half an hour ago but everyone is here

so rip

[jaunty skiff]

this is the party channel

[whole barn]

The thing is with #questions and #general as catch-alls it becomes much less critical to have the rest of the channels be perfectly tailored to the taxonomy of graphics programming questions

[carmine elbow]

bikeshed-2

[rigid obsidian]

FYI i will not apply anything we discussed so far right away/today

[carmine elbow]

yeah that's correct

[rigid obsidian]

monday evening CEST should be doable to start with some things, unless the other mods want to "talk about it" first 🙂

[carmine elbow]

i have a fun weekend project i'd like to share and i still dont know where i should post it

[river hull]

what is it

[rigid obsidian]

#showcase

[whole barn]

Showcase is a no-discussion-except-threads channel so if you just want to post pictures and have a thread for people to ask about it, that's the place

[carmine elbow]

started working on a CPU-side shader interpreter so i can paste a HLSL function and print out the exact numbers

so does that go in #showcase #1019722539116802068 #wip #experiments #lang-dev

[rigid obsidian]

lang-dev if you want to bikeshed it with gobi

[river hull]

your-project is for long lasting threads, experiments is for asking for interaction

[rigid obsidian]

wip if its an on going thing and you just want to dump screenshots/mentions

[whole barn]

Yeah if you look at #experiments you'll see that it's for things that people want others' help with

[carmine elbow]

it looked like a weird hybrid between #1019722539116802068 and #1019726067851862097

[rigid obsidian]

indeed, it seems that way sometimes, if i had a say in this, id get rid of wip tbh

[river hull]

it's like a #1088805767441825924-me-test-this-thing

[carmine elbow]

the channel topic says "A place to show off the results of server experiments" which i dont think is what is happening in there

[rigid obsidian]

uh, missleading

[river hull]

yeah that sounds weird

[rigid obsidian]

update channel topics is on the list

[whole barn]

It's for server experiments in general

[rigid obsidian]

where differnt gpus are to be tested on various osses

[blazing widget]

Honestly nowadays you could just make a thread in #1019722539116802068 and boop the experiments role

[whole barn]

#wip doesn't sign your soul images to the devil be posted on the GP website or whatever

[ornate estuary]

Also, did anyone suggested to move down the voice channels

[rigid obsidian]

yes

[river hull]

so that leaves #showcase or #wip / #lang-dev depending on the level of completeness, anticipated post frequency, and desired interaction

[carmine elbow]

like five times so far yes lol

[rigid obsidian]

see pins

showcase should remain, unless #1019722539116802068 can be promoted better

[whole barn]

"By posting in here, you provide Graphics Programming permission to post the media on our website." so #wip is where you post if you don't want that

unless you mean just merge it with #1019722539116802068 or something

[rigid obsidian]

which is lso again a discord problem, posts are not visible to everyone automatically, similar to threads, you have to actively click into it

[whole barn]

yeah

[rigid obsidian]

the things im interested in for instance

[carmine elbow]

EngineKit -- for when you need an engine for your engine

[river hull]

they also pop off your list if someone hasn't posted in them for a while

erhe's popped off mine a few times

[carmine elbow]

gotta pop off

[rigid obsidian]

thats mine btw 😛

[carmine elbow]

anyway hopefully my frustrations are a bit understandable

i dont think this is a bad server at all, i just find it hard to parse

[river hull]

yeah sounds like you need to lurk moar

[carmine elbow]

i want more discussions

[rigid obsidian]

me too

[carmine elbow]

i'll move "techniques" to my "things to read" list

[river hull]

I keep hearing that this server was apparently way more active a couple years ago

[carmine elbow]

and pop into bikeshed more often

[rigid obsidian]

you should move this to #362716013256507392 😛

[carmine elbow]

did something change?

[whole barn]

The regulars learned all the graphics programming there was to know and now there's nothing else to say

lol idk

[rigid obsidian]

people grew out of school, started real life, lost interest

[whole barn]

The pandemic had everyone bored and GPing at home

[rigid obsidian]

im here since 2018 😮

[little narwhal]

there used to be unity/unreal channels here but nobody ever used them

[rigid obsidian]

even language based channels

[loud wolf]

yeah i guess unity/ue people use unity/ue discords

[little narwhal]

i think i joined like 3 years ago and asked something in the unity channel
it was the first message in like a month and nobody answered it before the channel got deleted

[carmine elbow]

looking forward to #general-2

[loud wolf]

me too

[river hull]

tfw you ask a question so bad the entire channel gets deleted

[loud wolf]

i was wondering something, who's the server owner?

[carmine elbow]

Can someone help me with my raymarching?

[whole barn]

lol

[rigid obsidian]

kick

[blazing widget]

DragonSlayer?

[rigid obsidian]

dragonslayer

[whole barn]

yea

[safe cairn]

I still think my idea of using reaction roles so that people dont access to channels they dont want to is good

[loud wolf]

oh im an idiot, i was looking at this thread's user list instead of the whole server

thanks

[jaunty skiff]

how active should a project be, to be posted in #1019722539116802068 ? I always have a bunch of different projects, but most of them are on hiatus for months. I'm afraid to flood with a bunch of pointless mostly empty threads.... also is it supposed to be mostly a devlog kind of thing, or a place for other people to find out interesting projects and talk to the author about them? or I guess is it just both ?

[carmine elbow]

discord is a good app

[loud wolf]

why not make a thread for your stuff, whatever that may be at the moment?

i see it as a personal log more than anything

pixelcluster posts whatever too

[jaunty skiff]

interesting thought

[rigid obsidian]

i regularely check #1019722539116802068 and if theres interesting things popping up i join and say hi or give my 2 cents, otherwise i treat it as my place of inspiration, talk out loud, show my shit, ask questions, talk to myself- over time others joined and partake in all that

[safe cairn]

3DFX is nuts

[jaunty skiff]

lol

[blazing widget]

Dam, I've been here a while, too

[safe cairn]

I don't know whether to ask why or how

I mean, isnt 3dfx like 20 years old or something

[whole barn]

The server used to also have a number of insane people in it that helped to pad the traffic

[river hull]

implying it doesn't now

[whole barn]

Who have since been banned

[safe cairn]

pad the traffic?

[blazing widget]

I'm still around

[ornate estuary]

This is also one of the reason I'm not making my own thread. My updates are sure to be few and far between due to me on a team so...

[rigid obsidian]

the server was a huge pile of mess when i joined, and then i made the former owner change things 🙂

[jaunty skiff]

more than that :) see the new glide channel... but as I said there, OpenGL is even older :)

[whole barn]

People who would have giant meltdowns and/or incite hours worth of disbelief in response to everything they say/ask

[ornate estuary]

moments too

[whole barn]

e.g. UnitA, dunk master, peps, etc.

[loud wolf]

ah yeah. i've been at a few servers where you basically have years of this "content" because it technically doesnt breaks any rule

[safe cairn]

I haven't seen much people like that

[whole barn]

You're new

[safe cairn]

but I have seen non-programmers join a programming server and vent a ton

[whole barn]

There hasn't been anyone in a year or so

[loud wolf]

or you're the one with the meltdowns

[river hull]

I think I only got to witness peps

[rigid obsidian]

i do have meltdowns too semi regular

[whole barn]

Not the same kind lol

[safe cairn]

I'm genuinely trying to be less active on discord

[rigid obsidian]

true, but im working on it 🙂

[safe cairn]

im only here because I am pissed

[loud wolf]

in the LWJGL server we had this guy that was convinced we were a cabal of Project Zomboid devs trying to hide a sound option from him. nobody of Project Zomboid is there.

but the dude was convinced we were lying to him

because some letters of the project owner matched the nick of one of the project zomboid devs

[river hull]

project zomboid gangstalking

[rigid obsidian]

the jwiggle syndrome got to him

[safe cairn]

Maybe I should get off discord and go get less pissed

you guys have a good night

[rigid obsidian]

its worth a try

good night

[loud wolf]

we timed him out twice over the span of two weeks and had to ban him, because he just basically waited until the timeout was gone and came back again to accuse us of hiding that sound option from him

[river hull]

that sounds like legitimate schizophrenia ngl

[loud wolf]

ikr?

[river hull]

only place I've met confirmed schizos was on the #winapi IRC channel

and that's not surprising at all

[loud wolf]

lol

[whole barn]

Peps was the Polish? guy aged maybe 50 or so who had a major language barrier and delighted in claiming that memory addresses were hex numbers, which drove everyone absolutely insane and caused like 24 hours worth of nonstop people picking at the minutiae of his wording instead of ignoring it and trying to interpret his questions more loosely

UnitA was a (I think russian) person who was working on a very ambitious Vulkan project that was chock full of extremely obtuse C++ and was incredibly depressed and would come on here only to vent about how hard his project was

[river hull]

its kinda fuzzy whose at fault, it was a bit of a perfect storm because he was just aggressive enough to give off a troll aura and just foreign enough to confuse people and make the mods hesitate

[whole barn]

Exactly lol

[river hull]

you could literally feel the mods getting awkward about banning some foreign guy for being too foreign and that made the situation an entire level funnier

[loud wolf]

on the GD.net server we had this egyptian guy who basically crowfounded every job he ever had to the server and various forums. somehow he'd get into this quite lead position roles and get tasked with stuff way, way out of his expertise.

so he'd go to the server and basically post the same snippet of code again and again until somebody fixed it for him

eventually he always got fired

so he ended up asking for money and stuff

until he got a job again

and the cycle would repeat

i saw this happening for years

dude still at it

[whole barn]

Dunk master trans was a person with severe emotional problems who was a 3D artist who was trying to learn programming from square 1 starting with Vulkan and taking notes on C++ books and would constantly ask technical questions about the content but had never written a single line of code, and had a meltdown every time someone suggested they try writing some code

[river hull]

oh I think I remember that name, I remember the dumb questions but I never got to witness a climactic meltdown

[carmine elbow]

i've been helping people on the internet for over 15 years now

[loud wolf]

yeah this rings a bell

[river hull]

I remember the weird screenshots from 20 year old d3d books

[whole barn]

Oh yeah there was also that "<something> the rat" or whatever person who blocked almost every regular on the server including all the mods and proceeded to act obnoxious and the mods never had any means of telling them off lol

until they eventually got banned

[river hull]

OH YEAH

can't believe I forgot about the rat

[whole barn]

Quite an experience isn't it lol

[river hull]

literally blindsided the entire blocking mechanic on discord because no one uses it as insanely

[whole barn]

yeah lol

[loud wolf]

im probably being quite mean but i always thought people that clearly have some kind of mental problem (or are too stupid? i dunno) should be banned swiftly

it makes the community lose too much time otherwise

drags everything down

[whole barn]

I agree but it's fair for the mods to be forgiving

[river hull]

yeah at the end of the day you straight up don't have the resources to deal with that, that's what professionals are for

[whole barn]

I don't think my authoritarian swift judgements would be better than the mod team giving enough chances for the person to unambiguously prove that they should be banned

[loud wolf]

got reminded of this depressed dude that would basically grab his C++ project, ask a few questions, then basically beg for a pep talk on how he could do it even if it was too complex, then complain about how he wasnt a good programmer or whatever, abandon it... then come back the next month.

also saw this happen for years.

[whole barn]

That might have been UnitA

[loud wolf]

not on this server

[river hull]

I have this perpetual slight disappointment that it's no longer acceptable to have communities be a bit abrasive and attempt to resolve stuff like that in a grassroots way through their nature

[loud wolf]

the dude legit got medicated after 4-5 years and it was like night and day

but yeah he wasted months of community time in the meanwhile and the main channel was basically a no-go zone every time he was on it

[river hull]

like somewhere in the golden mean between passive and horribly toxic

[loud wolf]

yeah. i've been in ultra passive places i guess

this stuff going on and on because it technically doesnt breaks the rules

[quiet grail]

where should i ask questions related to matrix stuff

[whole barn]

#mathematics

[loud wolf]

ie didnt outright said someone should die for their skin color or anything

[quiet grail]

thanks

[river hull]

yeah, you basically run the risk of getting banned for outward aggression so there's basically 2 avenues

you either act like a passive aggressive turd or you wait for the mods to maybe probably resolve something

or you somehow find the magic insane ability to post on topic in such a way that it breaks no rules but completely derails the entire server

[whole barn]

I usually tell people off pretty quickly

Frankly I could have communicated with peps if everyone else had left him alone

If he'd been quarantined to his own thread or something

[loud wolf]

if the mod doesnt wants to do anything then it's basically your words against the wind

and the wind cares little for what you have to say

[river hull]

yeah and in general you get... mixed results from having volunteer internet janitors acting as some kind of social order to people who range from well meaning to certifiably insane

[rigid obsidian]

im sorry

[river hull]

lol rip its nothing personal, its just how the internet be

[rigid obsidian]

i know 🙂

also also, albeit unrelated

if you want different mods/admins, make a suggestion, if people want different mods/deccer gone, then this can be arranged

[outer oracle]

Why talk about deprecating mods, when we can talk about why triangles arent called trigons

[carmine elbow]

nothing against the mods/admins i just want less channels

[rigid obsidian]

yeah, i took another look at the welcome screen bs

its still super stupid, and we are just "too small" to make use of it, since its based on most active channels

but the channels you can pick there are ont the ones which are the actual active ones

and there is some sort of stupid threshold for a channel to count as active

quite stupid

same with server insights, really mircstats had much more to offer

[ornate estuary]

also believe me when i say this server is relatively clean compared to others on my serverlist

especially anime related ones, those are always a clusterfuck

[carmine elbow]

i thought there was a welcome screen you could use to select roles

[ornate estuary]

there is yeah

[rigid obsidian]

its like a 2 part thing

[loud wolf]

like we said, this server is quite good about keeping the crazy people at bay. so far no complaints from me.

[rigid obsidian]

yeah

this server is alright in general

[loud wolf]

this is a pain you bring onto yourself though, going to such places

[ornate estuary]

was pretty funny because i joined bocchi the rock's server and participated actively on their programming thread (met one of the devs of https://store.steampowered.com/app/650700/Yume_Nikki/ there )

but then the thread got moved like 3 times and i lost interest lmao

[loud wolf]

i forgive you because a weeb started dxvk

but i havent seen a weeb start dxvk2 yet

so, be aware

[outer oracle]

Ooh could set up a role system so that some channels only appear when you volunteer for it

[carmine elbow]

fyi the recently enabled "Browse Channels" page now lets you hide channels

[loud wolf]

yeah

that's pretty good

[ornate estuary]

same dude wrote a hook (https://github.com/doitsujin/atelier-sync-fix) for Atelier Ryza because their renderer sucks

truly dedicated person

thigh connoisseur

[safe cairn]

this server definitely has a lot less politics than every other programming server ive been in

which is nice because programmers are not well in the head

anyways i need fit military-age males, any volunteers

[whole barn]

There's a strict no politics rule

That is enforced

[whole barn]

Lol what for

[safe cairn]

oh that’s sick

[safe cairn]

We are liberating child laborers

[whole barn]

Lol what

[old prairie]

Adding my two cents, given I only joined recently: I like the current volume of discussions. Makes it easier to track and discover stuff. Merging too much channels together would have the benefit of me muting them and never reading them ever.
That's why I like #graphics-techniques as-is for example, while #bikeshed-😇 or #general or only glance over. I personally like the cozy side of having channels with slower pace.
If fewer channels were more busy, it would have been harder for me to post something. Joining a community can be daunting.

[last moth]

I agree with some of the points listed, but froyok makes a good point. I think implementing some of these merges is a good thing but specialized channels like #gpu-compute and #graphics-techniques definitely have their place

Merging #questions and #1019726067851862097 is definitely not a bad idea imo

Also I really don’t think #retro should be a channel

[carmine elbow]

my only counter to froyok's point is that if i have a #questions implementing a #graphics-techniques in #vulkan using #gpu-compute for my #engine-dev project, i think it can be discouraging to not know where to post it in to attract "the best audience"

especially when i've just seen someone get lambasted for asking in "the wrong channel"

[frosty forge]

It sounds a bit like we need to make a better way to designate a hierarchy of channels. That way it'll be easier to work out which channel best suits a conversation.
But here's the fundamental issue with only having one channel relevant to each topic: if that channel already has a brisk conversation going, you have to make a (totally unread by 99.9% of the server traffic) thread to avoid talking over an existing conversation. Having multiple venues for each conversation is a feature, not a bug.

As for the hierarchy: by making it clearer (maybe in a welcome message) how the channels are designed to operate together, we can flag to new (and existing users) what they would likely want to mute & which channels to pay special attention to.
The API channels, for example, are meant to only be interesting if you're into that API. Don't use (or plan to use) Metal or WebGPU? Probably put a mute on those unless you've got an abundance of free time. So that also means that conversations you start there should be considered to only be for API fans (so don't start a more general question that happens to use one API there - this is part of what the Deccer policing of OpenGL tries to instil & why we rearranged channels to put other stuff like general & questions higher in the list).
Engine-dev is where you chat with people who are interested in or actively involved in custom engine development. If you want that audience, you go there, & only that audience. Mathematics is for a problem for the math geeks to think about that's relevant to your GP but expressed as more of a "I need to know this thing that you would find in a maths textbook, not necessarily a programming textbook".
A lot of our channels are designed to fill niches (while still generating enough foot traffic to justify being pulled out of "just dump everything in general & let the conversations fight it out"). [Are we going to remove VR-AR for the 4th time? Well I don't think it looks good TBH even if the suggestion to bring the channel back had several upvotes - those people are not using that channel.]

[rigid obsidian]

9 out of 10 questions in opengl were never focused on anything opengl, thats why i kept shooshing people away into questions

and its always the same people still not asking opengl related questions

but anyway, as stated i will simply learn not to care and let them ask whatever they want

(im not pissed/moody/give up, im just saying)

what jasper is suggesting (see his pin) does make sense, in general imho, like reordering things, renaming and updating things here and there

and perhaps joining/yeeting certain channels like the high-level thing as mentioned couple of times above

then there is also the option to hide channels from your channel list, i dont think it a nitro exclusive and should be available to anyone

regarding the "site-map" in welcome, describing everything i think is ideal, but in reality nobody bothers to read anything, not even the rules

and you will get questions "where can i ask x" because people cant be bothered checking the channel list - i dont really understand why this is such a problem, but its what its

either way, im not here to decide how this thing should be run, im just here to look at yalls amazing shit you program

[frosty forge]

Agreed, the historical reason for things like high/low-level (dragging those conversations out of other channels where they overwhelmed other chats) don't mean they still have to exist right now (if they are poorly defined or used). I've noticed a few channels like that, it just seems like this suggestion is asking for a far more radical redesign of how channels route people into a limited number of conversations.
My general view is that as long as a channel manages to hold at least one rolling conversation every day or two (which would otherwise likely have clashed with an active chat in general etc - if we want to reduce the number of times people are shooed into other channels, forcing less channels to exist will do the opposite - mods will need to be more active in making sure two conversations aren't smashing into each other & becoming unreadable) then they justify why they were originally broken out.

[rigid obsidian]

technically we could just have 10 general channels, and people just talk about anything gp related anywhere where so that no conversation is interrupting an ongoing one, there are quite often crosstopic conversations happen in all sorts of dedicated-topic channels anyway - which is good and "bad"

[frosty forge]

But in that case then no one could opt out of conversations (about eg Metal) they will never care about. Specificity allows channel mutes to work.

[rigid obsidian]

yeah

api channels probably do make sense a lot

the niecheness of the current channels also helps for conversations not to go under as if they woudl happen in generic channels, it still happens quite a lot when anyone asks a question about x, you get 100 answers which are immediately bikeshedded to the end and you still have no answer to your opengl homework problem using glfw

[frosty forge]

And stuff like art-discussion is basically some catch-all for a load of things that don't justify their own existence but would be totally lost if we dumped them into general. Maybe stuff like the forums means that sort of channel is less required now.

[rigid obsidian]

i think its a hard problem 🙂

to balance those kind of things in a way that it fits most people

forum channels kinda work and also dont work at all for some reason

career/codereview/job-board makes most sense i guess... and our your projects thing is the best example of forums to work - still not what i would like but its a start