Create a discord server (Edit: invite link available)

[iAndyHD3]

Edit: invite link

It would be great if axmol had a discord server for general discussions and small questions that don't necessarily need creating a specific issue. discord would be incredibly helpful in building the community that was lost in Cocos2dx, potentially leading to an increase in the size of the axmol community. In fact, some users have already been discussing axmol in the official Cocos2d Discord server (as seen in the attached image).

[rh101]

It may seem like a good idea to have a presence on services like Discord, but in reality, it really isn't.

If a question needs to be asked, then the most appropriate place is a forum, such as this "Discussions" section of the github project.

With Discord, there are a lot of issues, some which may not be immediately obvious. For instance:

• The live nature of it would make moderation much harder. Bad content will reflect badly on the project, and is often the cause of conflict between users.
• The previous point would be solved by moderation, but that in itself is a problem, because moderation requires users to be active, which means devoting time and resources to that role. This is an open source project, so it is unreasonable to expect people to place themselves in this role.
• Even if people were to put their hands up to be moderators, then the moderators themselves would require some kind of oversight, so someone always has to be active to ensure that the moderators themselves are not the cause of issues. Moderators are just people, and people make mistakes; that's just the reality of it.

Now let's get to the users and the content.

• On Discord, there would be a lot of "noise" in between useful pieces of information, and the ratio is significant. So, it would be tough to find the information you need, or to even follow it. Now, with a forum, the questions and answers are contained together in a thread, even if there were unrelated answers in there, the amount of "noise" is almost insignificant.
• Users on Discord are just people, and some people tend to feel like their time is worth more than other people's. This results in problems, such as users constantly re-posting the same question, or insisting that their question be answered in the time frame they want, again forgetting that there are no support people being paid to help them. Also, there is a bigger issue of unsolicited direct messages to other users. This is a pain point, and would end with users becoming annoyed, and blocking users, or simply ignoring or leaving the service altogether, and defeats the purpose of having it there in the first place.

Where Discord is great is as a communication tool for transient information, something that doesn't need to last long, which is why it's great for being used for random posts or as a voice chat tool for past-times like gaming.

For information that should be persisted, and easily accessible, a place like this forum would be the best place for such things.

[DelinWorks]

Thanks for clarifying! I get what you mean now.

[iAndyHD3]

Thanks for providing a good answer explaining everything in detail. One last question, how would you feel about an unofficial discord managed by other people (e.g my team) and having the link posted here? The server would be 100% community based and I don't expect any developer to join. We understood all of your concerns about discord but understand that me and my team would still like to give it a try (simply see the amount of upvotes).

I insist, for random discussions or small issues or literally any topic a discord can be pretty useful.

[rh101]

I don't really have an opinion on that, as there is nothing stopping anyone from creating a Discord server for any reason, so it's entirely your choice. The only thing to be aware of is making it clear to users that it is a community-run server, and not officially tied to this project.

@halx99 is the one who (thankfully) created this fork and maintains this project, so it is his opinion that matters regarding this.

[iAndyHD3]

You are right that nobody stops me, but I want to ask first because I obviously don't want to do something unofficial (that affects the project and) that maintainers don't want at all
We would make it clear that we are community based.

[halx99]

I think you can try.

[iAndyHD3]

we finished setting up one, invite link

[DelinWorks]

Nice!