Connect Change Log - Oct 3rd 2019

Connect Change Log - Oct 1st 2019​

After a period of no changes to the platform we are ready to get things going again, so welcome to the new Connect Change Log. I am Andrew, the new Community Manager for Connect and as we make changes to Connect we will release a Change Log like this to bring you up to speed with what has happened on the platform.

Today we are announcing some changes to Connect that have been introduced over the last week that you may or may not have noticed.


Connect Groups Ecosystem

In order to improve the Connect Group ecosystem we have made a number of changes to how these will now function.

• Group creation has been closed for now
  
  
• A Group cleanup was initialized which saw the removal of groups that fell under the following
  
  
  • Inactive for a previous number of months
    
    
  • Low activity
    
    
  • Low population
    
    
  • Spam

This is to ensure that the Connect platform brings you the best active content and community that can be provided. If we accidentally removed a group you want to keep, please get in touch.


Screenshot Comment

Ever played a WebGL game and were curious how a specific thing in the level was made or share quickly you beat the game? Now you can ask specific questions or simply share your highscore on any WebGL game by leaving a Screenshot Comment! Try it out by either clicking the screenshot icon or by pressing Alt/Option during gameplay.

 

About half of the groups I follow are now missing. My own group is gone. This is really disappointing.

User hostile and misguided.

Activity and member count are absolutely awful ways to measure of the ‘value’ of a group. If a group’s subject matter is even a little niche it WILL have low users and low activity. BUT the discussion within that group will be specific, relevant and rare to find in other places. These are precisely the types of communities that you should be encouraging, not nuking.

And why on earth was it handled so badly? Why not put in place a tiered and proportionate response like every other community driven website.

Step1. Give the group admins better tools for combating spam or unwanted posts - captchas, auto moderators, spam detection.
Step 2. Inform the group admins by email that “the group has been automatically assessed as being unused/spammy and will be actioned in X days time. If you don’t want the group actioned please click the following link.”
Step 3. Demote/quarantine/hide the group if there’s no response. Group can be restored if asked.
Step 4. Delete group after 6 months period.

This is basic basic community management.

Instead we get death by algorithm.

 

Please just reinstate the old job forums. They were significantly better than Unity Connect in every way.

Retain Unity Connect as a place to save your portfolio and static information, but use the forums as a place to browse profiles and find freelancers.

 

I can't post Links on Unity Connect. Previews are broken also.

 

Is Unity Connect depreciated?

Lots of questions going unanswered inc bug reports, eg https://forum.unity.com/threads/no-...-on-existing-project-in-unity-connect.980208/

 

I think that the place as social network is dead. But as Job Posting & WebGL games hosting it can exist.

 

It seemed like a good place to post test builds, to get some exposure - but that feature seems to have been removed from 2020 ( the package doesn't exist ). It would be good to know if it was being depreciated, then devs wouldn't spend time trying to get it to work, after reading online docs stating that it is possible.

 

https://gamejobforum.com/

Is still being maintained, nearing 500 registered clients and freelancers.

 

Unity Jobs Forums are now reopened:

https://forum.unity.com/#commercial-and-collaborative-work.45