Dedicated forum team

Thing is you need learn team or docs team or actual unity dev competency... so why would you utterly waste them on a forum? you would use these people in their actual development roles.

This is why the concept never works. It's HARD enough finding qualified people to work on the engine and docs or learn team, let alone burning their talents on a forum which asks questions most of the community still knows the answer for.

The only answer for me is what Unity already does: hire smart people to work on Unity, and encourage them to post often.

Community then spreads those nuggets of information around. It's the sign of a working community and I do not believe anything needs to change.

However if you look at other engine communities you'll find there's no chance at all really of getting answers you want. So this community is working very well as-is.

 

Talking about hiring extremely valuable people to do the lowest.value work of dragging the dregs who won't drag themselves.

Again, who benefits? And what is cost.

 

Finding competent engineers to work on the engine I would imagine to be quite difficult.
I wouldn't expect such expertise. Instead, an experienced Unity Editor user, lets say similar "skill level" to those already spending time on Unity Live Help.

Agreed, this is one of Unity's current advantages over other engines, and I hope they continue to strive in this aspect.

The question of whether such idea being necessary or worthwhile by any means at all, well, time will tell. So far seemingly not.

Anyways, would be curious to know if Unity has had some more internal discussion about this, and what problems they identified, that would be interesting.

 

Not many people know Lithium is the 666th element in the periodic table, with its main use to treat bi-polar and cure depression, rather ironic IMO.

 

Ideally, the community, at the cost of Unity's wallet.

 

Is that your business proposal? Not very convincing.

It is probably clear to you by now, with the minimum of thought experiment you.can see the idea is unfeasible. If you were determined to prove it not, you'd really have to do real work.

But you aren't. So what's the point?

 

No, its not.

 

How do you get a one armed man out of a tree?

Spoiler

Wave at him

 

Lies! It's the beginning of the day and you're surfing Unity Forums under a VPN tunnel!

 

We are just discussing, no worries. If you believe & others believe it to be unfeasible, well like I said:

The same goes for myself, attempting to convince people who have their mind made up, won't go anywhere besides bickering. This works both ways.

If people no longer feel like discussing this, well then I would imagine they would not be posting here & we are good to go!

 

Or similar to those of us already posting on the forum for free.

Like I said, I'm happy to take a pay check. You are welcome to pay me. I think I still have a patreon account set up from back when I was trying to make my YouTube big. Or you can paypal me via my website. I'll answer whichever questions you think are worth paid time.

But as the old saying goes, "Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?".

 

In this context, for better, or more milk.

 

Here is rhetorical question:
How much should get payed highly skilled person, spending few hours explaining basics and principles, available free online otherwise, for which person is unable to understand by all means anyway?

For such cases, I fully understand concept of being charged per minute, or per single ASCII character.

I now try to imagine, getting payed for responding to this or similar threads ... what a joy ...

 

Lol. Not that I am qualified, but if I was, I wouldn't want this job for a decent middle income salary. And I like the forum! I mean there could be some real satisfaction but mostly it would be the kind of soul.crushing work you know is absolutely useless, and yet it's tedious as hell and unlucky you just have to do it.

Benefits would have to include subscription of prozac.

 

If we are talking about the same thing, I would hope such job description included more than explaining basics and principles for users who do not understand.

Well, no. This is a general discussion forum, and as per the subtitle of this forum:
"Discuss Unity & game development. This is NOT a support forum."

 

We've had many support requests in this section because the person asking for help failed to notice that. So someone would have to be responsible for handling them even if it's just moving them to the correct section. Our moderators are purely volunteers at this point. Having paid moderators would be nice.

 

Yes, this is a basic issue most forums face and isn't related nor Unity specific.
Generally in this case a moderator relocates the support request to the applicable forum, where it can be dealt with accordingly, which already happens as of now.

Agreed, I see no harm in compensating moderators in some form.

 

I would be curious* to see what the long term effect of paid forum users would be on a forum community.

It instantly creates a double tier of users, I can easily see people dismissing otherwise good answers because they don't come from someone with the staff tag. Which might in turn discourage some of the regulars.

Its would also create an interesting conflict of interest for the staff. They would be obligated to be evangelists and marketers for Unity, even in areas where the poster really should be considering an alternative.

Finally I really want to see the storm in a teacup that arises when one of these low ranking drones posts something that is contrary to Unity's policies or roadmap.

*Curious in a "I wonder how lithium would effect the community" kind of way.

 

Well "tiers" of users is common in many forums, including this one already. Personally I can't imagine someone would dismiss an answer, (given that answer is correct) solely based on the tier of the user.
People searching for an answer to a tricky problem they are stumped with, will be willing to hear any solutions. Tier of user is probably their last concern.

Nonetheless, fair observations.

 

It's important to encourage noobs that dev'ing games for success is real a possibility and is finishing their game.

Otherwise . . . what are we left with? The horrible realisation this is a lie and general forums threads exploding!

 

And since posting this we've had two people do it...

https://forum.unity.com/threads/is-there-no-self-shadowing-with-spotlights.773120/
https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-do-i-store-a-date-using-mysql.773153/

And teach them to be more observant. If you can't tell that this isn't a section for support threads you're going to have a very miserable time with programming because the compiler won't be as helpful as us when it tells you that your code is wrong.

 

Citation? Why do I care about noobs?

Citation? When compared to the number of noobs, the number of developers who can finish a game is small. The number of developers that can successfully sell their game after its finished is tiny. The simple fact is that most people posting on this forum won't be successful in games.

This isn't horrible. Its the simple truth. Gravity isn't horrible, even though it will kill you.

If you'd prefer to live in a delusion, that's fine. But when does it end?

 

I didn't think there any presumption that if you are.making games you must mean to do so professionally. Aren't most here hobbyist? Meaning it's just a fun passtime?

 

My take away from this is that general discussion is... well, something special we could say.

On the topic of forum features - Someone recommended to me a useful feature called “ignore” which can be used to filter out posts from certain users. Greatly useful.

Time to get back to work for me

 

Yes, if you don't want an actual discussion and just want people who agree with every word you say, ignore is great, but if you don't want a discussion then it's kinda silly to come to a section titled General Discussion.

 

Or for other reasons.. Still useful.

 

I don't think anyone here was worth to press ignore button.
Discussions can be sometimes heat up. But here we had very civil situation.

Ignore button, is the best way, to shut off, from potentiality important, valuable feedback and information.
If not today, then tomorrow.

Then will be a day, when ignored person will be only person to reply to the thread. What an irony that would be ... "Why this forum is so dead?"

Worth reconsider.

 

I don’t think so either.

 

When I was paid staff for a game forum, we ran into exactly this problem. The kind of users who love helping on the forum would give the right answer, point to the correct resource, or otherwise provide the information needed, but the OP wouldn't accept it because it wasn't an "official post" by someone employed by the company.

I do not know exactly what causes this, but it seems to be a built in part of psychology for some humans. It works the same way with customers who will be told by a retail workers that, "This is how X works," but refuse to accept it until a manager is summoned to recite the exact same information, often word-for-word.

I assure you, plenty of people will do exactly that. They will even do it when the person providing the correct answer is linking to a post / thread / resource from a higher tier or paid poster. Human beings just suck that way.

 

I can somewhat understand that newbies cant evaluate if a answer is good or bad and need to rely on official answers. But a seasoned dev should be able to evaluate answers them self. I value answers from both unity and communy members

edit: And if you have been here a while you learn which members actually produce something and not just talk

 

I think it is important to always be kind, those noobs could be the next 'cuphead' devs.

 

They could also be the next Digital Homicide :v

 

Sounds like a great game where can I download and play it <3

 

I doubt that. I do nothing but talk here and never show my project, but I have been to 5 publishers this year with 2 potentials to fund the project. From my comments you would think I was making nothing, because I dont talk about or push my game ever and wouldnt on this forums anyway.

Not everyone uses the forums to push their game and talk about its development, some of us come here to enjoy the chat and to support other users, as well as, you know, get support

 

Or you just talk we don't know

 

And you definately wont know for at least another 6-12 months that said after we have finalised funding and our release plan I will likely post on here same time as we start our social media + regular tweeting and devlogs, so eventually you guys will

 

Don't just wait too long, you need hype. But I do not do as I teach myself right now. But that's because our game is already released to early access and if we promoted now we would get some sales sure, but we need to hit that critical mass when we have atleast 200 concurrent players 24/7. So we hold back marketing until closer to release of coop patch. A few weeks before patch we will start handing out devlog and also beta keys to you tubers

 

There are paid moderators. they're just quiet as they don't need to chat like we do

Having unpaid moderators is essential, because you cannot say "OK you're just staff and can only say good things". While unpaid moderators are really just championing the community itself, we just want the place to be the best place to develop in and chill out making games in... there is no business agenda.

It's a situation that's envied by all other engines, they either get moderators who are power hungry, or they have staff that can't say anything negative ever.

Unity and the users are benefiting from this freedom to criticise constructively. The community being this settled down is a fantastic thing you can't actually buy, and it's taken a few years of tireless mentoring to get here.

 

Oh hi!

This discussion is actually really timely, because as it turns out, Unity agreed with OP.

My name is Brian. I've been brought on to head up the newly-forming community engagement team here at Unity.

Our job is to make sure that the forums and all other channels where Unity is being discussed receive our full attention. By the end of the year our team will be full-strength.

I have to reiterate that there are many, many Unity professionals and staffers that hang out in the forums. Without it being their full-time jobs, obviously, a great number of our devs and experts do stop in to answer questions and engage with the community. My team's role will be to help out with that last-mile; the posts that maybe need attention but have slipped through the cracks. We want to make sure that nobody feels ignored or left behind. While we are not here to provide tech support, we can help connect you with the right people within Unity, direct you to tutorials that may answer your questions, help you find the answers you're looking for, and generally be all-around helpful and hopefully at least somewhat entertaining as well (I can't actually make any promises about that last part).

Looking forward to getting to know you all better!

 

That's going to be a full time job!

I welcome the initiative, any help finding the right information is always precious! Are you going to create a category on the forums where people can go and ask questions or just monitor all the forums activity?

 

@DetroitBrian
Welcome !

And I think @hippocoder deserves a mention, for always helping out.

 

Turns out, more than one!

Thanks! We'll just be monitoring all forum activity for now

 

Hi @DetroitBrian

So that indeed sounds full time job.

I understand this role, is more like navigator, rather than technical support, to asked problem by posters?

From your post, do I gather there will be few new staff involved?

However, I am interested how this matter will be handled, since Unity touches so many aspects in game dev and beyond. Challenge is none trivial.

In my view, is indeed organize similar questions, and direct to combined common responses / guidelines. That would indeed tidy up some forums and SO.

We have discussed earlier potential issue, with falling behind the rapidly evolving Unity tech of the team.
How this matter is going to be addressed in long run? Any thoughts?

 

This is great news.

Glad people at Unity are on the same page. Others in this thread, not so much.

Anyways, excited to see where this leads!

Cheers

 

That's a good way of putting it.

Yep. Our team will be four new people by the end of the year

Stay tuned! You'll see a few changes, mostly minor, some bigger, that will all help us work towards making things smoother and more efficient.