Discord for smoother communication?

Hey, do you think we should have a discord? Sort of like gamejams do it?

 

Are you aware of the official Unity Discord? https://discord.gg/rzKaer

 

@cirocontinisio do you think it would be viable to create a new section on the discord server for this?

 

Like, one dedicated channel? I think it'd make sense. I'll speak with the Community team tomorrow morning and see what they think!

 

Along with pre-made thread topics, having Discord for bulk conversation could help keep this sub-forum better organized, which I know @luisquid has been pushing for emphatically.

 

The problem with Discord is traceability. It will be very hard to keep track of the conversations, what has already been said, by whom, to whom, etc... Especially if there is only one channel for the whole project.

I fear that there will be a disconnect between what is discussed in here and in the Discord channel, which will hinder our ability to help in a meaningful way.

 

I guess for tracking conversations we could stay with the forums since that's the aim of them. But for more instant communication as in seeking for help, asking if anyone is working on something at the moment, the discord channels could work.

 

I agree with @luisquid . For a project this size, the delayed nature of forum communication makes it easier to communicate and agree upon task goals for medium/long term planning. For asking for help when you're developing a feature, or tracking down a bug Discord's real time nature makes co-ordinating that easier in immediate term.

 

Oh that's kind of interesting, delayed communication as a positive thing. I've definitely been in environments where I could see that mentality helping reduce the noise.

 

good point about the delayed communication however I tend to see Discord more as a meet-up portal, almost like a virtual work place where you can discuss topics about the project or ask for feedback. The ability for casual screenshare and voicechat is quite helpful in staying motivated.

 

The thing about forum is even if some people had a conversation we can easily read through it and get to the latest builds or points or updates while i (hopefully) think you know how fast messages go disappear in discord because of chat speed and catching up the progress is going to be probably harder than on the forums

 

Realistically, as the project gets more complicated and involved, contributors are going to use platforms like Discord anyhow.

The real question is whether Unity wants to scaffold that or let it happen organically.

 

A dedicated Discord channel made by the community will be hard to manage as the tasks will increase exponentially and people can be talking about x different tasks at the same time which will prevent lisibility.

 

@cirocontinisio the channel invite link you gave was expired

 

here it is

 

thanks

 

FYI, we opened a channel for the Open Projects on the official Unity Discord. Carol announced it in the News and Updates thread: https://forum.unity.com/threads/news-and-updates.981531/#post-6401216

 

Woudn't dedicated server be better for this project?
We can't voice-chat or screenshare on the official server, and tons of messages on different topics will eventually became a mess

 

This, please. I think it'd be really beneficial to have a separate server with voice channels. If that's not possible, at least you should add more channels for the different areas of the project and put them all into one separate category, instead of having just one under general discussions. And maybe you could add voice channels only visible to the Open Projects Contributor role.

 

Not really. Then people would post important information in the server, and we'd have to run between the Discord and the forums and cross-check information. It would be a mess.

 

Why would we? Posting long-term information were things can fly away in a few hours feels stupid.

On the official server there is no room to breathe, so one general discussion channel couldn't possibly help, as we, for ex. can't see each other, or we don't want to interrupt ongoing conversations of other people.

While in a dedicated server we'll have special roles and channels, easily see all our contributors, who has joined and who is online, with no unwanted distraction.

 

Exactly but then catching up that progress for others would be harder and people with different timezones won't be able to give their opinions until it might be too late

 

It wouldn't be harder. Actually, we would be able to catch up and contribute to that progress. Right now there's no catching up at all, everyone's just working on their own branch, we've seen the same bugs getting fixed in different PRs already, the same systems implemented in many different ways... If we were able to easily ask for help and request feedback, iteration would be a lot faster and we would have less duplicates.
Also I think everyone would feel more involved since we could actually help each other and learn as we develop, instead of having to try to understand someone's PR that has maybe a week or more of individual work. Which is very tedious and sometimes intimidating depending on your experience and the complexity of the system, possibly leaving out the people using this project as a learning experience, who could otherwise maybe hop on to a screen-sharing session to follow the logic as it's being written, or ask someone to guide them through the code.

I get your point. However, timezones will always be an issue, no matter the platform. At least on discord anyone from any timezone can say something and will likely get a response, instead of maybe having to wait until the next day to see if someone answered their post on the forums.

 

I think that in any team a fast and straight communication is important to succeed. Maybe we need a protocol to live discord and forums together.

 

Hey all! We have a Discord role for the ones who made a PR, or reviewed code on a PR in Github, or opened a valid issue. It's called "Open Projects Contributor". Post here if you have made a contribution and haven't been assigned it yet.

 

I really think we need a seperate discord channel in order to have smooth communication. It might be a bit of extra work to set-up but im sure some of us here are willing to help out and moderate. Discord is perfect for creating the feeling of being in a virtual studio space.

Important information/finished work/announcements can all be pinned down in private channels but im guessing we will use the forum for this as well.

 

Unity has already created a special role for Open Projects Contributors on the official Unity Discord, just have to message AskAlice or Ciro to get it (per instructions in the News and Updates thread). While I haven't connected yet, I assume there's at least a text channel or two simply for this project. If there's not a voice channel specifically for the project, is that a problem?

Ciro has already pointed out the asynchronous nature of this project while also acknowledging that some times people will be working together at the same time, which is why both the forum and Discord exist. What other steps are needed to make the current Discord setup acceptable?

 

Hey there @ArtofRemo!

We love that you are getting so excited about this project that you want to discuss with other contributors in real time. As @shuttle127 already pointed out, we decided to add a channel in the Unity Discord so that you can connect with each and we can officially recognize the Open Projects and their contributors within the bigger part of the community. We think that for this first project, it would be best to have it be part of Unity so we can help moderate and make sure everyone has a good experience

If you think you need more than that, we totally encourage you to make your own Discord servers! Feel free to plan, discuss and ideate; afterwards, you can bring your findings to the forums so the rest of the community can have a say. Unfortunately, we won't have the bandwidth to monitor those spaces or to officially recognize the contributors there. Depending on how this project goes, maybe we can think about scaling it in the future!

 

Hi all,

I tried joining the official unity discord but I don't see an open projects channel? Just see a few housekeeping channels like 'community-conduct', 'anouncement', 'bot-commands'... no where to actually talk to other folks on the server. Are there some steps I need to take to get full access to the server?

 

i believe you need to assign yourself a roll? its been a few days, i think theres a time delay involved too.

 

Some might show up after being on the server a few minutes, then you need to go to the bot-commands channel and do !ranks to see what ranks are available, then pick ones that fit you. That opens up the rest of the channels based on your role. I think programmer was the one that got #open-projects working? You'll have to pick and choose to find out.

On a related note, is there a way to remove a rank if you don't want to see certain channels anymore? For example, choosing Generalist rank shows everything iirc.

 

thx! worked like a charm