Please leave the Beta/Alpha forum categories unlocked for a week or so after release

It feels like the door gets shut on your face when there are numerous threads with unresolved issues/questions/etc. Maybe disable new threads, but leave existing threads open for replies for a limited amount of time?

I would post this in the Meta forum, but I have posted there before and it seems like that forum is completely devoid of Unity Employees. And this is part of the frustration - the Beta/Alpha forum have the most consistent Unity Employee activity. We generally get replies from you guys in the Beta/Alpha forums but every other forum category is generally hit and miss. I even tried my best to title this thread in such a way that it would qualify as 'on topic' for the 2019.1 Alpha category, because I know it'll get some exposure here...

Since the only reliable way for the community to get in contact with the developers is the beta/alpha forums, it hurts when the entire forum category gets locked over night. The only other way to get in contact with developers is through bug reports - but sometimes the issue doesn't warrant a bug report or we might not be sure if it should be a bug report so we have to ask on the forums. And it sucks when that falls on deaf ears like in this example.

Once we do get a response via a bug report, it is a 1 on 1 conversation. The community is excluded from the conversation because the conversation happens behind closed doors between Unity and the sole developer who reported the issue. This was the case with an Async Method issue - apparently this issue was marked as 'wont fix' but the resolution was reached behind closed doors, leaving the rest of the community out of the discussion.

Here are just some of threads that I have either created or participated in where the thread is just outright ignore or not seen at all by any unity dev. I don't expect replies on every single thread I create, but the Unity is the one product I use where I consistently fail to get a response on the products forums.

Scripting category:

1. Async methods do not stop executing when exiting play mode. Intended?
   • And of course, the same thread on the Beta forum got a response:
   • Async methods continue to execute when you stop the game in the editor, potentially dangerous

Meta category:

1. Using Autocomplete while writing up a post on Android/Chrome results in missing words/letters

HUB category:

1. If the network adaptor changes (LAN to Wi-Fi), the Hub silently fails to launch Unity Instances.
2. Signed in with wrong account and attempt to reactivate Unity - says 'unknown error' not 'wrong user'

Audio/video category:

1. Unity 5.6.1: VideoPlayer.Play() or VideoPlayer.Prepare(); leads to temporary game freezes

Graphics category:

1. We have 'pragma skip_variants', can we also have a 'pragma only_variants' ?
2. Need SetSharedMaterials/SetMaterials methods on Renderers to avoid allocations

 

Yes, that would be great. Like, I posted a breaking bug one day before closing the forums, and did not get any reply. I hope I will get an answer through the bug report, but since the bug reports go first through QA, and if the QA won't understand the issue and won't forward it to actual developers to see it, who knows if it will get solved until someone else stumbles upon it with actual reproducible case, because my bug report contained only the RenderDoc captures for both 2018.2 (ok) and 2018.3 (not ok), which can show a lot of stuff to the actual developers too.

The bug I'm talking about is GPU Skinning being turned on completely screwing up rendering due to adding extra skinning draw calls and keeping the GS bound even later during rendering, resulting in a black screen with just forward-rendered water being seen - https://forum.unity.com/threads/cas...metry-shader-that-should-not-be-there.596785/

I will probably retest it in 2019.1, and if the alpha/beta still has the issue, I'll post the thread again here; but I don't think that is a proper way to handle things. :/

 

I support this, as my report is also sitting at the top of beta forum, no longer available for replying.

- https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...ra-with-game-view-camera-case-1109127.597169/

And another Unity Hub issue on the edge of 2018.3 release that has no place to go but the non-beta forum, and got ignored:

- https://forum.unity.com/threads/storage-googleapis-com-is-blocked-or-very-slow-in-china.597361/

Compare it to a similar issue on Unity Hub during beta stage:

- https://forum.unity.com/threads/una...t-since-early-november-china-specific.584638/

I would say a LTS forum maybe the best way to address this issue:

- All unresolved beta issues from current TECH stream should be migrated there.
- Unity team could check in to see if there are movement on these issues, and aim to address them in LTS releases.
- If Unity relies on user reporting to fix LTS releases, then I hope Unity team encourage reporting by responding in LTS forum, as I see no better encouragement than acknowledging an issue, and no worse discouragement than an issue ignored.

Thx!

 

Moved thread from Alpha 2019.1 to Meta.

I appreciate people want to talk about it but leaving beta forum open for a beta that *no longer exists* is sending the wrong message to unity's thousands of users, for the sake of a handful that posted in this thread.

Problem is that 2018.3 did have a lot going on that spilled over 2018.3 forum. As a mod, I know that Unity wanted to move a lot of what was posted in 2018.3 to the correct forums, and sometimes that didn't happen, so 2018.3 is a messy one, and future ones should be fine as they have been in the past.

If issues are ongoing you probably have a case number, and that's all beta really is for. It's not for discussing how to do something that's older than the current beta. Just for testing it, giving feedback on beta specific problems... and making sure it works as intended. It's not for any kind of discussion whatsoever, that isn't specific to that beta release, and if that did happen, it was an exception not a rule obviously, based on the rules in the sticky posts.

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1. we should have locked or deleted your thread in beta because it's not a beta issue at all.
2. we should have warned you via PM not to cross post, which is totally against forum rules.

So this is just an example, and people need to really understand beta is *only and exclusively* for something to do with the beta editor or player code, not for anything on package manager whatsoever (which should go in respective forums replies or not). The only exception is if the package relies on new beta API.

I didn't check too many other links but I'm going to bet a lot of people don't respect the limitations of the beta forum rules. It's *only* for beta features feedback, stability, bugs. Only the beta issues. Not anything future or past from that.

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I have moved this thread from alpha, to the Meta forum where it belongs. Don't play with the rules. Alpha is for alpha issues. Beta is for beta issues.

Anything else is in other forums / bug reporter tool.

Apologies for lax moderation in deleting and moving posts from 2018.3 - it was a very busy and complex release. But you're wrong that staff do not have eyes on various parts of the forum - CM and mods do tip off staff from time to time.

But it has to be within the rules so staff aren't swamped, you can imagine how it turns out if we let everyone carry on like this.

 

I challenge your take on this: why? It happens during beta, and there is literally no other version that can reproduce it because LWRP wasn't working properly in 2018.1 and 2018.2; in addition, LWRP major versions are bound to Unity point releases due to required internal API changes.

About cross posting: sorry, I didn't want to do it, but I don't know if it's a LWRP specific issue, and I have already posted in the LWRP thread (note: as a reply, not a new thread). Seeing 2018.3 beta is leaving beta soon, I want to confirm it quicker, than to leave it in 2018.3 stable and LTS where things are evidently moving slower.

Again, I am not saying Unity team should "solve" issues in beta forum. I am saying those bugs are reported, and never triage with users because few bug reports during beta/alpha are triages by QA.

Why, besides QA are busy with other priorities?

I opened 8 bugs during 2018.3 beta: 2 resolved and closed, 2 resolved and remain open, 4 unresolved, none of them got any replies at all, and I provided repro samples for all of them. The resolved ones are resolved only because Unity team are aware of them.

Unity is not obligated to reply or triage with me, sure, but a simple "like" would be enough, because it proves the team notice it, and that's enough in my book.

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As for what beta forum is for, I somehow believe it is:

- To get attention or confirmation on beta release related bugs.
- To measure what bugs are actually affecting many users.

If Unity fix issues solely on the number of bug reports, then an open bug tracker would do just fine.

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To close, this thread is now at the Meta forum, fine, people can forget about it. But those untriaged bugs are still there, they are not going away. The only thing going away are the users that reported them, they either workaround or move on to other things.

So color me not angry, but disappointed, in how Unity decides to handle beta stage bug reports when Unity leaves beta.

 

Hilarious how this post went from receiving a steady stream of likes (suggesting that this is a pain point/something people in the community can relate to) to absolutely no activity as soon as it hit the Meta forum. This post is almost as good as having been deleted.

 

Thanks for sharing your frustrations,@Prodigga.

In regards to the way we handle our beta forums, I've talked with our beta team, and we'll be working to see how we can better work to keep recent activity unlocked and active. We lock these areas down as we want to make sure that as a release moves out of beta, the conversation can move as with it as well. The reason we lock the forums, instead of remove them from view, is so you're enabled to reach out to our forum moderation team to have the content moved to an appropriate sub-forum after the beta ends. If there is a thread that you need moved into our greater forums, report it so we can help move it.

The forums are here first and foremost for our community to support each other. Unfortunately, don't have a technical support team here on the forums answering questions. What we do have is a lot of employees who are very engaged with the community and want to share what they are working on, get feedback from you all, and support you as best they can. The beta and alpha teams are great examples of teams who are highly engaged with our community and I know they value your support.