I will add that I understand that the Discord chat is not for everyone. However, there is more to the channel than the #chat room. The stacks room is a place where you can create more traditional forum like discussions.
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And yet everyone who posts questions there gets help really quick. Such a horrible place.
Discord is a truly horrible environment for interaction, and I really don‘t know why Isaiah chose it. The quality of the interactions may be good, but the nightmare of navigating it is a put-off. These things could be happening on Weavers Space or here or there could be a Stacks forum. They could even be happening on Facebook — even that would be better.
I’m sorry, but Discord is a lot better than Facebook. I am all for the Discord setup. Literally easier to navigate than most things.
@joeworkman Discord is what is being used for the Yourhead discussion stream. The issue is not whether you like it or not, or whether it is for eceryone, it is the primary source of information direct from Isaiah, for Stacks information. There has been some excellent Stacks related announcements and Stacks related questions and answers direct from Isaiah. Hopefully that is where the first real news about Stacks Pro will be announced first. Shortly.
Yes there is an area called “Chat” but without user discipline, it loses focus and that valid information gets lost in the noise.
As valuable as the Chat area is, it has become increasingly more difficult to find Stacks information, and the very information that Stacks users are looking for has become diluted and obscured amongst the idle chiff-chatter, self-promotion, new stack announcements, discussions about M1 processors, etc., the list goes on and on.
So I suggest that the Yourhead Discord group users exercise some control and only “chat” about Stacks specific issues.
You did ask a valid question, but just in the wrong place.
“I’m keeping my eyes on AI. It’s powerful but still quite limited for a full coding or design project.”
This forum is a far better place to chat about such topics and there is an active thread on this forum that got very interesting yesterday.
For sure, Discord is what Isaiah chose. Personally, I think that was a bad choice, given the alternatives, and I still find it confusing and labyrinthine. What I need from a Stacks discussion is not a ‘platform built for belonging’ but somewhere where it is easy to ask questions, get answers, and where the best answers are compiled into a knowledge base. Stacks is a relatively simple application from a user’s perspective, and most of the issues that arise in using Stacks have to do with individual stacks themselves, rather than the framework in which they run. Those issues are best dealt with by individual developers, and most do so in the various forums that already exist.
As a beginning developer of stacks, what I need is a dedicated place to get answers to the questions that arise in that process, given that the documentation that is in the Stacks API wiki is just a skeleton. I could ask individual developers, but it’s not their job to do this — it’s YourHead’s job to support this side of their product. So far most of what I’ve learnt has come from Joe’s and Gary’s (Doobox) beginners’ videos, and from taking apart the stacks I have. And I’m amazed how little of a knowledge base there is for Stacks, either on the old Slack channel or now on Discord. (It’s as if building stacks is some kind of initiatory cult that one has to go through ordeals in order to join.)
Anyway, as to the unsuitability of Discord to be the Stacks platform, it goes right back to what the company itself says about what it has set out to do:
“Discord was started to solve a big problem: how to communicate with friends around the world while playing games online. Since childhood, founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy both shared a love of video games, cherishing the friendships and connections that formed while playing them. At the time, all the tools built for this job were slow, unreliable, and complex. Jason and Stan knew they could make a better service that encouraged talking, helped form memories, and recreated the feeling of togetherness all found through gaming.”
In what way is either using or building stacks like ‘playing games online’?
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It origins of Discord have no bearing on what the tool is or can be used for. Substitute “playing games” with “building websites”.
Again, the chat feature is optional. If you go into #Browse Channels you can even turn that channel off. And you will never have to see it again. Once the chat is hidden the only things left are what look like a traditional form.
Had Discord not shipped the forum feature last year, I would agree with your that what the service was, would not be suitable. However, the forum does exist and having native apps is pretty awesome.
Announcements
There is a place for announcements. In fact, I have been bad and not posting my announcements there. I will start doing so.
Stacks Questions
Just like this forum, there are individual threads that you can ask your question.
Dev Group
There is a developer group. It’s existed for many years. However, with the turbulent times that we are in, it was put into lockdown. I am sure once Stacks Pro ships things like this will start to open back up. I think that it will get merged into this new Discord server. So unfortunately, you just started at a bad time.
P.S. I know that some you here thrive on negativity, so here is some. I hate the emojis in Discord. They were designed by a child and I wish they would die. And why can’t it have a true dark mode? It has an almost dark mode instead.
My position on Stacks has been “wait and see.” These issues with support, announcements, sharing ideas are all kind of mute at this point. Even though they are severely needed for those that are still using the combination of Stacks, stacks and RW. Once the app StacksPro ships I would hope that more realistic and mature solutions for the above listed needs will be provided. Obviously in CONJUNCTION with full and understandable support documentation. If things do not change I will change over to other options permanently. The infighting is just not worth any “cool” tech that might be offered. Again I am speaking for myself, NOT anyone else.
I think that is a completely fair view Mark. Right now, RW8.9 + Stacks 5 work perfect. They will for quite some time as well. This will give user plenty of time to see Stacks Pro when it ships and even use it side by side with the existing setup.
My comments here the past couple of days were purely to shed some light on what I felt were unfair complaints about the new Stacks forum on discord. Discord is new to many people and change can be hard sometimes. I hope that my post above will help some people get more out of it.
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Joe, I still don’t understand why Discord — what can it do that another forum app can’t, which Stacks needs it to do? What you’ve built on Weavers Space is really clear and easy to navigate, as is this forum. The way Discord works seems completely counter-intuitive to me: maybe it’s obvious to gamer kids, but I’m not familiar with that world. There are so many ‘insanely great’ mac apps that have really well considered UI and UX for grown ups — I’d list Agenda, Ulysses, Craft here, and I‘m sure others can suggest many more — but Discord is so not insanely great. It’s the UX experience of suddely finding yourself in the middle of downtown Tokyo surrounded by a riot of neon signs in a language you don’t understand. Given that the age profile of the RW/Stacks community is distinctly older, I just don’t get this choice.
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I should add, again speaking for myself. Something needs to ship soon or I’ll just move on anyway. Several other options are getting pretty mature and even more fun to use. I’ll leave it there.
Have you not been using Slack groups? I have been a part of a dozen of so over the years. Discord behaves pretty much identically to Slack. There are a few differences. Some I like, some I don’t. As I said before, this new forum feature makes it completely different. However, once Salesforce bought Slack, some things started going downhill. Many of the groups that I was a part of on Slack have now moved to Discord.
Maybe using a more modern platform will help inject some young blood into the community. 🤔
Like it, good description :)
I have to admit, I’m not particularly keen on the Discord platform, I do tend to miss stuff, I’ve only just seen something from mid-feb on there this morning. I do respect it is the preferred platform of the Dev(s) so I’ve never felt it my place to express my feelings on it, but like the person that starts a mass street brawl by being the loud gobby one, but then hides behind a parked van when it all kicks off in the street shouting to his mates “Go on, go on, get 'em… yeah that’ll teach 'em” in a similar manner I thought I’d be that person and add by mentioning that I’m not keen on Discord while this discussion has surfaced. Apart from not really following everything in a linear manner and missing stuff I’ve found on two occasions it has locked me out, a kind of being banned, for no apparent reason, this would go on for a couple of days then suddenly I can access again. That has been really frustrating. Also a ‘regular’ forum unless locked down can be publically read without logins etc, which is good for potential new users to get the feel of an app by doing a bit of research, when people are thinking of moving away from their current platform, having an open forum page helps the research as to what the app can do and the third-party app options. But… if it is the preferred method of communication for the Dev(s), I’ll respect that and happily continue to wrestle and contend with it.
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“Maybe using a more modern platform will help inject some young blood into the community. 🤔”
I’m really looking forward to your TikToks 😜
@isaiah and @joeworkman I hope you take these comments as constructive criticism rather than negativity.
Sorry but really not a fan of the discord setup either.
- It’s hidden away and you need to sign up before you can get access to anything.
To new, non-discord users, the chance for a quick browse of a particular products’ forum and community can be very useful. Also the same if you are looking for a solution quickly.
I have been put of trying and using quite a few software products, both personal and professionally, if you have no idea of support and the community around it.
- The chat feature seems to be the main way that people use it, and a lot of useful info can be quickly buried in it. It’s maybe a matter of user education, as trying to moderate and organise all of those comments would be a nightmare and not feasible for any of the mods/devs to do.
Both this forum and Weaver Space are far more user friendly.
I’m not adverse to change (ie Weaver Spaces’ move from humhub to tribal was a big improvement) but I hope something more open and useable appears with Stacks Pro went it arrives.
Cheers,
Paul
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It’s a new thing for all of us. I agree that everything being in the chat make it difficult to keep up with things. I posted a couple of new announcements today. I will be conscious of doing that going forward. I think that this will raise awareness that there is more to it than the chat.
So if anyone else wants to post over there, give the stacks forum a shot. The more people use it, the more intuitive it may become for new users.
I had a thought… what if the default view in the Stacks discord was the Stacks forum, instead of the chat. I am not sure if that is possible. But I will mention it to Isaiah.
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It’s not a matter of sight.
But just a lot of confusion.
Hopefully later you will build a Stackpro5all, identical to this forum, which is great.
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The issue isn’t Discord itself which originally served itself well with the amount of Stacks related content.
The problem, that breaks Discord is all the non essential chat and discussion and annoucements of new stacks, hangouts, how are things going, etc…
Discord is what we have and Isaiahs time is better spent elsewhere IMHO.
It’s all the above for me. It’s just really inferior compared to so many other options. For me, less is more.
In business and operations development, my profession, we are constantly asking the question. “What is the problem we are trying to solve.” The proper solution is typically the simplest. Allowing a solution to become too complex will itself become another set of problems looking for a solution. This creates layers of fixes where layers are not necessary.