The future of the forums - a call for comments

[Fireswamp]

I like Discord and I would personally prefer to have things in one place; however, I think the forums should stay to some extent.  For those who don't want a Discord account or don't want to join a public Discord server, they should still be able to read discussions so they can be made aware of things like bugs on a specific map.  I think that moving the forums to the Discord would prevent a lot of players from being able to see what discussions are going on and they would be less likely to find information on what they are looking for.

[Vertu]

I am neutral mainly because I like movements to help keep things fresh and up to date but the forums are nice and simple but most importantly, not noisy like discord.
I am an introvert but the main reason I don't do discord is because I don't like the noise of large servers so I oppose moving information from the forums onto discord such as Farsite Colonies discussion as I don't like the idea of putting such rather "quiet" information into a noisy place. Honestly I think it is still a good idea but maybe not make it impossible to reply to forums stuff as this is the forums so a hybrid of such a decision (this is real life after all, life doesn't give you integers so why use integers?), a place of Knuckle Cracker and information of it, discord is a chat rather a place of complete information.

However a good positive of integrating discord is the ability to give people are more familiar setting and possibly a more user friendly one. Like I still don't know how to place images here but uploading a screenshot (without it just being a download) on discord inside a topic of a map? Should be very quick and easy. This can enhance the flow of information between all participants which can be immensely useful.
Also well done in getting me onto your discord.
My standing is still that Discord servers can be noisy and detour certain people while the forums is nice and clam and I can't put downloads at the wiki (as far as I know) and I don't think I can in discord unless I can create "rooms" or what ever the mirror of what we have on the forums is to place my CPACKs for example, leaving the forums the only place to put my downloadable CPACKs and I would prefer having discussions there at the download page rather than in another location, not that I get much chatter so what do I know?

Simple answer:
-Keep the forums (maybe cut a few things here and there) as Discord can be noisy (and some may even find it hard to navigate with how many "rooms" there will be to accommodate each map discussion but you may have a good plan for that already).
-Integrate Discord for improved flow of information between participants from both a familiar environment in modern popular media and a very user friendly oriented platform that is meant to work on people who don't know how to read a 1 sentence worth of instructions.

[Karsten75]

I am neutral mainly because I like movements to help keep things fresh and up to date but the forums are nice and simple but most importantly, not noisy like discord.

I had a great deal of difficulty parsing your response. Mostly because of language constructs like the above. :) Usually "but" introduces a new and opposite point, so a double "but" sentence seems to negate itself?

Honestly I think it is still a good idea but maybe not make it impossible to reply to forums stuff as this is the forums so a hybrid of such a decision (this is real life after all, life doesn't give you integers so why use integers?), a place of Knuckle Cracker and information of it, discord is a chat rather a place of complete information.

Discord is transitioning and evolving. So are we. We want to be where the player audience are. In our estimation, that is Discord, and will be so increasingly in the future.

We also felt that it presents difficulties if the same thread (discussion for a specific map) is in multiple places. Not everyone would follow both sites and some information may be not seen or may be in multiple places - neither is desirable. As transitioning mechanism, we are still placing an entry here, but we link to where we believe the primary venue should be..

Like I still don't know how to place images here but uploading a screenshot (without it just being a download) on discord inside a topic of a map? Should be very quick and easy. This can enhance the flow of information between all participants which can be immensely useful.

You are correct in the ease-of-use observation regarding Discord. For uploading images in these (the SMF forums), you should host the image somewhere such as imgur.com and then use the image tags (there is a button in the post editor bar) to mark the image. There is plenty of help on Google if you need to figure it out.

Also well done in getting me onto your discord.

Well, if you are there, drop in somewhere and say "hi" - I'm sure many folks who  played your maps might be keen to talk to you about them.

I can't put downloads at the wiki (as far as I know)

I believe we made a conscious decision NOT to host CPACKS on the wiki. Some folks create their own GitHub repositories to host their CPACKs. When you're on Discord, ask Grabz, for instance. You could simply drag and drop the CPACKs onto a post in the relevant map thread, or you don't have to do either and folks can grab them from the most current map by opening that in the editor. In my opinion, GitHub is a good repository for material like that.

[teknotiss]

i have been doing some further investigation into Discord and i think there are a few serious reasons KC should consider closing their current Discord and never using it again.

part owned by Tencent, a well know Chinese State data harvester that is slowly making all gaming (and internet use) dangerously non-private.

the software sends copies of everything on phones and PCs to the Chinese state and anyone else with a share in the company.

Discord breaks EU GDPR law and NEVER deletes data, even when instructed to (breaches right to be forgotten here also) and only deletes the username, the actual account number and data remain intact

there is no encryption in the software at all, 3rd party plugins are unreliable and likely compromised by the Chinese State anyway.

there are a number of worrying cases of child sexual exploitation linked to Discord too, not sure KC should be associated in any fashion with a software service that is so poorly policed by its owners that child abuse is possible on it.

all this is easily findable online, i think KC should stop using Discord ASAP.

[Darklurker]

I'm neutral, but I'm in agreement with rennervate - I'm getting old and hate changes.  OTOH, I post here maybe once every 3 or 4 years, so I'm not at all the target audience for this. And I only play CW1, which I guess is pretty stable at this point.  Hence, I'm neutral.

My only concern is - will this affect the chronom score database for CW1?  I'm assuming that's hosted on the same server as the forums?  It would be a shame to lose my 10 year streak of keeping the bottom of the daily CW1 score rankings populated. ;)

[miquelfire]

I think it's more the servers will always be here. If they do switch to Discord, maybe the forums themselves will be here as well, but read only (and writable only be the bots and admins for news post).

[Karsten75]

I'm neutral, but I'm in agreement with rennervate - I'm getting old and hate changes.  OTOH, I post here maybe once every 3 or 4 years, so I'm not at all the target audience for this. And I only play CW1, which I guess is pretty stable at this point.  Hence, I'm neutral.

My only concern is - will this affect the chronom score database for CW1?  I'm assuming that's hosted on the same server as the forums?  It would be a shame to lose my 10 year streak of keeping the bottom of the daily CW1 score rankings populated. ;)

None of this will affect score tables or custom map repositories. 

We are merely looking to move with our audience. Most players today have a Discord ID already and find it preferable to not register on a private server.

We are not really sure what the future holds for this forum. Traffic to it is very light compared to its heyday, and already the CW4 custom map forum  that we have switched over to Discord is more active than the corresponding CW4 board here was.  


If I had to guess, we'd keep this around indefinitely, if only because we use the SMF authentication scheme to to authenticate users on the wiki. Migrating that would be a headache we don't need. 

Anyway, after the recent upgrades and upheavals, we're good to go for another few years. And remember, if you don't like the current color scheme, we have a few options for you to choose from. :)