Why Discord?

[BluLightShow]

Hi friends,
My name is Max and I'm one of the managers over on the Arduino Discord Server. I've been following this thread to understand how the forum users feel about the discord server because I feel it's important that we don't fall into an "us vs. them" situation and that begins with a level of awareness of our own position as the newbies on the block. I'd much rather work with everyone here on the forum and I think there's much to be learned from how this forum operates in comparison to the discord server. We're very aware of the lack of structured conversation that comes with the live chat capabilities in discord. Originally, Discord had plans to introduce message threading similar to how it exists in slack. However, it seems that these plans may have been delayed, halted, or completely abandoned (we haven't control or communication with the discord company, we're just going off of what we can determine). As the server grows we've been looking at solutions to this problem that are within our reach, and one of them is a system (facilitated by a bot) that lets persons with questions formally claim a channel from a channel pool. After claiming a channel, the bot would clearly mark the end of the previous interaction and the start of the new one with the question, with the channel completely dedicated to one question at a time. I'd like your guys' input on this concept. Would this new format make some of you more open to helping others on the discord server? Do you feel it would be easier to follow if this separation was implemented? Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I'd like to set the record straight. To my understanding, the intention is not to replace the Arduino forum with the discord server. It's another option that appeals to a younger audience since more of those persons are already on the Discord platform.

[anon73444976]

Hi Max, you may not be used to how the forum works, but could you please not hijack my thread about how the forum software here works (or doesn't)?

Thanks.

[Grumpy_Mike]

one of them is a system (facilitated by a bot) that lets persons with questions formally claim a channel from a channel pool. After claiming a channel, the bot would clearly mark the end of the previous interaction and the start of the new one with the question, with the channel completely dedicated to one question at a time.

Most of the more knowledgeable members here would probably describe ourselves as "old farts". Personally I have not spent my whole life in electronics, firstly because I am not quite dead yet, and secondly I only started playing about with electric circuits when I was about 8 years old.
Secondly I am dyslexic which when I was growing up was called being thick. It still is when I make a spelling mistake despite spell checkers. That is because spell checkers can't cope with homophones. But I do put a lot of effort into trying to make sure things are spelled correctly. Therefore it is quite annoying to see things deliberately miss spelt. So I am so un-hip it is surprising my trousers don't fall down.

Anyway thank you for telling us what this is all about, but it would have been even better if this information could have been passed on before the botched introduction we had with badly placed "help buttons" that appeared directing people away from this forum.

As to the stuff about the channels it sounds total gobbledygook to me so I can't comment to how effective it will be, or if it would encourage me to help over there. However, the majority of our young posters confuse the word "help" with "write code for me". Good luck on trying to get a bot to write code for you.

I did have high hopes of your hackster.io project. I thought "at last a quality instructables", but no. A bit of interaction with the moderators, as a result of the popups that said "would you recommend this site to a friend" soon left me disillusioned with quotes like "why should contributors have to post schematics of their projects". Well if that is the standard of the moderators I don't think much of them.

I can't speak for others but personally I simply can't see the point. You have yet to sell it to me.

[PerryBebbington]

Hello Max,

I've been following this discussion and not chipping in until now. I for one appreciate the contact. My conclusion is that Discord is different to this forum and probably suits some people very well, those people are the people that are probably not comfortable here. I think therefore the 2 different formats complement each other, not compete against each other, and serve different people. I cannot say if the changes you propose would make Discord more amenable to those of who like this format, I would have to try it to know. However, I wonder if that's the right thing to do, the people who like your format might think it was wrecked by making it more like the format here, at the moment the two are distinctly different and suit different people, maybe that's a good thing.

[Coding_Badly]

TheMemberFormerlyKnownAsAWOL:
...please not hijack...

Yup. Thread split.

[anon57380292]

Question. Max in one of his posts told that the Arduino discord server was created in early 2018. But it was added to the commmunity toolbar like 2 months back...Why?

[PerryBebbington]

Another thought Max,
What is Discord for? Who is it targeted at? I know what this forum is for, I know who it's appropriate for and I recognise people here who are probably in the wrong place. What I don't know is when it might be appropriate to recommend someone to try Discord instead of here.

[UKHeliBob]

Max - I have been using and contributing to Discord for a few days despite having been banned for 12 hours after simply asking what Discord was for, but I now have a feel for how Discord works or doesn't. It desperately needs some form of threading and if the developers can't or won't provide it then it is the wrong vehicle to provide technical support. OK for a chat or a quick one question, one answer but no use at all for long drawn out support with the amount of to and fro that threads here often have

As the server grows we've been looking at solutions to this problem that are within our reach, and one of them is a system (facilitated by a bot) that lets persons with questions formally claim a channel from a channel pool.

So, you are trying to paper over the cracks with a solution of your own. Frankly it sounds a nightmare, but I would need to see and use it in order to give an opinion. I assume that there is a test/demo Discord where the idea could be implemented, tested and discussed. If so then I would like to see it. Under no circumstances introduce this change into the live environment without thorough testing and without letting the users know what is about to happen and when. I am sure some of the current Discord users will not be pleased with the idea

In the meantime I have some questions :

How many claimable channels would there be ?
Will the channels be named to allow identification of the subject being discussed ?
What actions or events would trigger the release of a claimed channel ?
Is the idea scalable to allow say 20 simultaneous claimed (and suitably named) channels to exist ?

[UKHeliBob]

What is Discord for?

Don't ask that on Discord. I did, got abused and banned for 12 hours

[PerryBebbington]

UKHeliBob:
Don't ask that on Discord. I did, got abused and banned for 12 hours

So I read. Perhaps you, Mr. Moderator, would like to ban me from here for asking that question!

More seriously, Max from Discord, I'd be interested in your opinion on people being banned for asking what Discord is for.

[Robin2]

blulightshow:
My name is Max and I'm one of the managers over on the Arduino Discord Server.

Welcome. It's good to have direct contact with the Arduino team.

Also, I'd like to set the record straight. To my understanding, the intention is not to replace the Arduino forum with the discord server.

That is good news and I have no objection to the existence of different sources for information and for contact between Arduino users. However present evidence does not support your assertion.

On the other sections of the Arduino website that have this help button

when you click it the section on "Ask the Community" says

If you need a hand picking up the appropriate board for your next creation or just need help with a project, head over Discord to ask the community.

There is no reference to this Forum anywhere on the Help Center page

At the very least the Ask the Community text might be modified to say something like
If you need help with your Arduino project or programming visit the Arduino Forum or, for less formal questions, head over to our Discord community.

...R

[UKHeliBob]

To add to what Robin says, a reciprocal link to the forum from Discord would seem to be appropriate. If it is there I have not seen it

[J-M-L]

Hi Max,

First of all thanks for reaching out. Communication is a the foundation of a thriving community and it can't be about members alone since your company owns the infrastructure and business decisions.

I would second what has been said above, after checking it out a few times, I can see a purpose for 'instant gratification" type of questions that call for a very short savvy answer. It won't scale well, anything longer than 2 back and forth will just get lost if you start getting traction and dozens of concurrent posters. That's what I tagged as 'cacophony' in previous discussions. Feels being in a very loud party, everyone speaking at the same time and no option to isolate your small conversation from the noise of the crowd. Some enjoy such parties, get your one liner out there and forget about it and other hate it because nothing really constructive can happen there. There is a need for a follow up place - which could be this forum when appropriate.

Your channel idea seems like a short term patch that won't scale if you are successful and dozens of questions are being raised at the same time, so you might be investing time, efforts, budgets and members's goodwill in something that might be short-lived.

My view is that "things" needs to have a purpose for existing. You run a business, I would strongly encourage you to watch Simon Sinek talk about "Start With Why". The answer to the why needs to be very clear to you and to your target audience.

It does not need to please everyone but your "thing" needs a purpose that is casting a net wide enough to justify its existence. If not, sooner or later your leadership will question the idea, your CFO and CEO will ask again "can you tell me again why we are spending our scarce resources on this?"

The other thing I learnt in business is that you need to own and control the key components of your strategy. Handing over the keys of your strategic initiatives to someone else is a recipe for failure.

So where are you today? Here is my honest 'community member' view of my on-boarding if I where to join today:

In your home web page you state

COMMUNITY
The ever-growing Arduino community is made up of everyone from hobbyists and students to designers and engineers all across the world. Have questions? The official multi-language Forum is the place to go

And there is a Community popdown linking to the forum. So if I see that, I have a destination clearly marked, with an Arduino Login. All good.

If I look around and find your Blog Home, you tout about community and your new "Arduino Help Center":

How can we help? New Help Center makes it easier than ever to enjoy Arduino

ARDUINO TEAM — October 8th, 2020
The Arduino customer support team is excited to announce the final release of the Arduino Help Center. A place where you can find answers to your questions and lots of useful troubleshooting articles to help you enjoy and get the most out of the Arduino experience.

With the active Arduino community finding ever more creative ways to use an Arduino, building a purposeful help center with customers at heart has been a challenge that we enjoyed taking. The design, development and customer support teams have been studying all the different contact points in our ecosystem to gather more information and insights on how users interact with Arduino; providing a solid foundation to build a Help Center with useful sections and friendly navigation.

One primary aim of putting together the Help Center was to specifically make it easier for new Arduino users to access all the information that can help them to get the most out of their Arduino experience. This new solution expands the channels we use to support our customers, and rest assured we are still here to help if you can’t find the answer you’re looking for — plus there is the Arduino forum with millions of community members out there willing to share their tips. Given the constantly active nature of the Arduino community, we will continue to add new articles on a monthly basis with the most topical and useful solutions.

So now it seems the Help Center is the preferred place to start from and - side note - there is the forum too with millions of members to use if everything else fails... Hum, may be the forum is not the best place to go then.

So I go to the Help Center and there if I search for "Forum" I get this as an answer:

So the millions of members are nowhere to be found... No problem I scroll down to the "Didn’t find what you were looking for?" section and there I get hope. There is my link to the Community of experts !

So I go there and suddenly I'm being invited to join discord, create an account, download extra software.

Before I go through the trouble of handing over my birthdate and eMail address to a company that is not affiliated with Arduino, I double check a bit who they are.

Discord is an all in one text, voice, and video chat application dedicated to the gamers around the world

Hum... that Feels weird.

Curious how they plan to make money?

Discord has more than 87 million users, and is planning to rule over the $1.7 billion worth of voice chat market. The application is entirely free to use and has no plans to charge money in future for its core features

I'm then a bit puzzled. Does not sounds like a great place for an Arduino user, unless.... I'm already a gamer and member of the Discord community.

I'm not such a member, thus as I don't have any other option and I need my answers, I oblige and create an account. I arrive (with difficulty, see PS) to your general readme where you state:

This server is for getting help on anything Arduino related and connecting with other users in the Arduino community.

and

Getting Help
So you want help troubleshooting your project? No problem! We have channels just for the cause, but it’s beneficial if you know the way we operate so we can help you quicker. Here are some steps to getting help and notes about how you can help us help you

I look over the few channels to choose from but nothing linking me to the millions of forum users. I may try my luck and dump my question there, but as you noted if it's anything a bit complicated, needing code analysis or guidance or some sort of discussion then it's not the right format.

So what do I take from this:

• I'm part of a generation that worries about privacy on line. I'm OK to engage with the Arduino company, why would I have to give away stuff my privacy and accept terms with a different company?

• it feels like your company has difficulty articulating the "why" of each engagement platform and there is some sort of internal competition showing through the cracks.

• Discord feels an interesting option for those already part of that community, used to quick ask/answer, nothing deep, nothing complicated.

• Voice option with a friend to help out is valuable in Covid's time too. But I've plenty of options to choose from already. Is that the core mission of Arduino?

• Trying to address the shortcomings of Discord to make it more like the forum feels like creating an overlap in purpose and thus detrimental to the value added. If at the time the plan was to leverage "message threading similar to how it exists in slack" (possibly as a way to pave the way to the future of the forum?) then it seems this option is no longer on the table.

• Doing side development to address the shortcomings is building technical debt for your company on top of something you don't control (as proven by the fact that threading did not make it) with a different business goal than yours (voice chat market).
  This money would be better invested in making the forum infrastructure better. Have leadership stop the internal competition for attracting audience. Create a frictionless flow from one service to the other when the member's purpose / quest is better suited in the other place => That goes back to defining the "why" and the purpose of each service and staying true to that purpose.

hope this helps

---

PS: I did not like to have to register twice, this is part of the feeling there are two communities (SSO techniques are meant for those things when joining disparate systems) and the link in the "Community" Pop Down menu at the top of the website does not work for me. It tries to open the Discord app on my computer which I don't want to install. (workaround = let it fail and backtrack in the web browser to get to the web version of Discord).

[PerryBebbington]

@J-M-L
++Karma; // Very well put!

[J-M-L]

Thx

as a side note to Max and sharing a personal opinion, enforcing "English only" is disrespectful of cultures and a strong barrier to entry to build a worldwide community.

As an Italian/European company I would have thought this would be something strongly anchored in your values. The Forum has a vivid local language section showing there is a need and people willing to invest time in support of local language help for those not mastering English.

[Robin2]

J-M-L:
As an Italian/European company I would have thought this would be something strongly anchored in your values.

And they might spell "Help Centre" the way it is done on this side of the Atlantic.

...R

[J-M-L]

Robin2:
And they might spell "Help Centre" the way it is done on this side of the Atlantic.

LOL

[anon57380292]

J-M-L:

+1 to add the link to the Arduino Forum along with discord...

[BluLightShow]

I just finished reading everything from the thread split. I'd like to clarify though (and I blame myself for not making it apparent from the start) that I am not an employee of the Arduino company. I am one of the 2 community volunteers appointed by David Cuartielles back in 2018 when the server was just starting out to help in managing the Discord server. For the most part, we have autonomy in our decision-making and aren't bound to a format or set of requirements by the Arduino company.

TheUNOGuy:
Question. Max in one of his posts told that the Arduino discord server was created in early 2018. But it was added to the commmunity toolbar like 2 months back...Why?

Until recently, the Discord server was perceived by the Arduino company as a primary means of contact for live casts taking place, especially after Arduino Day went virtual. Before Arduino Day, we were contacted by Alessandro Ranellucci. One of his responsibilities is overseeing many aspects of the community and he wanted to push for a live cast channel to ask the live presenters questions on a number of topics. While I'm not completely sure where Arduino's shift regarding the perspective of the Discord server took place, after this initial involvement we started getting slightly more attention, and they had some of the Arduino customer support team join in case questions needed to be escalated. If you ask me, the beginning of my time on the Discord server it was small in the grand scheme of things, and they gave us space to see if it would grow. After growing to upwards of 5000 members without any mention on the Arduino website, I believe they started to take an interest.

PerryBebbington:
Another thought Max,
What is Discord for? Who is it targeted at? I know what this forum is for, I know who it's appropriate for and I recognise people here who are probably in the wrong place. What I don't know is when it might be appropriate to recommend someone to try Discord instead of here.

Discord right now primarily serves as a help destination and place for discussion on all things Arduino. In reality, it's targeted at anyone that likes real-time messaging over forum posts, though I believe the Arduino company is placing an emphasis on it as a place for younger audiences to get help as it's more than likely they already have or use Discord. The purposes of the Discord server and the forum are very much similar. The contrasting characteristic is the real-time messaging in channels vs forum posts in threads. For that reason, I wouldn't send anyone away from the forum in favor of Discord. It's truly just about what platform you prefer using and what format you would rather communicate in.

UKHeliBob:
In the meantime I have some questions :

How many claimable channels would there be ?
Will the channels be named to allow identification of the subject being discussed ?
What actions or events would trigger the release of a claimed channel ?
Is the idea scalable to allow say 20 simultaneous claimed (and suitably named) channels to exist ?

About your 12 hour mute that was issued- I myself issued the mute. It was not the other moderator you were speaking to. The interaction was taking place in our general channel, a place specified by description for talking about Arduino related topics (rather than what was happening, more of an Arduino community-meta type discussion, something we've decided does not fit within the scope of the channel). We are usually lenient in allowing off-topic talk to a certain extent in the general channel, however, I made a judgment. I apologize if the consequence seemed harsh. It was not the first time we've had forum members go to the Discord server and post in the wrong section questioning the decision of the Arduino team to put the server's link in the navigation bar or questioning the purposes of the Discord server. I interpreted it less like a genuine question and more as a call for controversy.

The proposed channel system is following in the footsteps of an existing implementation over in the Python discord server. The number of claimable channels would be determined based on server metrics. As it exists in the Python discord server, channels have generic static names and whenever a channel's rotated out and back in with a new question, it gets added to the pinned messages for the channel while it's relevant. This means you will always get to see the question at hand in the channel, have a clear division of interactions, and keep the real-time capabilities that set the server apart from the forum. Channels would be released either after a certain amount of time with no discussion takes place or a helper deems the topic resolved and runs a command to release the channel. The idea is very scalable, and the system serves almost 100,000 people for the Python server. If you'd like to see the system for yourself, you can join their discord at https://discord.gg/python.

Robin2:
Welcome. It's good to have direct contact with the Arduino team.

That is good news and I have no objection to the existence of different sources for information and for contact between Arduino users. However present evidence does not support your assertion.

On the other sections of the Arduino website that have this help button

when you click it the section on "Ask the Community" saysThere is no reference to this Forum anywhere on the Help Center page

At the very least the Ask the Community text might be modified to say something like
If you need help with your Arduino project or programming visit the Arduino Forum or, for less formal questions, head over to our Discord community.

...R

The reasons for linking to just the Discord and excluding the forum are beyond me. I believe it should mention both.

PerryBebbington:
So I read. Perhaps you, Mr. Moderator, would like to ban me from here for asking that question!

More seriously, Max from Discord, I'd be interested in your opinion on people being banned for asking what Discord is for.

See the first half of the response to UKHeliBob.

J-M-L:
Hi Max,

First of all thanks for reaching out. Communication is a the foundation of a thriving community and it can't be about members alone since your company owns the infrastructure and business decisions...

So the millions of members are nowhere to be found... No problem I scroll down to the "Didn’t find what you were looking for?" section and there I get hope. There is my link to the Community of experts !

So I go there and suddenly I'm being invited to join discord, create an account, download extra software...

As I stated at the beginning, I apologize for misrepresenting myself. I am only a volunteer for the Discord server so I can only help shape the experience on the Discord server. The rest of the dialogue and experience are left up to the Arduino team, which we have trouble contacting as is.

J-M-L:
Thx

as a side note to Max and sharing a personal opinion, enforcing "English only" is disrespectful of cultures and a strong barrier to entry to build a worldwide community.

As an Italian/European company I would have thought this would be something strongly anchored in your values. The Forum has a vivid local language section showing there is a need and people willing to invest time in support of local language help for those not mastering English.

We are not trying to be disrespectful to other cultures or create a strong barrier to entry. We used to have many language channels for help and discussion, and they were hardly used. Maybe one message every few months or so. For this reason, we removed the channels and stated that the server should stick to English only. In light of this post, I'll reopen a discussion into adding back language channels now that the server is reasonably larger than before.
Sorry it took so long to get respond. I'll keep watching this thread and try to answer any more questions. It's very helpful to see everyone's thoughts.
Stay healthy,
-Max

[PerryBebbington]

Max,
Thank you, I appreciate your comments.