Ogre Discord server?

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drwbns
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Ogre Discord server?

Post by drwbns »

Hey guys. Anyone know if there is an Ogre3D discord server is running? I did a search but was surprised to find nothing. Can a moderator or person in charge make one for the community?
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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by sercero »

There is something similar: https://gitter.im/OGRECave/ogre

I don't think there is a Discord server, might be a good idea.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by dark_sylinc »

sercero wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 3:21 am

I don't think there is a Discord server, might be a good idea.

I don't think that'd be a good idea. We're not a 50k-active-users library. Splitting our presences only makes it harder for us to be reached or questions to be seen. We also have to moderate those spaces; and some get left out.

For example I don't think there's any of the devs on IRC, and we no longer get questions on why we're not anymore there ever since the Freenode takeover and our channel used to be there.

I much prefer Discord over Gitter but I wasn't the one who set it up and besides Gitter has the advantage of letting you sign in with Github, Gitlab & Twitter. Our main audience already has account in at least one of those services thus it makes it easier to begin engaging with us; so that's a big plus.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by EricB »

dark_sylinc wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:47 pm
sercero wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 3:21 am

I don't think there is a Discord server, might be a good idea.

I don't think that'd be a good idea. We're not a 50k-active-users library. Splitting our presences only makes it harder for us to be reached or questions to be seen. We also have to moderate those spaces; and some get left out.

For example I don't think there's any of the devs on IRC, and we no longer get questions on why we're not anymore there ever since the Freenode takeover and our channel used to be there.

I much prefer Discord over Gitter but I wasn't the one who set it up and besides Gitter has the advantage of letting you sign in with Github, Gitlab & Twitter. Our main audience already has account in at least one of those services thus it makes it easier to begin engaging with us; so that's a big plus.

I am a little late to this conversation, but I would like to mention that the IRC channel was pretty active for many years without a developer in it. A whole lot of us old-timers had to maintain, keep it active, and answer new comer's questions. And yes, there were still quite a few new people popping in now and then to ask questions, even as late as 2021... We had to turn away a lot of 2.x users questions, because most of us were using/had used old 1.x versions. (I used 1.7 myself up until 2019.)

Ogre's development team's refusal to idle in an IRC channel with 80+ past and present Ogre users is one major reason why the IRC channel died. Bad community relations work IMO. Slowly those users left the channel, but at a slower pace than the death of these forums. The final nail in the coffin was the Freenode schism. Most FOSS projects and users left for Libra.chat. Being probably the most active #Ogre3d IRC user over the last decade, I tried to register it on Libra, but Libra's rejected me because of their asinine rules.

Many other people, including myself, have zero desire to use gitter. I won't even consider connecting to it if I needed support. It's an awful chat protocol and aimed mainly at Github users. (Discord is worse, but I digress.) What I never understood all these years is if the Ogre Dev team is so steadfast in pimping the glitter to the point that they let other established and more aligned networks die, why didn't they just make a bridge between these networks and let users decide how and where they want to chat? Surely in 2018, there weren't 40 people on gitter. We had those numbers on the IRC, 10-20% of whom were active at any given time on the channel. With an occasional new comer popping in after finding us on irc channel search.

It's moot now for IRC since the Freenode schism killed the last remains of the IRC channel, but there isn't a single reason not to connect a Discord to their glitter if there is enough demand for Discord. If the devs want to remain on gitter, they can. Just setup a matter bridge and connect the two networks. All done.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by paroj »

some context:

I set-up the gitter channel when I moved Ogre to github, as anyone who wants to submit an issue on github automatically also has a gitter account. Note that at this time the majority of Ogre devs still clung to bitbucket/ mercurial.

Actually, I tried to contact the last IRC admin for the Ogre channel first, but did not get any response. And it makes little sense to promote the channel as official, if the Ogre team cannot moderate it.

Nowadays, gitter is part of Matrix network, which you can think of "modern IRC". There are bridges to IRC, so in theory given a Matrix account, you can chat via IRC on gitter. There are also Discord bridges for that matter.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by EricB »

paroj wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 4:48 pm

Actually, I tried to contact the last IRC admin for the Ogre channel first, but did not get any response. And it makes little sense to promote the channel as official, if the Ogre team cannot moderate it.

Sadly, Freenode of old was ran by the same folks that ran Libra, so the same absurd rules in respect to channel registrations. Anyway, if you would have talked to those of us that ran the channel unofficially (without moderator status)**, we could have told you the guy idling there with ops didn't have founder control, and the accounts that did have founder status had been awol'd for 10-15 years. We tried to gain control of the channel several times in the early 2010s. Someone with a valid @ogre3d.org email address with proof that they were being allowed by the project to take over the channel would have had to petition Freenode for ownership.

**If you did, sorry that I missed it. I started cutting back IRC a bit starting around the time you took over 1.x

That being said, the community was pretty good at self moderating for years.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there and in the past.

Nowadays, gitter is part of Matrix network, which you can think of "modern IRC". There are bridges to IRC, so in theory given a Matrix account, you can chat via IRC on gitter. There are also Discord bridges for that matter.

I know quite a bit about matrix and the bridges. It doesn't help the layman users who just wants to click a discord link and be taken to the channel that talks about Ogre though.

As for myself, I have backed away from all chat networks (and foss projects), except use of IRC to manage my business and my business community. I ran out of free time for anything else. I'm not here complaining about IRC, I'm just pointing out what I see as a flaw in community outreach. (And throwing some salt around about the past failure of this.) OP wanted to join #Ogre3d via Discord. A simple solution is give him a discord link that is your glitter channel. Without that, it's probably one less person around the community chat.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by spacegaier »

EricB wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 10:14 pm

[...] Anyway, if you would have talked to those of us that ran the channel unofficially (without moderator status)**, we could have told you the guy idling there with ops didn't have founder control, and the accounts that did have founder status had been awol'd for 10-15 years. We tried to gain control of the channel several times in the early 2010s. Someone with a valid @ogre3d.org email address with proof that they were being allowed by the project to take over the channel would have had to petition Freenode for ownership.

We actually had tried that back then (when I was an active team member and I had such an @ogre3d.org email address) but that official petition did not go anywhere sadly...
But I think anyway that IRC has run its course if the numbers listed on Wikipedia are correct.

Discord feels quite established in many FOSS projects (we are using it heavily for "Home Assistant" for example).

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by drwbns »

I originally wrote this post because to me, Ogre3d has positioned itself as a hard to reach sort of framework in terms of onboarding new users of the framework. I consider myself a student of c++ off and on for years now and really enjoy learning about all kinds of frameworks and honestly these days, any legitimate framework that cares about onboarding new interested members is going to have more up to date communication platforms available especially for new users. I look at it like this - if I am a newish c++ person interested in some framework called "Ogre3d" that I randomly heard about on my grandpa's youtube channel, I am probably going to search youtube or google and either find nothing recent on youtube or come here and see the docs and probably feel overwhelmed and then maybe check out the forums and see how little anyone actually posts here and then bail. The fact the IRC was mentioned here shows how old school this place is. I haven't used IRC since like 2000 and forgot it even existed until re-reading this thread lol. Don't get me wrong, I have spent a ton of time in the past trying to build projects with Ogre because I was super interested in how it all works and I still am interested which is why I check back here every so often, but I can only imagine any new users running before even posting once here. I mentioned Discord because younger generations (and older like myself), use it because that is today's IRC, and it is popular for a reason but I also understand that maybe Ogre just simply can't support anything new due to lack of help but Discord seems like it would bring in new attention and a more up to date avenue to onboard new users. Discord is also great for seeing chat history and spurring engaging conversations of course! Besides the obvious discussions that Discord is used for, things like searching, bots for questions and such could be setup and of course links for FAQ, docs and links to posts here of course - all creating a new and fresh environment for onboarding and organizing and possibly revamping existing information about Ogre. Clicking a link to join a Discord channel is now normal because it's easy as hell - that's why it is popular. I would just hate to see Ogre fade into the abyss since I believe it holds so much value, especially with all the development that has already been done over the decades. Maybe I'm just old and cranky now haha. Would love to hear more thoughts on this topic. Cheers

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by drwbns »

dark_sylinc wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:47 pm
sercero wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 3:21 am

I don't think there is a Discord server, might be a good idea.

I don't think that'd be a good idea. We're not a 50k-active-users library. Splitting our presences only makes it harder for us to be reached or questions to be seen. We also have to moderate those spaces; and some get left out.

For example I don't think there's any of the devs on IRC, and we no longer get questions on why we're not anymore there ever since the Freenode takeover and our channel used to be there.

I much prefer Discord over Gitter but I wasn't the one who set it up and besides Gitter has the advantage of letting you sign in with Github, Gitlab & Twitter. Our main audience already has account in at least one of those services thus it makes it easier to begin engaging with us; so that's a big plus.

I have to disagree here. Who doesn't have a Discord account these days? You said yourself you prefer Discord and I think most people would agree. If anything, Discord seems like a much better way to adopt new users that perhaps don't even have a github account just yet but are interested in what Ogre has to offer vs other engines or frameworks. In other words, I think new interested users are much more likely to have a Discord account than to have a github account these days. Discord just lowers the barrier to entry IMO. I think if I was a new user, I would much rather click a Discord link and check out a channel with my existing account rather than lurk to a dated-looking Gitter, IRC channel or the forums. I think if I joined an Ogre Discord channel and saw no engagement, at least I would know I am on an up to date platform and think to myself maybe the framework itself is not so up to date or not worth the time. I really think that a new user would more likely engage with the community while being on an up to date platform, call me crazy.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by farnandez »

drwbns wrote: Wed Apr 19, 2023 7:21 pm
dark_sylinc wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:47 pm
sercero wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 3:21 am

I don't think there is a Discord server, might be a good idea.

I don't think that'd be a good idea. We're not a 50k-active-users library. Splitting our presences only makes it harder for us to be reached or questions to be seen. We also have to moderate those spaces; and some get left out.

For example I don't think there's any of the devs on IRC, and we no longer get questions on why we're not anymore there ever since the Freenode takeover and our channel used to be there.

I much prefer Discord over Gitter but I wasn't the one who set it up and besides Gitter has the advantage of letting you sign in with Github, Gitlab & Twitter. Our main audience already has account in at least one of those services thus it makes it easier to begin engaging with us; so that's a big plus.

I have to disagree here. Who doesn't have a Discord account these days? You said yourself you prefer Discord and I think most people would agree. If anything, Discord seems like a much better way to adopt new users that perhaps don't even have a github account just yet but are interested in what Ogre has to offer vs other engines or frameworks. In other words, I think new interested users are much more likely to have a Discord account than to have a github account these days. Discord just lowers the barrier to entry IMO. I think if I was a new user, I would much rather click a Discord link and check out a channel with my existing account rather than lurk to a dated-looking Gitter, IRC channel or the forums. I think if I joined an Ogre Discord channel and saw no engagement, at least I would know I am on an up to date platform and think to myself maybe the framework itself is not so up to date or not worth the time. I really think that a new user would more likely engage with the community while being on an up to date platform, call me crazy.

I am totally agreed.
Todays everyone has a discord account which is why most of the forum are now migrating on it.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by sercero »

And then Discord would own all the user generated content and answers that are invaluable to this community.

I often find myself searching the forum for answers, and I get an ordered list of topics to look into.

If I was browsing discord it would be a mess of messages that have no unifiying topic and good luck searching for something that was asked one year from now.

I really prefer traditional forums because of this, it is less dynamic and of course requires more patience but it is better in terms or archiving the content.

Another thing is that the community would be subject to the rules of the people who run Discord. What happens if one day they decide that the OGRE server with all its questions and answers should be deleted?

What happens if Discord suddenly is not in fashion anymore (like IRC) can we get the messages out of the site in a database dump? I don't think so.

I totally understand where you are coming from and I really wish that OGRE was more popular, but I think that the popularity of OGRE is reduced because of other factors. Mainly because nowadays there is way more competition than before. You can't throw a stone on github without hitting hundreds of game or rendering engines nowadays.

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Re: Ogre Discord server?

Post by EricB »

spacegaier wrote: Sat Dec 24, 2022 1:24 am
EricB wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 10:14 pm

[...] Anyway, if you would have talked to those of us that ran the channel unofficially (without moderator status)**, we could have told you the guy idling there with ops didn't have founder control, and the accounts that did have founder status had been awol'd for 10-15 years. We tried to gain control of the channel several times in the early 2010s. Someone with a valid @ogre3d.org email address with proof that they were being allowed by the project to take over the channel would have had to petition Freenode for ownership.

We actually had tried that back then (when I was an active team member and I had such an @ogre3d.org email address) but that official petition did not go anywhere sadly...
But I think anyway that IRC has run its course if the numbers listed on Wikipedia are correct.

Discord feels quite established in many FOSS projects (we are using it heavily for "Home Assistant" for example).

My point was to show the historical disconnect between the community and the devs. We had an active unofficial IRC, but devs rarely idled there (regardless of moderation control). When the devs finally became active in chat, they were mostly in Gitter, even though IRC was still large and healthy.

I am not/was not advocating for using IRC in my comments, even though it is the superior chat protocol. I am pointing out the historical disconnect.

Why shouldn't Ogre have an official Discord, Slack, Telegram, Matrix, Gitter, and IRC? It's a single bot and an hour setup to bridge all of those together. Give the user the freedom of choice on which network he wants to be on. Personally, I wouldn't touch most of those networks with a stick, just as most people here wouldn't touch IRC because it's filled with words! (A chat network that is nothing but words in a terminal, the audacity of it!) There isn't a valid reason why we can't use the clients we want and talk to the broader network.

If someone wants to talk on Ogre Net with Discord, give them the link. If they want to talk on Matrix, give them the link. If they want to talk on IRC, give them the link. If they want to talk on Giter, give them the link. One community, many protocols. It's not that hard.

I'll have to agree that any talk of replacing forum software with chat is dumb though.

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