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Why I think the Freedom Respecting Software Gaming Community needs a Discourse forum.

Jastiv
Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - 11:20
Jastiv's picture

I've been thinking a lot lately about the tools we use to communicate with one another, and something really struck me as problem with our current situation. I believe what the freedom respecting software games community really needs is a discourse forum. I know we have other forums and places to discuss free software games need their own specialized community, because existing communities aren't really cutting it. We either have forums for one specific game ie, battle for wesnoth, minetest etc, or we have forums that host topics on a bunch of different games such as here or freegamedev.net. We also have communties like reddit and more genralized communities, and of course irc, but what we really need is better communication across projects.

I firmly believe that if we had better communication, we could do improve game development in ways that right now probably sound impossible, up there, that is with time travel and teleportation in real life. Okay, I won't go quite that far, but some days, it just seems like that is the kind of thing I am asking for.

I know there is a lot of resistance to the idea, such as Javascript is evil, what is wrong with the tools we have? we just don't have a large enough community etc, but I believe those excuses are entirely bullshit.

My recent experiences and the current downtime on freegamedev.net made me realize the urgency of the situation. I know if the right person applied for a forum we could get one and fill out the community, but I need to know if there is enough interest in the idea. Discourse is even offering free hosting for qualifying communities.

https://blog.discourse.org/2018/11/free-hosting-for-open-source-v2/

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PeterX
joined 4 years 6 months ago
Thursday, January 28, 2021 - 08:51

I never used Discourse. So what would be the advantages of having a Disourse forum? And why would Discourse bring us more participants? Or more communication?

Greetings
Peter

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Jastiv
joined 14 years 2 months ago
Monday, February 1, 2021 - 17:54
Jastiv's picture

Well, for one thing, we wouldn't be using this outdated forum software all the time.

Discourse takes away the the part where you have to check each sub-forum to see if there are new posts, but you also have the option of going to a specific sub forum. Discourse also has a better member moderator system than other types of forums, making it it easier to get rid of trolls and spam.

I currently belong to and regularly post on a couple Discourse communities and I have found it to be more fun and enjoyable than posting on other types of forums. I know the FSF uses it internally for associate members and participation went way up since it was implemented.

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 8 months ago
Friday, February 5, 2021 - 13:07
MedicineStorm's picture

Are there any tools for integrating it with Drupal? Single sign on, theme customization, etc or am I missing the concept?

--Medicine Storm

 

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theidiotmachine
joined 9 years 2 months ago
Friday, February 5, 2021 - 14:16

Looks like it uses oauth, so you can log into a Drupal website using Discord if you flip the appropriate switches.

https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/modules/drupal-oauth-openid-connect-login-...

I am not a huge fan of Discord, but I get that it might be easier than chatting here. I quite like the low traffic nature of this site, though.

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 8 months ago
Friday, February 5, 2021 - 14:34
MedicineStorm's picture

I agree the (s)lower traffic makes a forum more appropriate than live chat like discord, but for what it's worth, OGA already has a discord server: https://discord.gg/RkNCGCsEsN

However, "Discord" and "Discourse" are very different, correct?

--Medicine Storm

 

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theidiotmachine
joined 9 years 2 months ago
Saturday, February 6, 2021 - 00:29

Oh my old eyes. Sorry.

Looks like there is an oauth/oidc plugin for discourse, so you can SSO with drupal.

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theidiotmachine
joined 9 years 2 months ago
Saturday, February 6, 2021 - 00:31

... and the thing with discourse is that the mobile experience is much better than here. I made that mistake on my phone! I find the zoomed in thing you need to do is not a happy thing...

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Jastiv
joined 14 years 2 months ago
Saturday, February 6, 2021 - 10:55
Jastiv's picture

We don't need discord, we need Discourse forum software.

I love how you can just get to the latest topics and don't have to check through every category all the time, but you can if you want to like if there are a lot of posts.

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PeterX
joined 4 years 6 months ago
Saturday, February 13, 2021 - 12:38

But other software makes it possible to see the new postings, too.
Usually the forum's main page shows a different color and/or symbol for yet unread postings. So what is special about Discourse?

BTW this buggy FGD.net forum software crashed now again.

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