I don’t know this project’s devs’ philosophy on communications. Do you purposefully limit yourself to “thought-out forum postings” here, or do you have a “chatty” Discord server or Slack channel? As I dive in, I will probably have a lot of questions that would clog up this forum pretty fast. Should I just “batch” them here, or is there a realtime option?
I am still kind of new, I went with the flow and clogged up the forum, but I tried to not clog up too much and made one topic where I asked questions for several weeks.
A more chatty form of communications would work for me, it wouldn’t be “realtime” though, more like asynchronous due to different timezones, job, family, children
If the team would like me to, I can easily set up a Discord server and so bots to handle GitHub, Travis, etc. messages.
It would take discipline, but at the doable level, to keep quick Q&A to Discord, and keep the “big picture” (long reads) stuff in the forums until, if and when, the team would decide to move to Discord full time for development comms.
I would, of course, do all the work necessary to set this up, but I would then need some help by those with permissions to set up webhooks and stuff.
If you could put me on probationary access to github, I will try to prove my usefullness.
I guess I should add, that I am a DevOps engineer for another development team. I could do work to shell script developer workstation setup and pre-configure add-ons, like check-style, with the proper settings to make onboarding easier.
I am also cross-platform: Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Personally, I think that is a great idea. It helps build the ‘brand’ and develop a sense of community. Discord isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but is something most projects have these days. Need to be careful about trolls, language etc., I’m not sure how all that works. I use Discord infrequently, but have found it great to get instant answers to simple questions.
Discord is also a great way to organise Vassal match-ups.
Like many things with Vassal, we have never done it before because we have had no-one with the skills or drive to set it up. The ‘thinky forum post’ method has suited our (developers) work/life-style. The forums are still are great searchable repository for information, but a lot of ‘How do I load a module’ type questions could be handled easily on Discord, assuming people with knowledge want to be involved.
If I am allowed to start this “In the name of VASSAL”, I know how to set things up and use the leading bot (Dyno) to automate much of the moderation. I will give you all full privledges of course. Nothing to hide. You need not make it public until we get things the way we like them.
Thus spake tinjaw via messages:
I don’t know this project’s devs’ philosophy on communications. Do you
purposefully limit yourself to “thought-out forum postings” here, or do
you have a “chatty” Discord server or Slack channel? As I dive in, I
will probably have a lot of questions that would clog up this forum
pretty fast. Should I just “batch” them here, or is there a realtime
option?
I wouldn’t worry about “clogging up” the forum. It’s useful to have a
record of old conversations sometimes.
I can see a realtime-ish channel being useful. (Though we’ve had an IRC
channel forever basically and hardly anyone has ever joined me there…)
–
J.
I have set up a server, as it doesn’t take much effort to do so. If you would like to try it out, PM me here and I will send you an invite URL.
Is it Discord? Send me a link.
There is a “Vassal PBEM” server on Discord already, made by players for finding PBEM opponents: discord.gg/gtp7nGk
I didn’t know about the existing server. So, the server I have set up would be for contributers only. We could also open it up to module designers. Or… we can just leave well enough alone and I can shut it down and we just start using IRC more.
I’ve added myself to tinjaw’s new server. Yay!
I guess Discord is “The free Slack” so sounds like a good choice for us.
Thus spake tinjaw via messages:
I have set up a server, as it doesn’t take much effort to do so. If you
would like to try it out, PM me here and I will send you an invite URL.
I tried the invite you sent me and was told it was invalid.
–
J.
It was only valid for 24 hours. Resending a new one now.
I really dislike the way discord hides all it’s channels, like some sort of secret squirrel… purely by abstraction, it’s like changing your HTTP to port for your “personal finances” website to 8081, thinking no-one will see it.
… wouldn’t Gitter be more apt for this?.. I dunno
The plan is to leave “players” to that server. Coders and Module designers to the new one.
for devs, gitter.im is better… native SSO from github (or gitlab), has native integration to reference git commits/issues etc… - and if a project owner you can create a “community” against a github repo…
It is my understanding that gitter.im is an open forum. The developers need a “private backroom” to handle things without being blasted by general questions. Am I not understanding gitter.im properly?
It is public, yeah… didn’t realise privacy was necessary