Poll: Migrate DevForum to Main Forum (CLOSED)

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Hi all,
I’ve put a poll up on the main forum looking for feedback on whether we think it’s time to migrate back to a single forum rather than have two.
I’d appreciate you taking a moment or two to pass your vote.
Ta,
David.

EDIT: Replicating poll here in case there are devs who aren’t members of the main forum

I’m wondering whether we need a separate forum for developers or we can integrate the content here in the main forum’s development category. I know that this has cropped up a few times in the past (see my first comment below this topic for a small list if you are keen) but personally, I feel that the time is right to raise the topic again.

We discussed this in the office and it was a pretty convincing swing towards a single forum so now I’d love to get a broader opinion.

POLL

  • 1 - Move to a single forum
  • 2 - Stay as two separate forums
0 voters

Background

From what I can gather we originally had a single forum (this one) and it was split into two in order to take developer specific chat out to a new space. This would remove the ‘noise’ of general chat from developers and would stop development specific chat clogging up the main forum for people who weren’t interested in that level of detail.

Pros & Cons

To my mind, and I’m not suggesting that this is an exhaustive list, the following are the positives and negatives I see in migrating to a single forum.

Pros

  • Only need a single forum login (devforum needs seperate signup)
  • One place for all conversations to be based (no need to check 2 forums)
  • Remove needing to duplicate or cross-link topics on forums
  • Non-developers can get an increased appreciation of development activity (if interested)

Cons

  • Without filtering topics there could be a lot of technical posts for non-devs to skim past
  • Without filtering we could see a good bit of market/general chat for devs to ignore.

A note on filtering …

I found out while looking into this that a user can filter what categories are watched and muted in their account preferences so it should be easy to avoid topics that are not of interest. I’m thinking about posting about this in the beginners section.

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Yes maybe the best if in one forum is to not have the categories on the front page. That way only those interested in development will set those categories to watching.

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I think I’ll draw my, unwittingly devisive, poll to a close at 17:00 (UTC) on Wednesday so that it doesn’t drag on forever.
Two more days to get your votes in!

David.

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Not many have voted and I’d say if we don’t get more than the current 12 votes here then no conclusions can be drawn really from this poll on this forum.

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@DGeddes adding the poll halfway down the thread probably means people have missed it. I certainly did and have only just seen it five days later.

If you want to have a poll here I suggest making it in a new topic to give it some prominence. It seems pointless me voting now so I’ll wait for that.

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So did I. Without you mentioning the vote here I would have missed it.

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Sorry, guys. I thought I was addressing @happybeing’s comment on the main forum in a timely manner.
I guess that I can’t be perfect every time I step in to the ring.
David.

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Respect for listening and trying! :slight_smile:

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okay gang…

I have created a new topic as requested with the poll right at the top. Closing this one at 5pm.

Boogie on over to this new disco hot-spot and make your mark:

! POLL: Keep Developer forum separate? (developer poll only - NOW CLOSED)

tagging: @happybeing & @tfa just for my own piece of mind.

I’ll probably get flagged as spamming the forum if I post any more :smile_cat:.

David.

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That reads like you’re closing the new poll within two hours! I see that you’re not, but that is how I read it.

It is open until MONDAY folks!

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Since it’s not in this thread, here is a link to the main forum poll & discussion.

I’m highly skeptical of this plan, with the caveat that I don’t really know how segregated the system allows these things to be.

It’s not clear why this was presented to the main forum. Isn’t development discussion intended to aid developers with finding answers? It really sounds like an attempt to expand this tooling for marketing, which for all I know, may be a good idea.

I don’t find maintaining two logins a burden at all.

My experience with forums where development is also present is a whole lot of well meaning non-devs advising with very limited knowledge and lots and lots of ‘I think I read…’, ‘I can’t find it right now but there was a post…’ . I just need the current state of a mutable data update from a Rust lib so I can get my code moving…

I prefer to know that those giving advice and participating in development discussions are developers.

For new developers, which I’m assuming we’ll want to be attracting and consider myself, finding authoritative answers fast is paramount. I don’t see how inviting non-dev participation supports this.

I don’t want to manage filters. I just want the default engine to show me what I’m looking for when I ask for it. Please don’t make me do more work by making it more complicated than buying shoes online :wink:

Lastly, I’m not sure we’ve got a response from either the main forum poll or this one that can show a consensus.

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Thanks to everyone that took the time to contribute to the poll.

Looking at the results, I don’t think that we’ve got a clear enough mandate to merge the devforum in with the main SAFE Network forum. So, my suggestion would be to leave things as they are for the time being. Perhaps we can re-visit the concept again in the future?

Closing this thread off - if you want to continue the discussion I’ve kept this thread open:

POLL: Keep Developer forum separate? (developer poll only - NOW CLOSED)

David.

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