The advantage of having a Discord Server is that little and fast questions for new people could be solved faster since there would have more constant Online people would also be a great place to meet other creators related to Embedded development and exchange experiences
(Keep in mind that questions related to LVGL or would keep being derectioned to this forum but discord would still a option for a less formal and more friendly to new users to met LVGL and quick solve problems)
Hmmmmm… I was also thinking about it as I’ve seen that many communities have a Discord server.
But to be honest I don’t participate actively in any servers, so I’m not sure what it means in the practice.
Can I just open a server, a let the community meet there? I assume we need some official presence, moderation, organization etc as well.
If you have more experience with it can you tell how it goes?
Basically, Discord uses a role system to establish a hierarchy within the server, typically used to indicate who the important individuals are and who are just regular members of the server. Each role comes with a set of permissions related to editing, configuring, and moderating the server, which can be customized specifically for each role. There are some Discord bots used for moderation, some of which offer free services, while others require payment. These bots can be configured to assist in the overall organization of the servers.
In summary, Discord is a platform that needs to be organized only once, and after that, it’s just a matter of inviting people using an invitation link and letting them interact with each other.
many communities have a Discord server. because its a easy way of having a free organized place to cluster people with same interest
Thank you! I just want to be sure I clearly understand the advantages compared to the forum. Could you help me with highlighting these?
the first biggest advantage is having a chat that is a main lobby so every single person who looks at the server would see that place (great to know people with same kind of interests)
you can make a channel for big announcement that can ping a notification for everyone in the server
its a cumulative community amount number what that means is with time the server will always get bigger and start finding other people bubbles (because in discord anyone can create a invite link for your server after they joined it and send to a friend)
but the idea with having a discord is not trading the forum for it but having both since discord requires almost no maintenance
its so easy to setup a discord server that you could just make a test one and if it goes well then you make updates for it until its the way you like it
Okay, cool. Thank you. I’ve added it to my todo list to make some experiements.
The barrier of entry is certainly smaller for many (younger) people, but the discoverability inside Discord is very terrible. It would be a shame if Discord diverted attention from the forum and just became a support channel where the same problems get solved over and over again, because the last solution was just a few scrolls farther up in the chat log. Yes, it’s cool and sometimes more efficient to directly talk to people, but getting carried away with Discord would be a mistake in my opinion. And if important discussions increasingly happen on Discord, then there is no way to catch up on them. This is something to keep in mind.
It used to be a a bad place for discoverability since now it has this page where you search for new servers with the filter you looking for like LVGL Or ESP32 or Arduino Some keywords like those
I see the value of Discord in developing a strong and friendly community but we should really limit its usage to chatting and making connections. With the help of the moderators we should direct the technical questions to the Forum or GitHub.
exacly
A discord server however is not a good place to provide support. This is what commonly happens with them is they end up being a place where people start to ask support questions because people are on the server and can get an immediate response. The issue with providing support is there is no history. Other users cannot search for the problem they are having and see if anyone else has had the same problem and what the solution was. You end up getting a mess of repeat support questions. It actually gets pretty annoying to deal with from a support standpoint.
Okay, if there is no support on Discord, what will the users talk about?
Anyway, if we agree on, there is a larger group of people who would use Discord in association with LVGL we need to create a Discord server. Just need to figure out how to channel their enthusiasm in a constructive way.
BTW, what do you think realistically, how many people can we have on Discord in a year? Maybe 1000 in total and 50 online on average?
Discord does not have a limit on the number of people in the same server. The server’s population tends to grow over time, as more users join and invite others to join. This growth is often slow at the beginning but increases exponentially as more people connect and communicate with each other.
The platform caters to a diverse range of users, and new ideas for utilizing Discord will continue to emerge as it evolves. Despite the potential for new features and improvements, it is essential to maintain the core focus on providing support through the forum-like structure that Discord offers.
Additionally, Discord includes a feature that allows users to create a forum-like environment, which could be used for less complicated questions or for questions less related to LVGL it self but to Embedded development heres a print of a example of it from another server
I see, however we need to draw line between the Forum and Discord. For LVGL related questions the Forum should be used. For “how to configure the SPI on STMF7” kind of questions (i.e. for random engineering issues) Discord could would too.
So I can see these categories to get started:
Anything else to add?
Media chat where you can send images the other chats should not have that option of sending images
and maybe a chat tailored for hiring individuals skilled in LVGL? This chat service would serve as a hub for quickly finding talented professionals proficient in LVGL, whether it’s for setting up a basic interface or designing an entire UI.
What I think is missing is a Github issue discussion channel, where complicated issues can be discussed. Obviously with the rule that somebody needs to do a protocol or something, but sometimes it could be efficient to get on the same page about something in a small chat or even a meeting.
I’m not so sure… You are probably a more active Discord user, but that seems like it’s pretty annoying, if you want to share a picture of an LVGL screen or something and you have to switch channels to see it and hope it can be cross-referenced…
I would advise against the job platform idea. Having this on an official Discord might prompt expectations of quality and since nobody has time to vet the people that advertise there, it will come back to bite the actual LVGL staff.
Thank you for the ideas, guys.
I hope on Thursday I’ll have some free time to play with Discord and check out some existing servers.
The thing about images in any chat is that not everyone is there to be cool. Some people might try to spam images with strange characteristics for various reasons. And having just one place for images makes the chat for conversations more clear to read the same works for links
And about the job, I see that place as more of where professionals who are looking for any kind of job in the area of LVGL could promote themselves.
