A while ago I noticed the link to godotforums.org disappeared on the godotengine.org website. It used to be here: https://godotengine.org/community/
Did it move somewhere? If not, why are the forums not being promoted there anymore? And has there been a significant downturn in activity on the forums as a result of this?
Valknor It was removed during the recent community drama involving the forums. Hopefully it will be reinstated.
The forums seem to be even busier than they were when the link was there. I think we get a better quality of posts than the Godot Reddit. 
IMO Forums is still No.1 source to keep persistent information on certain discussion or problem solving, since it takes some deep thoughts to write questions/solutions/workaround or tutorials down into a thread, rather than concise answers on IM's or lite-discussboard.
Hopefully official site will re-link this site soon.
Valknor I can't speak for why it's taken down from the Godot engine's website. But the forum is thriving. We are seeing a pretty good increase in traffic and activity every week. And it's heartwarming to see that the spirits (from my observation) seem to be kind and helpful to people.
I have started to reach out to Godot people. But unfortunately, I don't have any news to share on that yet. My goal is to re-establish a good relationship between the engine core team and the forum.
DaveTheCoder Well, 95% of Godot Reddit is Stack Overflow ;-)
Nobody uses Reddit anyway, except children.
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Personally I think Godot's community is too fractured right now. We got Discord, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Forums, etc. Plus documentation on various third party sites that have sometimes gone down. Many a time while looking for a solution to a problem, I become convinced people solved it, but the relevant link goes to a dead page.
Valknor I think Godot's community is too fractured right now.
There are advantages and disadvantages to that.
A big advantage is that we're not dependent on a single support source. If problems occur with one of them, we have alternatives.
Even huge monolithic organizations such as Microsoft and Apple have multiple unofficial support sites. An open source project such as Godot has the advantage that there are no secret, proprietary source modules that only the owner can view.
This community is completely free and has no string attached, the misunderstanding between cyper and godot core team staff is already resolved after cyper's statement/apologize post, and the case is closed upon the unpinning of the original thread.
So I don't see a reason why godotforums shouldn't be restored to official links.
Though that's just my opinion.
Valknor it's worth noting that the official forums are migrating currently and are in read-only. It could be that they are waiting to fix all that before updating things like hotlinks. Could also explain why the forum is booming right now!
Interesting. What happened with cypher? I must have missed all the fun.
MagickPanda This community is completely free and has no string attached, the misunderstanding between cyper and godot core team staff is already resolved after cyper's statement/apologize post, and the case is closed upon the unpinning of the original thread.
cybereality was basically forced to apologize to avoid further retaliation, from what I can gather, because I've noticed dozens of insults towards cybereality at /r/godot, and none of those insults were removed, as per Godot's CoC.
I think Godot's leadership wants to distance themselves from anything that has connections to past criticisms, like what former members of Godot have to say about it. Something similar happened to LillyByte, and now cybereality.
Valknor Interesting. What happened with cypher? I must have missed all the fun.
You likely mean cybereality. Read this deleted thread. Warning: do not discuss it here, as you would be labeled as someone conspiring against Godot.
DaveTheCoder also, "official" support channels tend to have scripts rather than experience (Godot is different of course but i digress). I find communities like this have more hands-on experience with the actual software.
SnapCracklins also, "official" support channels tend to have scripts rather than experience (Godot is different of course but i digress)
It's not that different as you may be thinking. Look at proposals on GitHub, such as the one created by Juan Linietsky, the lead developer of Godot.
While this might appear as an organizational improvement, it is, in reality, merely a tactic for Godot's leadership to create distance between themselves and the community. Disregard the count of thumbs-up, because, as the core developers of Godot state, they hold little value in the decision-making process when contemplating the implementation of proposals.
They shifted away from open communication technologies like IRC to Matrix. However, they soon realized that people could criticize Godot's leadership on Matrix just as easily as on IRC. Consequently, they transitioned to a private instance of Rocket.Chat (a freemium software), referred to as Godot Contributors Chat. Here, they have ultimate control over the discussions about the project.
This is why I believe that moderators of this forum should not be concerned about being added to "official" communities. They should not let Godot's leadership dictate the rules. People do need a place where they can express their concerns freely without the fear of retaliation.
Xrayez This is why I believe that moderators of this forum should not be concerned about being added to "official" communities. They should not let Godot's leadership dictate the rules. People do need a place where they can express their concerns freely without the fear of retaliation.
I agree with your summation. However, I also agree with #3481. I was just saying yesterday that godot may have reached the point of being unmaintainable with the current manpower.
duane #3481
I just read that, which was interesting. Maybe a solution is an issue classification "stale", in addition to "open" and "closed". Is it possible to configure that for a github project, or are we stuck with the open/closed choices?
There will be no open issues for godot if staled option is available, since all open/pending issues might be set to staled instead, to make the sheer number of open look less ridiculous. -.-
MagickPanda The "stale" option would be better than closing issues due to lack of activity.
MagickPanda It would be nice if they had a better system of prioritizing issues. As it stands you can't tell - from a list view, from a glance at the top of an issue page, or even from the comment thread and pull requests - when or if the devs expect to implement a solution. It does not inspire confidence.
I realize they're locked into MS Github's issue tracker, but it's pretty good as those things go. I think they just need to use the tag system a little better.
Xrayez They shifted away from open communication technologies like IRC to Matrix. However, they soon realized that people could criticize Godot's leadership on Matrix just as easily as on IRC. Consequently, they transitioned to a private instance of Rocket.Chat (a freemium software), referred to as Godot Contributors Chat. Here, they have ultimate control over the discussions about the project.
I gather that you were an active developer but you aren't any longer because you've lost faith in the leaders, right?
I generally agree with what you're saying on this forum, but I DO NOT think total transparency and democracy are automatically good. They're terrible. When a software project gets this popular, the devs are always inundated with opinions and proposals and varying degrees of criticism. They can't please everyone. They should certainly make some effort to please the masses, but not when it goes against their vision. It's THEIR project, and if people take it away from them in the name of democracy, don't be surprised when they abandon it and it dies. (Yes it can be forked, but the same applies to the new core devs/leaders.)
EDIT: Let it be noted that you were banned from the Godot project for good reason (something about the Ukraine war) and now you're meddling with this forum. I don't blame the mods for gatekeeping you.
