What's the deal with this forum? There's already a Godot Forum.

Demetrius_Dixon

So, this may come off as a bit rude, but I discovered that this other Godot Forum exists after a random Google search.

There's already a help-based forum for the Godot Engine located right here: https://forum.godotengine.org/

I'm a very active member there, and it seems that forum is a lot more active than this one.

My main question is, how and why did this other Godot Forum come to exist? Isn't having 2 forums a little redundant. I'm asking because the developer of the forum, @MikeCL, seems to be active here a lot, so I can get a direct answer.

MikeCL

Demetrius_Dixon Hi there, and welcome!

This is not a forum run and owned by the foundation. This is a privately owned forum that has existed for much longer than the official forum; there's a lot of history here. I, for one, think it's great for people to have alternatives. And because the foundation does not own it, I believe there are many opportunities for this place that the foundation might not be able to pursue for various reasons.

Demetrius_Dixon hy did this other Godot Forum come to exist?

I have only been the Admin/owner for a couple of years (this place has existed much longer than that), and there hasn't been an official Godot forum until the foundation created the current one, shortly after I took over. So this place has been the "go to" forum in that aspect before (not including the other social places like Discord and Reddit ect).

Right before I took over, there was a lot of drama that I think pressured the foundation to create an official forum of their own under their control.

Tomcat

Demetrius_Dixon Isn't having 2 forums a little redundant.

And there are no stupid political statements on this forum, and dissidents' posts are not banned.

DaveTheCoder

MikeCL this place has existed much longer

When I joined this forum in 2020, the admins were Megalomaniak and TwistedTwigleg. They joined in 2016, so the forum is at least that old.

For reference, Godot 1.0-stable was released in 2014, 2.0-stable was released in 2016, 3.0-stable was released in 2018 and 4.0-stable was released in 2023.

Megalomaniak

MikeCL and there hasn't been an official Godot forum until the foundation created the current one

There used to be a forum on godotengine.org way back when it first open sourced. The site was hosted by the software freedom conservancy (IIRC) back then and their infrastructure couldn't really cope with it, so after a while the forum there got closed down.

Now I don't exactly recall if the case was that the original forums DB just couldn't successfully be imported over to the new forum software or what but I think I recall the admin previous to me back in the day mentioning that the forum here did have it's roots with the OG tho. So this one is, at least partially & in spirit - the continuation of the OG forum, but with a database loss at some point such that posts from godot v1.x era were lost...

And the new forum on godotengine.org is more so the replacement of the Stack Exchange-esque Q&A system that they were hosting for a while there(which had it's own share of problems).

At least that's the gist of it.

DaveTheCoder admins were Megalomaniak and TwistedTwigleg

Credit where it's due, there was also one @BinaryOrange as the host and primary admin at one point, chronologically I think between me and @TwistedTwigleg IIRC.

Toxe

Well, as Mike already said this forum is way older and also independent.

As for reasons to read and post here: It's smaller, yes, but also a lot less crowded than the official forum. And it's still quite active, so if you post something here chances are pretty high that people will read it, which is not the case on the official forum.

Oh and another very important thing: This here UI/design is plain, simple and easy to use. Whereas the official forum uses the Discourse forum software, which I absolutely despise. 😠

JusTiCe8

Tomcat BUT, there is a but... or a butt, there are lot's of cats (who sometimes argue with each other, or maybe it's their way of playing together) 😛 some people may not like it.

Demetrius_Dixon

Wow! It's actually really cool that this is the OG forum. I started using Godot about a year or so ago, so I had no idea.

I really do apologise for asking the purpose of this forum. I see the benefit of being more independently ran, I literally tagged the owner and he responded. You can't do that on the official forum.

In fact, I asked who runs the official forum, and I got no response:
https://forum.godotengine.org/t/who-actually-develops-the-godot-forum-and-adds-new-features/119588?u=demetrius_dixon

The official forum doesn't seem to have a singular person/leader in change who can take feedback and make decisions, unlike this forum. I just saw that Mike added a category for hardware for Godot relatively recently. Feedback doesn't get applied that fast, or even at all, on the official forum.

So yeah. I think I'll be posting my questions on BOTH forums now. Thanks for your guy's help.

MikeCL

Demetrius_Dixon No worries, this question comes up every now and then. Happy to have you onboard!

kuligs2

Ive posted few question on original foundation forums that never were answered.. when i post here, i get more answers that generate more questions..

Also i joined around godot 4.0 release.. im pretty new here, but i like that, well, given that now im even banned from github, here atleast so far i havent been banned for my ideas and usage of words.

I think this forum is the go-to forum when it comes to real questions and answers.

DaveTheCoder

kuligs2 I think this forum is the go-to forum when it comes to real questions and answers.

For hard questions, I would rate the forums as follows:

Godot Discord > godotforums.org > Godot Reddit

I haven't paid much attention to forum.godotengine.org, so I can't judge its quality.

kuligs2

DaveTheCoder Not everyone is using discord. So idk about that. I use only this forum, reddit has mostly outdated issues/info. Here you have access xyz, i doubt that you will find him on discord, maybe under different name

DaveTheCoder

kuligs2 Not everyone is using discord. So idk about that.

I don't know who "everyone" is. In my experience, the Godot Discord has provided me with better help on hard problems than this forum. But I don't hang out there.

Toxe

Personally I am not a fan of Discord for questions. The Discord search is abysmal so every question gets asked again and again, and also the answers don't show up on search engines. A forum is vastly superior for this, but I guess they are not fancy enough anymore. 😔

DaveTheCoder

Toxe I am not a fan of Discord

Neither am I. But sometimes you have to go where the answers are.

MikeCL

Megalomaniak I stand corrected (I think we might have had this discussion long time ago that slipped my mind), thanks for sharing! 🙏

FrozenFried

I joined! yayy! that's also a lovely forum!

MikeCL

FrozenFried Hey! Warm welcome!