We currently CANNOT accept bugs via Discord
Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:55 am
A lot of people seem to want to report bugs via Discord.
The reason why this is actively discouraged and why we direct people to the forum every time this happens is because of the ephemeral nature of what appears in Discord. To put it simply: It disappears, and is long forgotten about, before a dev has a chance to address it. And then we have to deal with the age-old complaint "but I reported it via Discord but you guys ignored me!" - no, we didn't ignore you, it was you who insisted on a medium where your message would scroll off and get forgotten.
That's not even counting the fact that the majority of GZDoom's devs do not use Discord at all.
Sure, you can scroll back, but then you're scrolling back through VERY long logs of conversations in order to get to what you want - and honestly, no dev is going to do that.
So please, report your bugs on the forum here. It's been opened to guest posting for a reason - you do not need an account to post here.
If there is enough interest, I would not be against creating a Discord bot that can create bug reports on the forum for you. But that's going to require at least a couple developers and a pretty strong communication among them - we need a developer who's able to safely manipulate phpBB's SQL database backend, and we need a developer who's familiar with Discord's API, or are able to use third-party API's to make their job easier.
Also - for practicality, if such a bot is made, I'm likely to restrict the languages it can be created in, simply so that I don't have to install extra utilities to make it work. Valid languages would be PHP, Lua, or Python. If you have an idea for another language, let us know, and we'll see about the feasibility of getting a server that supports that language working.
I'm leaving this topic unlocked, in case you guys have ideas on how you want to handle this in the future. The major problem MUST be addressed in order for this to work: There needs to be a way to put the bug reports on the forum here - period - firstly so they're all in one place, and secondly so that they don't get lost.
And lastly - because I know someone will inevitably suggest it - I am vehemently against asking a volunteer to manually do the work of the bot I proposed above, due to the fact that it creates a dependency and a void when they decide to quit. I will gladly accept the help of a volunteer who will help create the bot - but not a volunteer to do the actual bug reports on everyone else's behalf.
The reason why this is actively discouraged and why we direct people to the forum every time this happens is because of the ephemeral nature of what appears in Discord. To put it simply: It disappears, and is long forgotten about, before a dev has a chance to address it. And then we have to deal with the age-old complaint "but I reported it via Discord but you guys ignored me!" - no, we didn't ignore you, it was you who insisted on a medium where your message would scroll off and get forgotten.
That's not even counting the fact that the majority of GZDoom's devs do not use Discord at all.
Sure, you can scroll back, but then you're scrolling back through VERY long logs of conversations in order to get to what you want - and honestly, no dev is going to do that.
So please, report your bugs on the forum here. It's been opened to guest posting for a reason - you do not need an account to post here.
If there is enough interest, I would not be against creating a Discord bot that can create bug reports on the forum for you. But that's going to require at least a couple developers and a pretty strong communication among them - we need a developer who's able to safely manipulate phpBB's SQL database backend, and we need a developer who's familiar with Discord's API, or are able to use third-party API's to make their job easier.
Also - for practicality, if such a bot is made, I'm likely to restrict the languages it can be created in, simply so that I don't have to install extra utilities to make it work. Valid languages would be PHP, Lua, or Python. If you have an idea for another language, let us know, and we'll see about the feasibility of getting a server that supports that language working.
I'm leaving this topic unlocked, in case you guys have ideas on how you want to handle this in the future. The major problem MUST be addressed in order for this to work: There needs to be a way to put the bug reports on the forum here - period - firstly so they're all in one place, and secondly so that they don't get lost.
And lastly - because I know someone will inevitably suggest it - I am vehemently against asking a volunteer to manually do the work of the bot I proposed above, due to the fact that it creates a dependency and a void when they decide to quit. I will gladly accept the help of a volunteer who will help create the bot - but not a volunteer to do the actual bug reports on everyone else's behalf.