yvvt0379
commented
3 years ago Maybe, you can go to StackOverflow?
Closed p-i- closed 1 year ago
yvvt0379
commented
3 years ago Maybe, you can go to StackOverflow?
p-i-
commented
3 years ago Currently options are Stack Overflow and GitHub issues.
These resources are well suited for specific questions and answers. However they are a bad match for discussions. Often a conversation, requiring several messages backwards and forwards, is needed in order to resolve an issue or impart an understanding. And that is painfully slow on these asynchronous / nonrealtime platforms. Sometimes that information is by nature transient... it would create clutter to store it permanently.
Suppose I have a technical question regarding Python.
My experience over 10 years is that when you provide a community forum, experts step up and offer expertise for free. They enjoy it. I enjoy doing this in the fields in which I have expertise.
Another example: coding Telegram with Telethon. There is an AMAZING Telegram channel. Something that might take a couple of days to figure out using Stack Overflow / GitHub-Issues can be resolved in a few minutes. So much more productive.
And it BUILDS a community. Just creating the medium, the community forms. Self-organizing principle of life.
VSCode team work SO hard to deliver a flagship product. I read through each version release, and what you are doing is splendid. You've brought Jupyter notebooks into an IDE. 🙏
And VSCode is aimed to be a "community" version of Visual Studio. But WHERE is the COMMUNITY?
The terrible neglect of your gitter does a disservice to the hard work of your team, creating an impression of neglect/abandonment.
Please consider this suggestion. You have a huge team of expert engineers. Just provide them a public place to hang out and help out, invite them to join, and you will see VSCode flourish at a new level. The quality of 3rd party components will improve. Standards / coding practice / style will cohese, and this uniformity will lower workload on the core VSCode team.
You are trying to squash your GitHub issues. You published a graph showing progress in the latest release notes. But to get to the ROOT of the issue, if there were some realtime forum, you would be receiving only a FRACTION of the issues you currently receive, freeing your engineers to put focus where it is truly needed.
The main point of VSCode is to be a barebones framework that invites 3rd party engineers to augment it. But for a complete ECOSYSTEM you NEED a community hangout.
Please, reallocate some resources! It's a win-win!
p-i-
commented
3 years ago I would favour Discord over Gitter, due to the ability to create separate chatrooms. That's very much in line with the multifaceted nature of VSCode.
Just send a mailout to the dev-team, inviting them to join and keep an eye on it. And ADVERTISE the Discord at the TOP of the root README.md here. You would end up with rooms for different plugins, rooms for DESIGNING plugins, rooms for feedback/bugs/chitchat/announcements/...
Or even leverage IRC and build a client that runs out of the IDE.
Moderators could escalate key issues from the transient chat to github issue tracker. Contributors of value could be escalated to admin privilege. You'd tap into a huge free workforce. And I can't see your kanban boards but I'm guessing it's not gona put anyone out of a job.
And you guys would have your finger on the pulse. You could see what the community wants, where the pain points are ...
p-i-
commented
3 years ago Issue with Gitter is scalability. Single-channel solutions for popular technologies quickly get so busy that it becomes a challenge to keep up with them. And doesn't VSCode naturally split into multiple disjoint regions of interest? But why not start with manning the Gitter and see if it becomes busy enough to warrant levelling up?
p-i-
commented
3 years ago ok I found the Discord just by typing "VSCode" into it. Looks like I was already a member, so if this isn't working for you, try https://discord.gg/U8Y9Zc2U What I see is exactly the same problem as the Gitter... a huge ratio of questions to answers. Yes, stack overflow has irritating policies. They close questions that are undeniably valuable.
Please can the management of the VS code team deploy some firepower into this discord?
RandomFractals
commented
3 years ago just an fyi, we do have a slack workspace for vscode extension devs that is vibrant and striving and many extension authors help others build new tools there: https://vscode-dev-community.slack.com
You can join it to learn more about making vscode extensions. As a general rule, we don't answer vscode user questions or issues there tho :slightly_smiling_face:
p-i-
commented
2 years ago What stands out to me is that the VSCode team allocate huge bandwidth to fielding its GitHub Issue tracker.
REALLY stands out. Every issue I file, almost immediately an engineer is on it, asking the right questions, integrating it with related issues, etc. And the speed of fixes is blinding. I've never seen such an impressive level of performance on any technology.
OTOH VSCode Gitter is a barren wasteland that will create a false impression of the vitality of the VSCode project.
Recommend you guys either water it or pull it up by its roots and destroy it.
So how about: kill the Gitter and add a "general" channel to the Slack? And promote the Slack: add a "join our slack" to the "help" VSCode menu, just above "report an issue".
That way you'll reduce noise on this Issue Tracker and any topic on Slack that warrants changes in VSCode source/doc can be propagated/escalated to here.
My general workflow when I hit a snag is:
If everyone does this, we keep SO and GitHub IssueTracker clean.
RandomFractals
commented
2 years ago I know .net teams use discord and I frequent .net interactive channel there frequently. That dev community also has moderators from Microsoft. So, maybe moving vscode gitter to discord could be an option.
@p-i- if you are suggesting vscode-dev-community slack gets polluted with rando vscode questions I would be strongly against it. We built it to over 4K devs now, mainly focused on building new vscode extensions. We locked general channel there because there was too much noise posted there. I hope that clarifies that dev community goal for you.
xaxazak
commented
2 years ago Isn't using GitHub Discussions (Forum) a better option than multiple dead-ish monolithic/mostly-threadless feeds (slack, gitter)? AFAICT it's a regular(ish) forum, which is far more efficient timewise (ie, wastes less time for helpers and users) than scrolling through every post in a feed.
See https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/125609 for a request to reconsider enabling GitHub discussions.
p-i-
commented
2 years ago So, as of now, where should one go with general VSCode usage enquiries?
I see no clear direction.
I think #1 priority should be to nuke any dead communities. They serve nobody and can only serve to waste time, frustrate users and damage VSCode's public image. There should only be one goto hangout for each topic, right? It's hard enough to stay on top of one. If there are multiple contenders simultaneously operating, this will be discouraging for those who are willing to offer expertise.
Second should be to create one single location for general VSCode community support.
Disappointed to learn that this has been tried and shut down on Slack, which provides the necessary structure for firewalling, i.e. you create a #general channel and all the "clutter" goes there. If you don't do this, sure you have a cleaner Slack, but that "cruft" then spills out over the internet. And I don't see that fragmentation ultimately serving the goal of VSCode as becoming the goto IDE for the future.
Best to seek to "contain" the "clutter", no?
My experience with Discord is that it encourages autonomy. By giving people badges/status for merit, a hierachy emerges and you end up with quality expertise given for free. (Same goes with Stack Overflow). People like badges/status.
Why not keep the Slack for plugins, reshape the Discord for general VSCode discussion, kill the Gitter (and any other dead outlets), divert a trickle of expertise to the Discord and present updated community resources (1) at the top of the root README.md, (2) at the root of the public VSCode doc and (3) accessable from the 'Help' VSCode menu?
Think about aquisition of new users contemplating migrating from another IDE, or trying VSCode as their first IDE. It's surely in VSCode's best longterm interest to ensure there is an onboarding ramp to minimize the pain of making the switch.
RandomFractals
commented
2 years ago oh, I don't know. Coming from a guy with 47 contribs on github in a year? That's a lot of telling folks how to run their dev community before you even became part of one 🙂 Interesting spill tho. Thanks for your input!
p-i-
commented
2 years ago How is the fact that I haven't interacted much with GitHub this year supposed to correlate with my exposure to dev communities? As it happens I've been on IRC since 2005 and active on 50+ channels. But attempting to denigrate is disingenuous... what purpose is served? It's veering off-topic.
I am simply applying common sense / critical thinking to a simple situation that is clearly visible. Stating the obvious, if you will. If an error is circled on a chalkboard, does it matter by which hand? The merit is in the accuracy of the identification, not the personal history of the circler.
Is it accurate? Does it compute? That is the question.
I have no horse in this race. I created the issue in order to raise awareness within Team VSCode of the experience of a newcomer. Because that perspective shift is hard when you're an expert.
So, as of now, where should one go with general VSCode usage enquiries?
^ Still not addressed. +1 to anyone who sorts it out. My gratitude to VSCode team for making an amazing product. 🙏
intellix
commented
2 years ago Discord, Slack and Gitter aren't Googleable. Github discussions are superior to Stackoverflow in a few regards, like the ability to link/embed code.
Surely it would be in Microsoft's best interest to advocate the use of Discussions since it owns Github. Currently you're just forcing traffic to various competitors:
sharpninja
commented
2 years ago just an fyi, we do have a slack workspace for vscode extension devs that is vibrant and striving and many extension authors help others build new tools there: https://vscode-dev-community.slack.com
You can join it to learn more about making vscode extensions. As a general rule, we don't answer vscode user questions or issues there tho 🙂
How do you join the workspace?
sharpninja
commented
2 years ago It will not let me join with any of my existing slack accounts.
quantuminformation
commented
2 years ago @SNDST00M It has recently come to my attention that malicious "Discord Nitro" links including viruses
story of my life as a discord owner
p-i-
commented
2 years ago Can anyone list the resources currently available?
I will add them to the original post, which will improve this as a jump-point--resource. I've recently found a Discord that may be the solution I was searching for when I filed the issue: Microsoft Python: https://discord.gg/QFZhphfK
zm-cttae
commented
1 year ago @digitarald can this now be closed? Seems we are in a good place per https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-discussions/discussions/5. The discord has also gone from strength to strength and is well-staffed atm 👍
Issue Type: Feature Request
Your product is excellent. However, there is NO community support ANYWHERE.
Google "vscode community support" -> nothing
Inspect https://gitter.im/Microsoft/vscode and you find 100 questions and 0 answers. Nobody from VSCode team is monitoring that group. It is an embarassment.
Search Telegram: Nothing
Search Slack: Nothing
Search Discord: Nothing
So there is NO place where a community of VSCode users can exchange information live.
VSCode is successful, yes. But you have no idea how much DAMAGE is caused by FAILING to provide ANY community hangout.
Look at crypto exchanges. All the successful ones have a Telegram group. e.g. "Binance API". There's half a dozen Binance engineers supporting that community. What's the result? Huge incentive for traders to use Binance, because they have a connection with other Binance engineers and support staff.
Microsoft has the budget to PAY 3 engineers to monitor your https://gitter.im/Microsoft/vscode around the clock, so that every question is addressed.
You know Google indexes gitter right? So if I query google and get a gitter link come up, I click it and see an absolutely dead gitter room.
What is the psychological effect of developers around the world experiencing this?
Please, someone in management needs to allocate resources for community support!
Your technology will evolve MUCH faster once you have this.
VS Code version: Code 1.62.2 (3a6960b964327f0e3882ce18fcebd07ed191b316, 2021-11-11T20:59:05.913Z) OS version: Darwin x64 20.6.0 Restricted Mode: No