RD,
I am not a fan either and I would like to know whats to gain by doing this. I fear it will split what posts we have now and my time is already very limited. I personally dont want to have to follow two forums. However, you are far more active than me and I respect you and your knowledge and your insight so I will support it.
Nigel
Hey Dave, valid points. Quite honestly I share them as well
Let's turn back a few years and do you like me have the impression that Viperpit activity is decaying?
I do !
It's the same all over, forums were great when forum where the only media.
Then came facebook, twitter, instagram and forums lost their uniqueness and many same project evolved in parallel depending on the media used.
Back then forum remained important because the other media were not that massive.
Nowadays they are much more massive and unfortunately we don't hear about solutions being developped on Facebook because we (I know I do) will not have a facebook account. It's a choice we live with and that's all right.
Again, it's the same in flight sim forums, modelling forums, any forum...
it's a trend and we can fight it but we will be left in place if we don't adapt
and the consequence of that is less traffic on the forum, and therefore less interest to participate in the forums - and the mary go round starts turning.
It got worse a few years ago when reddit and discord become very popular.
But that again makes the forum less attractive because "old fashioned" and not quite as fast as the majority of users nowadays requires.
Today when you look for an answer to a problem, asking the question here on VP is not sufficient, because the audience is not (anymore - unfortunately) broad enough. because the solutions are way more numerous than 10 years before and we remain a niche in a niche. So if you want to get that answer, you need to go on reddit or on discord to maximises your chance to get an answer.
then comes the realisation that there is nowhere a dedicated discord for cockpit building. There are plethora of cockpit builders asking questions and getting answers but on many different discord servers. and you cannot search them because simply you do not know where to search and even if you would there are too many to search because the information is scattered all over.
On the other hand Viperpit is a gold mine. But it's a mine with many galleries and it takes an awful lot of time to find your way in here
We tried to keep it organised but the old forum engine, the lack of modern tools, the users and the rapid changing world of cockpit building makes it very complicated for both users and moderators to keep it organised.
It's much better than before I reckon, but still the subject we develop are not subject oriented, they are ppl oriented.
How can I know that a best backlighting solution than mine is possible and within my reach if I don't read Moon's WIP topic ?
I'm here since 2004 and I have trouble sometimes. What about a guy joining in 2025?
It's not a critic, it's basically an argument to illustrate the fact that organisation is easy when it's 1 person with 1 goal but it's more complicated if not impossible when it's 150 members each with a different perception of the purpose of Viperpit.
The goal of creating a discord is to address that very issue primarily:
I think Moon perfectly understood the way it's supposed to work this morning on the Discord server:
Someone ask a specific questions and Moon answered by orienting different possibilities here on VP, linking to specific post on his WIP topic.
Perfectly done.
I linked my free 3D work from Discord to VP giving direct links embedded in other long post. Michi did the same
The videos don't work here, they work on Discord
You can get annoucement from other servers, news for sims, news from software, etc etc
You can get voice and discuss specific items when doing it in writing isn't efficient
You can share screens to explain more complicated matters
And many more
All these things cannot be done on the forum. these tools are really too good to be ignored
The second goal is to establish VP credential on a Discord server and takes a place no one other thought about creating.
We have a solid base, I think we should use it and model it at VP's image which has always been a great place to participate in mostly because of the maturity of the vast majority of the users (we had a few renegades too)
Will this work?
No idea. Again, it will work if we do what it takes to make it work.
Will it be simple?
Certainly not. The impetuous users will be harder to manage on Discord than on a forum
Will it be challenging?
Definitely
What there is to gain?
On the personal point of view of guys willing to invest time in this, only more work,
On the VP point of view: more traffic, increase the user base, switch to modern tools, get broader answers to your question, Overcome the VP structure by adding a human direction to it (like Moon did), and enlarge the VP legacy.
Will there be duplicate
Yes
but there are already duplicates today, just as I explained above. There are many F-16 pit solution that are discussed on other places and totally unknown to VP. So the duplication is not a problem. By creating our own Discord, if this works we would actually decrease the duplicity (that is if you accept to use both and not exclusively VP or Discord
I see Discord as a lively index or table of contents for VP or other aspect of sim flying/building
I don't see my WIP topic being on Discord, that's simply not possible
But by using both, we can get way more efficient than by using a single one
Compared to a forum Discord is "controlled" chaos but it presents the advantage to bring members closer to each other with modern tools.
And if the base is strong and if we all understand that the point is not to replace VP but to support and enlarge it, then it will be a success
Guests: 23
Hidden: 0
Users: 0