Using Discord?

Hi Snoopy and thanks for your comment !

Forum64 is and will be the main communications platform for the MEGA65.

We want to use it to collect and preserve information for the MEGA65 here at the biggest 8-bit forum around.

...but ...

since we do not invest money in advertisement we need to spread news and information on as many social platforms as possible, to reach as many people as possible.

This is where Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Paul's Blog, etc. joins the information spreading game together with Forum64.

one negative side effect to this approach is, that we also receive replies on those social media platforms, that we, of course have to answer there as well and as usual, some people don't like Facebook, some people don't like Forum64, etc. pp., so they just stay on "their' favorite platform.

So not only does this mean alot of extra work for us to ensure that the information is getting in every fans hand, it also comes along with having certain people ignoring information that can be found on our main information platform (Forum 64).

So for a small team like us this is a lot of extra, but unfortunately unavoidable, hassle

If we would have the proper amount of money to build and provide such a site that combines all the requirements for a project of that size, we would certainly go that route, but we just don't have that cash or manpower.

(anybody interested to become a forum mod for the MEGA65 subsection ? )

So while Forum64 provides the platform to meet, ask questions, etc. some people want an answer to their question immediately and start ranting, if an answer is not given within 2 seconds, this is the reason, why we've created a Discord server, to be able to provide a quick chat system, that stores chats for a certain amount of time, provides the possibility to spread small files and share links, use a bot system for bitstream updates, etc.

Since we are moderating those as well, we try to spread the valuable information from there, here as well.

(As you've seen already, that i just copy chat logs over here, to preserve the information).

Unfortunately Forum64's own chat system does not support the requirements mentioned above, that's why we went with Discord. (We even use Skype as well, but only for the core team, but Skype lost against Discord)

The Fileserver is something we needed as well. The Forum64 admins offered us a minicloud but after team internal discussions about what our requirements for such a file storage would be, we had to refuse the offer, since there would be some restrictions regarding direct file access, upload possibilities by the users, etc.

So we needed a fileserver that we can easily maintain and is under our full control but users can easily upload their files as well.

The last couple of years we've been using for filestorage a Scryptos server. which worked pretty good,

but the accessibility was limited and the data filter system was not as good as we wanted it to be.

Our plan is to provide the filehost not only to access files from the PC but in the future we want to be able to connect with the MEGA65 directly to the filehost to access files

So building our own server was the only valid solution and we are totally happy, how it looks now.

Fazit: so if you speak of "informational fragmentation" i have to agree to this but we try to keep it to a minimum.

If i would categorize the current MEGA65 related sites/links it would look like this:

Project Homepage:

MEGA65.org, GitHub

Wiki page:

still wip since this takes a lot of effort and manpower to keep such a page updated with the most important and up-to-date information

Main communication platform

Forum 64

Quick communication platform

Forum 64, Discord, (Skype - MEGA65 core team only)

Social media advertisements and news:

Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Paul's Blog, Forum64, Discord

File storage:

MEGA65 Filehost, (and still partly Scryptos)

i would say, this is not to bad and the "fragmentation" is still overseeable.

Quote from Snoopy

Then I hope that these people also have your private mobile phone numbers just in case something gets stuck at their DevKit at 4 a.m.!

Quote from Snoopy

Tell them that you are all working on this project on a voluntary basis and that you absolutely cannot and do not want to provide the full-time service of a large company.

Snoopy you're absolutely right. But we knew, that during this time, after releasing the 100 DevKits it will be extremely stressful and that we need to keep on track and support the DevKit owners as quickly as possible.

our hope is (Yes, i know there's this saying "Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt" ), that in a couple of weeks, after we took care of the Devs and get a common MEGA65 knowledge base, that the stress will go down again and by the time, we are able to release the final MEGA65, there will be enough users available, that are able to answer the basic questions that arise as well.
We don't want to loose a single DevKit owner due to frustration.

"availability" and "communication" are our magic words that should get the MEGA65 project running towards the mass release and we will do our best to collect all C65/MEGA65 fans to create here at Forum64 the social heart of the MEGA65 project. We use this time now to create the fundaments/knowledge base for the final MEGA65 release

So yes, you'll probably will read here from time to time, "ask at discord if you need a faster answer", but we know as well, that the information there is lost quite fast compared to here.

And No, you're not getting my private mobile number

PS: did i already mention, that we're searching for a moderator who would like to support us here in the MEGA65 Forum ? So whoever is interested please send me a PM

Maybe on the final MEGA65 we need live chat, hosted on the fileserver. All MEGA65 owners can communicate directly to fellow-MEGA65 users, bypassing the forum, Discord, Twitter, etc all together 😎

Quote from Snoopy

The today youth expect an helpful answer faster than a C64 game loads from 1541 these old days.

It's worse than that. Today, in 'professional' software development, many people expect to find the answer to each and every problem on stackoverflow.com, along with a ready-made snippet of code they can conveniently cut and paste into their own project.

And, even worse, if they can't find any answer at all, they declare that the problem can't be solved and use the next "retro" (or some other agile voodoo therapy session) to complain that they're expected to achieve unrealistic goals. Gone are the days of sitting down in front of your code and spend a few minutes (or hours or days) thinking about what is going on, and that wonderful feeling when the penny has finally dropped and the whole thing comes alive before your own eyes... a feeling that many of my younger colleagues have never known.

Yeah, getting old here, too

You forgot to attach the Post Scriptum of the agreement:

"PS: Those Questions and problems that everybody voluntarily agrees to answer 24/7 do not need to be restricted to MEGA65 issues only, but can also be of private, social or weather related nature (i.e. possible lottery numbers, recipes for apple pie, kids homework, best place to order pizza, etc.)"

Quote from Snoopy

The only reason why I don't write there is that I don't have a Discord account at all and therefore don't even know whether and if so which discussions about the MEGA65 are taking place there.

Just in case you want to have a try: You don't need an account.

If you go via the link on the Mega65 website, it will open in a browser window, asking for a username (and then, a date of birth, I guess because of child protection laws). Then a popup appears, asking for your mail address, but you can simply click outside of that popup to make it go away and join with that username without having given them a mail address.

Nice!

OT: we should make a friends' menu item with links to sites like yours Snoopy .

I will start that right away.

adtbm please collect more friends pages and let me know via Skype. Thanks!