Oh hah! I didn’t see he changed his description lol.
When I started the company I had some people try to contact him to buy the username from him but he wasn’t active at the time. Maybe I could try again.
I am not sure why you would want to split conversation across multiple channels - it can only hurt this site which in turn would Arduboy sales if the information and conversation is fragmented.
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I think the forum here has always been more active anyway.
By the time I even heard about the first Reddit group the tumbleweeds were rolling along.
To be honest I think it makes more sense to keep everything central anway.
As @filmote said, why divide the conversation?
As far as I’m aware anything that can be done on Reddit can be done here.
E.g. Polls
Example Poll
- Pirate
- Monkey
- Robot
- Ninja
0 voters
@filmote @Pharap Personally, I don’t think I would want the Reddit group to divide the conversation or be independent of this forum. I don’t think it necessarily has to do with what we can do on each platform, but more of an extension to the community. You could reach more people in a simpler way through Reddit, I think, and it has the benefit to be a central non-complex discussion area that would be beneficial to people on mobile devices.
I think the main benefit of a Reddit page and a Twitter community (account plus its followers) is to reach more people, easily and people can interact with your community on an app that they are using for other activities/forums.
They can see Arduboy news/discussion in their feed without actively checking the community posts. (Also Reddit has a live chat/feed that people in this community might be interested in idk)
Not to say that it would be standalone, I think it would be nice to have links to a bunch of community chosen games ranked, and have links to community updates. A bunch of people with real Arduboys or clones don’t know about this forum, and the subreddit may be a way to introduce them to that or keep them updated through their phone.
I don’t really know If it would work out the way I’m envisioning, but that’s my opinion/reasoning I guess.
And @bateske judging by the description and the fact that the guy posted last month and is fairly active, he seems possibly open to leaving the username and I say give it a go.
There was a slack group at one stage too … it died off slowly.
I don’t use any platforms like twitter but see how they can drum up interest and direct the traffic back here. Like the defunct slack channel, I see Reddit as second, parallel universe of conversation. I have been involved in other hobbies where the forum died off because people moved to an FB page. The problem with these mediums is the information gets lost and it eventually just becomes people shouting into the void.
Then again, I am just a grumpy old man so what do I know 
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It would be divisive simply by virtue of who does and doesn’t use it.
You’d end up with a load of regular users who don’t visit the Reddit being ignorant of what goes on there.
(Some of us are already ignorant of any Arduboy-related conversation that happens on Twitter.)
Does this forum not already fit that bill? Is it somehow failing in that job?
Notice you say ‘Twitter community’, which implies that it would be a separate ‘community’ to the one we have here, hence the concern about division.
I can see how Twitter might do that if it somehow leads to someone being more likely to accidentally stumble upon the Arduboy, but even then I’m not sure it necessarily will.
Kevin already posts Arduboy stuff on his Twitter page and other users already mention Arduboy from time to time, so I’m not sure having a dedicated Twitter page would be much different other than the branding and possibly filtering out personal discussions.
You mean a web browser? Like Firefox or Chrome?
If people don’t have 5 minutes to click on a bookmark and load the forum page every now and again,
they probably don’t have 5 minutes to read any of the posts.
There are also several RSS feeds (assuming people still use those), but they’re not advertised (presumably because not many people know about that feature of Discourse).
I can see instant messaging potentially being useful on the odd occasion, but we have a lot of users in different time zones with relatively busy lives so having two people online and available at the same time isn’t necessarily the norm.
Posting on the forum is near-instant anyway, it’s only the way people choose to use it that means it doesn’t always seem that way.
We have had game polls in the past. Usually we only do ranking during game jams though.
If we made ranking a common thing then we’d probably end up with a lot of people who get upset because their “first game I ever made” ends up bottom of the rankings, which to me kind of defeats the point of the Arduboy - it’s not about being the best, it’s about bettering oneself.
(The only way I can think of to avoid that would be to make some kind of opt-in system with a waiver saying “I promise I won’t get upset if I come last”.)
If that’s the case I’d say a better solution would be to improve the advertising of the forum on the front page and (if it’s not too late) on the actual packaging.
Rather than splitting the conversation, I think we should be directing the traffic here.
The fact this forum is still going strong after 4 years and the previous Reddit group and Slack channel both dried up and died is strong evidence that the forum is at least doing something right.
And if the forum is falling short somewhere, we should improve the forum rather than trying to start something else in parallel.
If they haven’t stumbled across the forum by accident when doing a search for ‘Arduboy’ why would they stumble across the Reddit page?
What is it about Reddit that would somehow make it more likely to be noticed than the official forum?
Since phones were mentioned twice, is the forum somehow less usable on phones? (I wouldn’t know.)
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I’m usually consulting the forum on my mobile phone and the user experience is great!
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But doesn’t that mean that more people are attracted to the community via Reddit? And if that’s the implication I feel like there would be ways to deal with that if it means more people coming into the community.
The main reason I said ‘Twitter Community’ was because it is akin to a Reddit page and also because I wanted to include the followers of the Twitter account instead of saying the Twitter page which on its own doesn’t have the same impact.
I feel like if you pushed the branding of Arduboy on a separate account that it would help to show up in people’s feeds and For You page and similar, but it would become less personal. A solution I think would be to maintain both Kevin’s current account and a more branded account.
I feel like it isn’t a matter of not having time, but being deliberate requires remembering/actively going there which I think people can forget a lot of the time.
I think people still know about RSS, but the main issue is that there aren’t that many modern RSS readers anymore, so people don’t have good options for displaying stuff from their feed.
I feel like if you are trying to get fast answers, especially to smaller/easier questions, that it would be difficult on the forum because people aren’t notified with a response, post unless they have emails on which I know, at least for me, can’t be an option because of constant activity/clutter.
Yeah, I think it would be good, because it could spark some light competition/motivation, but could definitely cause some problems with people being upset. I think it could be good also for newer people who want to see which games, in particular, the community thinks is best and they can play them as a starting point.
That’s not a bad idea, If you put an agreement at the bottom of your game post, then it would be eligible for ranking or something.
Regardless of everything else, I think this is a good idea. The forum is linked under the dropdown and talked about a bit on the front page, but I think the packaging would be helpful especially if someone bought theirs from a third party store instead of arduboy.com
I agree. I also think that part of the forum’s success stems from the good leadership/control of the forum, where others, the Reddit one at the least, failed.
Mainly the way that Reddit suggests subreddits to people of similar interest and the way people in those subreddits share/mention it across other ones including cross-posting. The main way to find the forum is by looking up ‘arduboy’ and going to the community link under the website or through the menu on the website, which if you have bought a clone/made a homemade is less likely. Although I think a possible Twitter would be more effective for people.
It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve had experiences with some less-than-ideal official communities in the past, so it has created somewhat of an aversion. Obviously, after seeing it, this one is more lively and better managed than a lot of ones I have been part of in the past. I can’t say the same for others, but that’s me personally.
I think it is a bit jankier on mobile, but that may be entirely because I’m not used to having all the buttons crammed together on my small phone screen so I don’t know ¯\_(ツ)__/¯
I feel like a subreddit could be an extension that would be more accessible to people, and could be for more casual/less intense posts. The mods, whoever they are, could direct questions and game development posts or whatever to this site, while keeping the casual sharing of pixel art, jokes, homemade arduboys, etc.
People could also make posts linking to updates on the community forums that people from Reddit could engage with or just be notified about. It could also be a good place for newcomers, with an easily accessible wiki that could have some starter games, guides for programming, or how to download/install. Many of which would be linked back to the community.
Maybe it could be fine to have them coexist, or maybe you are correct and a Reddit sub would be too divisive. In either case, I doubt Twitter would be that way since it isn’t a discussion platform in the same way as Reddit.
I think a Twitter page for solely the arduboy company would be beneficial, at least for me, to get updates links to community events/games/etc. At the same time, I think, based on experience, that it would pop up in people’s tech recommended sections if that was something they may be interested in.
Anyway, who really knows, this is all speculation. I’m not dead-set on a Reddit side of the community. Although I do think that notifications through some platform or in some way would be nice to keep up with it
Remember to write “oye wey pinche cabron” when asking for the twitter handle. Since he is mexican.
As I see it, the purpose for Reddit is to have a completely open discussion area for Arduboy. The community here is great but it’s got a strong moderation priority to the sales and marketing of the Arduboy brand.
For example, posting games that are otherwise covered by trademarks could be shared on Reddit, (on your own risk) as it doesn’t cause any harm to the Arduboy brand.
Also, if you want to go over there to complain about me that’s a good place for it too.
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I agree with the sentiment of not dividing the conversation. I signed up for Reddit a long, long time ago and could never get into it. Both this site and Reddit are blocked by my work firewall but at least I can read Google’s cache and email to threads on this site.
If someone wants to complain about you they can find any other website on which to air their grievances.
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Or just go wild on this site. Kevin, you **** … when is the Arduboy XL coming out?
Maybe I should take a note from nvidia and sell them slowly on ebay…
Potentially, but not necessarily.
There could end up being some people who only use the Reddit group, just as there will be those in the forum who don’t use it.
Those two subsets of people would thus be ignorant of each other and of the events occurring at the other website. That is what I mean by being ‘divisive’.
People must remember to visit Twitter or Reddit or whatever other social media sites or forums they choose to visit.
If they cared about what goes on here then I don’t think they would forget to visit.
At least, not unless there was a particularly quiet period with little activity.
There are several RSS readers available, but I think the real problem is that most seem to be commercialised. It seems RSS readers haven’t benefitted from open source in the same way many other types of software has.
The forum supports ‘desktop notifications’ which can be enabled so that your browser will notify you when you recieve a reply. (Or at least it did last time I checked. I would assume that situation hasn’t changed.) Both Chrome and Firefox support these kinds of notifications.
Though keeping the tab open and checking back every now and again isn’t much of a hassle either.
Are email filters not an option?
Most email providers provide a means to set up filters to sort emails into folders.
Personally speaking, I don’t think competition would be a good thing.
It’s true that our Game Jams usually result in more content creation than other times, but I don’t think that’s due to competition. Doing better than other people isn’t important. It’s more about the personal challenge, and about the joining in.
I think the ‘Featured Games’ section of the main page (https://arduboy.com/) does that to an extent, although I admit it’s not particularly visible.
@eried’s Arduboy collection does a much better job in that respect:
https://arduboy.ried.cl/
But note that very few people actually use the ranking system.
The most votes anything has ever received is about 14 votes.
I don’t know what the average is, but I’d imagine it’s around 4-6.
Perhaps, but we’d still need someone to go to the effort of developing that kind of system.
As I said earlier, these things take time and effort.
That much is a fair point. Perhaps @bateske could find a way to make the forum part of the website more prominent?
The packaging should still be the same if it’s an official Arduboy.
I’m certainly not aware of any resellers/third-parties that sell the Arduboy with custom packaging.
Thinking about it more, I think the forum should definitely be more advertised on the packaging since I think it’s one of the Arduboy’s biggest selling points.
In fairness a lot of that is down to having good users.
The majority of our long-time users are nice, sensible people.
I think the way Discourse forums are designed helps with that as well.
For one thing, note the lack of a downvote button.
Hrm… That is a fair point.
If someone made a clone I would have expected them to need to visit the forum to get the information to do so.
I know there’s a few instructables that discuss how to make an Arduboy clone, but all the most valuable information is here on the forum.
My first thought was that’s a good reason to avoid having other ‘communities’,
but if they’re actually bad enough that they’re putting people off then I think we might have to try to find a way to take control of them.
But all things considered, I think it would be better to structure these things in such a way that they funnel people towards the official forum. We already have so much useful information that to attempt to duplicate it on Reddit/Twitter would be a big effort. This forum is where ‘the party’ is, so to speak.
Where there is one there are likely to be others.
Oddly enough we do permit those things here. :P
We only have a handful of pixel artists around, and most only provide art if they’re actually working on a particular game, but there’s nothing to stop people sharing pixel art, it has been done before (e.g. in this thread).
Naturally we prefer ‘clean’ jokes,
but I’m sure some have noticed the odd ‘dirty’ joke has slipped through the radar. :P
After realising the interest in discussing homemade Arduboys we created the ‘homemade’ category dedicated to discussing them.
(For a slice of forum history, see this thread.)
But to keep the Reddit group informed someone would have to be responsible for posting those updates. Unless a bot could be created to do the job in a suitable fashion, that job would fall to an individual or a group of people.
We already have all that here.
In fact we have two different quick-start guides:
https://arduboy.com/download-and-learn-arduino/
We have two main tutorials. The main reason we don’t have more is that tutorials take a surprising amount of effort to write.
I believe we can create ‘wiki’ forum posts that anyone can edit.
(It’s certainly possible on other Discourse forums.)
It seems that essentially all the key Reddit pages would just be linking back here to forum pages to avoid duplicating the information.
Either way, I personally have no control over the matter.
I’m merely here to raise my personal concerns and hope that my concerns are representative of the concerns of others.
As Arduboy Inc’s sole employee, only @bateske can act upon that and be responsible for its management.
I think the biggest thing to take away from this is that the forum could be better advertised, though I for one am doubtful that creating a Reddit group is the best way to do it.
Twitter I am less concerned about because people are likely to discuss Arduboy there anyway.
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I mean, there are a lot of subreddits for subjects/products that have official forums, I don’t think the community has to have any kind of monopoly on where people talk about it.
It also increases exposure theoretically, allows more people to discover it.
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@bateske, In case you “TL;DRed” the last few large posts and/or are low on spare time,
here’s the stuff that’s probably most relevant for your perusal:
- The forum could be better advertised, e.g. on the
arduboy.comhomepage, or on the Arduboy packaging (if it’s not too late to do that) - If other ‘communities’ are being badly mismanaged and that’s having a negative impact on the forum then we perhaps need to take control of them
- Making an ‘official’ Twitter is something only you could do because you own the company
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Pretty much every link on the front page that isn’t sales related takes you to the community. It has the most recent games and topics actually ON the page. What do you mean by better advertising? Do you mean like have a bigger blurb on what the benefits of joining the community are?
Yes, I’m trying to wrestle control back from reddit of the other one but they are not responding.
Ross ran ArduboyTweets and took it with him when he left, and I don’t want to like, create a new account and do all that. Celine had the instagram. It may actually be a net benifit to hire someone to do this actually since that would drive more sales. It’s a pain in the ass and having to start all over again just… ugh.
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True, but you have to scroll past two screens worth of sales stuff before reaching a link to the forum.
It does, but that’s buried half way down the page, and it’s worded as if the person reading it already knows the forum exists and what the ‘the community’ is.
Personally I really think the forum deserves pride of place considering it’s arguably one of the Arduboy’s best achievements.
This would probably help.
At the very least I think the page needs something that clearly explains what the forum actually is.
(Preferably including the words ‘online forum’ at some point. The term ‘community’ is vague and abstract, but most people know what to expect from a forum.)
Looking again at the FX packaging (or at least the image that was posted in the Japanese translation thread) there are more mentions than I noticed the other day.
It’s perhaps not as obvious as it could be, but I can’t think of any better alternatives.
Looks like I might just be getting the subreddit back! Then you can trash talk my customer service all you want! 
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