Because everybody just hangs out on the JGO “unofficial” Discord now and nobody posts here.
It’s only ever useful if you happen to be around when someone else useful is around at the same time. All conversation is basically ephemeral. The forum is dying. I’m just wondering whether maybe everybody might want to come back? Because Discord vanish and leave no trace, but JGO is full of useful threads archived for all eternity*
Cas 
I wonder if the users there consider that a feature rather than a bug?
I can see where Discord is maybe better set up for chatting than here. Are we back to question of needing to upgrade this site? (Maybe I can find some brain cells to try and give SHC an assist. I have a little database experience.)
I don’t use Discord at all, I can live without using this proprietary crap.
@Cas: Probably a generation gap, isn’t it? I hate those chat platforms too. As you said, it’s helpful for a small conversation or for a very fast support… but I wish the gathering of precious information over time would be continued here. Can’t say how many times I googled for “Riven’s fast mapped buffers” and reread all the discussions about buffer access and stuff
Suspect it’s generational yes… apparently forums all over the internet are now wastelands because everyone’s gone to Discord and Slack.
Cas
Discourse is nice! Wasn’t there talk of migrating to that at one point? Processing has. Seems a good middle ground between forums and chat.
You’re most welcome for helping me! Any help in this matter is appreciated. The repo is located here:
By the way, though I’m not a frequent lurker here nowadays because of my job, I’m still stopping by. For me, it is really better to have a modern forum than using a chatting application like Discord or Slack.
Discord and Slack IMO are both applications for realtime chats and team discussions, and are successful mostly only because generally the whole team will be online at the same time in an organisation.
They are not for discussions like we have here.
By the way, I’m now following Flarum development in spare time and expecting them to roll out a new beta (Beta 8, but still should be a bit stable) in a few weeks from now, and I will resume my work on the migration script.
I think I have to rewrite it, since the database structure is now drastically different. Once this new beta is out, I plan to create a separate discussion for the script in the General Discussions board here.
I’d be happy to help you in any possible way. How ever my knowledge regarding databases is quite limited I’d say. Maybe we could exchange regarding possible tasks?
Additionally I agree with the point that a forum is in general a better approach to follow a discussion especially over a longer period of time.
However supporting a forum with the possibility to interact in realtime in apps like Slack or Discord seems reasonable but rather as an addition to the forum than a replacement.
I wouldn’t say that this a something caused by a generation gap in general but rather something caused by the growing demand of people receiving everything as fast as possible caused by the digitization nowadays. This demand can also be saturated by a kind of forum (reddit for instance), but it requires a rather big, active community.
Regardless of generation the key feature everyone should see in a forum is the traceability of created knowledge during discussion, asking and answering questions, as well as simply providing information / meanings on various topics one estimates as important for a wider public.
What are the discord details? I don’t mind having chats to complement the forum. Agree the forum is dying a bit, from my perspective it’s because the forum is so dated. I browse on mobile mostly and this forum is rubbish for that. There is still some quality posting here though, it may not be a lot but at least the quality is good
If any help is needed on the SQL for discourse I can help out as I have quite a bit of experience of sql
Boost activity at this site?
Maybe more folks could write more tutorials, written and proof-read so that they actually teach those of us that don’t know as much.
Also, be more welcoming of beginners and not start off by bashing them immediately with how unrealistic their goals are. They’ll figure it out and revise and correct course as they learn more about the terrain.
Also, maybe avoid participating in flame wars with other members on a beginner’s question. I would think that could be quite a bad look to a newcomer or browser checking out our site.
Just a couple grumpy thoughts. I didn’t sleep very well last night.
Embrace it… all of the issues you mentioned could be solved by just letting the Discord grow, and in the year 2018 it’s easier to grow a Discord server than it is to grow a forum because people don’t like using forums anymore. Hate to say it but it really do be like that sometimes, cut the life support
^ lol
I don’t have a ton of experience using Discord, so correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like some major selling points for a forum that Discord doesn’t provide are:
These reasons (and probably more as I think a little longer) are why a forum is much better than Discord for things other than chat. Threads can help more than just the OP, and I can’t imagine trying to find answers to someone’s question that they asked 5 months ago in the Discord chat…
just adding the useless message that I’m also still around on the forums, I check it everyday, just don’t post anything, often don’t see anything that I can or want to contribute to
Joined the discord at some point, and this might just be the age thing, but keeping up with all the various servers and channels is almost impossible and a waste of time… so I end up idling everywhere including my own Discord server 
As I wrote several times, this is an age related stuff.
Younger people don’t like (usually as I observed) to read a lot, slowly. They need instant messages, quick short chit-chats. I don’t like it, but lots of them does. This is how life works, nothing special.
Don’t assume everyone else is in the same boat!(sorry, I’m not a native speaker, I’ve looked for the best translation of the French expression “ne prends pas ton cas pour une généralité”)
Is it an argument? I disagree with you but I don’t only answer “lol”. I sometimes spend some time in explaining my positions, I don’t just laugh at people thinking differently. I’m fed up with people who think that we must be on Google+, Youtube, GMail, VKontakte, Amazon, Facebook, Apple ICloud, LinkedIn, Github, … When I think that other shouldn’t do something, I don’t tell them “lol”. For example, today, I explained to someone else why I think that a gynaecologist shouldn’t be allowed to work in a public state-controlled hospital if (s)he refuses to practice abortion, I didn’t tell him “lol”.
I think it’s generally agreed upon that forums are slowly dying as a platform for communication. There’s a few people holding onto them for dear life but the rest of the world is moving on. It doesn’t matter if forums are a better platform, fast-paced discussion seems to be the way of the world nowadays and people should just accept it instead of expecting everyone to “come back” despite the drawbacks. Otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. Don’t get me wrong I think Discord is an utter disaster but there’s no point in getting upset about the community using it.
I don’t care if you have a different opinion. I just think the way you expressed that opinion was stupidly self-congratulatory, but let’s move on.
For getting technical help, Discord is only as good as the accumulated expertise of the people attending. What happens when expertise moves on to the next thing? Having lived through many “next things” this seems to me to be an inevitability.
It seems to me there is also a bit more tendency towards group-think and herding, not that this doesn’t show up in forums, too.
If getting an answer is as easy as a quick chat, chances are nothing will be written down, and that knowledge will be gone unless someone makes an effort to write a tutorial. With a forum, bad advice has a chance to be corrected or updated. You are more likely to get pros and cons from different POVs contributing to a discussion.
It is fun to hang out with others, and I can see making some nice friendships through that format. It could well be that its healthier to hang out some with programmers and make friends that way. At least, with them (unlike less tech-inclined), you can talk shop. Also, you can spout nonsense (sometimes this is the only way to discover that what you are thinking is nonsense) and not worry about leaving a historical record.
There are a lot of situations where we have a race-to-the-bottom feedback loop operating. I’m wondering if going for ever faster-paced discussion, is one such. There is a lot to be said for “Slow thinking” (c.f. Daniel Kahneman).
I don’t even know about JGO on Discord 
Seriously, forum are better for searchability and openness. Amount of useful tips, tutorials etc… on this forum is amazing, maybe people on discord could “stress” this on chats systems too ?
About age etc… I don’t think. If you don’t have patience to read a forum, you will never never make a game in Java!! Programming is reading!
The Discord exists as a complement to the forums, not as a replacement. The content that occurs within the Discord discourse is far more conversational than is typical of the forum format and I am skeptical that in fact the Discord is displacing any conversation at all as technical and creative questions almost never occur on the Discord. Many of those active in the Discord are people who would’ve otherwise simply left the JGO community as they moved into non-Java and/or non-gamedev areas, and I think this is the core problem JGO is facing: demographic changes within the programming community. JGO used to have a constant cycle of new blood as people decided they wanted to make the next Minecraft, but as more beginner-friendly tools have been developed and popularised at a faster rate than Java has (read: Unity), that supply has been cut off. All that remains is essentially the same people who are over time becoming less interested in Java-centric game development. The Discord may be symptomatic of this, but it isn’t the cause.