SFML community forums

General => SFML website => Topic started by: Stauricus on December 17, 2020, 10:40:40 pm

Title: a "beginners" board in forum?
Post by: Stauricus on December 17, 2020, 10:40:40 pm
hi
I'd like to know what other members think of having a beginners' board in the 'Help' forum. i've seen lately some questions related mostly to C++, but still pertinet to SFML. which is nice, because it shows that some people are really trying to get the hang of programming, instead of just going for ready game engines like Unity.

so please, opinions.
Title: Re: a "beginners" board in forum?
Post by: Laurent on December 18, 2020, 08:51:32 am
This is just my personal opinion, but I'm not in favor of such a forum.

First, the scope: "Beginners" doesn't specify a technical scope, and since a large part of the members here can be considered as "beginners", it would receive 90% of the messages. In fact it would just be the new "Help > General" forum, but worse ;)

Then what would we get in this new forum? C++ questions, mostly, but then why not posts about other languages where SFML exists? Algorithms? OpenGL? Win32? Physics engines? It would open the door to many new things -- too much.

Would it be a problem to have all this new stuff possibly posted on the SFML forum? Definitely. More work for us (reading all posts, sometimes answering, moderating). And more difficulties to find answers on a specific topic, as everything would get mixed into this generic forum. Inefficient search of existing topics, so more duplicates posted ;)

I really want to focus on SFML here, I think we can be efficient at helping people if we keep the scope limited; I don't intend to create yet another generic game dev forum -- there are already tons of them elsewhere.

But this is just my personal thoughts.
Title: Re: a "beginners" board in forum?
Post by: jamesL on December 18, 2020, 09:38:37 am
for beginner questions you probably have better luck on reddit                       
https://www.reddit.com/r/sfml/
Title: Re: a "beginners" board in forum?
Post by: Kvaz1r on December 18, 2020, 10:55:16 am
There are enough other places for C++ beginners questions that unrelated to SFML, but as far I understand Help->General is already used for such questions that related to SFML.
Title: Re: a "beginners" board in forum?
Post by: Stauricus on December 18, 2020, 01:19:59 pm
but the idea is not to make a board unrelated to SFML, but something more open to receive questions from new programmers that many times aren't even sure if the problem is based on the language or the library. like they have in Irrlicht forums:
Quote
Beginners Help
If you are a new Irrlicht Engine user, and have a newbie-question, this is the forum for you. You may also post general programming questions here.

i'd just change the part about general programming
Quote
If you are new to SFML or programming in general, and have a newbie question, this is the forum for you.

but well, it doesn't make sense to have it if other members, include beginners themselves, don't endorse the idea
Title: Re: a "beginners" board in forum?
Post by: Kvaz1r on December 18, 2020, 02:49:11 pm
I'm new on the forum and my comment above isn't against this idea - I was wondering why just not change description for "General" section.
I'm totally endorse your idea, from my point of view much better to give any reasonable enough idea chance and if it goes bad - then close it as unsuccessful experiment.
Title: Re: a "beginners" board in forum?
Post by: Nexus on December 20, 2020, 10:48:56 pm
I don't see any distinct enough scope that would justify a new section, either. Already now, new users often don't particularly care where they post help/beginner requests (just look at the General Discussions subforum), I don't think adding one more which highly overlaps with the existing ones will help the decision process.

Furthermore, I would not encourage users to ask even more C++-only questions -- there are enough places on the Internet with specialized communities, where more people can answer those quicker. Questions of the form "I'm learning SFML and C++ simultaneously" are already frequently asked and answered, even if their answer is often a pure C++ one and comes with a hint for good C++ resources.