RFC: Discord Community 2025 Reorganization

[GaianHelmers]

O3DE Discord Community Reorganization 2025

As the O3DE Community grows, there is a clear need for the Community Discord Server to evolve to better serve new, and old, community members alike. Creating an easier flow of onboarding and new-user engagement, as well as creating a more intuitive range of channels for users to use with less pressure of selecting the "correct" one. This change is also in order to create a far more organized space for long-term users to engage with new users, and fellow long-term users and sig chairs alike.

What is the relevance of this feature?

We have not made any changes to the O3DE Discord Server in a year, and in that time the Mod team have experienced ongoing/recurring painpoints expressed by users, users expressing confusion or hesitation towards channel selection, some channels being forgotten/unused by regulars. And, from the mods point of view, a growing feeling that changes should be made to improve these many situations.

What are the advantages of the feature?

Starting with the day to day experiences of the mod/community team, we've put together a more orderly organization for the server. Thanks to a demo server we've put together for early evaluation, we can gather feedback from the community for up to a month. These stages of feedback and editing allow us to only mobilize once everything has been polished to the best case we've got.

What are the disadvantages of the feature?

We will only truly know it's full efficacy or shortcomings over time, as the community interfaces with the new arrangement, and we see how the UX plays out. Change is often scary, and users may be overwhelmed by the change in what they know.

Are there any alternatives to this feature?

Leave the server as is.
However, in order to align with the growing scale of the community we need to continually re-evaluate what is best for the flow and experience of all users on the server.

Overall, we feel it's an absolute necessity to make this change.

Feature Details & Implementation

Through stages of user feedback, and using a Mock Discord Server with the new working arrangement. We will evaluate and polish an improved O3DE Community Server arrangement and experience, complete with new/edited roles, a new Onboarding process to better introduce users to the server, and an improved user flow through channels.

Once feedback has been gathered and all changes are made, we will have an active template to use in order to rapidly implement the actual community server with the changes.

Criteria used in Redesigning the Server

• Reorganizing the order of categories and channels from the top down to ease user onboarding by putting highest use, simplest to understand servers/categories first, followed by the more specialized channels that regular, and power, users are more familiar with due to longer community engagement.

• Reduce the footprint of channels/categories in the channel list of the server to bring more channels to the top.

• Redefining the Categorical inclusion of some channels for a more appropriate position. Largely within Community, and Features.

• Simplifying the purpose of channels by consolidating redundant ones into one single targeted channel. This should allow for far more precise feedback and support for new users by making landing points that intuitively relate to their needs.

• Renaming channels with multiple interpretations of its name to more precisely frame it's topical purpose.

• Breaking out the most overloaded sig channels: sig-content, and sig-graphics-audio, into feature and gem, channels, in order to improve clarity and isolate systemic work from feature work within the scope of the sigs.

• Consolidating sig's that are overwhelmingly unused in the general day to day community engagement. This stage will require proper processes and implementation from the O3DF Board first.

Schedule of Evaluation and Implementation

Already Complete

Moderator and Community Leadership Evaluation and Proposed Reorg.
Onboarding and Role Rework

2025-07-14 - 2025-07-29

Early SIG Chair and Community feedback

2025-07-29

TAC-TSC End of Month Meeting Proposal
Seeking Group Approval to Proceed

2025-07-29 - 2025-08-12

Final Feedback Window

Implementation. End of Aug

First Pass at Rework:

• All channels organized.
• New Onboarding Process.
• Roles, Channel Descriptions, Guidelines.
• Forum tags.
• No sig changes yet.

Once approved: Final SIG Redefinition pass.

• Adding sig-audio.
• Consolidating sig-build-testing.
• Renaming sig-ux.

Outline of Changes Made

• Broke Information cat into Info, and System/Status to allow collapsing without loss of info.
• Removed Newcomer channels. (Often being forgotten.)
• Reorganized Community Category to more relevant orientation and categorical placements.
• Content Cration renamed to Community Content (Confusion over intended context)
• Closed all Support channels to favour support-forum (Users unsure of where to post.)
• Replaced Roles-Tags channel with Discord Onboarding
• Introduced "Features" Category and channels. (Stops overload of content and graphics features)
• Made Voice Channels Generic and massively reduced.
• Intend to consolidate sig-test into sig-build.
• Intend to rename sig-ux-ui to sig-ux (confusion over Editor GUI and Lyshine)

Give Us Feedback!

We've put together a demo Discord server to allow the community to poke around and get a 1:1 feel for how the server rework will be in the Community Server.

Please join in, and give it a look. We will be taking feedback up until the implementation deadline, and would love to know what you think. Below are a range of questions we'd love your input on.

Demo Server to Explore

https://discord.gg/ygn7BzE4eV

Request for Feedback Questions

• Was the onboarding process clear and able to provide you with the necessary information to start interacting with the server?
  (The small number of options are to spare us including dozens in the demo server. Full support would be implemented in final integration.)

• Does the order of the channels and categories feel easy to understand for new users starting at the top?

• Do the channels feel intuitive towards finding your needed subject for discussion?

• Are there any missing topics wanted?

• How do you feel about the reduced footprint of server channels?

• Do you feel it's simpler/more intuitive to have less general support channels?

• Do the support forums seem capable of handling and focusing issues/needs, without starving people from an "in" through the general-support chat channel?

• How do you enjoy the "Features" category and channels? Are there any channels you feel are missing, or unable to be under the gems-features forum umbrella?

• Is there a mismatch in the order of Categories that you feel should be changed?

• Do the mock topics raised in jobs-teams, and gems-features, forums feel appropriate for the type of topics that should be allowed in them?

• How do you like a Gallery Forum for Showcase over the regular Text feed style?

Mock Tags have been included in the forums as a post.

• What tags do you think would be appropriate for support-forum?
• What tags do you think would be appropriate for jobs-teams?
• What tags do you think would be appropriate for gems-features?
• What tags do you think would be appropriate for showcase-forum?

Final Thoughts?

[GaianHelmers]

There have been multiple requests for a dedicated animation channel. Both were requesting sig's, but I don't know the process, and last I was aware we lost all our animation specialists that would be the chairs of the sig.

I added an animation channel to the Features cat.
I have added a sig-animation channel, for a pending future sig initiation.

[GaianHelmers]

A user contributed a fun idea.
Turning Showcase into a Gallery Forum. Try it out for size!

[GaianHelmers]

Migrated the Server Stats into a Category and moved to the bottom. Can be opt in through onboarding.

[lsemp3d]

I like the direction this is going, but I wonder if it's moving the needle enough, some of the channels are either fairly specific or too ambiguous, for example:

• gems-features
• code-editors
• dev-languages
• script-canvas
• resources-tools
• multiplayer-demo

Perhaps consider moving towards a more industry-wide feature set of channels under Features

Features

• animation
• audio
• automation
• build-infrastructure
• camera
• cpp
• input
• materials
• multiplayer
• level-design
• rendering
• robotics
• scriptcanvas
• scripting
• tech-art
• terrain
• troubleshooting
• user-interface
• vfx
• whitebox

I know the SIG channels cover a lot of these, but the SIG channels ought to be aligned as developer/contributor channels, this is where contributors, maintainers, reviewers, discuss the direction, roadmaps, implementations of certain areas of the engine, perhaps not the best place to help the community with "How do I?" questions or troubleshooting. That said, the sig channels should be remain open and available to everyone, simply that they're very broad, it's not quite the same for folks that want to use the engine, as it is for the folks that are developing it.

[GaianHelmers]

@lsemp3d I really like this input, and definitely feel you capture a particular distinction we were hoping would be captured by the "features" category, in that they are areas to discuss things in details that aren't necessarily moment by moment help and support, and that the sigs can be more specific to technicalities, and moment by moment efforts to resolve, improve, or develop within the scope of the responsibilities of the sigs.

We'll definitely review this list over time here, I love having some examples/ideas to look at for this. I think you've been able to capture clusters of concepts that could represent more than one feature at once. Which is quite powerful.

One thing I'd love to query you further on is: Gems-Features was meant to be a catch all for feature topics we couldn't capture in more formal representation. Stars gem, Volumetric Clouds, commercial gems like popcorn fx, and kythera.
I feel you do capture the needs we were framing for gems-features in the categorical listing of channels you've provided... but I guess would like to hear under what circumstances you'd imagine an open ended forum format would supplement the choices you've left above?

Additionally, the dev-languages were meant to continue to capture language based feedback. Like in using C#, python, or other input regarding supports or implementation of languages throughout the engine and it's affiliated tech.

[lsemp3d]

The dev-languages is an interesting example, a lot of the discussions tend to be aspirational, "why not use X language? it's better at Y" The reality is that there is no plan to change from C++/Lua/ScriptCanvas. It's a fun engineering topic to discuss, the effort required to move O3DE from Lua to any other language is significant, Lua is used as the gameplay scripting language, Script Canvas produces Lua, the material system uses Lua, and we maintain a Lua editor that supports debugging.

I would say, if there eventually is a serious consideration for changing scripting languages, those discussions ought to take place in SIG-Content which owns scripting, any project to replace or add a new scripting language would likely require a lot of thought, strategic planning, resources, and time.

But on the other hand, the majority of people who are looking to use O3DE to make a game or 3D project, will likely have scripting related questions, with the proposed list of features above, they can go ask them in #scripting which would be easier to deduce than #sig-content

Oh, and on the question of gems-features, we can add a #gems channel for questions about a specific gem, or questions on making new gems

[GaianHelmers]

I've now implemented Features B for AB testing.

Compacted Features A a touch more.

With Feature B, are we missing any categoricals? Are there redundant or unnecessary ones?

[GaianHelmers]

We're also feeling out the Inclusion Committee renaming.

Option A is BEAR Committee.
Option B is IED Committee.

You can check the acronym descriptions on the channels.

Additional Context.

BEAR was designed to have no common terms to the original phrase, to prevent find & replace. It's an effort to preserve the dedication to the effort... just with completely different terms.

BEAR is also used in an other Linux Foundation org: https://openssf.org/groups/bear/

IED preserves the terminology of the original, but re-orders them. Doesn't prevent Find All, but prevents the search for at least the acronym.
Note: the original channel is d-i-committee. It's effectively as functional as ied, actually.

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Or we leave the original, to not react to starkly to the negative political pressuring around the term, and just hope that nobody brigades the community server.

[GaianHelmers]

The window for feedback regarding the O3DE Community Discord Rework is Closing.

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Active Topics of Discussion

Features Category

We have introduced a new "Features" Category to allow talks on every single feature you could want. This is to remove the burden of #sig-content basically being responsible for half the features available.
There's a schism between:

• (A) Having the smallest footprint and drawing the discussion into forums, which allows talking about a single feature, similar to opening a thread.
• (B) Having a list of categorical topics that should encapsulate any feature discussion needs. But introduces a much larger footprint." - Refer to RFC: Discord Community 2025 Reorganization #147 (comment)
  • And as a follow up: Does it seem clear that support goes in the support-forum, and discussion goes in features?
  • Could some of the Feature B's be migrated/consolidated into Industry Category instead?

SIGs

Should we move forward on O3DF policy changes to introduce and alter the Special Interest Groups?
Changes are:

• Break apart #sig-graphics-audio into sig-graphics and sig-audio?
  • This would require the introduction of an audio group, and Chairs/Co-chairs to be elected for it.
• Consolidate #sig-build and #sig-testing into #sig-build-testing
• Change the naming of #sig-ui-ux to just #sig-ux?
  • This is in order to remove the mistaken discussions about the Lyshine In-game UI system under the umbrella of #sig-content and and justify Editor GUI needs and discussion as just a detail of the greater UX.
• The introduction of a #sig-animation
  • This would require electing Chairs/Co-chairs

User Experience

Some questions we'd like more approval on:

• Is the footprint of categories smaller and more focused?
  • This also includes being able to find your desired channel without having to scroll so much from the top.
• Is the layout of channels intuitive and feel like you can find what you're looking for?
• Do the top channels and categories feel the most new-user friendly, and more highly used?
  • And of course the inverse. Are the lowest channels and cats specific, less used, and more focused on experienced users and discussion?
• Do the chosen forum channels make sense for the topic?
• Do you see using the various forums for the purpose they are supposed to capture?

Ease of Support Access

A major focus of this update was trying to reduce the redundant support channels. And prevent specific support discussions from being pushed away or mixed with a different discussion going on simultaneously.

• Do you feel you'd know where to go to get a random ambiguous support question answered?
• Do you feel you'd know where to go to get support on a system like: EMotionFX, Sky Atmosphere Component, or Miniaudio?
• Do you feel you'd know where to go when you want to ask an advanced question about the complexities of underlying systems, like Render Passes, Asset Processing system, or updating core libraries?

[GaianHelmers]

Following a hunch I made a merger of Features, and Industry to create a Discussion Category that captures topical discussion across the server.

We isolated gems-and-features at the top. Then included the industry verticals, but also captured roles/sectors of the industry. Broke apart "games"

The footprint is far smaller than Features B was. And "Industry" category gets removed by its inclusion in this category.

[GaianHelmers]

Delineating the various forums.

• #support-forum - You want answers.

  • So and so isn't working. Whats going wrong?
  • Does emfx have xyz feature? I can't find it.
  • When I x with physx it doesn't do what it says it does.
  • Compile error? I don't know. code follows

• #gems-and-features

  • What if emfx had this feature? How would you do that?
  • Hey check out this completed gem I found/worked on.
  • Just made x Gem, feedback forum.
  • GS_Play Cinematics Gem 0.5.0
  • #"New LyShine Hierachichal Interaction Toggle"

• #showcase

  • Look at this progress video!
  • I made my first environment. (Screenshots)
  • I made some Odie fanart. ❤️
  • Check out my first environment concept! (For an O3DE game to come.)
  • I made this sweet attack animation.

• #community-content - Outside linking, and extra-community content.

  • Check out my recent blog post. (Link)
  • So and So made a new youtube video about O3DE!
  • I just found a user wrote a tutorial on O3DE Landscape stuff on their website.
  • Hey I posted a new Intensive tutorial! Check it out!
  • This is a cool video of a bunch of shaders in O3DE I found.

[mythrz]

Discord channel for o3de.org so we can see the activity there: o3de/o3de.org#2711