I’ll just repeat after others it will be bad/sad if the chat is gone. Discord or any other separate entity is just not the same.
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Add my name to the list of those believe that removing the chat would be a huge detriment to the site. I’ve seen several coding platforms go down the road of being less community-focused is one way or another, and as a result, I and many others essentially lost all interest in continuing to use them (CodeFights – er, sorry, “CodeSignal” 
– being a prime example). Like others stated, the chat is what makes CG feel “alive”, and it is also a tremendous educational resource for many.
The idea of restricting the use of the chat based on a user’s level would seem to be a fairly simple solution to the moderation issues. I really hope that the CG team will take this and other suggestions into consideration.
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I’m new here but it was nice interacting with other players on clash chat rooms, and for sure on discord it will not be the same.
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Hello,
Even if it seems like a lost cause :
I’m not active on the chat. But it’s always opened when i’m on Codingame. I read it regularly. Amongst other things : that’s mainly how i’m informed of what’s happening on CG.
For sure, it will seem a bit dead without it.
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May I also add, until the spam problem on the discord server is resolved or dealt with somehow, it will put many people off. I have had all but announcements and the occasional other channel (eg contest-specific) on mute for what feels like forever.
You have a long way to go if you want the discord to work.
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RIP chat.
Respect to that intern, chat was a really nice addon on CG.
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There is no thing as “Restrict the chat to a minimum level is really a simple solution”.
You can reach lvl 20+ by copy/pasting some hard puzzles solutions from the web. You can copy/paste your own solutions from your other accounts. And I don’t really see what would be the use of the community chat if this “community” must resolve many hard puzzles to join in.
As a moderator, the webchat is too difficult to keep safe. You can just kick or ban a user, but the messages are still there. The user then comes in your private message because they wants to know where your mother lives to very closely get in touch with her. 1 minute after, the user has a new account and can spam again.
On Discord, I can just ban the user and delete all of the messages in two clicks. And the user can’t contact me in private.
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Many companies and countries (China) block discord, it will be difficult to tell who is who since the CG/Discord user names will usually be different, chat during clashes will be unfeasible, and in general you lose the real-time chat ability when it is off in another window.
If anything truly awful pops up, people just scroll if off with calls to the chat bot.
Adding a day or two waiting period before accessing the chat (or adding it far down on the quest map), and maybe email verification, solves most issues.
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China isn’t a good example. They block everything they don’t control. To bypass this everyone in China, including their pet dog, use VPN. Chinese government officials use twitter despite the block.
Codingame isn’t big or popular enough for China to ban it.
In many respects, Discord is a far better solution than CG chat except that it is not integrated into CG ecosystem. That probably explains why, in nearly four years, on Discord, I have never had any discussion that reached the same level that is routinely achieved on CG chat. I would not lose that.
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I totally get the need to fix the issues in chat. I’ve spent some memorable evenings repeatedly banning the same guy only for him to reappear and keep on being a ****. I also know how hard it often is to pick up legacy code written by someone who isn’t there anymore and who might not have known what he was doing when he wrote it. Discord is definitely a superior platform for that.
I do hope you will reconsider the decision not to embed it in some way, though. Echoing what others have said, the chat makes coding here a lot more fun, more like hanging out with friends than doing your homework after school.
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We can give this topic rest. It did not happen June time. Not going ahead.
It was scheduled for this week. Just because it did not happen at the specified time does not mean it will not happen.
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I understand the advantage of discord:
- no maintenance on Codingame side
- Discord has proven to be a reliable chat system and provides great capabilities such as administration tools or message history (this was really the pain point with CG chat according to me)
But I am concerned with the following:
- as mentioned by @Westicles will there a possibility to map a CG user to a Discord account through CG settings? (it’s currently very easy to talk to someone playing the same multi/contest as you or to ask questions to people that posted some interesting stuff in the forum, if the CG username and Discord username are different, it would be much more of a hassle)
- the Discord adoption won’t be as smooth as the CG chat. Currently a newcomer can sign up on Codingame and instantly have access to the chat. But with the new approach, I am afraid that most newcomers that don’t have Discord wouldn’t bother to sign up on Discord on top of CG and they would be missing a key part of what makes CG enjoyable, interesting and addictive. Not sure how the site will be designed to increase Discord acceptance but some newcomers might not even know there is a Discord if they don’t look at the right place.
- at this point there might be more activity on CG forum than on CG Discord channels. It’s not even close to the popularity of the chat.
- the fact that Discord has so many channels makes it hard to know where to post to get answers to your questions => As mentioned by @Astrobytes a lot of users have muted most of the channels and probably wouldn’t bother looking at all of them to see if they can answer some questions as opposed to the unique CG chat where all questions were asked and online users could just easily go through everything from a single place. Another issue is that this rigorous topic split would intimidate people to post => “if I post, I need to make sure it’s relevant and not get a ‘wrong channel please post in #XXXXX’”. On the CG chat people could just casually post anything from puzzle advices, multi strategies to casual chit-chat. While discussions might have been messy at times, I feel like it was what made the chat and the site charming.
All in all, I am not totally against the move to Discord but I think that the lack of an integrated chat will be a great loss for CG. Hopefully some actions will be taken for the Discord channels to be more lively and friendly.
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Chat was a very useful feature for me. being able to chat while solving a puzzle, getting an instant response when facing a problem, I don’t think it’ll be the same when it’s moved to discord. There are many ways to solve the moderation issues as struct said. The best ways are probably email verification and specifying a minimum account age to chat, no troll is desperate enough to make multiple emails or wait for n days, that’ll noticeably reduce the trolling. I hope this is reconsidered.
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There is no thing as “Restrict the chat to a minimum level is really a simple solution”.
You can reach lvl 20+ by copy/pasting some hard puzzles solutions from the web. You can copy/paste your own solutions from your other accounts. And I don’t really see what would be the use of the community chat if this “community” must resolve many hard puzzles to join in.
The point is that if somebody does that, you can simply ban them, and it likely won’t be worth their time/energy to do it again. As it stands currently, someone can be banned and then immediately create another account and start spamming again.
And who said the cap would have to be at level 20? Obviously that would be excessive. You wouldn’t necessarily have to make it level-based at all; you could base it on the length of time a user has been active on the site (say 10+ hours), or create a list of simple requirements that must be completed before being given access. There are numerous ways you could approach it. The point is to make it simple for real CG users to gain access but a hassle for spammers. Certainly anything would be many times better that the current system (i.e., anyone can create multiple accounts and immediately start chatting). Many, many sites I’ve used have a system like this in place, so I fail to see how one can claim that there is “no such thing”.
If the main point is that nobody on the CG team is willing to invest the effort into improving/fortifying the chat (hard to believe that not a single developer of a platform like this would be willing to take this up as a pet project…), then another idea would be to require each user to “opt in” to seeing the chats – that way, they must first agree to the possibility that they might read something that offends their delicate sensibilities. No harm no foul – if you don’t want to risk being subjected to spam/naughty words on occasion, don’t request access to the chat. I should note that 99% of all the the conversations I’ve seen in the chat have been constructive and on topic, with the odd troll making an appearance every once in a while and then immediately getting kicked.
Also, moderation is obviously good and desirable, but just as a point of comparison, take a look at YouTube comments, which are essentially “un-moderateable”. Lately there’s been a massive influx of spam bots, but people merely ignore them and carry on with their discussions. If trying to keep the chat spam-free is too big of an investment, then what’s the worst case scenario if they keep it around with little to no moderation? If the opt-in system I proposed is implemented, it shouldn’t really bother anyone if there’s an obnoxious user present on occasion. A simple block feature could be added so one could hide all the messages from certain users if desired.
It seems to me that there are myriad possible ideas that could be tried before just flat out nixing the entire thing. Considering how valuable the user base seems to think the chat here is, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for CG to consider a few different alternatives.
But, alas, most software companies don’t give a damn about the users of their products anymore, so I don’t know why I’m even wasting my time making suggestions. Most of the formerly great tech companies have all but ruined their best software and sterilized their services to the point of obliterating every characteristic that once made them worth using. If experience has taught me anything, this decision will likely be the first of many dominoes that will soon start falling, and before the majority of users even have time to realize the extent of the changes happening before their eyes, this platform will have fundamentally transformed into something completely unrecognizable and vastly inferior. I pray I’m wrong, but I’ve seen it happen again and again, and it always starts like this.
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Maybe it doesn’t and all stress was in vain, but I no what you mean never give up hope.
No I meant that it will be removed, it is just a matter of time.
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In fact, it is already has been removed from the website.
The XMPP server is still alive (and you can reach it through a XMPP client), but we don’t for how long it will stays open.