Epic looking for your feedback on the direction to take with Answerhub

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Hi all,

With Unreal Engine 5 on the horizon, we are focusing on how to empower and support you better, and build resources that will continue to serve you for years to come.

While we are discussing and researching all kinds of things, which we’ll share in due time, right now Amanda and I would love to get your input on AnswerHub.

Below, we’ve outlined all the details to give you some perspective on what we are working with and thinking through. This is a long post, but it is important, so buckle up!

AnswerHub
We launched AnswerHub during the early days of UE4. For UE5, we will be migrating away from the existing platform.

  • There are some technical reasons for this, mostly relating to flexibility behind the scenes, and the degree of support we have access to.
  • We worry about the fragmented channels—we see users post and answer topics across both the forums and AnswerHub, but sometimes struggle to get replies or find the answers they’re seeking. Other things like recognizing and supporting contributions are harder too.

Our plan

  • Migrate the current content from AnswerHub over to a new Q&A section that would run on the same platform as the forums (Discourse).
  • Then, in the future, integrate the Q&A section, as well as the forums, into a larger community experience, bringing together the disparate pieces to make it much easier for everyone to find and share information, projects, and so forth.

We need your input—We see two paths forward:

Option A - Merge Q&A into the forums

With this approach, we’d migrate current AnswerHub content directly into the forums. Users would be able to select whether their post is a “discussion” or “question” upon creation, and allow the OP to accept a reply as the answer. This would leverage Discourse’s Solved Plugin, plus some additional customization for filtering questions and discussions.

Pros

  • One stop for everything. Both AnswerHub and the forums are already used to post questions to and look for info. This solution would streamline pages and make it easier to find information—it’s all in the same place.
  • People are (hopefully) more likely to answer things or participate in discussions since the topics would be altogether and have more visibility.
  • Easier for us to manage (single ecosystem)
  • May help reduce duplicate posts
  • Easier for us and all of you to recognize key contributors in the community

Cons

  • Minimal customization of the actual Q&A experience.
  • Less Q&A-specific functionality (upvoting replaced with likes, use of tags over dropdowns). It would primarily feel like a forum experience.
  • May not feel like a dedicated space to quickly jump in and get answers.
  • Volume of questions may overwhelm topics or dissuade participation.

Option B - Migrate into a new space, but connected at account level

Migrate AnswerHub content to the same platform as we use for the forums (Discourse), leveraging Discourse’s Solved Plugin, but hosted as a separate instance. The two different instances would interconnect on an account level, and through other currently planned future community features.

Pros

  • More flexibility for us to individually shape the forum and Q&A experiences, which could help it feel like a more traditional Q&A experience.
  • Easier for beginners or people just looking for answers to understand where to turn to for finding help.
  • Does not disrupt other activities that happen on the forum such as group discussions, showcases, feedback, and so forth.

Cons

  • Discussion and Q&A would continue to exist in two separate places, leading to potential confusion on where to ask or look for info.
  • More complex behind the scenes.

What we’d like to hear from you

  1. Which of these options sounds most appealing to you?
  2. Do you like the idea of the discussion and Q&A spaces being combined or would you prefer they were separate, and why?
  3. Do you feel like if we combined them it would be too noisy? Would that be okay as long as we have strong filtering options between discussions and questions?
  4. What features do you feel are essential for a Q&A experience? (Tags, filters, voting, threading, etc.)
  5. Do you feel that Discourse’s Solved Plugin would meet your needs?

Thanks so much!

  • Option A - Merge Q&A into the forums
  • Option B - Migrate into a separate space, but connected at account level
  • Something else
  • Don’t know/Either works

0 voters

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I agree that the Answerhub must be replaced – too many technical problems.

There is no perfect solution. In one way prefer Option A, mainly because it is nice having a dedicated Q&A section. Then the forums could be more devoted to discussion and less of solving problems that only affect one person.

But, Option B is also good as duplicate posting is a problem.

  1. I would prefer Option A.
  2. I prefer them separate, for reasons stated above.
  3. Yes. I don’t think a filtering system could prevent that.
  4. The base Discourse features, along with tags, voting and down-voting, and a “solved” system are all needed for a ideal Q&A solution. EDIT: Also threaded comments and answers.
  5. I think that leaving these forums as they are (avatars would be nice) and setting up a secondary Q&A Discourse forum with the Solved plugin would work.
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I usually post a question on Answers first because I try to follow rules, but it seems like more traffic on the forums and sometimes I get an answer there quicker.

So to me it seems like bringing it all to the forums would make sense.

Both the forums and answers have good search and “related questions” functions, so I don’t see a downside.

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I don’t mind using separate platform, I just dislike the AnswerHub software and its many problems.

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Problem with the AnswerHub:

  1. Pages… load… so… slowly…
  2. Logs you out frequently, which contributes to the former
  3. It’s hard to find questions to answer (compared to the Discorse forums), which makes less people’s questions get answered.
  4. Clunky, somewhat intuitive interface: No Markdown support, people have a hard time finding the “Resolve” button.
  5. The question-askers are less responsive than on the forums.
  6. This is only a few people (including me) – Requires “moderation” of all posted answers and comments, which can take a 1 to 5 days.
  7. Unreliable – Frequent outages & maintenance; sometimes constant 404s that are only solved by erasing cookies.
1 Like
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We Vote for consolidation into Forums to include Q & A from the Marketplace.

Visit TheGameDevStore.com in the Unreal Marketplace.

4 Likes
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Forums have too many duplicate questions and answers. Why not have an option to mark the question as duplicate like in stackexchange.

Add FAQs section here or link somewhere. FAQs should ideally have c++, bp, editor, sections. Allow the community to expand the FAQs with quality answers. A Tips & Tricks section? Users should preferably only ask question if it is not dealt with in those sections

Search features of answer-hub and forums are not the best out there.

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Do you feel that [Discourse’s Solved Plugin ] would meet the needs
NO NO NO
for the reasons below

Why Discourse, everyone, group has this. In the middle of a conversation, is a post, “Is this topic on another Discourse channel” is into this.

I find this fashionable and trendy. When I have been on this it’s like social media, “we don’t like the rules about channels, so we won’t follow them”,

Well, I for one won’t be going there. Oh, Microsoft tried that, Discourse, on HoloLens development. Within a year it had collapsed, because the main developer contributor’s answers, did not move and left.

We are NOT all in the 25 to 35 years age group, in fact, this person collects a state pension!, I had and still have been in Computer Science for more than 27 years!.

Whilst you have your own support system you control it, developed over many years. You are in control. In Dis COARSE. Nobody is in control.

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Just please keep links working and add redirects. It’s a pain to come across links to old QA posts that are just gone now.

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Also: one could argue that with better moderation and curation it wouldn’t really matter, which is to say: all of this might be a moot point without fixing the underlying problem of there being a chaotic mass of transient question askers and answerers with no one dedicated to cleaning it all up and making sense of it (and improving the documentation and learning materials).

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Yes, we agree! We’re reviewing some routes to add more moderation support within the forums to help keep a more tidy and organized space for you all—remove duplicates, condense threads, archive outdated info, and so forth. Regardless of the path we take with AH, this is on our radar.

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Thanks for all the input so far!
Yeah Merging is winning, but we are conscious of the fact that we are asking this question on the forum. We are also going to put a notice to this thread up on Answerhub today, and Unreal Slackers to see if that brings any change to the current balance in the poll.

The plugin we want to use will allow you to select an answer, and it will then bring that answer into the OP - there is a little preview here Solved | Discourse - Civilized Discussion and existing AH answers should be migrating over. We definitely don’t want to sacrifice that in the migration.

Since Merging is winning at the moment, I am a bit nervous personally that if we merge the two together it is going to possibly come across as a downgrade, a step back, because perception wise it might look as if we’ve ended the support channel we have today. Even though the info would all still be there, and the forum would take on extra functionality, would that not be how this would feel?

Our current thinking is that through the UI we’d make it very clear that the forum is also the place for Q&A, but I am just wondering if the concern is justified?

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Please make sure whatever you do that redirects will be set up! It’s been such a pain to have a million dead Wiki links that are scattered across the web.

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Looking at that Solved Plugin, from what I can tell it only allows selecting one answer as the solution, right? IMHO that is reducing what makes StackOverflow and the whole StackExchange experience great to only a very slim part of it.

As I see it, the true advantage of StackExchange is that it involves the community in a really great way, recruiting active community members to be kind of curators and moderators. It is preventing duplicates and unanswered questions by putting the spotlight on similar questions and the unanswered questions, allowing to give bounties for answering them. And many times I did not find the best answer by looking at the one selected as the solution, but in the 2nd answer which sometimes has more votes than the selected answer (or even the 3rd). So my fear here is, that this plugin is too simple for the very complex beast that is Q&A.

I also second the concern that you mentioned about overwhelming the regular forums. I think if the merge is the choice here, there needs to be an effective and simple solution for people to opt-out of the Q&A, like a checkbox “show/hide Q&A” or a separate view.

I voted “Something else” and here is my idea: Why not create an StackExchange site for unreal engine that is part of the official StackExchange network? Yes, this would give up control but this is THE industry standard for anything Q&A.
Integration-wise that would be difficult I guess, but there’s also StackExchange for Teams. Since Epic is pretty big player in the industry, maybe something can be negotiated with the people behind StackExchange here? No need to reinvent the wheel.

Same with the Wiki. Instead of Epic going their own way, there already is a great community wiki. Why not approach these people and join forces to the benefit of all? IMHO the best things happen when companies openly approach their fans and invite them to collaborate, like the engine contributors on GitHub :slight_smile:

“If you love something, set it free.” :grin:

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When Microsoft wanted to move documentation to open source they chose GitHub, there are so many tools to convert. As I never worked for Microsoft, but a rival. I used tools and even modified open Source C# code to move my section Universal Windows Programming, based on Windows RT libraries, we external curators and moderators were welcomed at GitHub. Many of MS, more obscure products are now supported by StackExchange

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I voted “Something else” and here is my idea: Why not create an StackExchange site for unreal engine that is part of the official StackExchange network? Yes, this would give up control but this is THE industry standard for anything Q&A.

I’d definitely support this direction, an UE specific StackOverflow network.

Personally, I really don’t feel like the forum is able to support a Q&A. Usually, when looking for any programming question, I check out the StackOverflow answers for a post with the most votes, choose whichever I like best, check the comments if there’s any drawback for such solution, and upvote it if it worked. If it was in this forum… I don’t know how I could see the answers, and the answer-specific considerations. If I’d like to understand how events work, I’m not looking for a long discussion… I’m looking for facts. THIS is how events in UE work, THIS is what to pay attention to, and THIS is the place to find more information in this topic. If I’d like to achieve something complicated in BP, I don’t want to read 52 pages of discussion… I’d like to see the 3 options I have, preferably with references, pros/cons, links to learn more - so, like on Stack Overflow.

Of course, I understand that the distribution of information is an issue, but it’s maybe because it’s not well separated. In my understanding, the Forum should be used for all questions, which are project specific, personal, not relevant to the larger ecosystem. Like, “why my code no works ???”, or “How can I put this sword into this characters hand on this test level”. These don’t belong to Q&A, as these are only helpful for the OP; so these are perfect on the forums. However, “How to add a component of a runtime class to an actor in BPs?” is something I’d like to see on Q&A, with multiple different answers, preferably up-to-date ones too which reflect the most recent changes the engine provides to solve the problem better.

This distinction might not always be super-clear, there are always gray areas, but I feel like sticking to a “technical questions useful for the community belongs to Q&A, others to the forum” is less of a burden than moving Q&A to the forums, losing a lot of features which are expected to exist in a Q&A.

What you might also consider is that people like getting things, even if they are virtual. Stack Overflow works, because (besides getting great questions instead of the same ones beginners ask all over again without any way of filtering them out) with great questions / great answers you increase your standing in the community, you get virtual scores with which you look more professional / cool / whatever. It was similar with the old forum - when you saw someone with like 7 badges and 3000 posts, you knew that you’re dealing with someone who knows their sh*t. I have even written to a mod once when I didn’t get my badge automatically, because it simply looked cool to have, it was a great incentive; now, on the forums it is totally gone; my posts look the same as John Doe’s, who just joined yesterday and spreads technical misinformation, I’m just one “K” of the hundreds, so I really don’t care anymore if I get a badge or not, because, simply, nobody’s gonna know about it. I can accept it. But if now, Q&A will have even less “virtual swag” than it had before (the AH scores), I feel like much less professionals will care about answering questions (there is already not enough).

Btw, I really see it positive that you’re getting in touch with the community regarding such issues. However, I do see the “voting” part a bit less useful. It’s like asking a farmer in Chesterfield if the country should leave the EU. “They are stealing my things!”, so of course he’d say yes, but that’s because he is unable to comprehend all the macro-level changes that happens afterwards, because simply that’s not his profession, he cannot see all the interconnected systems of the economy, etc. Similarly, whichever option “wins” at the end, it might seem that “yeah, it’s what people want”, but at the end it might result in much more negative effects that the people who voted didn’t see into / expected.

Of course, it’s just my 2 cents, maybe it’ll turn out just fine, I just wanted to share my thoughts. Thanks again for involving the community in the discussion!

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As of right now, the existence of all these places can be confusing. Especially with all the third party run communities that offer different types of support. So I do agree with the idea of unifying the experience provided by Epic. It feels very split and separate even though provided through the same login / framework. Visible through duplicate submissions.

But I’m not sure if forums are the right way to go. Forums have a very specific user experience and appeal to a very specific kind of user. From the user perspective they are rather high maintenance. Something that’s been bothering me with the Answerhub as well. Either I accept basically spam emails or have to go out of my way to visit the page and dedicate time exclusively to support others.
The forums are slightly different as there is a proper community that exists and that one can become a part of which can be a secondary motivation to visit and participate… however, it poses a similarly high barrier of entry and really requires high activity to really get something out of.

Just as food for thought, not that this would solve the actual problem.

To answer the actual questions:

  1. Which of these options sounds most appealing to you?
    As a gut feeling option B.

  2. Do you like the idea of the discussion and Q&A spaces being combined or would you prefer they were separate, and why?
    Separate. I believe the clarity in purpose would help both the forum and the QA space. Assuming both spaces are properly moderated. Taking QA out of the forums and discussions out of the QA area. A strong separation in some way, especially for searching, would be important either way though. To not find open ended discussions when searching for solutions.

  3. Do you feel like if we combined them it would be too noisy? Would that be okay as long as we have strong filtering options between discussions and questions?
    I believe more people would be stepping by a single or a handful of times. This would definitely impact the existence and development of the forum community. This could be a boost to activity or a deterrent for people expecting a more traditional forum community. So, more noisy yes. Whether that’s too noisy is a hard judgement call.

  4. What features do you feel are essential for a Q&A experience? (Tags, filters, voting, threading, etc.)
    Comment threads are important. It should really be possible to have two ongoing conversations without introducing a lot of noise. Which is helpful for both receiving help as well as the usability when searching for solutions online. These may also go in significantly different directions which is heavily disincentivized in single thread environments.
    Voting is similarly important. Up and down. Misunderstandings and poor advice should be moved down whereas the most helpful should move up. Especially disregarding the date of submission.
    Tagging and filtering is generally a challenge. It’s a lot of effort to keep tags accurate and searchable. As far as it might help with online searches it can be very useful. But for the actual, in the moment user experience it doesn’t sound terribly important.
    Which really is the most important property. How searchable the section is. Accurately searchable. That is what makes reddit or discord poor resources. You can not properly search them. At best you randomly stumble over a reddit thread. And you probably don’t even think about searching a discord history. Which means a lot of knowledge and information is lost and buried over time. Whatever the solution, exactly that property should be in the front and center. Even with just the answerhub I’ve had a few occasions where “past me” helped me out with something I forgot. Discoverability is the vital thing.

  5. Do you feel that Discourse’s Solved Plugin would meet your needs?
    As far as I’m aware it lacks threads, which makes it a suboptimal replacement to stack exchange as mentioned above. I’m also not sure how much it would help with discoverability. Stumbling over forum threads has not been very common and has been more miss than hit. Whether that is because it’s not as commonly used to ask questions with the answerhub existing or inherent to the format is hard to tell though.

Edit 1&2. Clarified two points.

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Thanks for all the detailed and thoughtful input!

Redirects, including SEO redirects, will be vital. We know that most traffic comes from Google, because everyone is googling for solutions. It would be crazy to lose that.

I hear you all, and yes the risk with the plugin is that it is a simplified experience. It remains a forum experience. That is very much so on our minds, and it does personally worry me a bit.

We did talk with Stack, but the issue is that it would merge into the general StackExchange (can’t run your own public instance of it), which means that for one we would not be able to integrate our account system, or have dev contributions done at SE flow back or be recognized by us/within our community.
Also, the idea with bringing things together is also about stimulating and motivating people to more actively help each other through the increased visibility people would have into things, and the increased site traffic. If we’d use SE , it would again be in an entirely different location, and we fear that would work against this goal.
And worse, and this was the real deal breaker for us, migrating AH data to SE was apparently not a possibility. That means sacrificing everything that has been posted for 7 years. So…

KristofMorva:
We recognize they like getting things. The virtual recognition is important, and an area where we can do more I feel. It is an important part of this discussion for us.
AH may have its karma system, but at the end of the day the issue is that the karma points stand entirely on its own on the isolated channel that AH is today. What you’d want to have I think is a way that contributions and recognitions on one of our channels carries over to other parts. That someone who has a forum badge, or answers many posts, or has stuff on the marketplace, or has completed tutorials on UOL, or whatever else, all comes together and forms your online bling bling to put it that way, and then does what you describe.

We are aware that the forum at the moment did remove some of this, but rest assured that we are aware, and that for us putting effort into ensuring that both we at Epic, and you all between each other in the community, can better recognize those of you who stand out through activity, seniority, contributions, and so forth. I have been there myself too, when we migrate from the UDK forums to the UE4 one, I felt very let down that my post count or join date and other things got stripped for example.
To bring, or otherwise sync up, the forums and AH together is a first step to connecting the dots to allow us to do so better. In the future, within such a larger interconnected system, the ability to create such an online and personal presence resonates a lot for me, given my own background.

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I voted to merge. Answerhub always seemed like a ghost town to me, even in its earlier days when things were more active. I think because of the fact that it was separate from the official forums and was plagued with login issues it caused people to use it less.

I myself would generally find myself answering questions here more so than on Answerhub simply because of ease of access. I can make my rounds to my usual topics and then check on new threads to see what people are posting or having questions on and respond accordingly.

Then you have the communal aspect of it. On a separate site that’s strictly focused on Q&A, it feels a bit more singular in focus whereas incorporating it into the wider community discussion channel I feel it might encourage people to participate more.

Another somewhat related thing that would contribute towards learning and solutions is signatures. Or better yet the information they contained. While there are parts of the forum that are hubs for information, many users used to be able to point to their signature for links to tutorials, documentations, videos, or other useful information. In other cases forum users could simply happen upon something useful by chance and get it from there. I’m not sure where you guys are in regards to getting signatures back up and running, but if you plan to go according to how this poll is trending and blend the two experiences, I’d strongly recommend getting that feature incorporated again as it helps significantly in disseminating useful information.

That’s just my 2 cents on the matter anyways. =)

1 Like