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.