Why is Answerhub not a Stackexchange site?

General Feedback & Requests
1

Like many programmers, I’m a heavy Stackoverflow user. It’s great.

You guys are using some wonky knockoff of a Stackexchange site. I have no idea why. Please switch to Stackexchange.

As part of that, your mods need to learn the “rules” of a Stackexchange style site. Right now your knockoff version isn’t even being used effectively - very few people upvote questions or answers, and you’ve got long conversations going in comment threads.

There’s lots of wisdom to be found in Stackoverflow policies, and you’re not using it. The software is also much better than the buggy thing you guys are using.

2

Hi Backov, thanks for the feedback.

I can’t speak on all the reasons why the AnswerHub was chosen, some of which includes issue tracking and other custom needs of ours on the backend, but you are correct that there is a lot to be gained from a Stackexchange type of site. We can’t reasonably swap sites at this moment in time, but we are working closely with the AnswerHub developers to improve and expand its functionality. I have a number of planned improvements alone for helping to surface questions by upvotes and other means.

I’m happy to hear your thoughts if you (or others) have any specific functionality you’d like to suggest.

Cheers

3

Yeah, community is hardly responsive and don’t **use **the tools provided to spread knowledge on AnswerHub.
Also I am always amused by the fact mods are always closing issues without proper answer as SOLVED. That is plain absurd.

4

For general questions, this shouldn’t be happening. Ideally it is up to the user who asked the question to go back and mark a correct answer as the “Accepted” one. Unfortunately we do notice that many users never complete this step and things remain open indefinitely. In these cases support staff may mark a best answer as accepted for thoroughness. (Also, the website has the unique feature of automatically marking any answer by staff as the correct one. This isn’t always ideal, and sometimes we may forget to revert the status).

For Bug Reports and Installation issues, the situation is a bit different. These posts are actively tracked by support staff and remain on a queue while unresolved. When support staff has taken an action on the post, and cannot proceed further on it at the time, it will be marked as resolved to clear it from our queue. Often this will be the case while we await additional information from the original author. If they do respond, then the post automatically becomes re-opened and is returned to our queue. If they don’t ever respond though, then unfortunately it never gets a proper resolution but it is marked that way so it doesn’t remain on our queue forever. For Bug Reports, the post is considered resolved once we are able to reproduce the issue successfully and log a report for it on our internal issue-tracking system. Not every bug is fixed immediately, and many fixes have to wait for future releases. But once a bug is logged internally, there are no further actions that support staff can take on a user’s Bug Report on the AnswerHub, so this is why it is marked as resolved even though the bug may still be occurring for a while in the engine.

I hope this helps explain things a little bit. I know there are opportunities for improvement to the workflows on the AnswerHub, and we are working towards that.

Cheers.

5

As Unreal Engine 5 is excepted to release this year, I would like to know if the Idea of Stack exchange is still in mind ? As the software is not only used by gamedev but also from others industry like architecture, product, or FX visuals. Unreal not only become a Game Engine, but also a Render Engine.

Finding informations in the doc is sometimes not as simple as it sounds. When searching for unreal engine error, or for documentations on way to do something specific, I see less results than others programs (even paid program that isn’t as accessible and used as unreal)

And results are split across many forms that all have their editorial line (in the way community can talk) and a lot of thread are left unanswered.

Results vary from unrealanwser (which need login to access) to forum.unrealengine, to other platforms like Reddit.

Having a real stackexchange would allow to better see similar questions, better sort questions with tags that are better interpreted with search engine like google. It also allow to better sort answers with vote/karma count, and this inevitably leads to more complete and carefully written answers.
There is also the possibility to modify the answers or the questions, and this allows to get closer to what Wikipedia have made (a commuty driven platform that produced great results as modifications goes on, and updates over time).

About the question of unresolved topic if owner of the question goes away : This isn’t really an issue as the answers are still here, people still vote and comments answers, and the chance of getting the first answer the actual solution for the issue increase compared to standard forum.

6

AnswerHub data is being migrated and integrated into The Dev Hub:

This site has now a QA & Knowledge Base sections. More reading regarding additional functionality:

7

What is the difference with a normal stackexchange (in termes of added features vs removed features).
And what are the benefices of having choose this framework ?

Another question : Does create a community stackexchange is allowed (in terms of right) (like there is a community discord) or do Epic Games© need it’s aprooval for that ?

8

People weren’t using Answerhub so they’re merging it with the forums where there’s more traffic

9

Don’t you mean, the CREATE CORE!? :upside_down_face:

1 Like
11

Because Stackoverflow is a natzi like site, where as a human being you can’t ask questions and not get bothered by what responses you get there. It’s because the way it’s setup, with arrogant answers.

It’s what you get there because it’s what that kind of site generates.

Stack Overflow is full of idiots. - YouTube

If your question gets down voted it will be shut down by the mods. Happened to me, because there is a crowd there who just comes in and downvotes you on purpose. Even if you re-evaluate your question it will not get turned on again because the mods are absurd there and they listen to the opinions of others because people who own that site tell the mods to apply this policy, meaning if you have been down voted on your question that you made and you have minus on it, the question will get shut down. And the church people there are there, if they don’t like you they will always vote you down all the time ha ha ha, because they don’t like you. You like this system ?

Each time now from now on the guru church people will vote your questions down because they have it for you. You were not begging enough and now you upset their ego, each time you put a question down vote by them. So you won’t get any answers.

Stalkoverflow It’s garbage, why would you want to bring it here.

So I asked some thing in the python section, and in a imidiate way I got an arrogant response, and I responded with what ever who cares, it’s just a question, I can’t believe you have this attitude for just questions, I’m not answering but it’s just a question, I’m here to find answers.

Almost in a imidete way they voted me down, because they are in groups there forming a church, and my question got shut down because the mods have this policy that I told you about once you reach minus whatever.

I had minus 4 on my question and had minus 7 but some of the users there tried to lift it up to get the mods not to shut it down.

Why would you want this garbage here ? This is actually a pretty good forum.

12

What, you must not live on the same world as me. Do you say the same thing with wikipedia compared to others encyclopedia ?

I personally often use the blender, the photography, the maths, and the general dev/python, and sometimes the gamedev section of stackoverflow, and god the content is so clear, so updated, so in adequation with what I need.

13

I don’t mind if you like it, I don’t.

It produces negativity in my view, I speak out of my own happening there lol.
Why would you want someone to vote you down so the can shut down your question, just because you haven’t beg properly the Shaolin Software master voter or talked in a manner that hurt his ego centric bulox

Something like, what ever, it’s just a question, I don’t care what you think. You give arrogant answers you get arrogant response. But the problem is that they are many you are one, and they say, this guy let’s vote him down, the church has decided. Everyone complains how stalk overflow sucks badly with this kind of behaving and you are cheering for them, sucking up to it.

Can you imagine this here where they paid for stuff, hired people, projects are involved with this game engine on the forum, this forum is critical for project developers and those who hired them.

They paid for stuff on the market, they paid unreal small fee from profit after publish, they paid people to handle work, the paid people depend on the forum to finish the project, the people who hired the people also depend on this forum to ask questions. Let’s create a voting system to shut them down if somehow you think they don’t put good questions according to your voting views after they paid for some things. People, market, unreal and so on.

I don’t think you are right about the beniefits of that forum.
Don’t take it personal, you like it, I don’t mind it, just don’t expect others to like what you like I would say. Afterall from time to time I go to search the posts there on that site, but I will never login there again and ask questions since in my view it’s a horrible system.

I haven’t logged in there in such a long time that I forgot my account details, it’s not worth searching for them :grinning:

14

Do you have any more specific link to how bad your experience went ? (link to downvoted post or anything else)

Personally, my experience with stackexchange isn’t maybe as far as you, (i learned how to use blender and python a lot of thanks to it)
The documentation generated with answers, and how even questions are modified to fit best reading experience this is excellent on my opinion. I was never faced with any strict moderation.

The main difference between stackexchange and a traditional forum is that for example here you have to read all our conversation to get to the conclusion, and there might not have any conclusion.

Even if i posted a question negatively, with a bad formulation, and in a bad frenglish, the anwser were still good and they corrected my question.

Link me to post where you think all the benefits of this framework turned into ashes?

It’s like some prefer traditional encyclopedia to Wikipedia, yeh, ok, I get it, but why would you only have traditional medium ? Both have their advantages, and one is used by million of users that really prefer it (more info, more language, more links, more popularisation of scientific subjects)

I learned python not because the documentation of python was good, or i found a fantastic course i followed entirely, but because i wanted to do program, and i didn’t knew the syntax, and i searched how to translate my english into python, and usually every question i asked was stackexchange posts.

About blender, when you are a beginner, and for example don’t apply subdiv, or you flip all your normal, or you unintentionally create non-manifold overlapping edges, or you have a bad color transform between software, or you want to recreate a tilt shift effect, or create a dolly zoom, or you want to know what’s best between sculpt + retopo vs hand modeling… there is so many question everyone had when learning a subject, that having short question with short yet really descriptive answer is really cool. Having to read documentation and deduce what you might have done wrong is harder. Having to read long topic of persons debating if sculpted hard surface is bad or not or if baked lighting vs not bake etc… it is awful.

Take example of all these good subject with good answer :

Now try to give me similar result with forums.unrealengine.com
All threads are people just talking with specific issue no one have the anwser.

Even the really bad designed website answers.unrealengine.com can some time give me more results than classic forum.

Don’t get me wrong, i really like forum, just like i really like books, it’s just i also like video and books is just another medium, having both is better !

Tim sometimes make fun of web people struggling to draw svg to the browser. When you have created nanite and lumen, that optimize billions of data to run on runtime, I agree with him.

But when you just didn’t want to use stackexchange as you’re not as open source philosophy as you think (tencet money) and instead of that, you create a closed website where every page take 5 sec to load, the most voted question, and karma system doesn’t work, and you have a so bad moderation that no one use your website as there is no answer, you need to think about what work and what doesn’t.