News State of skUnity: 2024 - Response Overview

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Hi everyone,
We recently ran the State of skUnity: 2024 Survey and had over 40 responses which was double the count of last year's State of skUnity. It's been great seeing the feedback. This post is an overview of the responses. I won't be sharing specifics regarding the responses from the survey.

Donating to skUnity
Pretty much all responses said how they donated to help support skUnity. Those who haven't donated said they would, but they lack the funds. A small percentage said there aren't enough incentives to donate. Overall, the response was that people are happy with what skUnity provides as gifts for donating. Suggestions included exclusive help channels and events. We want to give as much value to your donation as possible, but we have to do this without adding a cost to skUnity. We'll continue to look into what we can offer supporters of skUnity.

skUnity Discord - Activity
A majority of respondents use the skUnity Discord for over an hour a day. The main reasons why people are in the skUnity Discord is because it's the only active Skript Discord, and even more so because they like the community and chat. Getting help with Skript, and liking the way the server is set up were equal at 31% each. We can't force activity in the server, but internally have noticed year-on-year increases in activity across all channels, not just Skript help.

skUnity Discord - Likes & Dislikes
The main likes are the server setup, including things like the Showcase channel, Famous Quotes, and Skript Help. Praise was given for a good range of channels to provide specific discussion, but also for not having massive amounts of irrelevant channels. We're always looking at what channels we can create to provide value to the server, and constantly assessing our current channels to look for improvements, or even if a channel needs to be closed down.

In terms of dislikes, most comments pointed at toxicity. This is always a tricky one to judge. As staff, we don't always see the toxic parts of a server because people hide it when a member of staff is present. I believe most are on about the general attitude of Skript help, and attitudes of certain members. Skript help has been great for server activity, and we want to have a great place for people to get help, while also providing channels for general chat and discussion. We do have many plans for the Skript help channels. Any attempt at changing Skript help has to be carefully evaluated to not cause harm. In terms of attitudes of specific members, as a staff team, we're discussing internally what members cause trouble, and how we can improve the general feel of the server. Overall, I do believe the toxicity in skUnity to be very limited, and compared to many other servers, skUnity is a great place to be.

skUnity Staff Team
Overall feedback about the skUnity Staff Team was positive. A majority of people chose Good or Perfect when asked to rate the skUnity Staff Team. Certain questions had some leaning towards Needs Attention, so these specific ones will be investigated to see where we can improve. Staff teams can face negative feedback as people don't like being punished, but the feedback here looked good, and there is no reason for us to have to make any sudden changes to our staff team.

Language Channels
International Help has gone through many iterations, we were asking for feedback about a possible future iteration where we use roles to show language channels to users. 31% of the vote was No. 23% was Maybe. The remaining was then either yes, or a mixture of handwritten yes/no. We appreciate everyone's feedback and will continue to discuss internally what we can do with International Help to improve it.

AI Content
The rules around AI content might seem a bit overkill to some. We have a server-wide (except #ai-chat), no AI-generated content allowed rule. We allow the discussion of AI in #general, but sharing AI-generated content is not allowed. AI-generated content can be useful, funny, or interesting, but it quite often leads to spam of content that doesn't require any skill. The person sharing it, only put in a few words in for an AI to use other people's work for the final output. As a staff team, this is something we want which is AI-generated content in a specific channel, and the results did agree. A majority of users said they like the #ai-chat channel but do not want any more AI-related channels, they also don't want there to be any place for AI-generated content. The results also showed that a majority of respondents do not want AI-generated content in more channels, and most certainly do not want AI-generated content in Skript Help. The written feedback question about AI also showed that a majority of respondents like AI for some tasks, but do not want to see it in all channels. Due to this feedback, the AI-generated content rule will remain the same, and #ai-chat will continue to be the only channel where AI-generated content is allowed. Showcase will continue not to allow AI-generated content.

skUnity Showcase
The skUnity Showcase channel is quite a popular part of skUnity and is used by many to show off their work. Overall, the feedback was quite mixed. Each question about Showcase was very close to 50/50 when grouping up Strongly Disagree with Disagree, and Agree with Strongly Agree. The main feedback we're seeing here is that the cooldown isn't too long for Showcase (it's currently 24 hours), and that Showcase doesn't allow for enough types of content. Respondents don't have a problem with the amount of posts in Showcase, but there are mixed views on the same people posting in Showcase, and the quality of the content. We're going to internally discuss what would be best for Showcase in terms of what content to allow, how long the cooldown should be, and agreements on what level of quality should be allowed.

Skript Help
Oh, Skript Help... everyone loves to hate. Skript Help is a difficult one to moderate, keep focused, and allow for actually getting help. Feedback here showed that respondents think there are a correct number of channels. Moderation overall is good, and the channels are overall, in a good place. The question "Slowmode on skript-help-2 should be kept on," was very much 50/50. We like the slowmode on #skript-help-2 as it helps encourage users to try #skript-help or #skript-help-3. #skript-help-2 is the busiest of the three channels by far, slowmode helps keep things at a good pace and stops people from spamming messages. To bypass slowmode requires the "Manage Messages" permission in Discord. We'd love to let skUnity Supporters bypass this, but we just can't give everyone that permission. We probably won't remove the slowmode as it does help spread the load from the channel. What we might look into is having a bot determine the activity of the channel and increase the slowmode when needed. Pieces of written feedback asked for a #skript-faq style channel, and more bot commands to let people quickly advise users on the correct ways to get help. These are great suggestions that we will see about implementing.

SkriptLang Channels
skUnity provides a range of channels directly related to SkriptLang. skUnity isn't affiliated with SkriptLang in any way, but we want to make sure everyone has easy access to what they need. All the feedback here was positive towards the SkriptLang channels being on skUnity. A majority of respondents selected Agree or Strongly Agree to SkriptLang being on skUnity, the SkriptLang channels existing, and also that they're able to keep up to date with Skript through skUnity. We won't be making any changes to these channels, but it has been great feedback for both skUnity and SkriptLang.


Most to Least used Channels
In order of how much each channel is used according to the responses, Showcase, Famous Quotes, Addon Development, Resource Meta, Share Your Pets, Safe for Work Memez, and finally, Exclusive Chat. This channel order does make sense, going from useful and funny channels, to niche discussion channels, and then Exclusive Chat which isn't extremely active. None of these channels need any attention, but it's great to see what people think about our more generic channels. Good bits of feedback included suggestions about combining channels to create a broader selection of content in them, such as Share Your Pets and Safe for Work Memez.

In terms of suggestions, there are a range of suggested channels. Including more Java-related channels, a best-of-the-best Showcase channel, more language categories, and a serious discussion channel. These are great suggestions and we will look into each suggestion and what value it can bring to the server. None of these channels will be created in the immediate future as any new channel requires planning from the staff team to ensure it can be moderated properly and is also safe for all users.

skUnity Discord Feedback
A majority of the written feedback is positive about the skUnity Discord. There weren't any negatives written here. We're thrilled to see that people do like being on the skUnity Discord. We're going to continue doing what we're doing to give everyone the best server they can be in.

skUnity Forums
The skUnity Forums are used by skUnity primarily for user management. They also help generate content for Google which lets others find skUnity, and get help as Discord lacks this completely. The overall feedback is that the skUnity Forums are ok, which isn't much of a surprise. Forum-style discussion has fallen out of favour for instant messaging platforms like Discord. We've got some plans to improve the skUnity Forums, but for now, there isn't any feedback that requires immediate attention.

skUnity Resources
Not many problems here. From the feedback, for the most part, skUnity Resources provides good quality resources and there aren't any issues with it. While there are other sources to download Skript content from, skUnity Resources helps provide quality-assured content and also helps new developers out by providing real feedback. Other resource sites allow all content with no review which has partly given Skript a bad name for poor content. Respondents were happy with the feedback given from posting their content on skUnity Resources, even in cases where their content was denied or approved.

skUnity Tools - Sync with GitHub
Not a lot of people have used this which shows a lack of promoting it on our part. Even with little feedback here, we understand that we need to market our tools more actively and provide documentation on how to use everything on skUnity.

skUnity Docs
A majority of feedback here has fallen to the content on the skUnity Docs itself, and also some styling tweaks are needed. The skUnity Docs have gone through many different iterations, and feedback shows that for the most part, people do like the skUnity Docs, but there are minor tweaks required. Most problems are with outdated syntax and addons which do need to be removed from the skUnity Docs. We're going to take all this feedback on board and draft a plan of action on how to remove outdated content and provide higher-quality content.

skUnity Dashboard
As part of the new skUnity update, the skUnity Dashboard was released to get rid of the buggy, skUnity Docs Admin Panel. There wasn't much feedback here, but it's not used by many people except addon developers. We won't be doing much to the skUnity Dashboard for now, as there aren't any problems with it.

skUnity Tools - SmartImport
SmartImport received a rewrite as part of new skUnity and has massively improved its syntax detection. Feedback suggests the unreliability of SmartImport, but we believe this to be outdated and related to the first version of SmartImport. It falls into the same problem category as Sync with GitHub; a lack of promotion and documentation. This feedback has shown we need to properly document features on skUnity.

skUnity Tools - JSONImport
Similar feedback to SmartImport, the lack of documentation makes it confusing to know how to use it. We'll be creating dedicated documentation for our range of skUnity Tools.

The skUnity Parser
Feedback suggests that people do like the skUnity Parser, but the common problems are parse times being long, or parsing failing unexpectedly, and having a localhost server be a better alternative. We've got plans to make the skUnity Parser better, but these require a lot of development time. Our plans for the skUnity Parser are to allow more interaction with servers and update the parsing to Skript 2.8. Feedback on the design of the skUnity Parser was positive and no issues were mentioned there.

skUnity Connect
This is a new feature which launched quite recently. There wasn't much feedback, but the feedback that we did get showed how our lack of marketing and documentation means that users aren't aware it exists, and how to use it. There was some interesting feedback on which direction people would like to see skUnity Connect go, and it has helped give us the preferred options for development focus.

skUnity Guides
The general feedback was that the design is good, but there isn't much content on there. We can't force people to write content, but we do understand there needs to be better ways of writing content and more encouragement. We're going to look at what we can do to provide even more tutorials and guides to Skript users to help everyone out.

skUnity Downloads
Overall, the feedback about skUnity Downloads was positive. We recently added new features to skUnity Downloads, and don't see any need for any changes to this part of skUnity.

skUnity Snippets
From feedback based on the questions we asked about the skUnity Snippets, we'll be doing the following:
  • Updating the Snippets page on the skUnity Docs to be more feature-rich
  • Giving the ability to update/edit Snippets once posted
  • Add a way to post Snippets from the skUnity Docs
  • Show Snippets on related syntax on the skUnity Docs
skUnity Snippets does need attention, and the responses we've received confirm this. We will be moving this up the priority list to hopefully get some updates done as soon as possible.

skUnity API
No major feedback here, other than adding a way for posting threads/replies so someone can use their 3DS to access the skUnity Forums.

Events on skUnity
94% of respondents want to see more Skript Challenges and events on skUnity. Event planning is hard. We have to take into consideration the difficulty of the event, how accessible it is, and overall community feelings towards it. For example, to plan a Skript Challenge, we have to ensure the challenge provides a reasonable level of difficulty to not be too easy, but also can't be too hard. It has to be fun and accessible without being confusing. Even events like skUnity Game Night take a lot of planning and organising to ensure they can even happen. We do want to run more events, and the feedback here shows we need to talk more about what we can do. A majority of respondents did enjoy the Maze Generator Skript Challenge which gives us a somewhat good starting point to base future Skript Challenges on. There were some suggestions about future Skript Challenges which will help us out as it's always difficult to even start thinking of what to base a Skript Challenge around. Advent of skUnity had an 85% yes vote for making a comeback, so hopefully this December, we will have some sort of Christmas event planned.

skUnity Game Night received good feedback, although most users said that the times we run the event aren't always the best. Unfortunately, this comes down to the ability to host the event. skUnity Game Night does need either a member of staff or a reliable member of the community to run the event.

State of skUnity
As expected, feedback about the survey itself said how long the survey was, but that it was a good way of giving feedback. We hadn't originally intended to run the State of skUnity survey like this, but as we haven't done anything since last year, a longer version was required. Our plan for future State of skUnity surveys is to do smaller surveys with a focus on a specific part of skUnity. We need to gather feedback from the community and use a survey in which respondents can be anonymous to get more replies. Even those who have included their skUnity Forums or Discord usernames and provided negative feedback, there are no harsh feelings. If no one tells us what is wrong, we might never find out. All feedback, whether good or bad, helps us improve things for everyone.

The survey didn't cover every part of skUnity, there were channels missed, events such as Ducky's Gone Missing, and other parts of skUnity that we didn't ask for feedback about. The State of skUntiy survey contained 99 questions in total so it was pretty long already. In the next months, we'll do a State of skUnity survey but focus on the skUnity Discord and cover things like Ducky's Gone Missing and channels we didn't ask about. It's appreciated that so many people spent time filling out the survey. We'll be discussing the survey results internally, and I will be reaching out to respondents who have filled in their skUnity Forums or Discord usernames to gain additional insight where possible.

Thank you all
 
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