Discourse & Discord Sync - Use either to browse threads!

[Conqueror]

After our last meeting I took some time to bang out a connection between the current Forum software (Discourse) and Discord which now has a forum feature of it’s own which we avoided because for certain things, Discourse is just better.

HOWEVER

Given the success of the positions system and the obvious dip in participation on the forum we started to discuss how part of the problem was probably that a good chunk of our members don’t want to access another software and it was widely agreed upon that this is the case, even amongst some people that used to be avid forum users.

When we left the meeting I was leaning towards a “one or the other approach”, but when I went to look at the content on the forum, I realized just how much better it looks for long-form information. It has things that Discord doesn’t have like drafts and better lightboxing of links and images so they can be put in the middle of content. However, it doesn’t have that spur of the moment utility that a Forum Channel in Discord would have.

In the end I couldn’t choose one or the other, so I decided not to. I’m happy to announce that the Discourse install is now completely synced with Discord in a two-way fashion that supports images, file uploads and all markdown codes. This means that posts and comments that you make in Discord appear in their proper location on Discourse and vice versa. You can create posts and reply to posts wherever you feel like it at any given time.

The channel is located inside the “Trade Talk” category just below crypto (even though we know it’s actually above it in our hearts).

I’ve went ahead and imported some of the top threads so that they’re ready to go. From here on out when a thread that isn’t already imported has a new post on the Discourse forum, it’ll be fully imported to Discord. The reason I’m not doing a bulk import is that I don’t want to crowd it right away.

Quarks

This connection obviously is going to have some quarks, here are the main ones:

1. Messages delivered from Discourse to Discord are sent using a WebHook so they can be labeled as being from the user who posted them. This unfortunately doesn’t allow for those messages to be connected to your ACTUAL Discord account but just allows for it to have your username and pfp from the Discourse Forum.

2. Likes and reactions stay where they are triggered. Some day when I’m bored I can make likes on posts in Discord trigger a like on the post on Discourse, but the reverse is not possible.

3. Images are janky both ways in that Discourse allows them to be placed anywhere in a post but Discord just throws everything on the end. Discourse posts that are sent to Discord have the image locations replaced with “Image Placeholders” so you can see where in the content they were supposed to be (and the actual images are at the bottom). Discord posts sent to Discourse throw the images on the end like they were in Discord. Despite these, both methods of posting remain readable.

4. Discourse to Discord posts have embeds disabled because if you have 12 links in a post Discord will show 12 embeds for each link tacked onto the end making it utter unreadable.

That’s it for now. This feature is ready to go, I’m sure there will be some bugs but we’ll get them worked out.

[Conqueror]

Oh, I forgot to mention that it’s only active for the #research-analysis category (and it’s subcategories) at the moment, once we’re sure it’s stable I plan on linking everything.

[brummel]

Nice work Conq

[Conqueror]

Fixed a couple bugs with this today. Mainly that creating new threads in Discord wasn’t properly syncing them to Discourse, this is now fixed.

Going to be adding a couple more categories to the forum channel: Trading Journals, Education and Community/Development to make those threads accessible via Discord as well.

[Conqueror]

In between squashing bugs for this functionality, I’ve made a fairly substantial improvement. Instead of replacing images with a placeholder block like we’ve been doing and throwing all the images at the bottom of the full post, I’ve refactored the code to now insert images in posts written on Discourse in the same locations in the copy forwarded to Discord:

This, fairly substantially, improves the readability of these synced posts.

More soon!

[Conqueror]

Alright last update for tonight is that imported messages now are labeled including the date and time they were originally posted on the forum to cut back on confusion about how old messages are since they get the current date and time when they’re imported to discord. This indicator only shows for messages that aren’t from “today”:

Secondarily it solves an issue where if the same user posts something again later, it’s not broken up into it’s own post visually, however the labels now accomplish this (again, only for imported stuff. Non-imported stuff is correctly broken out and the times are accurate):

[Conqueror]

Trading Journals, Education and Community/Development are now added to sync

[Conqueror]

TF Notification Embeds have been updated to fit the new sync system. Embeds from non-sync’d categories will appear as normal. All categories will be synced in the future so this is a “for-now” thing.

The new embed has three features to it:

1. The top URL now points to the post inside Discord, so tapping that will take you right to that post and give you the opportunity to reply via normal Discord message instead of using the little pop-up that was present before.
2. The “Reply To Post” button is now “View On Forum”, this link takes you directly to the post on the “Main Forum”. So if you want to reply in Discord, tap #1, for the Forum tap #2.
3. The Like Post button remains the same. Unfortunately Discord doesn’t have a way to react for other users so this just likes the post for you on the Forum.

Also, new members without forum accounts will now have an account created for them so their notifications should work as normal and sync to both places as expected.

[Conqueror]

Didn’t want to keep taking up space in @HankPym’s Journal so I’ll be continuing this part of the convo here

@HankPym

I’m not sure the position system works as well for these either; both because the timing of the original plays don’t show up anymore by the time you are averaging in/out or closing the position, and because they are easily forgotten. I really like the new discord threads for managing this stuff, as it keeps things fresh and updated, but there has to be a way of making the callouts be more clearly separated as scalps vs swings, right?

I’m starting to set the stage for this using the new layout of Discord.

I talked about previously how I wanted everything to be revolved around “Catalysts”, or rather, a thread with a reason for a trade. Speaking candidly, I think it’ll be good for the community if we start to make things less revolved around scalping which I believe the current positions system is and more revolved around “thought out” trades.

For the last week we’ve been somewhat testing the idea of another type of thread, something that is broken out from the main meat of the forum and is more targeted as being a curated watchlist for the community. This idea took off pretty well and kind of hit a stride today with AVGO and then the Debt Ceiling thread:

The idea here is that we select news or something from TF and “create a thread” on the trading-floor channel that allows for the conversation to be continued and more importantly consolidated off TF while still making the conversation viewable like normal. You can see this in play this evening while TF is talking about random TF things, there is still a conversation happening related to trading from within Discord:

Now I’m not happy with the threads directly on the channel because I can’t slow-mode the thread itself without slowing TF and there are no tags so I’m going to be moving this to an actual forum channel I’ll replicate the “create a thread” functionality with an “App Command” similar to voting for a role change as well as a matching slash command to register a catalyst like you would a callout. I’ve got one created that’s being set up which currently has two tags, “Broad Catalyst” and “Intraday Catalyst”

So the idea here is to provide a way of keeping track of what we’re currently looking at vs the longer term due diligence that is hosted in the main forum. Positions should be taken from within these threads (in both catalysts and the main forum) as a shortcut of attaching a position to their content so that the thread is referenced in every callout like happens in the current watchlist functionality when it’s triggered from a thread:

This means that shorter vs longer term should be automatically indicated based on the type of thread the position is taken from:

1. Catalysts → Short term (< 1 Week)
2. Main Forum → Longer term (> 1 Week)

Where the position system has fallen short is that it’s almost always position first and explanation second whereas it’s truly meant to be the second step. There should be a thesis, or at least a reason stated that positions are taken off of and if one doesn’t exist I honestly don’t think the position is beneficial or should be followed.

When this is in practice it’ll provide us the opportunity to show all the positions someone has with links to detailed explanations and content specifically surrounding that position. So I can look at all of House’s plays for instance and see why he is specifically in each one which I think will further reinvigorate TF to be collaborative as we’re already starting to see again.

In addition to working with positions, these threads will be the place where we’ll start attaching events to build out the “calendar” I’ve talked about before. Naturally there are going to be some new commands and such to make this all work seamlessly and given that I’m focused on Discord dev above all else at the moment I’m excited to get those banged out.

Dashboard and Quick Views

So there are parts of this system that simply don’t work great from within Discord, for instance I can’t provide a chart that is scale-able. The initial reason I started branching out when I made the positions system to begin with was because of the limitations. For instance this feature which showed the totality of a position:

The issue is that past 25 updates I can’t show any more of it and because of the way Discord formats things it comes out fucking MASSIVE anyway. So while it does solve the “seeing everything” issue that @HankPym had pointed out, you get to a point where the information it provides isn’t enough fairly quickly as the play drags on.

So in order to fix this, I need to firstly fix the above command but secondly I need to create some faster, simpler views that can be opened from discord to expand the current functionality. For instance showing just that “full view chart” and then providing a link that opens a quick mobile-friendly view to view a real scrollable chart and the full history of the position.

So all this is to say that I agree, we need to make some changes to keep the building momentum we have in our revitalization efforts and I’m actively working on them.

[Conqueror]

The last post isn’t importing into Discord correctly. I’m going to fix it tomorrow but for now I suggest reading it on the actual forum: https://forums.ascendedtrading.com/t/discourse-discord-sync-use-either-to-browse-threads/14875/16

[Conqueror]

Send to Thread

This functionality is now up and running. Right click a message (or long press on Mobile) and select Send to Thread in the Apps select menu:

This will pop up a menu where you can select the thread to send it to:

The message is forwarded as-is in the name of the original user:

And TF is notified that it was forwarded:

This allows for us to send messages to relevant threads without having to copy and paste the content. You can’t send the same message to the same thread multiple times but the same message can be sent to multiple threads independently.

[Conqueror]

Community posts, trading journals and education posts have been moved to their own form channels at <#1112910886244450314> <#1111695019724767314> and <#1111694845665353728>. This means the forum channel has been renamed “due diligence” as it is now exclusively for trading related threads. <#1106630736880078939>

[Conqueror]

1. Fixed images on Discord to Discourse synced embeds.
2. Legends channel now embeds to <#846739018228957224> like the other forum channels do.

Still figuring out issues with syncing image heavy posts from Discourse to Discord and there’s currently a bug in <#1111694845665353728> that is preventing threads from importing correctly.

Going to be working on positions system related integrations here in a bit.

[Conqueror]

All known issues with sync have been fixed as of this morning.

1. Complex threads with many images now imported as expected and with the images in the proper order.
2. The threads in <#1112910886244450314>, <#1111695019724767314> & <#1111694845665353728> now auto import in their entirety and not just the last few recent posts.

If there are any threads you participate in that are not properly imported, just let me know and I’ll trigger a re-import on them.