Shut down the AF Discord server.

[Cy~]

I have a simple question. Why does this site have a Discord group?

 

There doesn't seem to be much linkage between the forum and the discord group. Not only that, but the forum itself actually has a built-in chat feature (which is rarely used). As far as I can tell, the sole function of the discord group is to cannibalize the "stickiness" of the forum.

 

Let me speak from my own experience on this. I have ran and been a moderator in both forums and chat servers since the days of IRC bots in the mid/late 90s. Forums and chat servers do not mix. Forums are conversational frameworks that encourage interaction. Chat servers are random hodgepodges that were originally intended for for time sensitive communications.

 

Chat servers are hard to moderate; the tools provided are sparse, the logs are troublesome, and being able to trace a specific line of events is a pita. The groups that tend to talk on chat servers do not tend to add any value to a forum community over the long term. They're used to a different medium, and they don't tend to care for the gentle exchange of ideas over long periods of time.

 

The only good reason that I could possibly imagine for a forum to have a Discord group is for gaming. However, I see no gaming events and no gaming staff to moderate the potential messes. The only other (somewhat good) reason would be if the forum exists solely to provide announcements and support for the chat group. However, it's clear that the forum community is a fully independent creature.

 

This takes me back to my original question. This site doesn't have a lot of moderators (certainly not enough to cover all time zones). Why spread your resources out to places that are going to be hard to control?

 

I saw a link to a discord server posted today, and basically went like "wtf". If you look at the pros and the cons, then there are a lot more cons to discord groups than pros. It takes me back to my original question. Why? All that is being done is the creation of a separate, more difficult to moderate, community with its own culture which may or may not grow and develop in line with the forum.

[zoop]

Either that, or just dis-affiliate it, imo. Things like that in my experience just end up fracturing communities into the 'forumers' and the 'chatters', creating increasing amounts of disconnect between them. Also, the chat on the site works well and is quite enjoyable to use. Just my opinion, though.

 

I'd much rather drive people's attention and activity toward the on-site chat and the forum itself, basically.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Guest

[Cy~]

Can I soapbox on this a little further?

 

Chat rooms expose a site owner to a frightening amount of liability. The reason for this is that people can post things, edit them, and (depending on settings) even delete things that they've posted.

 

Let me just share a list of some of the shit that I have seen posted in chat rooms that were overflowing with site staff -

• Intense, unrelenting negativity and hostility
  
• Pedophiliac content
  
• Online "gang rape" fiction directed at other members
  
• Personal information for the purpose of harassment
  

 

On a forum, all of your content is neatly categorized and tools exist for reporting, tracking reports, and responding to reports. In a chat room, you really have to be sleepless to police things perfectly, and you can still miss things or make mistakes.

 

Chat rooms make me nervous as an administrator, because I've ended up pretty close to some hot water in the past due to no personal actions of my own. To me, that just isn't worth it.

[brycec]

I never been on the discord service, but it certainly does seem redundant.

 

Then again, I am not too sure how many people, other than Optic, were or would have been here when this site was founded.

 

Either way, it does not really hurt things, except for administrating the server and such.

[Teru]

Honestly, I just use the discord chat right now to see if there's any new post because there's a sound alert.

[zoop]

Honestly, I just use the discord chat right now to see if there's any new post because there's a sound alert.

 

I'd forgotten about that! Though, with that said, the forum chat page does the same thing.

[Optic]

The Discord server was created by other members and when I first checked it out I thought it was great, the original plan was to actually replace the Forum Chat with Discord, as it was much more modern and also had the bonus of having push notifications for the iOS/Android Discord apps.

 

I trialled promoting it by adding a live user list Discord widget on the sidebar of the forum home page.

 

But unfortunately, this had a side effect of new users going straight to the Discord server and mostly staying there - drastically reducing forum activity. In some ways Discord is just too good, it's almost a sub-community by itself. The biggest issue with Discord is there is no way to embed it on a web page, you can only use it from the web or via an app.

 

I tried to mitigate this by adding a bot within the Discord server that would automatically post a link for each new thread and post created but it didn't help much so in the end I removed the sidebar widget to help the forums recover.

 

In light of the recent events, I'll need to review our official stance on the Discord server again. Admittedly I haven't been visiting the Discord server recently, so I will monitor it more closely and make a decision on it in the coming days.

[zoop]

If the chat were somehow improved upon, and the Discord server were disbanded, I think there would certainly be more traffic. But as it stands, I think right now I prefer Discord.

 

Actually - this is possible in the chat's current configuration.

 

 

Under the settings pull-down, you have a surprising depth of configuration options for the chat, including the Display Mode option at the bottom, which has the following options:

 

• All pages (places the chat in an expandable bar at the bottom of all pages that can pulled up at any time)
  
• Above / Below content (places the chat app, as it exists on the front page, on the top or bottom of most pages.
  
• Above / Below Forums List (below being the current default)
  
• Sidebar Below Visitor Panel / Sidebar Bottom (places the chat in the forum index's side bar... tiny bit too scrunched up to be useful imo)
  

Actually, I wonder if the All Pages mode might be a nice default for the chat.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Guest

[zoop]

@Wedgy

 

Odd! I wonder if this might be a matter of permissions.

 

@Optic is this something that could be opened up to other users, assuming it isn't already intended to be? I'm actually growing very fond of the All Pages chat bar that follows me around now.

[Cy~]

We may not be getting the same version of this chat then, zoop.

 

Yeah, I was just about to say that as well. Hahaha.

 

Maybe it's a permissions issue?

 

Edit: Everyone's a ninja, this morning.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Guest

[Nectar]

I do not appear to have these "Display Options" you speak of, unless I'm still missing something here. I did try changing site theme to make sure it wasn't something crazy like that, but they simply are not there. However, if there are some options out there, I think we may have just found a possible solution. If there was a way to make that all default, I think it should be done, because not everyone who visits the site is going to have the mind to switch the chat into the most user-friendly mode.

Amusingly, I was writing a post with the exact same thing just when you posted this

 

 

This certainly seems to be a permissions issue xP

Also, I'd like to add that despite my checking of the Private Messages box, I recieve no notifications of the sort

It would have been very useful, and might have swayed me from discord, had it worked

[sbauer]

i dont know! but looks bad.

[John jobs]

I honestly use discord because its hard on mobile....i use to use the built in chat because i didnt have discord but the lack of people chatting was what got me.....im open to any disicion

[Optic]

We may not be getting the same version of this chat then, zoop.

Odd! I wonder if this might be a matter of permissions.

Hi @Wedgy, @Nectar - please try now. Permissions adjusted.

 

This permission got missed on my end as this was a newish feature the developer of the Chat module added.

[John jobs]

Does it work for everyone now?

[zoop]

Does it work for everyone now?

 

It should, from the sound of it. Go take a look and let us know!

[Optic]

Yes, I must admit I didn't actually know about this feature until @zoop mentioned it. Maybe we can set it as the default.

 

I will also work on styling the bar to make it match with the latest Heiki theme.

 

:noire-crazy:

[zoop]

Yes, I must admit I didn't actually know about this feature until @zoop mentioned it. Maybe we can set it as the default.

 

I will also work on styling the bar to make it match with the latest Heiki theme.

 

I'm actually really impressed with the amount of customization that the chat app has! I was originally expecting it to be an extremely bare bones thing right at first, I confess.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Guest

[Metro]

Since the Discord server isn't actually apart of the forum it self and was made by a user so people who already used Discord could chat with one another and at one point the forum did have a bar at the bottom with the link to the discord and who was on it but that has since been removed but since it actually isn't part of the forum I think it should just be left there.

[Davis]

it was originally designed to do group activities such as listening to music, organizing watchalongs and anything else as a group.

 

group activities such as watchalongs can be great, but time zones sometimes prevent this.

 

i agree with metro, it was a server created by the members themselves and im happy for it to be there.

 

most people tend to have discord anyway, so if someone wants to join it why not, if members want to organize gaming sessions between them why not.

 

i guess they could make their own server, but why shut something down that members themselves created.

 

if it is shut down, another server can be made or members can create groups themselves so i don't believe it will make a difference.

[zoop]

Since the Discord server isn't actually apart of the forum it self and was made by a user so people who already used Discord could chat with one another and at one point the forum did have a bar at the bottom with the link to the discord and who was on it but that has since been removed but since it actually isn't part of the forum I think it should just be left there.

 

Aye, like I said, I think it makes sense to simply clarify that it isn't an official extension of the forum, and that it's no real different than any other Discord server. I think a lot of people think, seeing the invite link in the bulletin board (and, previously, the Discord users sidebar component) that it's closely and tightly linked and interconnected, that they both fall under Optic's purview, and that the same rules from the forum apply in the same ways. If this isn't the case - and it doesn't sound like it, given that Optic wasn't the original creator - then I think it should simply be made a little more clear.

 

To address that, I'd simply remove the thread in the Bulletin Board in which it was introduced, and treat advertising for it as being no different than advertising for anything else - basically just limit it to signatures and profiles. I guess the server name could be clarified to state that it's an unofficial thing, but that's really up to the owner I suppose.

 

At the end of the day, AF is a forum, so I just think it makes sense to not de-emphasize this in any way.

[Frost]

The AF Discord was mainly created by me and @Cirkadian. When we originally started it, as some other members mentioned, it was suppose to be a way for a large group of us to voice chat and coordinate events and things of that nature. I use to use it daily and I would VC with a small group of people from here almost every single night. It also helped us coordinate group watchalongs.

 

This was end of last year/beginning of this year. Since then, the main people who were getting on here to VC and use it for events, stopped using it.

 

Here are my thoughts on it.

 

The cons of the server are that, for a brief period of time, users were more drawn to getting on discord than they were actually using the forum. I noticed this change pretty quickly. It actually became difficult for me to get members to post here. They would just want to chat over discord. Another con is that it can be used for negative reflection of the forum, as anyone can really post there, and there's now, little regulation of the server. We use to have several members with permissions who logged on to keep things pretty steady and regulated.

 

The pros are that, I do think its an interesting dimension or extension of the forum if we could get it used like we use to. Group VC's, music rooms, etc. Discord is also pretty much used by everyone. It's fairly easy to use and is preferred over the chat module by a vast majority of members.

[Optic]

I have taken steps to make the Discord server unofficial.

 

The topic about it has been removed from the Bulletin Board section. I also have left the Discord platform, which means that the web-hook which was sending new thread/post notifications from here to the Discord server will also be deactivated. I am unable to commit to both chatting and moderating it due to time constraints with several projects. In truth I have been very inactive on the Discord server for the last few months for this very reason.

 

The Discord server was originally created by members as an informal place to gather - just in the same way anyone could make an unofficial Steam group or Facebook Messenger conversation group as a quick place to gather for events. I'm certainly not against having these other channels as they excel for live events and gatherings.

 

But from an official and practical stand-point, we cannot endorse any of these platforms (Steam, Discord, etc.) as official AF platforms. It's unfeasible because there is a lack of "Report" tools, as well as the lack of AF staff available to keep an eyes on things - they're already focused heavily on the forums here.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Guest

[Cy~]

I have taken steps to make the Discord server unofficial.

 

Hello Optic, thank you for considering my request, replying in here with thoughts, and taking an action. < 3

 

Also thank you to everyone else that chimed in here.

[existentiallylostdumbell]

What's a discord?

[Optic]

What's a discord?

Discord is a free text/voice chat service that is marketed as a Skype and TeamSpeak replacement.