Some suggestions about the Discord server

You are not demanding and I see your point but do you really think that people bother to write in the right channel?

When I look how many people constantly post stuff in the wrong places eventhough the purpose of places is extensively described then I have very little hope that it would work on discord.

New people on discord will post their questions instantly on the main channel (that would be my bet).

And honestly, having to check multiple channels every day to figure out if something important has been posted or not doesn't really make a huge difference other than having to do a few more clicks.

Information still gets lost sooner or later because Discord does not offer a way to structure stuff in a way that you would be able to find info older than a few hours or days.

e.g. If someone would post a bug report on discord and I by accident would read that stuff in the morning hours while I am at the office then this bug never will get fixed because by the time I get home I forgot about the report and most certainly wont read about it ever again. And that is what happens to every information that potentially could be important.

I dont mind the discussions and even the spam on discord. But I have a problem when people expect information posted on discord to be taken seriously while the forum which would allow a much better way to discuss important stuff is being more and more ignored.

Why do I even bother to write these topics if nobody bothers to read them?

Why am I asking for feedback on important topics and patiently wait for replies which I never get?

This is what pissed me off.

New Discord channels wont make a difference in my eyes. The fundamental problems remain.

But lets try to make a dedicated spam channel and see how this works... either the channel will die after just a few weeks because only tribbs is posting there or people return posting the spam/youtube stuff on the main channel again.

Imo better may work creation of annoucement channel where only few people can write and where will be posted only important stuff. People can use reactions for example which also is good and can serve as feedback with no spam effect. This works quite well on other discords. Main channel(s) is(are) always spammed, there simply is no way around it in any at least little active discord server. In annoucement can be posted just link (example), it will copy start of thread and is obvious enough for what purpose it is. Another advantage of properly used annoucement channel is, that people tends to not mute these channels ...

My feelings are similar to OPs. I don't think more discord channels will do any good. Why do we have a forum? What bothers players to post here? Discord for me is indeed a Spam program? Where or when there has been the last useful discussion?

Quote from Huor

My feelings are similar to OPs. I don't think more discord channels will do any good. Why do we have a forum? What bothers players to post here? Discord for me is indeed a Spam program? Where or when there has been the last useful discussion?

But this is how people (young, younger) lives now and Corona helped it even more. They want to chat with others (spam if you like) and play games, and mostly do not bother at all with forums reading. Maybe wiki is/are exception to this trend. I see it daily while play and talk with other folks in our squadron in Elite Dangerous. Forum is simply not fast enough or interactive enough to keep group with hundreds of different people (and there are quite old folks there too) together. Forum is usefull tool (or can be useful tool), but people better ask on discord about something that go into forum for search info there by themselves. Forums are perfect for keep information organised and searchable, but times when they were the only places where people primarily spent time with searching for info are gone ...

Yeah but that is the point.

The organization part is what is important here, this is where the problems started.

That people do their discussions on Discord is totally fine (putting aside that people which missed that discussion at that specific moment never will get the chance to share their views 2 weeks or 2 months later -> something that perfectly works on a forum because threads still exist and people can jump into discussions at any point of time and most likely even after months get answers to their questions).

But the whole organizing stuff simply does not work on Discord because I can not seperate topics there the way I can in forum threads. I can not put out information there that is easy to find while on a Forum the name of a thread already tells people what type of content is discussed and if this content is portentially important to know.

People on discord would have to scroll through hundreds of posts to maybe find the information they are looking for while on a forum they just pick one of the 10 threads that were recently posted in a specific area.

And nobody needs to tell me that this is a hard or slow task to do on a forum. Nobody needs to search for vital information in the Off topic section or "post some funny pics" threads. It is so much easier to categorize stuff on a forum and filter out what you want from the stuff you dont want.

And for me as developer organizing and categorizing stuff is vital to actually be able to do my work.

It is a nightmare when people drop information via PM or on Discord and I read that stuff by accident in the morning ours when I am at work. When I get home late evening I barely even remember such stuff and if I still remember that there was an issue I have to search where I have read that stuff.

That is why I introduced the Ticketsystem to even better store information, categorize it and deal with the issues when I have the time for that.

Discord is a nightmare in an organized development process and even if it was not about CF development it would be important being able to manage the daily server stuff, the requests, the problems, etc.

We need the Forum and people need to use it. It does not help me or anybody else if stuff only happens on discord.

lol ... I really perfectly understand your pain as I see numerous shortcomings with discord usage too daily. Eventhough, to be fair, I think you could be surprised that some hybrid structures with good organisation works very well on discord. It however need people actively working on it and this here is not the case where I think it can be effective for us. Final decision is of course up to you. My suggestions regarding discord more effective use are:

- creation of Annoucement channel with restricted access (there can be really only top importance stuff, so you, me and Huor can cover its use perfectly). Few things which can be in posts there are link to portal, mod installer, wiki, clan system rents, utilities for change accounts. And then info related to portal functioning changes, new mod version release, Moddb mod awards etc. In fact that channel I think will be used only rarely, but info posted there will be quickly reachable by all discord server users and will always lead to portal and/or moddb. Discord can use some basic text formatting, so it can be done also visually decent (not at all on forum level, but good enough)

- more frequent use of pinned posts by moderators

All my feelings go against discord when I think about all the stuff required to keep things running here.

I don't want to do any announcements on discord. I want to do them here.

Every movement towards discord means to move away from the forum and what reasons should people have to visit the forum any longer if we keep delivering stuff to discord. In the end nobody will check the forum for information, nobody will use it to give feedback, nobody will participate in needed discussions here.

And that in result would be very bad for the community, the mod development and this place in general.

Discord is a distraction and I personally don't want to use it.

It disturbs my workflow.

I dont want to read through all that crap. More channels might look nice on the paper but I the end it just means I have to read more through more channels.

I dont want people to think that they can write stuff into discord and get reliable answer from me because I dont want to scroll back pages of content and I dont want to be available on discord all the time.

I dont want to hear that fucking message tone when I am trying to get work done.

On the contrary.

Whats so difficult for people to check the forum once in a while?

Why do I have to change something that had worked perfectly for 18 years for something that is going to cause a shitload of problems?

The portal will continue to be what it is now - the primary source of information for CF mod, CF server, ticketing etc.

Consider Discord as a gateway, from where the channel moderators can leverage the routing - ie: pointing people to the portal by either posting the link of an important thread, or redirecting someone to a specific wiki section, tickets etc.

In general, regardless of the community types, when there's a discord / guilded server involved, most of the traffic is done in these chat services, due to ease of access, people being involved in other communities / discord servers, live interaction with other community members, etc etc.

Yes - it's primary function will be chatting, jokes, memes, vids etc - something that cannot be done on a forum. But on the other hand - for all CF related stuff, it will serve as a router.

I extended the moderation rights with channel management.

Super Moderators btw already had these rights since... probably the portal discord server was created.

If you want to do changes... feel free to try your luck with it.

OK, tried make use of what I have suggested. I cannot set wrtiting rights for that new channel, but I set for it maximal slow mode which should resolve most issues with anyone trying to spam it except us