[Discussion] A lore forum Discord chat channel!

[Theodric]

So, there's been talk about this very recently and it's an idea I've toyed with myself more than once in the past. I figured I'd go ahead and make a Discord chat for our little community here.

INVITE LINK:

https://discord.gg/43ySm2R

As you can see, there's been a lot of debate within this thread. Some people were all for it, others had concerns, yet others had no interest. Yet it's a thing that now exists and we'll see how it goes.

The rules are pretty simple - 'be excellent to each other'. I'd like to think that's fair and self explanatory. The intention of this chat isn't to replace this forum. It's there to offer a platform for more casual debate, to get to know fellow lore fans a bit better and to offer up a place to chat about the lore on the go for those who do a lot of traveling and can't easily access this forum on the move.

There may be growing pains. There might not be. We'll see!

As of this post, we have four sub-channels:

- Lore Discussion

A place to discuss the game's lore.

- Spoiler Discussion

A place to discuss the most recent spoilers. When 4.5 goes live, that's the place to be if you want to chat about specific plot revelations.

- Off Topic:

Casual socialising! Chat about the game, your day at work, your cat...your hobbies. That sort of thing.

- Role-play Discussion

A place to discuss role-play, character concepts and so on.

[Anonymoose]

Existence

As I said in the other thread(s), I occasionally get approached about making such a Discord hub for lore-minded people - and have, a few times - and currently have a (mostly) empty one that I repurpose every time someone wants to give it a shot. Though leaving the invite link in an open forum seems risky, lol.

Moderation

I appreciate all the thought that Theodric has put into it above. They'll hold if there are large numbers, but getting to large enough numbers to merit such bureaucracy is half the battle.

I also might argue the "don't boot unless strictly necessary" part. The Gamer Escape server has had a similar rule, and over the ages I've noticed that by the time someone who is a mild problem but perpetuates a constant mid-level unenjoyable atmosphere finally does something to merit action, they've driven numerous others to mute or leave the server, already. One in five only needs the one warning. At least three in five don't ever really improve and slowly escalate towards the kick.

Though I've had some success with using a bot to add strikes to records based even on making the atmosphere negative. Then any mod can just check the strike card and see, yeah, this isn't getting better.

Composition

One thing that makes me nervous is that there are so many people on the forums who've been here for years that I can imagine a dozen who'd think, "Obviously I'd be one of the showrunners." and I highly doubt those dozen have the same concept in mind.

Would it fracture the forums?

A little? I've never seen Discord kill a forum, just other VOIPs. We'd see a downturn in whimsy threads that are based on one simple question, but also a downturn in threads that accidentally become something deep after such a question is asked.

We'd also get back some of the people who were banned from the forums. Though if reddit is any indicator for every one that was banned by a heavy-handed mod, one of them really ... really deserved it.

[Theodric]

Fair points!

I'm not entirely opposed to a zero tolerance policy being implemented towards users that ruffle feathers needlessly. We should encourage people to sort out any issues they have in private, rather than have them seep into the chat itself. In other words, anyone joining the chat should - ideally - put any potential conflict behind them.

On the other hand, there needs to be some wriggle room. We have people from all over the world posting here. Some of whom don't speak language as a first language and some who do, but come from cultures that are more 'blunt' than others...if that makes any sense. In short, sometimes the best way to avert conflict isn't to assume the worst but rather the best...if that makes any sense.

To speak of the advantages, a major benefit of Discord is that it's so easy to just post images there - more than once I've found myself just not bothering to attach screenshots or photos of lore book extracts to my posts simply because it's more tedious to do it here than it is over Discord.

The issues with leaving the invite link out in the open definitely have merit. I'll have to think how best we could get around that. We don't want to be obscure enough to never take on fresh blood, but we definitely don't want to just...throw the invite link onto Reddit and let anyone and everyone join.

I don't want us to become a 'clique' so much as a group of people who share an interest - and that interest being FFXIV and its ongoing story.

[Iscah]

As I said in the other thread, I still don't like the overall proposal of a Discord channel because it will pull debate and information away from the forum, and while the immediacy would be nice in some ways, it's a very different atmosphere to the longer, thought-out posts here.

I appreciate the slower pace of a forum. I can spend ages typing out a thoughtful response, rather than rushing to get a sentence in before the conversation carries past it.

What would this do to, say, our "initial reactions to patch X" threads? Would those reactions get posted in Discord instead, and lost forever?

As forum threads, they make fantastic time capsules of what we were thinking at the time.

Browsing back and quoting posts also gets messier.


Basically, I don't like it. I'll join if it happens, because I'll 'have' to to keep track of the discussion, but I don't like the proposal at all.

[Iscah]

Moderation would need to be fair and free of bias, though loose enough that people aren't booted out unless strictly necessary. I'm very much in favour of pushing for civil debate and the concept of agreeing to disagree when it comes to controversial aspects of the lore; especially things that are subjective.

While you've put a lot of thought into this and it all sounds reasonable, I have to be mean and blunt here.

You seem to be putting yourself forward as moderator, and I don't feel like it's a good idea.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but it gives me a bad gut feeling.

You know you have controversial views compared to many of the posters here. You seem to think you're "free of bias", yet so many arguments come from what others perceive as your bias in the opposite direction, and it feels to me like the least pleasant parts of forum discussions happen when you stick to an idea regardless of everyone else disagreeing with you - and then you say "let's agree to disagree".

Saying that doesn't automatically make someone fair and balanced. It can be used to just shut down a debate when they don't want to change their position.



As a general principle, it doesn't seem right to put someone with controversial, opposite-to-mainstream views about a subject in charge of the debate about that subject.

Moderators aren't quite the same thing as directing the course of discussion, but I feel like they need to be impartial, not pushing a strong opinion one way or the other.

[Lauront]

While you've put a lot of thought into this and it all sounds reasonable, I have to be mean and blunt here.

You seem to be putting yourself forward as moderator, and I don't feel like it's a good idea.

You're free to create one with a moderator panel better suited to your tastes, then. It's a Discord chat. Not a mortgage agreement.

This is all making me feel anxious. Both the overall situation and speaking up like this about it.

Er, right.

[Theodric]

You're free to create one with a moderator panel better suited to your tastes, then.

This.

Though the ideal scenario is that the moderation team will be varied and not just an echo chamber/safe space. I want to establish a place where people can discuss the game's lore and not feel as though they have to tread on eggshells or find themselves insulted for liking a different character/faction to someone else.

The world isn't going to end if X likes Lyse and Y doesn't.

The world isn't going to end if A likes Garlemald and B doesn't.

It's a fictional setting. It's a game. It's meant to be fun. Some of us are more invested in the overall package than others, certainly, though I see no need or valid reasoning for there to be any bad blood.

[ObsidianFire]

You're free to create one with a moderator panel better suited to your tastes, then.

It's not that simple. Some of us are already on the fence as to whether we would want a Lore Discord in the first place as we like the structure inherent in a forum (that isn't modded by the community).

Then someone, who has a reputation on the lore forum for having an obvious bias (deserved or not), wants to start a Lore Discord. The idea of having to deal with that person on a regular basis isn't appealing to a lot of people. It might even be enough of a turn-off that the people who were on the fence about a Lore Discord aren't on the fence anymore and outright decide they aren't going to get involved with the whole thing.

You can't just tell someone to start up a project they would never have started in the first place just because someone they don't want to interact with has started up a project they might have wanted to interact with if that person wasn't there.

[Lauront]

You can't just tell someone to start up a project they would never have started in the first place just because someone they don't want to interact with has started up a project they might have wanted to interact with if that person wasn't there.

Why, of course I can - and I just did.

Overall, I find this all very petty. In the end, this is supplementary to the forum. If it is not to your liking, you don't need to join. If you do decide to partake, and find it is not to your liking, you have the option of leaving and creating a venue better suited to your tastes. Discord chats are pretty low commitment to set up or join. There is minimal cost to trialing it and no obligation to do so.

The tone of it is "thanks for doing all the work of setting up the chat, but I don't like you, so I don't want you having any moderation influence over it". Strikes me as a pretty entitled mentality.

[Mieck]

You're free to create one with a moderator panel better suited to your tastes, then.

That exactly creates the fragmentation people have mentioned they wanted to avoid.


On the idea in general, I'm on the fence. I like this sub-forum, and I think we would end up losing the little threads that often contain the most interesting nuggets. On the other hand, an increase in voices (from people who don't have anything to do with the Official Forum) is no bad thing.