Create proposal-of-move-to-discord #2
Conversation
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Worth noting there was a collection of opinions here: #1 For what it's worth, I think Discord is a lot better at serving this kind of group. They provide better moderation tools, free voice hangouts (which Alex Trost points out is a great tool for building community), and it helps us meet people where they are. Almost all of my hobby groups are on Discord at this point. I keep Slack around just for IO and a separate DevOps group. If we want folks to be involved in New Haven IO outside of the regular 9-5 I think it's important to use a tool that people will be using outside of work hours... and more and more it's seeming like Slack is a work tool on work machines. |
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From Tom Reznick:
Personally, I think the problem is that member activity is dropping off a cliff. The group in Slack has whittled down to a handful of core members while I'm seeing all my other tech based groups thrive on Discord. I think that's in no small part due to the fact the it's an app people are already used to using in their free time and provides better tools for community building than just text threads. Since we're already hemorrhaging active members, doesn't really seem like a risk to make the jump. Especially if we communicate the change well and set up some Slackbot responses to point stragglers (with clear instructions) over to the new Discord. |
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We will also need to update the website if we were to make this move. Get
some equivalent to "click for invitation" but for discord.
…On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 9:11 AM Henry Quinn ***@***.***> wrote:
From Tom Reznick:
Can we take a step back and frame the problem we're trying to solve here?
Moving to discord may be a good move however I want to frame the
conversation around the actual issue?
Personally, I think the problem is that member activity is dropping off a
cliff.
The group in Slack has whittled down to a handful of core members while
I'm seeing all my other tech based groups thrive on Discord. I think that's
in no small part due to the fact the it's an app people are already used to
using in their free time and provides better tools for community building
than just text threads.
Since we're already hemorrhaging active members, doesn't really seem like
a risk to make the jump. Especially if we communicate the change well and
set up some Slackbot responses to point stragglers (with clear
instructions) over to the new Discord.
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Frankly, Discord makes that "Click for invitation" bit way easier than Slack does. |
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I'm a huge fan of Slack; however, even Slack admits that they don't build it with communities in mind. Discord is just better formatted for communities and it doesn't seem like Slack is changing course anytime soon. I'll always like Slack better, but this would be the right move for nhv.io. And as mentioned it's much easier to invite people to Discord servers. |
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Another benefit is that members are automatically subbed to all the available channels in Discord. Folks wouldn't need to go spelunking to find #space, #ruby, or #talk-pay. |
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I think it is important to separate the concerns of what Discord can inherently solve versus what are larger organizational challenges. If the issue is "member activity is falling off a cliff" is this really an issue with Slack, or is it that the lack of IRL events to drive awareness and membership into the Slack? IMHO we have just reached a point where the macro trend is folks are deciding to engage less in virtual communities overall in favor of real world events after two plus years of COVID. This is compounded by the summer lull of vacations. We see this at Code for Boston every year. In August we ask ourselves "is this thing dead" and then September/October it lights back up. I think there are some other good reasons to move to Discord enumerated above. Ultimately I am indifferent. I will go where the people are. |
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I agree with @mzagaja - there are doubtless lots of reasons why folks are participating less, and moving to discord won't inherently solve them. The points raised in favor of discord (it's better-suited for communities, it's where people are, NHv.io is "the only" group on slack) aren't especially compelling in isolation, but in aggregate, they convince me. At some point in the coming 12 months, I think NHv.io should move to discord, especially while the community has energy to move. The biggest risk is leaving occasionally-active folks behind. Let's set up slackbot to forward them on to discord (it's a shame iobot had to die when it did, that could've been fun), and let's maybe think about moving in October, after summer's over but before the holidays? |
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I feel like early/mid October is a good target. Gives us time to get everything set up. The Discord bit shouldn't take too long but we need to get the communication and Slackbot auto-responses in order. |
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Set up a test server on Discord to play with settings and figure out how we'd like an IO server set up. This is a quick write up on moderation adjacent settings that should make running the community easier. Roles:
Music:
Invite Links:
Rules Screening:
Safety Setup:
AutoMod (Beta):
Bans:
Server Insights:
Welcome Screen:
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Slack isn't serving us well anymore, so we'll switch to Discord. Seems fine. I don't think it's going to fix any real problems, though (e.g. the membership attrition, general malaise, etc.). However, I think reducing the number of Electron clients on @Quinncuatro's laptop is itself a worthwhile cause, however. The support for roles and bots is definitely better in Discord. Policing Discord servers also seems to be a much worse problem than policing Slack. I'm not sure why that it, but it seems like every 9yo has 200 alts they use to harass other Discord servers. Discord is also pretty spammy, constantly prompting you to boost. I hate get automatically added to every new channel. |
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I am personally involved in far more technology related discords than I am slacks. Discord does have some really great moderation bots and tools and a ton of people making more. One thing I have noticed to @nrawling point is that if the server is completely public it can get crazy with trolls and children acting a fool. On some of the Recruiting/HR/Job discords I am a part of they have everyone go through somewhat of a vetting process up front to request a tag/role. To do that they have to fill out a couple of questions that then get approved. |
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I wrote up a “Discord Onboarding” doc that might help here! Several communities I’m in use Discord a lot, so I articulated a bunch of the big gotchas that people experience when learning how to Discord. A lot of the “I just don’t like the UI” impressions are covered/articulated here I think (and if you can think of more bumps please let me know, I’d love to update this article even more) |
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Today I finally figured out how to set up "reaction roles" using a bot!! carl.gg bot Reaction roles are like when you click on an emoji to get auto-added to a role to get auto-added to some channels And then after I struggled through it all, I realized there's probably a YouTube video about it -- and there is!! This is the shortest and most up-to-date video I found on Carl Bot reaction roles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5NiSkQlW9Y&t=0s In case anyone else wants to set up a server with reaction roles, this is the most straightforward way I've seen or heard of! :D |
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Late to the discussion. Happy to move to Discord. I don't often contribute on Slack and will likely be the same on Discord ;( |
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