Does Discord organize as well as Forums?

[Raphael]

Something I’ve noticed over the years is that Discord makes it harder to organize alliances discussing multiple topics.

Where a forum has:

Forum

-> sub forum

————> topic

 

Discord often requires bots, auto-moderation to be set up, dozens of channels to keep things sorted. It just feels, to me, like forums were more intuitive and easier to manage and navigate as a member and government.

The main advantage of discord used to be that it’s easier to get members into the community but lately I feel like it’s still just an extra step that many new nations don’t jump through.

I‘m curious if others feel the same way.

[Adrienne]

This is why we still have forums

[Shiho Nishizumi]

Forums are better for that.

Discord is better for fluidity and quickness, which is more valuable for coordination. Hence why it's used. It's also used because it's a common gaming-related app, so there's a decently good chance of the new applicant already having it.

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

Part of the push toward discord I think isn't just that it's easier or instant messaging, but also that in PW, alliances are smaller. 

The average size for a PW alliance is like 30 people, for CN in told "elite" alliances like Guardian were still the size of NPO or BK now, at 120, and that means your average could easily have been 300-400+. It goes without saying, organizing an alliance of 400 people with only discord would be messy and difficult.

I remember my time in AdMech, when Dio and Senry made forums for it. Ignoring that ADmech merged soon after, they were still barely used. ADM had 27 members, and there just wasn't enough activity between 27 people to merit both a very active discord (which there was) and a very active forum (which was basically dead aside from forced usage for grants.

 

Infact the only alliances who really use forums alot these days are around the 120 mark, the size of an 'elite' alliance in CN. In general I think it's just that discord is better for smaller groups until you get around the 70-90 mark, where it becomes a gray zone between the two, and 100+ where not having forums is likely going to hurt the alliance.

[Pheonix]

Forums will forever remain supreme

[Lossi]

The reality isn't that discord is directly outdating and outcompeting forums, but the internet is.  Where you say it's harder to organize stuff on discord, is saying it's harder to peddle a scooter; that's not what it's used for, and shouldn't be used for, but you can organize other tools, such as workflows, sheets, various other documents, links to a forum thread, etc in a discord channel, and have one person constantly adding and removing stuff that is and isn't relevant anymore.

The last statement there is where many alliances are going wrong, as they don't dedicate someone to this task, so any attempts of organizing becomes unwieldy, and no one wants to manage it anymore, because no one really knows what's what anymore.  In 2 of the discords I administrate, when we're setting up new features for the server, there's a discussion channel, a todo channel with links pertaining to it, and a channel that maintains notes.  Each day there's conversation, anything that might need to be referenced later is added to the notes channel in a little pointer and the channel is purged(This serves 2 purposes, one to keep the channel from getting too large and hard to search, and two so that anytime there's messages in there, all members of our team know there's an active conversation they should join).  When things are settled on the topic we have a workflow manager that we record all the notes into, then delete the channels on that topic, with a channel that has links to each noteset for us to reference later if questions come up.

If you're looking for a way to sort your channels further than the category level, we use a no-access voice channel, with a description of what channels are below that vc, as it does a good job of breaking up the flow of endless streams of channels.  Think of this as the title of a thread so to say.

 

I do hope this helps both micros, and large alliances which might be having an unwieldy time trying to update to the Discord Craze.

[Raphael]

2 hours ago, Rosey Song said:

The reality isn't that discord is directly outdating and outcompeting forums, but the internet is.  Where you say it's harder to organize stuff on discord, is saying it's harder to peddle a scooter; that's not what it's used for, and shouldn't be used for, but you can organize other tools, such as workflows, sheets, various other documents, links to a forum thread, etc in a discord channel, and have one person constantly adding and removing stuff that is and isn't relevant anymore.

The last statement there is where many alliances are going wrong, as they don't dedicate someone to this task, so any attempts of organizing becomes unwieldy, and no one wants to manage it anymore, because no one really knows what's what anymore.  In 2 of the discords I administrate, when we're setting up new features for the server, there's a discussion channel, a todo channel with links pertaining to it, and a channel that maintains notes.  Each day there's conversation, anything that might need to be referenced later is added to the notes channel in a little pointer and the channel is purged(This serves 2 purposes, one to keep the channel from getting too large and hard to search, and two so that anytime there's messages in there, all members of our team know there's an active conversation they should join).  When things are settled on the topic we have a workflow manager that we record all the notes into, then delete the channels on that topic, with a channel that has links to each noteset for us to reference later if questions come up.

If you're looking for a way to sort your channels further than the category level, we use a no-access voice channel, with a description of what channels are below that vc, as it does a good job of breaking up the flow of endless streams of channels.  Think of this as the title of a thread so to say.

 

I do hope this helps both micros, and large alliances which might be having an unwieldy time trying to update to the Discord Craze.

Thank you for your helpful insights on how to better organize a server.

 

However, your post is a solid example of how a forum shines where discord falls short. Keeping things organized is a hassle on discord and requires constant maintenance. Moderating a modern forum is a two-click process typically.

It's why the PnW forums can stay more-or-less moderated by 3-6 people on the mod team while the PnW discord is a hot mess.

[Lossi]

30 minutes ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

Thank you for your helpful insights on how to better organize a server.

 

However, your post is a solid example of how a forum shines where discord falls short. Keeping things organized is a hassle on discord and requires constant maintenance. Moderating a modern forum is a two-click process typically.

It's why the PnW forums can stay more-or-less moderated by 3-6 people on the mod team while the PnW discord is a hot mess.

To some degree I do agree with you, and stated so in my post (See: Peddling a scooter).  However, they require roughly equal moderation, the difference being forums come pre-installed with auto-moderation functions whereas Discord lets you chose the service via a bot.  Additionally if you don't have someone in the forum pinning important things, archiving old threads that are no longer relevant, the same thing occurs there.  It's really a matter of how you prefer to approach this, and also how quickly topics need to be discussed.  I don't think it's reasonable to argue the two even compete in the second part, but all I say really boils down to, "Use the right tools for the job you're attempting to accomplish".  Forum's aren't universally the best at anything, and neither is discord, they both require roughly equal administrative load, and can be arranged to fill the other's role, but there's 1 thing Discord does very well that forums don't, and 1 thing that forums do very well that discord doesn't.

 

Forums create and sustain a culture of a community.

Discords garner and allow that community to flourish.

 

If you use discord outside PnW, you'll see that most discords have a partnered Reddit or Wiki for this reason.

[Lossi]

44 minutes ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

It's why the PnW forums can stay more-or-less moderated by 3-6 people on the mod team while the PnW discord is a hot mess.

Also regarding this, it's worth noting, the PnW discord functions with only 4 mods, but they're managing activity dumps where there's 10-30 people all online posting a few messages a minute, whereas generally the forum mods only have to keep up with a few posts a minute, and things frequently still fall past their gaze until a user brings it up, also true of the discord server.

[Sardonic]

Sun Tzu once said that the pinnacle of military deployment approaches the forumless.

[Raphael]

12 hours ago, Rosey Song said:

Also regarding this, it's worth noting, the PnW discord functions with only 4 mods, but they're managing activity dumps where there's 10-30 people all online posting a few messages a minute, whereas generally the forum mods only have to keep up with a few posts a minute, and things frequently still fall past their gaze until a user brings it up, also true of the discord server.

It’s worth noting that before discord we used IRC. So in that regard I think discord was a huge upgrade and basically killed Coldfront as a nationsim hub.

 

13 hours ago, Rosey Song said:

To some degree I do agree with you, and stated so in my post (See: Peddling a scooter).  However, they require roughly equal moderation, the difference being forums come pre-installed with auto-moderation functions whereas Discord lets you chose the service via a bot.  Additionally if you don't have someone in the forum pinning important things, archiving old threads that are no longer relevant, the same thing occurs there.  It's really a matter of how you prefer to approach this, and also how quickly topics need to be discussed.  I don't think it's reasonable to argue the two even compete in the second part, but all I say really boils down to, "Use the right tools for the job you're attempting to accomplish".  Forum's aren't universally the best at anything, and neither is discord, they both require roughly equal administrative load, and can be arranged to fill the other's role, but there's 1 thing Discord does very well that forums don't, and 1 thing that forums do very well that discord doesn't.

 

Forums create and sustain a culture of a community.

Discords garner and allow that community to flourish.

 

If you use discord outside PnW, you'll see that most discords have a partnered Reddit or Wiki for this reason.

 

eh this is like arguing for windows or Linux. The average user belongs on windows. Just because you can customize Linux to be just as good as windows or, potentially, better doesn’t make it a better option that everyone should use.

7 hours ago, Sardonic said:

Sun Tzu once said that the pinnacle of military deployment approaches the forumless.

You’re too old to argue against forums. :P

[Astryl]

I enjoy forums, but I think for this game, whever activity is driven by community and urgency, discord is a better fit.

[Micchan]

No need to add anything else

[Ham Dim Sum]

59 minutes ago, Micchan said:

No need to add anything else

Please. Add something else. Elaborate on your hallmark graphics.

[Sir Scarfalot]

7 hours ago, Ham Dim Sum said:

Please. Add something else. Elaborate on your hallmark graphics.

No. It would be irresponsible to 'elaborate' on such a complete, detailed and well-supported argument, and it is equally irresponsible to suggest that the Forum Fighters flag should be diluted with redundant explanations.

If you actually need more explanation than is already as apparent and understandable as a brick to the face, then Sheepy help you and please wear a helmet.

[Ham Dim Sum]

9 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

No. It would be irresponsible to 'elaborate' on such a complete, detailed and well-supported argument, and it is equally irresponsible to suggest that the Forum Fighters flag should be diluted with redundant explanations.

If you actually need more explanation than is already as apparent and understandable as a brick to the face, then Sheepy help you and please wear a helmet.

Can you explain it to me, mister?

[Lossi]

7 hours ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

eh this is like arguing for windows or Linux. The average user belongs on windows. Just because you can customize Linux to be just as good as windows or, potentially, better doesn’t make it a better option that everyone should use.

Sure, but you realize, in this scenario, everyone uses discord, making Discord windows in this scenario.

 

7 hours ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

It’s worth noting that before discord we used IRC. So in that regard I think discord was a huge upgrade and basically killed Coldfront as a nationsim hub.

Yes, I recall how hard I had to push to get my Canadian mates to finally make the switch 3 years back.  

[Raphael]

10 hours ago, Rosey Song said:

Sure, but you realize, in this scenario, everyone uses discord, making Discord windows in this scenario.

 

Yes, I recall how hard I had to push to get my Canadian mates to finally make the switch 3 years back.  

Everyone made the push to move to discord but the organized alliances still use forums while the others still purport that you don't need them.

I think the absence of forums lately has really shown the difference between alliance and... well, grouping of people.

[Lossi]

18 hours ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

Everyone made the push to move to discord but the organized alliances still use forums while the others still purport that you don't need them.

I think the absence of forums lately has really shown the difference between alliance and... well, grouping of people.

This again goes back to, "Forums create and sustain culture", which is something an "alliance" as you put it, needs to thrive.  There's rare exceptions to this scattered about, but they generally have such a defining culture that it self-perpetuates in a way that doesn't need a forum.  But if the question is strictly "Do forums organize better", the answer's honestly no, they're about the same so long as both are used and maintained properly.