(sorry about the category, i wasn’t sure where to put this)
so i love the snap! forums, i’m sure we all do, i’m happy with it and how it’s maintained and moderated by the snap! devs and everything, but i started thinking about having a discord server for snap! users
first thing i want to get an understanding of is the “legality” of this, or in other words, would it be against the rules to make this server and maybe even promote it on the forums? is it against the rules to even bring up having a discord server? you know, since it’s technically outside communication (a chat-space that isn’t directly moderated by snap! devs and forum mods and most likely wouldn’t be moderated with the same standards as the forums/main site, something not particularly encouraged)
the second thing i want to bring up is the reasons why it would be nice to have this:
my biggest problem with forum pages in general is the lack of a place for off-topic conversations and the active socialization aspect that platforms like discord have, i like talking to some of the forum users, but sometimes, i’d like to talk about something other than snap! or whatever the original topic was, and granted, yes, i have had an experience where the conversation became off-topic and just got moved rather than removed and discouraged, but i think it’d be better if there was a place dedicated for these conversations, something you can do with a discord server
discord is a much more popular place for centralizing communities and talking about certain topics, and i don’t think a lot of people use the forums—or don’t even know what they are—however, having a place for the community that people are more familiar with could result in more conversation about and creations on snap!
similar to the first reason, it’s great to make friends with people who share interests with you, making it great to make friends with people in the same communities as you, but i feel like it’s hard to do that on the forums, because sure you can talk about snap! with other people who use it and maybe have small off-topic conversations about other things, but a community is usually closer when people get to know each other better
i’m not sure how many people will agree with this reason, i, myself, don’t particularly do, but having a discord server could open up snap! to a lot more people which could make the community grow even larger, but like i said, i’m not sure how great that would be in the grand scheme of things, but it can be taken into consideration nonetheless
if you don’t agree with this, feel free to say why, i just thought it was a good idea at the time of writing this
p.s. (off-topic)
are the view counts real or just based off statistics?
I have very strong but also contradictory feelings about this.
I, too, am really frustrated by the austere form of community provided by the forum. I’m really curious to know how old y’all are, what you look like, what you do besides program in Snap!, all that. And I know that many other web sites have associated Discord servers without the world coming to an end. And I hate the 21st-century paranoia about child molesters that underlies the austerity of our community. (When I say “paranoia” I’m not denying that there exist child molesters, just that the ones who attack strangers are too rare to be worth teaching children to grow up afraid. Almost all molesters know their victims.)
But all it’d take is one disaster to kill Snap!. Even if we weren’t officially shut down, no parent would let their kid use it.
And also, my one experience on a fan Discord (for a webcomic) was so unpleasant that I’ve never wanted to repeat it. I think a Discord would require a lot of heavy and quick moderation to keep it from turning ugly. We don’t have the resources to take that on.
So it’s with a heavy heart that I have to say no to this.
There could be a possibility they make a few chat forums, that way you can’t DM someone or say something that’s offensive or inappropriate. (Without getting caught) But then again they have reasons for why they do and don’t do certain things to Snap!
Personally, I think chat forums would be a great idea for off topic conversations and collaborative topics.
really? I only said that because of the weird sketchy groups that pop up there. Maybe im wrong, or maybe it was just the servers i was invited to. And yeah a few years ago I was in very bad communities. So that could be it
Social media are deliberately designed to promote bad behavior, which then serves as clickbait. You can overcome that design with really good moderation, but it’s not easy. That’s why we haven’t been so enthusiastic about social media features here.