TyraWadman
The Brutally Honest Man-Child
How is this related?
Discord: Preview Thread
- Thread starter luffy
- Start date
How is this related?
DesecratedFlame
Well-Known Member
How is it not? Try reading some of the threads on here about this topic. Part of what people liked about forums was that you could just lurk, and if you searched a specific question sometime in the future, you could happen upon an answer in an old forum post since it was searchable by google.
You don't get any of that with a Discord. If you aren't a member then you can't even see the chats most of the time. You can't search the posts as a non-member either. The channels are just ongoing chats, so even searching doesn't serve much purpose. The topics are just channels hidden inside of other channels. Since they are just chat rooms, they tend to wander off topic much more frequently, making searching them for specific info even more troublesome, etc.
It is 100% relevant.
Marius Merganser
The Duke of Birds
It's like I'm already there!
TyraWadman
The Brutally Honest Man-Child
That's why I asked. I've never googled for the faf threads. XD
If you truly thing Ctrl F is hard to use on discord, that's fine. If.you don't want to even look at how easy it is to make your own personal thread on discord, that's fine too.
Most people that have joined so far are just lurking anyway.
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DesecratedFlame
Well-Known Member
I don't mean googling specifically for FaF threads either. I mean googling for some specific thing, and the result is a link to the forum.
Like you if you google "why isn't my HTML hyperlink working for my custom profile," then you find your answer in the form of a 10 year old post on some forums you had never heard of before.
No one thinks it is "hard," sport.
TyraWadman
The Brutally Honest Man-Child
So are you arguing the forums discoverability on google vs discord?
DesecratedFlame
Well-Known Member
That is just one additional benefit of forums in general over Discord.
TyraWadman
The Brutally Honest Man-Child
Reddit and Quora are almost always the first result in all of my google searches. Never once seen FAF. Heck, I didn't even know FA existed because of my search engine, someone had to tell me about it because I wanted to find an art site that allowed NSFW content. XD
Discord is dedicated to social communities. Companies much larger than FA (think paid staff, raking in millions per year) have closed down their forums in favor of Discord because it's cost effective and (most likely) easier to manage. Game developers use them too. On a designated social platform you are more likely to be discovered than the one or two people willing to sift through 100+ google pages that also include ads.
quoting_mungo
Well-Known Member
I think they're more arguing that questions answered on a forum can be found when someone searches for the answer to the same question, whereas if someone searches for the answer to a question that was answered on Discord, it's not to be found. It's extra relevant/pertinent since newspost comments are generally off, leaving Twitter (with its currently shaky future) as the only source for public answers to questions when there's changes in policy or new features. Answers/messages on Discord also can't be linked to, so they're harder to refer to later.
Like, Discord is happening, and that is what it is. I don't really like it, but I get that the ship's already pulling up the anchors.
Depending on what things look like at policy update/new feature time after it's launched (as in, how busy do channels get with "how does the new feature work" and/or "how does this new policy apply") , it's possible it'll be a good idea to use the Discord as a source for a FAQ-ish section of future newsposts. "Question About Site Policy" tickets are great when it's about something more specific, but when it's something broader that's asked multiple times by different people (for example, the "are AI backgrounds okay?" questions in the Twitter replies after that AUP update was announced - I don't know the exact number of times it was asked, but at least three that I know of without going back to look), it'll save everyone time if the answer is easily available in public. (There may be better places than the newsposts, that's just what came to mind offhand. Either way, I think questions about policy or site functionality asked on Discord could become a valuable source for future policy revisions (specifically language revisions for clarity) and/or some sort of auxiliary document that goes into, well, frequently asked questions.)
I guess sort of similar to the threads/posts that have been made here (both posts by staff in this thread and various posts/threads elsewhere) to serve as a guide to Discord and/or the FA Discord server.
TyraWadman
The Brutally Honest Man-Child
That makes more sense.
But the discord is for discord news/related questions only. Questions about the main site would still have to be submitted via ticket system unfortunately.
I kinda feel like an FAQ might be helpful for the main site. Not sure how it would be organized, but still a chance to help reduce repetitive questions... a teeny tiny bit.
quoting_mungo
Well-Known Member
I have a sneaking suspicion that whether or not the Discord is intended to field questions about site policy, they’re going to be asked. Because people. Might as well use people being people as a source of something productive. (And, tbh, “don’t ask questions about FA (mainsite) on FA’s official Discord” is a bit counter-intuitive. I think I get why, or part of why, but I can’t blame people too much if they don’t twig immediately.)
That’s my thinking, more or less. A FAQ can be a lot more verbose than an entry in a policy document, and is helpful for both staff and other users as something to link to when people have questions.
Like, I have linked to forum threads/posts on Twitter to help people out with information, and linked to/embedded tweets here for the same reason.
Connor J. Coyote
Well-Known Member
Thank you for the answer.... I figured it was a helpful question to bring up.... not only for me, but for others as well I imagine.
GuffinDoesArt
Member
Will the Discord server have a channel/forum/category dedicated to site discussion, like this forum has? A lot of posts regarding bug squashing, feature recommendations/implementations, and finding/confirming issues with the main site have found a lot of activity with the recent buggy changes to FA. With the large list of planned features still being worked on and publicly tested, I think it would be a good idea to embrace people's feedback in a dedicated channel/forum in the Discord server. Much like the current site discussion forum, people would still be able to talk about bugs and confirm with other people what exactly the issues are and how they can be fixed, and staff could pop in to confirm, deny, or take note of what users have found out about the website's issues. The site discussion forum has also helped lots of people work around the website's many unfixed bugs, so I think having a spot for it in the Discord server would be very useful to both users and devs.
ryuukei8569
The Adorable Kurokuri
i would really caution you guys about relying on discord bots for content moderation though. Discord bots are notoriously dumb when it comes to filtering NSFW, especially when it comes to furry stuff. And setting the bots to their most strict setting often doesn't help. I've seen them block random scenery photographs with no people or animals at all in them, yet totally ignore outright porn.
Alyxx the Rat
Synthwave Rat
I agree. Relying on bots can be dangerous and can result in a high degree of false bans.
Always better to rely on people, especially with furry art.
JollyCooperation
Active Member
Question: Since there is a specific section on FAF catering towards writing, why is there no corresponding channel in the Discord, despite there being one for gaming and multiple ones for artwork?
It would pain me to see furry literature not being acknowledged in the Discord server. Even if we are less prestigious than the visual artists, I feel like we deserve a place of our own just as they do.
It would pain me to see furry literature not being acknowledged in the Discord server. Even if we are less prestigious than the visual artists, I feel like we deserve a place of our own just as they do.
Lutro
Writer
Great question! I posted it to the Feedback threads in the Discord itself to give it some attention.
Jackpot Raccuki
Vibing Raccuki
Discord FA staff trying to stop us from making a new favorite posterior discussion thread in the new Discord Thread
Fallowfox
Are we moomin, or are we dancer?
I don't know how people are unaware that former forum members will be a tiny minority in the server compared to mainsite-only users. We will NOT be the target audience there.
Multiple FA users after finding out there's no yiff section:
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quoting_mungo
Well-Known Member
I mean, it’s not that different from mainsite FA? You can’t post NSFW in SFW areas (journals including comments, profiles, shouts, avatars, SFW submissions and their comments…) on mainsite. The Discord would be the equivalent of a public area. Ergo, no smut.
Do I think people will end up fucking up a lot? Sure. I’ve also in the past reported someone who had posted multiple explicit stories or RP logs featuring underage characters in their journals on mainsite. So, yeah. People will be push boundaries and/or make shitty assumptions.
But technically making the Discord the equivalent of mainsite General rating is about as consistent as you can get.
ryuukei8569
The Adorable Kurokuri
Actually its more that its because of Discords incredibly puritanical rules about any NSFW content. They are the ones whom have implemented the id policy that is basically begging for identity theft to occur and have refused to reverse course on it. So I can understand why the FA staff doesn't want to deal with that nonsense.
Its just, you know, discords policies are enforced by bots that have the intelligence of a demented brain worm and more bugs than a Bethesta game at launch.
quoting_mungo
Well-Known Member
Discord having whatever policies they do can be a factor, sure. Makes the decision easier.
What I was pointing out was more that having the server be SFW is entirely consistent with how FA mainsite already functions (in theory, contingent on people following the rules). The link to the Discord will be visible to site visitors, and they’ll be free to join, so the Discord would absolutely be a public/SFW area.