Discord definitely is a great tool for building a community, particularly among a younger/newer audience. Definitely understand some vets struggling with it / not getting it. I think as the community grows, the Discord needs to evolve with it. The current structure worked when it was <100 people but we may need to start making additional categories and channels.

Unfortunately, Discord is designed for gamers and best supports smaller groups...Slack, MS Teams, etc. support larger groups but are more designed for business. Not sure what the solution is for a community of our size. I know there are other simulation gaming communities out there leaning into Discord but I agree, fd, it can get difficult to find information and have meaningful convos. It kind of centers on what's the latest & greatest thing to talk about.

The best Discords have strong moderators and solid automation flows too - if WIS (or the community) invests in the use of Discord we could make it easier to use by having commands that allow users to ask commonly asked questions & immediately surface links or answers, etc. But that'd take a while to design & build up.

Posted by sol_phenom3 on 4/23/2021 8:52:00 AM (view original):
Discord definitely is a great tool for building a community, particularly among a younger/newer audience. Definitely understand some vets struggling with it / not getting it. I think as the community grows, the Discord needs to evolve with it. The current structure worked when it was <100 people but we may need to start making additional categories and channels.

Unfortunately, Discord is designed for gamers and best supports smaller groups...Slack, MS Teams, etc. support larger groups but are more designed for business. Not sure what the solution is for a community of our size. I know there are other simulation gaming communities out there leaning into Discord but I agree, fd, it can get difficult to find information and have meaningful convos. It kind of centers on what's the latest & greatest thing to talk about.

The best Discords have strong moderators and solid automation flows too - if WIS (or the community) invests in the use of Discord we could make it easier to use by having commands that allow users to ask commonly asked questions & immediately surface links or answers, etc. But that'd take a while to design & build up.

Great post sol! I think some additional channels could go a long way. For example, instead of just having an "HD Chat", it could be broken up into more specific topics, such as game planning, scouting strategy, etc. That way newer users can ask their questions in a channel that won't get drown out by the other chatter.

I have a little bit of experience with commands, but not enough to know what's available or make any recommendations.

It feels very spammy right now with so many users and so few channels. Several times I've seen someone ask a question which then gets lost in the noise and never responded to.

Hey all. I started and "own" the discord. Just wanted to let you know there's some good suggestions here and I'm reading them. The other mods have seen it too.

I'm currently in the middle of moving out of a house and into a new one, so once that is done I can work on changes to the discord and adding new mods.

Thanks everyone for joining and building the community, it's really wild how big it has grown already.

Posted by mlitney on 4/23/2021 9:27:00 AM (view original):

Posted by sol_phenom3 on 4/23/2021 8:52:00 AM (view original):
Discord definitely is a great tool for building a community, particularly among a younger/newer audience. Definitely understand some vets struggling with it / not getting it. I think as the community grows, the Discord needs to evolve with it. The current structure worked when it was <100 people but we may need to start making additional categories and channels.

Unfortunately, Discord is designed for gamers and best supports smaller groups...Slack, MS Teams, etc. support larger groups but are more designed for business. Not sure what the solution is for a community of our size. I know there are other simulation gaming communities out there leaning into Discord but I agree, fd, it can get difficult to find information and have meaningful convos. It kind of centers on what's the latest & greatest thing to talk about.

The best Discords have strong moderators and solid automation flows too - if WIS (or the community) invests in the use of Discord we could make it easier to use by having commands that allow users to ask commonly asked questions & immediately surface links or answers, etc. But that'd take a while to design & build up.

Great post sol! I think some additional channels could go a long way. For example, instead of just having an "HD Chat", it could be broken up into more specific topics, such as game planning, scouting strategy, etc. That way newer users can ask their questions in a channel that won't get drown out by the other chatter.

I have a little bit of experience with commands, but not enough to know what's available or make any recommendations.

It feels very spammy right now with so many users and so few channels. Several times I've seen someone ask a question which then gets lost in the noise and never responded to.

When I started the server I'm not sure I imagined it getting so big so fast. We definitely need to organize it better and you guys have some good suggestions here. Let's talk about it soon. I also want some new mods added to help out and keep it rolling.

Also agree about the commands/bots for people to use as well.

Posted by StillWaters on 4/27/2021 12:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mlitney on 4/20/2021 11:42:00 AM (view original):
If WIS wants to attract more young folks, Discord is a great way to do it. Like gill said, its much easier to post pictures and media. You can get instant notifications if anyone responds to you. You can chat with someone in real time.

With that said, I'll still be using the forums, but Discord is a much better way to build a community.

Yes, that is a really polite way of describing what at first glance looks like unregulated kiddies blabbing about everything under the sun. If that community is to include adults, it is going to need some strong, strong moderation. Good luck, Teemo.

This is extremely condescending for no real reason... Not sure why you hold this opinion. Plenty of "adults" in the discord right now.

Posted by StillWaters on 4/27/2021 12:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mlitney on 4/20/2021 11:42:00 AM (view original):
If WIS wants to attract more young folks, Discord is a great way to do it. Like gill said, its much easier to post pictures and media. You can get instant notifications if anyone responds to you. You can chat with someone in real time.

With that said, I'll still be using the forums, but Discord is a much better way to build a community.

Yes, that is a really polite way of describing what at first glance looks like unregulated kiddies blabbing about everything under the sun. If that community is to include adults, it is going to need some strong, strong moderation. Good luck, Teemo.

i could live without the memes and silly gifs and all that, but those aren't out of hand in the regular rooms by any means. teemo quarantined most of that to a memes place early on.

however what is super valuable is being able to paste screen shots of players, teams, and settings pages. it is hard to communicate that stuff. the lack of a threaded format and a way to kinda separate the chatter from important stuff is tough, but that's a problem here too... anyway definitely the back and forth format allows folks to get a lot more help a lot more conveniently and in a more real time fashion. there's some pretty clear benefits there. a lot of folks have gotten some real good help and a bunch of ideas on the discord, its mostly good.

FYI this is from the perspective of a 30 something person in IT who can handle anything technically, but nonetheless refuses facebook, twitter, instagram, etc, etc for the reasons you are kinda getting at. i don't find the discord to be too bad at all. you definitely have to turn off notifications straight away though.

I helped grow a discord, I was a Moderator along with a few others, from 1,500 to over 35,000. So I have some experience. I just need to sit down and dedicate some time to this because y'all deserve it and HD deserves it. And I need to get some more mods so we have more coverage and help.