OpenBOR Discord
- Thread starter joseph
- Start date
No, and there won't ever be one while I lead this community. There are several servers, but none are official and anything you get from them is second hand info at best. This is where we reside.
DC
Skull Kingz
Active member
Totally unrelated, but I always loved the fact that the Openbor community gather together on a forum. Really brings a retro feel to how we communicate. There’s a lot of communities that get lost in the shuffle when they try to keep up with the latest apps and trends, but there’s a bit of comfort knowing the Openbor community will be right here on this forum.
O Ilusionista
Captain 100K
Foruns are way, way better for that
Information here is much easier to find and lasts for years—with the added bonus of being indexed by search engines. On Discord, the search system is pretty poor, and information gets lost over time and locked away in a system.
People generally prefer Discord for two reasons:
1. Immediacy
2. They don't want to search before asking a question
Plus, we can gather with our old friends.
Normally I am loathe to explain why I won't do something - because it's like telling a car salesman the reason you don't want a car. It's just giving them something to try and argue with you. In fairness though... here you are:
Discord is a graveyard for communities. The internet is littered with dead forums that thought it would be a good idea to try and run a concurrent Discord channel - and inevitably fell victim to the "one quick question" problem. We had the same issue with the shout box way back on Lavalit, and had to shut it down. It's also why no technical questions are allowed in Live chat.
Human nature is just a thing. The very split second you allow a perceived easy button or instant gratification, that's where they go. It's a race to the bottom, then you're the blind leading the blind, and the community is destroyed. This is not me spouting random opinions. It is empirical and easily verified. Witnessed it, cataloged it - even wrote one of my master's thesis papers on the phenomena. This is the basic colloquial break down:
Everything Discord offers, we have right here.
That's before considering accountability. Like me or hate me, I am still accountable. You know who I am and where to find me. Discord is a faceless social aggregator. Do you really want to count on them as a host? They WILL be enshitified (to borrow Cory Doctorow’s term). They WILL make deleterious changes. In fact it's already begun. I note it myself every time I open the app and they pester me to distraction to join their stupid Nitro club. That's only going to intensify further. Intrusive ads will come next. After that, deleting archives and severe storage limitations. After that... who knows.
For these and many other reasons, I will not directly support a Discord channel or any equivalent, and there is also a soft ban on support questions in our live chat room. Now, in many other communities that might not matter - members could start up channels and siphon traffic anyway. To a degree, that has happened to us here, and I'm not happy about it - but of course I can't stop them. We've lost some of our best members to Discord even as it stands (calling you out @NickyP).
However, since I happen to be the lead engine developer and overall most knowledgeable individual concerning it, that means any of the various Discords out there are always operating at a disadvantage. If you want the best support - this is where you go.
DC
Discord is a graveyard for communities. The internet is littered with dead forums that thought it would be a good idea to try and run a concurrent Discord channel - and inevitably fell victim to the "one quick question" problem. We had the same issue with the shout box way back on Lavalit, and had to shut it down. It's also why no technical questions are allowed in Live chat.
Human nature is just a thing. The very split second you allow a perceived easy button or instant gratification, that's where they go. It's a race to the bottom, then you're the blind leading the blind, and the community is destroyed. This is not me spouting random opinions. It is empirical and easily verified. Witnessed it, cataloged it - even wrote one of my master's thesis papers on the phenomena. This is the basic colloquial break down:
- Existing community starts a channel, either by their own initiative or due to demand from members.
- Co-existence works for a while.
- At a point, Discord begins to overtake the original community in traffic. In the case of support communities, it's always "just a quick question...".
- The original community slowly becomes defunct through lack of participation and support.
- The Discord channel begins to feed on itself as the more knowledgeable and senior members retire or move on, and there is no basis of community flavor or knowledge pool a forum provides to act as a guide.
- Individuals are no longer able to get competent answers for their "quick question". Community entropy is complete.
Everything Discord offers, we have right here.
- Live chat for socializing.
- Mobile app (yes, really - see here).
- Media sharing.
- Platform compatibility.
- Instant response.
- Social media integration.
That's before considering accountability. Like me or hate me, I am still accountable. You know who I am and where to find me. Discord is a faceless social aggregator. Do you really want to count on them as a host? They WILL be enshitified (to borrow Cory Doctorow’s term). They WILL make deleterious changes. In fact it's already begun. I note it myself every time I open the app and they pester me to distraction to join their stupid Nitro club. That's only going to intensify further. Intrusive ads will come next. After that, deleting archives and severe storage limitations. After that... who knows.
For these and many other reasons, I will not directly support a Discord channel or any equivalent, and there is also a soft ban on support questions in our live chat room. Now, in many other communities that might not matter - members could start up channels and siphon traffic anyway. To a degree, that has happened to us here, and I'm not happy about it - but of course I can't stop them. We've lost some of our best members to Discord even as it stands (calling you out @NickyP).
However, since I happen to be the lead engine developer and overall most knowledgeable individual concerning it, that means any of the various Discords out there are always operating at a disadvantage. If you want the best support - this is where you go.
DC
