Dedicate a Discord Channel in Aurora General to Serious Discussions

[UnknownMurder]

Aurora Station has a discord that we use. Not all of them are not for serious discussion and few channels such as #code_dungeon and #lore_channel serves a purpose to have a serious discussion about the lore. The serious discussion could be about anything in Aurora Station. When someone sparked a serious discussion something, everyone's discussing and hoping to expect fruition instead the fruit is often polluted over by memes or discussion unrelated to the already sparked discussion. The conversation dies out because of unrelated conversation. 

Another reason is the conversational pacing the forum is unable to have. People sees the forums as the only place to have a serious discussion. But, when do you think you'll expect a response? It depends on the respondent themselves, they'll either respond in five hours, twelve hours, a day later, or even three days later. With this serious discussion channel, we can cut down to just matter of minutes and few hours. The five hours can be a two minute to respond and keeps the people engaged. Absolutely, no politics please.

[Carver]

This is more of a discord problem than a channel problem. People tend to be serious on the forums because posts are seen longer than some off-handed comment that gets buried in a sea of off-handed comments.

[UnknownMurder]

And I suggested a solution to it.

[Carver]

Wrong. Read my reply again, a channel does not solve posts getting buried within thirty seconds or less on average.

[UnknownMurder]

I read your reply. I dismissed the negative criticism by saying I suggested a solution to the problem. A channel in a discord is both channel and a discord problem. 

 

EDIT: You never know unless you try.

Edited June 16, 2020 by UnknownMurder

[Carver]

A channel in a discord does not solve the problem that Discord as a platform inherently possesses. If you want people to be serious, then their posts need to be seen for longer than 30 seconds. The forum requires you to consider what you're going to say, rather than being essentially a dressed-up IM platform.

[wowzewow]

Agree with Carver here.

Any serious discussion realistically, would be on the forums anyway because it's an environment built to take your time and type out a well-thought out response.

Discord, however, is just a typing speed competition, and whoever gets the first word is going to segway into whatever.

Forums have topics and titles, with the first post being basically a coherent anchoring point. The channel you just proposed is just grabbing at straws at whatever people "feel" at the moment.

And you know, feelings are terrible for coherent discourse. If people aren't discussing what you want to discuss, you're shit out of luck unless you want to derail the current conversation.

Additionally : The fact we are discussing this *RIGHT HERE* throws a wrench in your entire argument.

 

For the arguments that code_dungeon and lore_channel are existing "serious" channels is misguided.

Most, if not all developer discussion occurs on the GitHub, and to a lesser extent, the developer discord. code_dungeon is just an extension of the developer discord, albeit more public.

And I'd reckon the same argument for lore_channel is likely to apply as well - we have entire, separate discords for human, skrell, IPC, etc. lore.

 

No matter how idealistic your idea of this channel's going to be, I'm pretty sure this is going to de-evolve into political-thunderdome 2, electric boogaloo.

And the argument that the "mods and admins will handle it" is also idealistic, because the very same admins and mods participate in political discussion as well.

Edited June 16, 2020 by wowzewow

[Boggle08]

How I see it, a serious discussion channel would serve as an intermediate between posting something on the forums, and just screaming into a channel that is tangentially related to balance discussion. People talking on discord tend to do this weird thing where we jump back and forth between shitposting and genuine sentiment, which derails discussion. Forums do not have this issue, but they're far slower, and there's only a small handful of suggestion threads that get attention at any given time. With instant messaging, discussion into different topics is more frequent.

To remedy the problem of a channel moving too fast, discord has the option of introducing timers into the channel, so when you post something, you have to wait a set amount of time before you can post again.

Fully committing yourself to an idea and posting a suggestion you want in game should still be something done on the forums, as should serious business discussion for balance and policy in general. This channel will be a place dedicated for talk about the game without getting buried under unrelated discussion or shitposting.

[Carver]

Slow mode doesn't really help it, and at 'best' just makes it into a worse version of forums because a channel only ever really has a singular discussion at a time anyways.

Balance and policy are also things you absolutely would never find serious discussion on in Discord, because if you actually gave a shit about either you'd make a suggestion thread instead of screaming into the void of an IM platform.

[Zundy]

What serious discussions are we expecting to be having in this serious slow mode channel that aren't just had elsewhere? 

[nonno_anselmo]

It is me, the comic sans man.

I would suggest creating a #help channel solely used for... helping people who have to ask questions and keeping #general as it is (shitposting and doing ||gnome||). 
While i know that theere are discordd for lesbians medbay, grayons eaters security, nerds science, chair RP cargo it would still be helpful and would increase mod and player presence on the server whilst also giving people willing to help and teach a direct outlet without necessarily redirecting new players to these barren wastelands servers.

It would kind of avoid questions being buried under people doing !cats at the wrong time and me posting that webm of wide Putin.

Edited June 16, 2020 by nonno_anselmo
forgot to chang everything to pink comic sans.

[Carver]

A help/learning channel would be valuable, yes. Greater 'input draw' than ahelp, for better or worse, and much more accessible than the departmental cliques discord servers.

[Scheveningen]

#serious_discussion could be a discussion channel, similar to how #general_discussion is meant for discussing literally anything under the sun barring a few inappropriate topics, the same deal can be attributed for the former case but with the caveat of being as serious in tone as possible, with all participants at least being expected to present their points seriously and honestly. At least in terms of how I think it'd work, ideally...

But I think there'd be some divisiveness over a channel that would inevitably create stigma as yet another debate channel, except this time officiated as one. I'm not expecting the hypothetical #serious_discussion channel to be particularly political, but I feel it could recreate some of the same problems #political_thunderdome did in being incredibly coin-flippy in terms of who you may end up seeing discussing things there, what you may end up seeing discussed there, etc. Most people tend to shy away from conflict as well, and I am not entirely confident that #serious_discussion's uses would be entirely benign for the community in, say, a year from now and further on.

[nonno_anselmo]

6 hours ago, Carver said:

 and much more accessible than the departmental cliques discord servers.

I snoofed : ^ ) 

[nonno_anselmo]

Third post in a row, i am not trying to bump. 

An #adminbus channel would also help with questions related to the rules and to the game without having to ahelp

every.

single.

fucking.

time.

[canon35]

A helping and learning channel would actually be extremely useful if its well moderated. Let people new to the game, server, or jobs speak easily on the main discord to get help from the staff or players in a environment. Maybe also have pinned posts that exist as primers to the lore, gameplay, and server culture/rules. 

[Kaed]

I'm not sure how this could be implemented in a way that doesn't lead to frustrating behavior.

[KingOfThePing]

Like it is in any other Discord server: moderate it properly

[Carver]

The server already fails to moderate itself by the mere fact that memes are spammed in general in lieu of the dedicated 'trashcan' channel.

[Garnascus]

This might actually be a good idea. Its the one thing i like about the sec discord. Sometimes serious topics crop up and the flow of general conversation dilutes it a bit too much. 

[UnknownMurder]

9 hours ago, Garnascus said:

This might actually be a good idea. Its the one thing i like about the sec discord. Sometimes serious topics crop up and the flow of general conversation dilutes it a bit too much. 

Yes. What you said is the summarized end-game goal what this suggestion is trying to achieve.

Edited June 21, 2020 by UnknownMurder
More explanation

[UnknownMurder]

@Garnascus

I think the #serious_discussion is a success. There are people engaging in serious topics/discussions. I see no need for this thread to be up.

[Fluffy]

Locking and archiving as per previous post of OP.