Delete all OOC channels from Aurora Relay, keep the discord for IC interactions only

[DriedMilk]

See title. This would move all OOC conversations to the main discord, consolidating the OOC side of the Aurora further into a single discord instead of it being split. The relay can keep its IC channels and what is necessary for admins and the bot to operate 

[Alberyk]

At this point, might as well just unite it all in a single discord and use the community function to keep it organized.

[greenjoe]

please do NOT do more discord forum stuff

[Omicega]

The Relay OOC channels are one of the more unpleasant things about Aurora and its community. I don't know if it's just the extra degree of separation from the main Discord that makes people swarm all over it, or if it's just the proximity of having it to the Relay itself (which is quasi-IC even on its best day), but they are a consistently unpleasant environment that I consider having helped drive me onto an extended break more than once at this point. It feels like it's just a neverending treadmill of cliques warring with one another over the same attention-seeking treadmill, honestly, and it's pretty stifling to try and engage with it without getting embroiled in any of this.

In hindsight, I probably should have sent my issues with the place in as formal complaints to staff at the time, but having been out of the thing for a while now I don't really regret it. The passive-aggression level perpetrated by some users who are consistently rude and dismissive in a very indirect, vague way so as to avoid getting struck for overt hostility is suffocating. I know a couple of them picked up forum bans recently for trying to spill similar behaviour over into this environment, but I am skeptical that anyone on Aurora really cares about a forum ban in this day and age, so it's more of a symbolic slap on the wrist than anything else. The main issue is that everywhere on Aurora is dead for OOC discussion except for the Relay server, and that creates a lot of problems trying to stay in touch with the community in general if you're not willing to tolerate this kind of sly, snipe-friendly atmosphere any longer.

Maybe merging Relay OOC with the main Discord would help combat this, I don't know. At this point, I'd say it's worth a shot. I don't really enjoy being disconnected from the general OOC pulse of Aurora these days, but trying to build a case to combat the sheer level of passive-aggression that permeates the place is a frustrating task even on my best days, since it's all so heavily contextual I'd need to make a video essay at this point in order to feel like I have a leg to stand on. At the very least, having the politicking and general bad atmosphere pushed into the public Discord itself might encourage behaviour to improve, since it's less 'invisible' to anyone not already neck-deep in the Aurorastation rabbit hole.

I regret even having to word this post the way I do, since I realise a large part of it exhibits the same kind of indirect behaviour I'm literally in the process of complaining about, but I'm not really looking to incite a direct flame war since I know that ends badly. This is an issue I feel kind of strongly about, though, to say the least.

[GeneralCamo]

Honestly remove the relay entirely. Embrace threads for apartment channels and twitter-expies. And add a relay to the main discord. With discord threads, the relay server is wholly obsolete. If we want to split game and off-topic discussion, add an off-topic channel to the maincord. Let's unite our community. 

[Kintsugi]

18 minutes ago, Omicega said:

-snip-

Omi summarizes my thoughts perfectly.

[canon35]

26 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

At this point, might as well just unite it all in a single discord and use the community function to keep it organized.

I do think we ought to just merge the other discords into one. The sections of the lore discord can easily be added as sections on the main discord with lore devs making requests to admins (Or whoever has power to edit channels) as to how their section should look. The departmental discord I'll be honest and say we can probably just scrap entirely. Questions about how mechanics work can be relegated to serious discussion or the general in the main discord, perhaps create a help channel if needed. The relay I have no idea on, frankly. I would say right now to leave it as it is but cut out all OOC channels and voice channels except for the requests one. But if someone has a idea of how to integrate its IC channels into the singular discord, then go ahead.

[DriedMilk]

38 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

At this point, might as well just unite it all in a single discord and use the community function to keep it organized.

Yeah this also works, also comes with the benefit of staff not having to look through 3 different discords in order to moderate them.

[NewOriginalSchwann]

30 minutes ago, Omicega said:

[Snip]

Omi’s post summarizes my thoughts on the Relay OOC channel perfectly. As lore staff, it is incredibly disheartening to see the main OOC channel of the server be a place where players, staff, and writing are often dragged through the mud and pilloried.

[niennab]

I am in support of this suggestion or even merging the three discords. For the health and future of the community, the relay's general toxicity and passive aggressive nature is one we should aim to collectively move away from. I can only guess as to the 'whys' but I think that there is something to be said in that when one space within a large community is seen as separate from the whole, it has the tendency to take on its own identity. It's with that thought that I want to hope merging will help alleviate this issue.

But moderation aside, I do think merging the discords would also help aid in the onboarding of new players. Although not inherently a negative, Aurora asks a lot from new players both in lore and familiarizing themselves with the forum and discords. Streamlining the process and finding ways of not overwelming new players may help the server in the long run, even if in only a small measure. Plus, since moving the apartment channels to threads, the Relay being its own server might as well be a matter of redundancy at this point.

As far as I understandd Kyres also had a WIP discord in the works for such a merger? Not sure if it has survived but it could be a good place to start.

On the plus side, maybe we'll see the cursed breakfast meme die (this is a joke).

[Triogenix]

2 hours ago, Alberyk said:

At this point, might as well just unite it all in a single discord and use the community function to keep it organized.

I am in favor of this.

[Dreamix]

I fully agree with the previous posters. Relay OOC is really awful, with the constant snirking, rudeness, brigading, passive-aggressiveness, horny/sus-posting, and all the other things that are just inappropriate but not exactly immediately ban or strike worthy - which is what makes the issue more complicated than "just ahelp it, bro".

It is driving people away from participating in it, including staff, and that should really be saying something.

 

Some people have already declared, "if I have to use the maincord OOC, I will just not use OOC", and honestly, this is the kind of shitty elitist attitude that is one of the many problems of relay OOC. People thinking and acting like they're better than the "huboids" or "maincord cryptids", instead of, you know, actually helping new players integrate in the community better.

[NG+7 Gael]

I entirely disagree with this idea, merging the discords sounds pretty horrible. If myself and other people who talk in the relay OOC wanted to talk in the maincord, then we would just talk there- and yet we don't, and I'm pretty sure most of us have our reasons for not doing so.

For whatever reasons they might have, some people who have posted in this thread seem to believe that merging the discords will, somehow, lead to a reduction in (perceived) toxicity or a change in how the relay or overall community interacts with each other. I don't see why this would possibly be the case- if you dislike the general attitude of the relay OOC, then you can simply use the maincord instead. Why would you want to merge them when all that would do is bring the people whose attitudes you dislike into the maincord? If you don't like interacting with the relay OOC community, how would bringing them into the maincord possibly improve things and not just lead to more conflict? I have also seen some people here who are complaining about the toxicity of the relay go into the relay themselves and be toxic towards certain relay users for being people who wish to keep the relay separate by- for example- referring to them as 'elitist', which is extremely hypocritical given the nature of the argument here, and only further leads me to believe that merging the discords would cause issues. I see references to the 'elitist' behaviour of relay OOC users "looking down on maincord users", while these people do the exact same thing towards relay users. It's not a server problem, it's a people problem. Ironically, I think this discussion has possibly brought some of the most toxic conversation as of recent into the relay when it was otherwise entirely fine.

Additionally, as some people have pointed out, the discords have largely separate communities, and thus- reasonably- largely separate OOC 'cultures' or whatever you want to call it, which is to say the way that people in the maincord OOC interact with each other is very often different from the way that relay OOC users interact with each other; whether that's perceived as negative or positive depends on who you ask. Is the relay discord a perfect nice place where people always behave? No, of course not, but merging the discords isn't going to somehow make that better, and I completely fail to understand how people seem to believe it would.

Overall, I just don't see what the point is. Nobody is locked into the maincord or the relay or the lore discord or whatever- they're all public discords that are easy to find links to via the maincord. If people want to interact with the community OOCly, they can do so on whichever discord they want to. Yet, the people here who complained about being unable to interact with the community OOCly because of the existence of the relay refuse to use the relay discord because of its community. So... why would you suddenly want to interact with them in the maincord?

 

Honestly, I don't think this is actually all that important. I don't think much of anything will change either way. However, I'm writing a lot about this because I, myself, very explicitly do not talk in the maincord for personal reasons (and no, it's not because I think I'm better than maincord users. fucking ridiculous thing to insinuate), but I do generally enjoy using the relay OOC, and I think the community- while occasionally frustrating, as with any community- is more often than not nice to interact with.

[Carver]

SCC Personnel Terminal, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Merge them, though I’d personally like the present lore/relay discords kept for *archival purposes* even if they’re merely read-only.

I truly suspect there’d be far more community bans if people acted on the main discord the same way they often act on the relay.

[DeadLantern]

We are all vastly overestimating the difference in users between the relay and the main discord. In reality, it is a small group of users who only use the relay and refuse to use the main discord, and vice versa. This will not be some grand merger of radically different cultures and biospheres like the joining of North and South America.

I am in favor of this as I think consolidating the OOC chats will just make it simpler. It also may reduce the cliquishness people are bringing up, but that is a minority (of perhaps very vocal) users.

I agree with NiennaB here and say that the best reason for merging the servers is that it will make it easier for new players. They suddenly don't have to join three separate servers to be a full member of the community. And if they are overwhelmed by the number of channels and don't want to participate in the apartment servers, they can just close the list of channels.

If you have reasons for not communicating in one server or the other (besides activity reasons), those reasons are probably relatively petty and small. If they are bigger and would actually drive you away from the server, you should probably make a complaint on the forums.

There is no reason to prevent this merger over a relatively small group of individuals who only use the maincord over the relay or vice-versa, who all enjoy the same server and read the same lore. 

Edited October 11, 2023 by DeadLantern

[GeneralCamo]

3 hours ago, NG+7 Gael said:

I'm pretty sure most of us have our reasons for not doing so

What are these reasons? You gave points to the negative on not merging the servers, but never delved into this. 

[NG+7 Gael]

6 hours ago, GeneralCamo said:

What are these reasons? You gave points to the negative on not merging the servers, but never delved into this. 

For me, it's personal stuff that's largely irrelevant to the topic, really. I don't think the reasons are important, just the fact that myself and others have reasons why we would prefer to avoid talking in the maincord- whether it's seen as petty or not.

I will also add that I don't mean to imply that merging the discords will cause significant issues or anything- like I said, I don't think much of anything will change one way or another- only that I don't see any real positives aside from perhaps ease of moderation (although even then, modmail exists), while having enough potential downsides that I don't believe the merge to be worth doing.

Edited October 11, 2023 by NG+7 Gael

[rrrrrr]

Having only started playing again a month ago after a long, long break from SS13, all I can say is that I was immediately turned off by how some of the people in the not-main Discord acted. There was a general vibe of elitism and the feeling that they were somehow better than other players for... being in a public Discord, I guess? That, on top of the already mentioned passive-aggressiveness that seems to be a part of the "culture" over there. It was off-putting.

also garn wouldn't give me the old folks home role even though i was ipc loredev back in ~2015, so,

I do not see any downsides. Omicega basically said everything that needed to be say. Weirdo parallel culture of passive aggressive players that needs to be uprooted and stopped.

[Sycmos]

Not only do I think that the relay needs to be merged with the other Discords, but I think that as a stopgap that relay OOC as an off-topic channel in the current iteration of the relay Discord needs to be either more heavily monitored or deleted altogether. Not anywhere else will you find players who are more confident in openly dragging the efforts of the lore team, providing unwanted and often rude commentary on community creations, posting offensive content and generally behaving in a way that is more befitting that of a high school classroom than a space for group-based roleplay.

Since its inclusion I find myself using the Aurora admin bot to report behavior issues several times a week, often because the moderation team are either not able to catch it or it gets swept up in the momentum of conversation. Many of the attitudes and remarks that get made in the relay would not fly with the maincord, in-game OOC or LOOC and yet there is some innate passiveness towards how snide and abrasive players behave that it's simply normal to poison your words with sarcasm and irony. It's not conducive to healthy or friendly conversation, and in my opinion if we can't sculpt how players interact with each other with moderation then the vehicle in which it happens should be nuked.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Sycmos

[Don]

When it comes to roleplay communities, there is literally NOTHING I hate more than having a "The Other Discord". At least Aurora staff had the right idea of making Relay official but I still loathe its existence. As long as the pet pictures channel gets moved to maincord nothing of value will be lost.

 

Kill relay 2023.

[Omicega]

I worry that some of this is too direct for Aurora's very delicate tolerance for confrontation, but some of these replies aren't really sitting well with me and I had more to say anyway.

I should probably clarify and follow up with @Dreamix's post mentioning hornyposting that it's not just the sharp, snipey atmosphere that annoys me about the Relay. Even when it's at its most 'friendly', I really shouldn't have to trawl through so much weird, horny content whenever I get @ed -- or got @ed, I guess, since I haven't been in there for ages now. I have thin hopes that a merger might fix that, too, since again I think this kind of stuff only gets so far out of hand because it's one step removed from the public-facing areas of Aurora, but maybe this is a separate issue I should just complain about on its own if I don't want to see 1000 posts about the funny boykisser fox.

21 hours ago, NG+7 Gael said:

I don't think the reasons are important, just the fact that myself and others have reasons why we would prefer to avoid talking in the maincord- whether it's seen as petty or not.

You can't expect anyone to take you seriously if all you're going to do is make vague allusions to some unknowable trauma that apparently, for some mysterious reason, only affects the main Discord and not the Relay server. If it really is that serious, whatever it is, I'd suggest you stop trying to be so subtle about it in public and take it directly to staff so it can be addressed. You aren't helping anyone by trying to express the strongest possible opposition with the weakest possible evidence, least of all yourself.

20 hours ago, Sycmos said:

Many of the attitudes and remarks that get made in the relay would not fly with the maincord, in-game OOC or LOOC and yet there is some innate passiveness towards how snide and abrasive players behave that it's simply normal to poison your words with sarcasm and irony. It's not conducive to healthy or friendly conversation, and in my opinion if we can't sculpt how players interact with each other with moderation then the vehicle in which it happens should be nuked.

Sorry, but this, to me, is verging on open hypocrisy now. Don't you think you contribute to this in some way yourself, both on the Relay itself and on the forums, etcetera? It's bizarre for me to see something approaching support coming from your corner. I don't like that the format of a forum thread allows you to jump in and take up a stance like this while brushing past the core issue. Like I said, it's been some time since I was in the Relay, but I remember the pithy comments whizzing around like bullets pretty vividly, and I'm a little tired at having to pretend like it's not an open secret where at least some of them are coming from. I'm interested in what you think would change with a merger of the two servers or, at the very least, some kind of tightening of the Relay's standards.

[Garnascus]

I think we can simultaneously acknowledge there is an issue of behavior on the relay and also acknowledge many of us contribute to the issue. The relay has a particular "grain" to it and even if you're normally not with said grain you can start to follow it the more you engage with the relay. I think the focus should be on a working solution to the problem. It is harder to punish people for being passive-aggressive due to the plausible deniability and vague appeals. Its very easy to punish someone for being vehemently aggressive. That kind of behavior isn't really tolerated in our community. We unfortunately have a lot of different groups of players that do not care for one another so they find the outlet they can get away with. That means being passive-aggressive. That means being snarky and cloaking your vitriol without name-calling. 

I am not sure if merging discords or deleting relay OOC will solve any of these issues. I do however think we should have only one discord. Its probably not good to have your community splinter. 

[Vulcenus]

nuke all the discord servers and disable the global ooc on top of that honestly

let these cliques crawl back into their private discords each and they can bicker all about their least favorite people out of sight and mind for everyone's sanity

nothing of value will be lost if you ask me, just hop into the game, kill your antag or sit in the bar and chat with your friends in-game and get out as god intended, skipping all the dumb drama

[Garnascus]

1 hour ago, Vulcenus said:

let these cliques crawl back into their private discords

Ill be honest I just don't think cliques are that big of a deal. We should just ignore it because its a boogeyman issue. Anyone who has been involved in this community for any significant stretch of time has seen people complaining about cliques. If you're knowledgeable of our social climate you will also see its multiple different groups of people who complaint about them and also people who ARE in cliques. The reality is we all have friends who play this game. We all have friends who are a part of this community. Thus, most of us are in a "clique". I think it only becomes a problem when theres targeted harassment over individuals. This HAS happened in Aurora's history but its been relatively rare.

I think there is a strong perception of cliques on the relay because anytime a spicy conversation starts a lot of people not involved at the start jump in and take a side. I think this is just people lurking and deciding to post when something controversial is said. Personally speaking I am far more likely to post if I see someone saying something I strongly disagree with. I think that is true for most people and its not evidence that we are shouting in our private discords for backup in a discord argument. All of us are more mature than that. Who the opinions are coming from shouldn't matter. 

[Vulcenus]

46 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

Ill be honest I just don't think cliques are that big of a deal. We should just ignore it because its a boogeyman issue. Anyone who has been involved in this community for any significant stretch of time has seen people complaining about cliques. If you're knowledgeable of our social climate you will also see its multiple different groups of people who complaint about them and also people who ARE in cliques. The reality is we all have friends who play this game. We all have friends who are a part of this community. Thus, most of us are in a "clique". I think it only becomes a problem when theres targeted harassment over individuals. This HAS happened in Aurora's history but its been relatively rare.

I think there is a strong perception of cliques on the relay because anytime a spicy conversation starts a lot of people not involved at the start jump in and take a side. I think this is just people lurking and deciding to post when something controversial is said. Personally speaking I am far more likely to post if I see someone saying something I strongly disagree with. I think that is true for most people and its not evidence that we are shouting in our private discords for backup in a discord argument. All of us are more mature than that. Who the opinions are coming from shouldn't matter. 

Goes hand in hand with the toxicity present in my opinion to the point where people care more about what's happening outside of the game on the discord servers than in-game. I don't agree that the cliquing in roleplaying communities is a boogeyman issue as it very much shuts off the newcomer from a pleasant experience as I've witnessed quite a few times throughout the years both in Aurora and outside. It used to be as simple as departmental cliques simply flat out ignoring people outside of their department and the new guy who's immediately assumed as a "huboid" or "greytider" which in itself is another stupid prejudice a lot of people have and with time the circle closes further in, which is both good and bad but still annoying to deal with when this whole game is about characters interacting with each other.

I think the strong perception of cliques is valid and should remain but it isn't really something with a solution, there isn't really much you can do about it except removing the platform/stage they use to further their shut-in, lashing out to the outsiders behaviours and put their focus back on what's happening within the round. Your friend circle shouldn't be affecting anyone's interactions in the game for better or worse, which a lot of people have difficulty dealing with. It also works in reverse as people get peeved about what happens in game and starts lashing at people OOC be it Discord or otherwise. Sure, there's nothing wrong with socializing with your fellow players in a normal circumstance but when the video game takes a backseat and the highlight is what people are yapping about in a chatroom you gotta ask what's the point of all that.

First mistake, albeit with good intentions, is to assume roleplayers in an already niche platform like BYOND/Space Station 13 notoriously holding a lot of weird communities (saving this server's presence, mostly) is mature enough to ascend over the toxicity and petty squabbles.

My main point remains, nuking the discord and most ooc channels should improve people's focus on what's going on in-game, as I've experienced in a few other platforms. Local OOC is all you need to help out with in-game stuff as it needs be.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Vulcenus