Does The Piazza need/deserve it's own fulltime Discord server?

[Big Mac]

Sorry if it sounds like I’m putting a downer on things; that’s not my intent. I’m just saying have a look to see if enough of the community will use a Discord to make the effort of set up and maintenance worthwhile. There might be enough likely users, if so do it.

Thanks. That is a good thing to point out.

I am currently trying to bring The Book-House at The Piazza up to date, and look into the table BBCode problem.

There are entire D&D settings missing from the Book-House, as it is still being built. (It's like the Second Death Star from Star Wars - fully operational, but with holes in it. ) Adding additional reviews and articles about the products already there and adding new articles for products that have not yet go up, will help people research products they don't yet own.

And fixing the broken table tag would help a lot of us get our posts looking better.

Working on the Discord would involve trading off time from one thing to another thing.

And, forgetting my own efforts, and focusing on the fun time I had at the 10th Birthday Party, lets remember that everyone there made the time in their schedule to be there.

So there is a "cost" to things like this, even if they are provided as a free service. And a cost vs benefits discussion is appropriate (especially if people are not being rude).

Having said that, The Piazza was created by Ashtagon after the staff at the WotC forums decided it was "too much work" to have bespoke subforums for several of the out of print campaign settings discussed here. And not only has The Piazza replicated that, it has also gone on to add bespoke forums for settings that WotC and TSR never supported with forums. (We have got to the level where only the hard-core cult D&D settings do not have bespoke forums yet, and I'm an advocate for finding fans of those and spending the time building a subcommunity for them.)

So, if there was a significant minority that wants to meet up on a regular basis, I think that would be enough to convince me to spend the time working out how to repurpose the Discord server.

At the very least, I can always archive the entire thing until next year and reopen it for the 11th Birthday Chat.

[shesheyan]

I didn't participate in the Discord chat over the weekend after I realized I would have to create an account and add another social media channel to my plate. I'm trying very hard to go into the opposite direction and reduce my social media time per day. I won't be using The Piazza Discord chat.

[Gravesguardian]

As of this time, we did not get enough Yes votes to get an active Discord server for the community to use. Unless the Admins say otherwise, I'ld like for the Poll & this topic to remain open so it can be used to gauge future interest, or lack there of, in having an active Discord server.

[RobJN]

The idea of not-on-all-the-time-but-opened-for-regularly-scheduled-events appeals to me. I could commit to something, say, monthly.*


*full disclosure: this would also stop me from spending ALL my free time in the chat, thus forcing me to work on the Chronicle.

[Big Mac]

As of this time, we did not get enough Yes votes to get an active Discord server for the community to use. Unless the Admins say otherwise, I'ld like for the Poll & this topic to remain open so it can be used to gauge future interest, or lack there of, in having an active Discord server.

I don't see a problem with keeping the topic open, but the fact you three couldn't get 10 votes in 24 hours means that it's probably not something the entire community is going to want to use.

But that's OK. A parttime Discord server might still be desirable.

The idea of not-on-all-the-time-but-opened-for-regularly-scheduled-events appeals to me. I could commit to something, say, monthly.*


*full disclosure: this would also stop me from spending ALL my free time in the chat, thus forcing me to work on the Chronicle.

Sounds like a good idea.

But, how many people would want to be involved in that?

And who would pick the dates for the online meetups?

And who would promote them?

I've asked a couple of people to talk to Threshold Magazine and Wildspace: The Spelljammer Fanzine, to see if an onlne chatroom would work for them.

What sort of other events do you think we could do?

[Havard]

It's not the server we need, but its the one we deserve...



-Havard

[RobJN]

But that's OK. A parttime Discord server might still be desirable.

The idea of not-on-all-the-time-but-opened-for-regularly-scheduled-events appeals to me. I could commit to something, say, monthly.*


*full disclosure: this would also stop me from spending ALL my free time in the chat, thus forcing me to work on the Chronicle.

Sounds like a good idea.

But, how many people would want to be involved in that?

And who would pick the dates for the online meetups?

And who would promote them?

I've asked a couple of people to talk to Threshold Magazine and Wildspace: The Spelljammer Fanzine, to see if an onlne chatroom would work for them.

What sort of other events do you think we could do?

My initial idea was mostly a "chew the fat" topic-less ("open") chat. Talk about whatever comes up, what's being worked on, how best to bend new book X for use in Spelljammer/Thorn's Chronicle/Blackmoor continuity

What time(s) work for the community? Well, polls would have to be conducted to see what time of the month and time of day shows the most promise.

Feelers would have to be put out, to see what interests are floating around for topic-based discussion: my thoughts on these centered around, say, seminar-like "how-to's," on things like design (of adventures, NPCs, dominions, Spelljammer ships/planets/Crystal Spheres and the like). For a while, over at the Alternity.net message boards, an annual "Alternity Game Day" chat was held with the A-team designers. Questions were harvested a few months beforehand, and the host would fire them at the guest, to the delight of the assembled audience.

[Big Mac]

But that's OK. A parttime Discord server might still be desirable.

The idea of not-on-all-the-time-but-opened-for-regularly-scheduled-events appeals to me. I could commit to something, say, monthly.*


*full disclosure: this would also stop me from spending ALL my free time in the chat, thus forcing me to work on the Chronicle.

Sounds like a good idea.

But, how many people would want to be involved in that?

And who would pick the dates for the online meetups?

And who would promote them?

I've asked a couple of people to talk to Threshold Magazine and Wildspace: The Spelljammer Fanzine, to see if an onlne chatroom would work for them.

What sort of other events do you think we could do?

My initial idea was mostly a "chew the fat" topic-less ("open") chat. Talk about whatever comes up, what's being worked on, how best to bend new book X for use in Spelljammer/Thorn's Chronicle/Blackmoor continuity

What time(s) work for the community? Well, polls would have to be conducted to see what time of the month and time of day shows the most promise.

Feelers would have to be put out, to see what interests are floating around for topic-based discussion: my thoughts on these centered around, say, seminar-like "how-to's," on things like design (of adventures, NPCs, dominions, Spelljammer ships/planets/Crystal Spheres and the like). For a while, over at the Alternity.net message boards, an annual "Alternity Game Day" chat was held with the A-team designers. Questions were harvested a few months beforehand, and the host would fire them at the guest, to the delight of the assembled audience.

I'm not sure you could do a "time of day that works for the community" unless you are going for a specific country as your main audience.

I suspect that, if someone wants to host some sort of session in the Piazza Discord, it is going to be more a case of when the host is free.

I could certainly do open research on the Book-House (if anyone wants to throw links at me).

When would you or someone else (and who would that be) be wanting to do a poll or polls to pick a chat day/time?

[Kythkyn]

So... how does one get a non-expired invitation..?

[RobJN]

I'm not sure you could do a "time of day that works for the community" unless you are going for a specific country as your main audience.

I suspect that, if someone wants to host some sort of session in the Piazza Discord, it is going to be more a case of when the host is free.

I could certainly do open research on the Book-House (if anyone wants to throw links at me).

When would you or someone else (and who would that be) be wanting to do a poll or polls to pick a chat day/time?

Darned pesky round world and time zones!

Obviously, the time open would depend on the host's availability, and thus why a schedule would be important to lay out and stick to -- nothing kills off a chat faster than a flaky host.

Another thought that just struck me: what if the Discord was left open for, say, a week's test period, to gather traffic data -- who's on when, what times are "peak" hours, and thus most likely to get participation? Theoretically, a non-hosted run, and then a "hosted during XX hours" could be looked at to see the difference between open and topic-based/scheduled traffic flow?

Another obviously -- it does little good to schedule a chat when nobody is likely to show up, but with some data to chew on, plans would be easier to make. And during the test period, visitors could be "pinged" about "what the heck do you want to talk about, and would you show up regularly to do so?"

[Big Mac]

So... how does one get a non-expired invitation..?

I did one-day invites, as I was open for pulling anyone in who wanted to come to the 10th Birthday Party.

I think I can do it a different way for the future, but I'm still testing things.

[Big Mac]

I'm not sure you could do a "time of day that works for the community" unless you are going for a specific country as your main audience.

I suspect that, if someone wants to host some sort of session in the Piazza Discord, it is going to be more a case of when the host is free.

I could certainly do open research on the Book-House (if anyone wants to throw links at me).

When would you or someone else (and who would that be) be wanting to do a poll or polls to pick a chat day/time?

Darned pesky round world and time zones!

Obviously, the time open would depend on the host's availability, and thus why a schedule would be important to lay out and stick to -- nothing kills off a chat faster than a flaky host.

Another thought that just struck me: what if the Discord was left open for, say, a week's test period, to gather traffic data -- who's on when, what times are "peak" hours, and thus most likely to get participation? Theoretically, a non-hosted run, and then a "hosted during XX hours" could be looked at to see the difference between open and topic-based/scheduled traffic flow?

Another obviously -- it does little good to schedule a chat when nobody is likely to show up, but with some data to chew on, plans would be easier to make. And during the test period, visitors could be "pinged" about "what the heck do you want to talk about, and would you show up regularly to do so?"

Well the Discord server is already permanently open to Piazza staff members, but I'm not seeing any of them popping in to use it yet.

I've turned the 10th Birthday Chat into a read-only archive, and put it somewhere where forum members will be able to see it. Voice chat does not get recorded, so I've got rid of that voice chat channel.

There is a bit of "is this thing on" clutter, from when the Piazza staff were helping me test Discord before the 10th Birthday party, and I'll have to read through that and see if it would be better zap it, but we are pretty much ready to go.

I'll have to figure out how to invite people in and stuff.

I might go for 24 hour invites, backed up by a "forum member role" that I can add to anyone who is a real forum member.

I can make tweaks as I learn how to do things better.

[Tim Baker]

Well the Discord server is already permanently open to Piazza staff members, but I'm not seeing any of them popping in to use it yet.

I've turned the 10th Birthday Chat into a read-only archive, and put it somewhere where forum members will be able to see it. Voice chat does not get recorded, so I've got rid of that voice chat channel.

There is a bit of "is this thing on" clutter, from when the Piazza staff were helping me test Discord before the 10th Birthday party, and I'll have to read through that and see if it would be better zap it, but we are pretty much ready to go.

I'll have to figure out how to invite people in and stuff.

I might go for 24 hour invites, backed up by a "forum member role" that I can add to anyone who is a real forum member.

I can make tweaks as I learn how to do things better.

Whether this works out as a long-term thing or not, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for taking the time to set it up for those folks who are interested in it. I appreciate how giving you are of your time on behalf of the community!

[Big Mac]

Whether this works out as a long-term thing or not, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for taking the time to set it up for those folks who are interested in it. I appreciate how giving you are of your time on behalf of the community!

Thanks Tim.

That all comes down to the inclusive attitude that Ashtagon created, back when she founded The Piazza.

When the small number of Other Worlds forums were about to be deleted, there were some folks who only wanted to see a "lifeboat" for their own preferred campaign setting, but she insisted on building bespoke forums for all of those subcommunities and then moved on to build subcommunities for campaign settings that had never been supported by the WotC forums.

I didn't know who Ashtagon was back then. I hadn't met her. And I didn't know most of the people here. But, Havard knew me and he picked up the spirit that Ashtagon had created and went hunting for me and other non-Mystara fans to make sure that as many of us as possible had the choice to come here.

I remember a time when I had a lot of people telling me that "nobody likes Spelljammer". After I came here, I went hunting in a few other places for Spelljammer fans (to let them know about The Piazza and the SJML (WotC's now deleted mailing list for Spelljammer) and I met a lot of other Spelljammer fans who had also been told that "nobody likes Spelljammer". Eventually I met so many Spelljammer fans, that I realised that it was definitely not true that nobody liked Spelljammer, but I still met people who had been told that.

I then realised that fans of other settings, that didn't have as big a fandom as Spelljammer had also had people telling them that nobody liked their setting and thought it would be cool to help people who were my friends hook up with other people who liked the same stuff. (I also thought it was pretty funny to gather up five fans of a campaign setting The Piazza didn't support and drop them into Ashtagon's lap with a forum request! )

And I really like the way that a smaller (more cult) campaign setting, like Council of Wyrms, gets the same support at The Piazza as a bigger (more mainstream) campaign setting, like Mystara. (And I like it that the same happens for rules and that things like Dark Dungeons and Castles & Crusades have "won" bespoke forums.)

Anyhoo, I'm waffling a bit, but the bottom line is that, as someone from a minority group (a D&D fandom minority group) I know how it felt to not get support and I know how much better it was to get the support (from The Piazza) that I wanted. So if there is an actual demonstrated demand that proves that a small number of people would use the Discord on a regular basis, I'm happy to spend a fixed amount of time sorting things out, so that gets up and running. (That's the same thing I did for the Threshold Team and the Wildspace Team, when I set up their invisible forums.)

[Coronoides]

I then realised that fans of other settings, that didn't have as big a fandom as Spelljammer had also had people telling them that nobody liked their setting and thought it would be cool to help people who were my friends hook up with other people who liked the same stuff. (I also thought it was pretty funny to gather up five fans of a campaign setting The Piazza didn't support and drop them into Ashtagon's lap with a forum request! )

And I really like the way that a smaller (more cult) campaign setting, like Council of Wyrms, gets the same support at The Piazza as a bigger (more mainstream) campaign setting, like Mystara. (And I like it that the same happens for rules and that things like Dark Dungeons and Castles & Crusades have "won" bespoke forums.)

And this is still the one active place on the internet and perhaps in the world for Council of Wryms fans. Thank you.

[Thorf]

Not for the first time I find myself wishing we had some sort of "Like" feature at The Piazza. Great post there, David.

[Hugin]

Not for the first time I find myself wishing we had some sort of "Like" feature at The Piazza. Great post there, David.

Seconded!

(I've often wanted to hit a "thumbs up" button after reading a post and then realizing there isn't one.)

[Big Mac]

I then realised that fans of other settings, that didn't have as big a fandom as Spelljammer had also had people telling them that nobody liked their setting and thought it would be cool to help people who were my friends hook up with other people who liked the same stuff. (I also thought it was pretty funny to gather up five fans of a campaign setting The Piazza didn't support and drop them into Ashtagon's lap with a forum request! )

And I really like the way that a smaller (more cult) campaign setting, like Council of Wyrms, gets the same support at The Piazza as a bigger (more mainstream) campaign setting, like Mystara. (And I like it that the same happens for rules and that things like Dark Dungeons and Castles & Crusades have "won" bespoke forums.)

And this is still the one active place on the internet and perhaps in the world for Council of Wryms fans. Thank you.

To be honest, when I see someone like you come along and bump topics from several years back, from a time where I and others have been struggling to get a fanbase going, it makes it worth the effort required for the actual administration work of adding a new forum.

The admin stuff is a fixed amount of effort. It's finding people who like to talk about campaign settings (or rules) that's the hard thing. So thank you for giving Council of Wyrms a boost.

[Big Mac]

Not for the first time I find myself wishing we had some sort of "Like" feature at The Piazza. Great post there, David.

Seconded!

(I've often wanted to hit a "thumbs up" button after reading a post and then realizing there isn't one.)

Thanks!

[Angel Tarragon]

It's really easy to set up a discord server. I set up my own this morning. I'm not sure if it's a good idea for The Piazza to have it's own Discord server, as the Forums could easily be duplicated there, thusly splitting attention between here and there and having to hunt down information becomes more of an involved process. Regardless of what the staff here decides to do, I will support the decision.

[Big Mac]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea for The Piazza to have it's own Discord server, as the Forums could easily be duplicated there, thusly splitting attention between here and there and having to hunt down information becomes more of an involved process.

That's been a concern raised not only against having a Discord server, but also against having a Facebook presence, a Google+ presence and a Twitter feed.

I personally feel that social media, of all types, is good for chatting, but not so good for long-term development of projects. You can't find old stuff easily.

For me, a Discord server would be useful for brainstorming sessions, but useless if the good ideas were not captured from the chat and then thrown down in a topic here. However, it's not for me to decide how other people want to try to brainstorm their ideas.

It looks like we have enough people who want to hang out on an "official Piazza Discord" that it is worth repurposing one I built for the 10th Birthday Chat.

I've got no intention of building one Discord channel per Piazza forum. I don't think that would be desirable in any case.

[RobJN]

I personally feel that social media, of all types, is good for chatting, but not so good for long-term development of projects. You can't find old stuff easily.

For me, a Discord server would be useful for brainstorming sessions, but useless if the good ideas were not captured from the chat and then thrown down in a topic here. However, it's not for me to decide how other people want to try to brainstorm their ideas.

Trying to find anything more than a few days old on social media is... well, to be nice, let's call it a chore.

I'm 100 percent in agreement, that the chat functions best as brainstorm and/or maybe one-shot RPG. For anything else, a topic in the appropriate subform a the Piazza seems like it would be a given, for further development, and this is the purpose for which forums can't be beat. Rather than one appropriating the functions of the other, I think they'd compliment each other. Live chat would just be icing on the Piazza's forum cake goodness.

I've got no intention of building one Discord channel per Piazza forum. I don't think that would be desirable in any case.

Sub-channels can be built into the main discord, can't they? Do they have to be programmed ahead of time, or can they be added on the fly?

If, for example, a bunch of Mystara-philes are chatting, and a group of Spelljammer-philes show up, rather than them talking across each other, could a moderator create a sub-channel for the for one or the other group right then, if need be? (This would be after the discussion of how the two settings would interact, of course, and talk begins to grow apart)

[Big Mac]

I personally feel that social media, of all types, is good for chatting, but not so good for long-term development of projects. You can't find old stuff easily.

For me, a Discord server would be useful for brainstorming sessions, but useless if the good ideas were not captured from the chat and then thrown down in a topic here. However, it's not for me to decide how other people want to try to brainstorm their ideas.

Trying to find anything more than a few days old on social media is... well, to be nice, let's call it a chore.

I'm 100 percent in agreement, that the chat functions best as brainstorm and/or maybe one-shot RPG. For anything else, a topic in the appropriate subform a the Piazza seems like it would be a given, for further development, and this is the purpose for which forums can't be beat. Rather than one appropriating the functions of the other, I think they'd compliment each other. Live chat would just be icing on the Piazza's forum cake goodness.

I concur with that. It does seem that live chat can compliment the forums, for a minority of the people here, at certain times.

I've got no intention of building one Discord channel per Piazza forum. I don't think that would be desirable in any case.

Sub-channels can be built into the main discord, can't they? Do they have to be programmed ahead of time, or can they be added on the fly?

If, for example, a bunch of Mystara-philes are chatting, and a group of Spelljammer-philes show up, rather than them talking across each other, could a moderator create a sub-channel for the for one or the other group right then, if need be? (This would be after the discussion of how the two settings would interact, of course, and talk begins to grow apart)

Hmm.

Well my issue there, is that I've moved the live-chat from the 10th BIrthday Party to make it into a read-only archive. I wasn't thinking about deleting it.

But if we start having pop-up extra channels, as time goes on, what would we do with those rooms later? Do we make Mystara and Spelljammer rooms and then delete them? Or do we make them and then archive them? Or do we make them and then leave them and end up slowly replicating the entire structure of the forums over time.

Now if a group doing the Play by Post sort of thing wanted to have a voice channel, so that they could do live chat games, that would be something that could not be achieved without that facility. That's the "complimenting the forum" sort of thing you were talking about.

But if people want to have different discussions on a Discord server that doesn't have a large number of supporters yet, I would initially ask if those conversations could be scheduled at different times, so that the people interested in both of them could take part in both conversations.

[RobJN]

But if we start having pop-up extra channels, as time goes on, what would we do with those rooms later? Do we make Mystara and Spelljammer rooms and then delete them? Or do we make them and then archive them? Or do we make them and then leave them and end up slowly replicating the entire structure of the forums over time.

Now if a group doing the Play by Post sort of thing wanted to have a voice channel, so that they could do live chat games, that would be something that could not be achieved without that facility. That's the "complimenting the forum" sort of thing you were talking about.

But if people want to have different discussions on a Discord server that doesn't have a large number of supporters yet, I would initially ask if those conversations could be scheduled at different times, so that the people interested in both of them could take part in both conversations.

Makes sense. "Don't split the party" and all that

[Big Mac]

I've mostly got the DIscord server ready.

Nobody has formally arranged any sort of meetup, but I've sent out a few invites (to the people who added me as a friend during the birthday chat) so that they can take a look at it and talk to each other about picking a time for online meetups.