Redoing Discord Channels Discussion

Operations Center
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Last May, @Sandaoguo wrote an op-ed on the old forum about the use of both forums and Discord, how to ensure the proper place for each, and how to foster healthy discussion on each. That op-ed in large part informed our decision to move to Discourse as our new forum provider, a decision which (in my opinion) has been rather successful.

In that op-ed, Glen highlighted limiting the number of Discord channels as a key strategy to avoid conversations becoming too spread out, unmanageable, bureaucratic, etc. It also actively discourages use of the forum to create a Discord channel for everything. Why create a forum topic to discuss an issue in depth, or with greater structure using the superior organizational tools of Discourse, when you can simply ask for a new Discord channel?

Despite raising this point, we’ve never gotten around to implementing a slimming of our Discord channels, and it’s badly needed. While we can come up with arbitrary reasons to separate out channels, each additional channel further subdivides discussion and bloats bureaucracy without actually moving things forward. As a result, I want to recenter the discussion on streamlining our Discord, and am putting forward a new suggested outline.

#welcome - contains core gov/forum information
#announcements - for gov/forum announcements

Chat
#lampshade-lounge - same purpose as now, “general chat”, except now more topics will likely end up in lampshade-lounge due to eliminating several channels
#spam - off-topic conversation
#rl-politics - current events, real life politics, etc.

Government
#government - fully public government discussion, accessible to all server members
#legislator-lounge - government discussion for only government members
#executive-planning - Citizens only channel to plan government activities (includes MoC, MoE, MoFA ambassador updates, etc.). No Ministry really needs its own channels, just put it all in one, that’ll actually increase engagement and communication with ongoing projects
#cabinet - private, Cabinet-only channel. Sensitive FA or opsec issues and internal Cabinet process can go here
#world-assembly - for both WA discussion and the OWL voting process to happen
#spsf-barracks - for SPSF chatter, banter, training, planning, and coordination - all SPSF access
#spsf-officers - for SPSF higher-level planning/opsec - officers and up can access
#legislator-committee - private, LegComm-only channel.
#crs - private, CRS-only channel. (CRS members: is this something that is used?)

This is what I propose as an initial outline. I’m happy to answer questions about why anything was included or excluded. In my mind, only absolutely-necessary channels should be included, and everything else should be axed. Honestly, I could be persuaded to eliminate some channels that I included (e.g. #rl-politics, #spsf-officers, and #crs) in the interests of further streamlining. But I’m interested to hear what others think :slight_smile:

Note: this post is as a community member, not a mod. These are my ideas, not me saying “this is going to happen to restructure the Discord”.

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#executive-planning feels a little too consolidated, but that may just be my initial knee-jerk reaction. I do think it’ll perhaps work better if/when we adopt an appointed Cabinet system at the conclusion of the Great Council, and maybe it’ll also be for the better in encouraging internal ministry discussions to actually take place on the forums.

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Discord has threads and forums as well, with forums being a more recent development. That might be hiding discussions and topics behind a relatively obscure feature (do you know how many threads have been made in any channel, aside from OWL’s?), but it would be an option for projects or topics that still receive a lot of attention but don’t warrant a separate channel.

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The kpop thread :wink:

1 Like
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This is exactly my thinking on the matter. I don’t think the rigidly defined boundaries we have for most Ministries are productive in terms of maintaining separate “staffs” and such. My preference would be that there’s a publicly accessible channel for planning to be done, and people can enter/leave projects based on whether they are able and interested in contributing rather than arbitrary “staff” delineations

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Bump.

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I’d like to bump this reorganization. I think it’s a great forward step for our community, and a solid shakeup.

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Seeing #executive-planning in action, I’m no longer sure it’s necessary at all. Organizing projects from Discord threads just feels like a less organized version of forum threads, and one that’s less accessible to consult in the future.

I’m also a bit averse to consolidating all SPSF training into #spsf-barracks but I guess that could be addressed with private threads.

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We still have a significant amount of non-government channels we could do with trimming.

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I agree, and I like what HS proposed in that area.

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I would like to recommend changing “#rl-politics” to “#current-events”, covering irl current events as a whole rather than just real life politics.

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Did you mean the reverse? I see current events now

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I meant “#current-events”

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The reason I proposed it that way is that in the past we’ve had a current-events channel, a rl-politics channel separately, and we currently have the COVID-19 channel separately. At this point, I think all 3 (or, rather, 2, because I think we slimmed down at some point) should be combined into one

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Speaking on HumanSanity’s suggested channel outline, I would like to keep #getting-help as well as a record of actions taken on the server.

Also recommend scrapping the Legislator Pavillion voice channel.

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We also need to scrap the “Games and Events” channel too, since it has been replaced with “Lampshade Bar”.

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I think the only voice channel is that we really need–or perhaps what is really used–is the Lampshade Bar. It’s used every now and then unlike the Games and Events one or the Legislator Pavillion one too.

Also, I like HS’s idea of #rl-politics, combining three alike channels into that one. I don’t think there is any need for there to be separate channels on alike matters.

And #spam is for bot-spam like Coco too not solely just “off-topic conversation”, correct?

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I would assume so, if #coconot-grove doesn’t make it.

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Hate to follow up to myself, but it’s been a longer period of time with both channels in place, and I’m… still not sure what #executive-planning accomplishes that #government-discussion doesn’t?

I don’t think there’s been any discussion in #executive-planning that couldn’t have gone in #government-discussion. And if we’re attached to the idea of government ministers being able to create threads, well, there are a grand total of two threads in #government-discussion and they haven’t been active since early October of 2021, so I think it’s safe to move the threads there regardless.

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#executive-planning is citizens only, #government is all server members.