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 Post subject: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:09 pm 
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hotel delfino's been the most active and visible chat on the boards for a while now- almost to a fault. a handful of times some users were confused as to whether or not the chat was official, and why MFGG didn't have an official discord to begin with.

i see chats as a good gateway to area or subject they're for- in this case, MFGG. discord's great with community building and intermingling which allows for new users to get a taste of new communities by trying out the discord. so in short- i'm proposing an official MFGG discord. but what would this entail?

one of the biggest points of contention with chatrooms is conflicting views in terms of rules and moderation. the simplest solution is to adopt the newest iteration of the forum rules, and tweak them where necessary to fit a chatroom environment. there's a few things that work differently in real time discussions than they do on a message board, so this is necessary for keeping things as smooth as possible.

the next question would be how warns and bans on the discord would translate to the forums, if at all? would a user banned on the boards in turn be banned on the discord? would a discord ban result in a forum ban? discord mods and admins would have some overlap with the forums but would likely be more focused on users who have experience in moderating discord servers- knowing what's best for the forums isn't always what's best for a chat. banlogs for both discord and the boards (presumably just hosted on the boards) would be great to have regardless.

what kind of content would an official chatroom have? i'll use two other successful chatrooms as examples- the vg resource + did you know gaming discord, and 1-up world.

Image Image
(left: tVGR+DYKG, right: 1-up world)

tVGR's discord is very straight and to the point. fewer channels mean broader scopes for each, as well as more clear-cut rules as for what is/isn't allowed to be discussed. 1-up world is certainly larger, but makes it easier to share content for upcoming games- whether that just be general information, or spoilers. there is no rule against spoilers in tVGR, as well as no place to contain them- not the case in 1-up world, where you can share or avoid them at your discretion. one thing to note is that neither of these servers has any kind of arguments or controversial channel- this means that these subjects are either not allowed or expected to be discussed calmly so they don't spiral into arguments.

currently, this is how hotel delfino is set up-

Image

it's not unlike 1-up world, but it has channels like controversial for political discussions and arguments to be contained and an anime channel rather than lumping it into cool-stuff, the designated "media sharing" channel. whether or not it will be kept should definitely be discussed- it has its benefits as well as its downsides, though personally i think the pros outweigh the cons.

the final, and debatably most important note, is how do we make it a companion to the forums, rather than a detractor? many chat naysayers bring up how chatrooms often pull attention away from the sites they're for- and it's usually true. so what can we do with both to make them each fun and interesting to be a part of?

i, again, see a discord chat as a gateway. it's far easier to join a chat than a forum, like it or not, and people typically go to chat first via word of mouth or otherwise before getting onto the boards. it's possible to embed discord channels into sites as well- this kind of unification would be extremely useful for livestreams, whether they be from MFGGers or nintendo directs. an on-site "channel" that goes live whenever one of a handful of MFGGers start streaming would be a good way to draw attention to both.

lurking on the boards is far easier than lurking in chat, and a lot of users simply check the site once every day to make sure if there's any new posts of interest, then log out, while in chat they could spend hours having discussions. discord is far easier for chatting, while the site is better for hosting content and events. this fact might be a good basis to go off of, but exploring other options is also a great idea.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:12 pm 
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Quote:
the final, and debatably most important note, is how do we make it a companion to the forums, rather than a detractor? many chat naysayers bring up how chatrooms often pull attention away from the sites they're for- and it's usually true. so what can we do with both to make them each fun and interesting to be a part of?

Give MFGG3 a greater emphasis on content showcase, critique, and development, while the Discord can be more oriented towards casual discussion.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:22 pm 
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A #WIP and #help channel would be good but having the showcase of more complete stuff as well as competitions and other such activities should stay on the forums.

Casual discussion should be the theme of the MFGG discord. Maybe take SJG back out and put Forum Games back in on the forums given that SJG posts tend to be more chatroom-style silly posts with few replies anyways. #random or #spacejunkgalaxy on Discord. Keep General Chat for deeper, longer discussions and polls as on the forum.

The way I see it, the layout should be something like:
#rules (link to rules and post rules updates here; same rules as forum with the addition of some guidelines on hiding spoilers with <> around a link)
#news (news posted here by staff / social media manager)
________
#wip
#help
________
#general
#gaming
#random/#spacejunkgalaxy

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:45 pm 
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I have very mixed feelings about this. Discord is popular and widely-used among those who like video games, but from what I've seen, most of the communities that have implemented an official Discord channel have severely reduced forum activity (I think Syx's forum, VGR, Minus World, and SMW Central all fall into this category). That might not be so horrible if total activity (forum activity + mainsite activity + Discord activity) increased as a direct result of creating an official Discord channel, but I'm not aware of any of those communities seeing a huge increase in games or art or other content being made.

I'm speaking hypothetically here, but if we did decide to make an official Discord, here's what I would recommend:

Purpose: The Discord needs to be able to do something that the forums can't do (or can't do well). Encouraging MFGGers to stream games or set up online multiplayer games would be a good thing (although even in those cases, you can facilitate those things with a forum account).

Structure: I don't have a strong opinion on the number of channels we should have. We'd want to experiment with this.

Rules: A lack of clearly-defined rules - and scant or inconsistent enforcement thereof - has been a contributing factor to the death of most of the previous unofficial chat groups. Obviously, setting appropriate boundaries is important to the success of a large, fast-paced Internet chat group full of strong personalities. What I have in mind: MFGG Discord rules would be the same as the forum rules, but enforcement would be somewhat more lenient because of the quicker pace and less permanent nature of a chat group.

Staff: Anyone who's currently an admin or forum mod should have a staff role on the MFGG Discord. I'd be cool with giving Discord moderator roles to QC members if they want them. It may be necessary to give Discord moderator roles to some other people as well, especially since we may need someone who can cover the "night shift". Discord-specific mods should probably get a badge on the forums.

Bans: This is another thing that needs to be decided on in order for a Discord to be successful. I believe that the forums and Discord should be regarded as separate entities. Bans on the forums shouldn't be enforced on the Discord, and Discord bans shouldn't be enforced on the forums. Unless I'm mistaken, Discord doesn't have a way to show a user's IP or e-mail address, and besides that, it's super-easy to create new accounts without being detected if you use Tor or proxies.

Controversial content: I'm strongly opposed to having a #controversial or #arguments channel - it's a bad idea to have a channel with the express purpose of encouraging people to argue (especially if politics are involved). I'd like to think that things wouldn't get as heated as they have in Hotel Delfino, but that depends on who's in the group and how it's moderated. MFGG is a Mario fansite, and Mario games are about bringing people together - and Internet political debates are a fantastic way to drive people apart. Personally, I'd love to have no political talk period, although that's probably asking too much. Having a #controversial channel is just asking for trouble.

Discord member groups: We'd have separate member groups for staff and MFGGers. I was also thinking of separating "MFGGers" and "Guests" member groups. MFGGers would be people with verified forum accounts - they could PM us on the forums to confirm that their Discord account is really them, and then they'd be moved from Guests to MFGGers. People in the MFGGer group would get some kind of small extra privilege. This would be an incentive to get newly-invited members to join MFGG - and since it's easy to make a forum account, I don't see any risk of stratification or elitism setting in.

I see what Mit is saying about a Discord being a possible "gateway" to new members joining the forums. It is easy to invite people to join a Discord group, and it literally takes one click to become part of the group. That said, it's also pretty easy quick and easy to register a forum account, and I'm not aware of many (if any) new people who joined one of the unofficial MFGG chat groups and then became active on Real MFGG.

Mit wrote:
Lurking in the boards is easier than lurking in chat

I'm not sure if I agree with this. I'm now in 15 different Discord groups, but I hardly post in any of them. Because it's so easy to join a Discord group, it's also easy to join a Discord group where you have no interest in participating regularly (if at all).

Personally, I think having an official Discord group is the wrong strategy for MFGG. I think we would be better served by focusing on continual improvement of our current forums, mainsite, and social media channels, rather than creating a chat group that has a high risk of choking out the forums.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:47 pm 
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I suggested something similar a good while ago, but at the time the community was in a kind of split up position and both sides weren't really trying to do much about that, so it wasn't really possible back then. But right now I do believe that an official MFGG Discord server can work.

Okay, so here's the thing, what works for one server doesn't work for another one. Like for an example, I am an admin of of a server with over 1000 members. It's really really big for discord standards and it's very active, as a result it has a lot of channels (15 channels open to discussion). Then there's another server I moderate which only has 150 members. It also has a lot of specific channels (16 channels), but they do not get a lot of posts. In fact, some of them get doesn't get messages for days, like the cartoon channel which doesn't serve much purpose. That really doesn't help the server as it makes the server seem like it's much less active than it already is, and possibly drives off new members. Hotel Delfino is even smaller and it doesn't have this problem, so it wouldn't be a good idea to increase the channel count. It has 10 channels, excluding #announcements and such, which is more than fine. Heck, you can even reduce the number a bit too, Flashback's server has 7 channels and 350 members. Another server I'm pretty active on also has 7 channels, but it has 800 members. They are both doing really fine. That being said, reducing that to something like 5 and getting commonly used channels removed isn't really a good idea, and I really shouldn't say why.

tl;dr: 10 is a good number for channels that aren't #announcements and such.

For rules, staff members, bans, and member roles I agree with Vinny's opinions. But in addition to the "MFGGer" role I'd also want to see roles like "Spriting Expert" or "Programming Expert", similar to what Mit suggested a while ago. Another server I'm in does this with game engines and it works really really well. Like when someone has a question they just ping the role and people try to help them. But a lot of people got the "Unity Expert" role there, despite not really being experts, so I wouldn't give the roles to a lot of people.

And lastly I don't really mind the #controversial but I can also live without it.

I hope you guys will take me seriously for once and won't ignore me.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:31 am 
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VinnyVideo wrote:
Personally, I think having an official Discord group is the wrong strategy for MFGG. I think we would be better served by focusing on continual improvement of our current forums, mainsite, and social media channels, rather than creating a chat group that has a high risk of choking out the forums.


This about sums it up for my thoughts.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 1:07 am 
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i dunno how i feel about having separate member roles for people who are on mfgg and who aren't. i already don't like it when people jump on newbies out of nowhere asking who they are on MFGG, because then it makes it feel like they're invading on some private chat when it's not and it shouldn't be. just letting things go with the flow works better in that instance.

as for making literally everyone on staff a discord admin/mod, i'm not sure how i feel about that. i agree that there should be a decent amount of overlap and staff should be designated regardless, but being good at forum moderation/administration doesn't automatically equate to being good at moderating for a fast paced chat. we've had some high-friction moments in chat before and a few staff didn't do so hot under pressure.

i still see the discord as a companion to the site rather than a "replacement". i think dismissing the idea purely out of worry that it would overshadow the forums is a defeatist attitude, and not one we should do going forward. we should at the very least give it a shot- if it works, it works.

i also read mors' post and agree with most of it. i agree with having fewer channels- it's just that we'd need to work out rules to compensate for the tighter scope. ped's layout was good, though i'd like to have a #spoilers channel or some kind of rule around it if not. having the expert/guru roles in-chat would be a good idea if not implemented onto the boards themselves.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 1:29 am 
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Yes please! This is something I've been a proponent of for a long time. If there was an official server and the audience were expanded beyond the very few people I see on there, I'd have a lot more fun participating in the chat.

Bans should be kept separate. If you become banned on one, still being allowed to join the other should be considered your "final chance". Immediately banning people on both does not give them a chance to redeem themselves.

Keep the number of channels on the low side, like the VG-Resource server. I've been spending a lot of time there and I like their system. If you create too many channels off the bat you will run into the issue of many dead channels. If spoilers/arguments/media become an issue and people complain about not having enough channels, that is the time to split them. Until then, have as few as possible. Even as someone who does not particularly like anime, I've never understood why HD splits things into #cool-stuff and #anime. I honestly would not mind they were merged into one because right now, #anime is a pretty dead channel.

If you don't want the chat to leech from the forums, then remove #showoff. Then people will be drawn to the forums to post devlogs and share art. I find it annoying when people use discord servers as their personal dumping grounds for projects. These people tend to join a bunch of servers, paste the same thing into each one and never stay around for discussions. It's spammy and should be saved for a dedicated thread on the forums. Also, remove #help-and-support. If people ask for help in the chat, whatever they learn is pushed upwards to never be seen again. If people ask for help on the forums, other people can search and take advantage of it too. It saves everyone's time when answers are easily found by search engines. This is the motivation behind sites like StackOverflow. As for controversial discussions, just have something like SMW Central's #reality-corner. People can talk about the ups and downs or their lives or bring up something like a recent political policy or national event. This channel would allow more serious discussions, but not outright arguments.

So basically that leaves us with a server dedicated to general discussion, gaming-centric discussion and media sharing. Media sharing is important because forums are not a very good format for posting random Youtube videos and images you find. Chats are best reserved for that.

Anyways, I'm excited to see what comes of this! I know I no longer use Hotel Delfino anymore, but if there was an official server with a lot more people it would certainly change my mind about that. :)

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 3:56 pm 
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VinnyVideo wrote:
I have very mixed feelings about this. Discord is popular and widely-used among those who like video games, but from what I've seen, most of the communities that have implemented an official Discord channel have severely reduced forum activity (I think Syx's forum, VGR, Minus World, and SMW Central all fall into this category). That might not be so horrible if total activity (forum activity + mainsite activity + Discord activity) increased as a direct result of creating an official Discord channel, but I'm not aware of any of those communities seeing a huge increase in games or art or other content being made.

Is this really such a bad thing, tho? Even though forum activity would surely decrease, the net total activity on MFGG would increase because Discord is a more accessible conversation platform. The website would still be necessary for hosting games and assets, but it's not like we spend our time partaking in much intelligent discourse anyways.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:09 pm 
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I didn't notice that my community was brought up. Though the forum died, the move to discord was a HUGE push in activity. The community has never been livelier.

Sure its not on the forum but who cares? not me! I can reach a much wider audience this way.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:50 pm 
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We're giving things a quick test run right now. Feel free to hop in and see how things are workin' out.

https://discord.gg/spRbsmg

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 8:54 pm 
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Honestly I'm hard-pressed to see how the activity on these forums could get even worse than it is already.

 
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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 10:39 pm 
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Honestly I'm hard-pressed to see how the activity on these forums could get even worse than it is already.

You do realize how incredibly hard you're tempting fate, yes?

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 1:03 am 
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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:49 am 
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I still have very mixed feelings about this. I agree that MFGG has been pretty sleepy lately, even with the addition of the Space Junk Galaxy. If people want an official chat channel, let's give it a try on an experimental basis.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:17 pm 
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Personally, I'd prefer the forums

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 7:44 pm 
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Littlelum: The Discord is intended to be a complement to the forums, not a replacement. We're trying to use it to increase total activity, not divert activity from the forums to the Discord.

We'd love for you to check out the new Discord group, but you won't miss anything super-important if you choose not to participate. News, announcements, competitions, and other important things will always get a forum topic.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:03 pm 
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Also I'd prefer if there were no Discord only events, or competitions that require the use of Discord to be a part of.

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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:29 pm 
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Kritter wrote:
Also I'd prefer if there were no Discord only events, or competitions that require the use of Discord to be a part of.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Should go without saying really. You're going to need to actively tug people back to the forums if you want the discord to complement them.

 
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 Post subject: Re: make an official MFGG chatroom
PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 8:58 pm 
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Finding the right balance between a live chat and forums is important. There's definitely some things that one can do much better than the other- both ways.

Here's some good articles by a company that built their own platform for communication. They used Slack for a while but ended up realizing something more like forums worked for them but there wasn't any real focus towards that sort of thing. Obviously their tool is more geared towards a company rather than a community but it's worth reading to get those cogs in your brain thinking about how we can build off of the forum and chat (and website)'s strengths in the right way so nothing is cannibalizing anything else.

- Why We're Betting Against Real Time Team Messenging
- Designing Twist: The challenge of making teamwork less stressful

In my early years online I was highly against any kind of chat format- I felt like it was the enemy of the forum! I'm a lot more open to them nowadays and I'd love to see what uses we can come up with it- as long as we try and give it its own uses rather than make it more-or-less a copy of the forum.

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