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Swift Strider
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Discord Suggestions

Thu Jun 13, 2019 10:35 am

This thread should have been made a while ago but seeing as changes are taking place now, I figured it's probably the best time and best way to compile any suggestions the community may have. If we happen to get a number of similar suggestions I can even throw up a poll so we can what most people would want. So I'll just start off with a few suggestions of my own.

First off is a Welcome Page/Channel.

As it currently stands the Discord is not a welcoming or inviting place to new members. There is very little info as to who we are, what rules should be followed in the discord, what all the channels are, what the bots do, what all the groups and titles are. A simple channel that condenses all this information that is updated to stay relevant makes the place a lot less daunting and more inviting and allows users to navigate and find helpful info for the discord without having to ask for it.

This is just a quick example copy and pasting excerpts found around our community but it should look something like this:
Spoiler: show
The Halo Wheelmen!
Welcome to The Halo Wheelmen server! Founded in 2008, the Wheelmen are a Halo clan for teamwork-oriented players and fans of the Warthog. Read more about us here.
Server Rules
Don't be a jerk! This is the core of our Code. These forums are the home of the Halo Wheelmen. We expect you to treat these forums as if you were a guest in another person’s Hog. If you are not acting appropriately, you will be left on the sidewalk.

Do not spam!- If you have a great idea, one place is enough for it to be posted; anything else will be considered spam.

Do not post just to up your post count! There is nothing on this site that rewards post count, so there is no need to boost your posts. The only thing you will accomplish is wasting time for everybody that looks at your senseless posts.

Do not flame! If you find that there is a problem with either a specific post(s) or a specific person(s), you should inform the Staff by Private Message immediately. The Staff will attend to the problem in an appropriate manner. Do not respond with a negative attitude, this only causes more problems.

Do not trash-talk! Like my mother always said, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, just keep your mouth shut.”

These topics are strictly OFF LIMITS:
Illegal activities, Politics, Religion, Pornography, Gore, Racism

The forums are a place to discuss an unlimited number of topics around the gaming community as well as personal life. If you find yourself wanting to start a new topic, please go through the minimal effort of searching for your topic using the search function in the menu at the top left corner of the forums.

Channel Guide
Channels may be changed and we will edit this post accordingly
(Here you would list channels with a brief description)
#welcome page - So we can say Hello!
#rules - Here be the rules
#bot commands - For all the useful stuff they can do

Events
#wheelmen_events - Are wheely people meeting in real life?
#events - Look for upcoming events schedules on games

Discussions
#general - General discussions
#wheelmen - Clan business only
#tabletop - All games played on a table
#media_discusion - This is a spoiler zone. Do not interact if you fear spoilers

Video Games
#general - For general chat
#party_up - If you are looking for people to play with
(all the other channels we have yet to decide upon)

DnD/Role Playing
#rp-general - For generic DnD talk
#rp-art-dump - Cool are for the fantasy world?
#dnd-sarge-campaign - Campaign ran by Sarge
#dnd-ducke-campaign - Campaign ran by DuckeE

Voice Channels
#chat - Generic chill chat
#E3 - Wanna watch E3
#MANX (Kitty Chat) - I actually still don't know what this chat is
#Timeout and AFK - People who fall asleep go here
#Jon and Brad's Gaym Chat - They...talk and play gaymes?

Bots -
@Groovy - (Brief description of the bot) You can find bot commands by typing XXX
@Wheelbot Alpha
@Wheelbot Prime
@Wheelbot Timekeeper
@WheelPatch


Almost every professional or structured discord has one of these and as it currently stands all we have is a site links channel which does the opposite of what we want. Instead of welcoming new members and giving them a quick introduction into our discord an how it works it forces them back to our site... with no info about discord and what the channels are. It send them on a U Turn if they just came from the site. That is counterproductive and we need to embrace the fact someone is choosing to join our discord and give them every little bit of help to navigate it.
Second point in the big hot topic of channels. Our old system was to separate Discussions from Video Game Discussions and then to have each video game have it's own channel. What this did was enable small groups or cliches to form within certain games whilst they were popular and had high traffic, and then if they happened to die out you would be left with a dead channel that wouldn't be removed in case activity kicked up again. The changes made were in order to bring about more community interaction between these groups and also to promote further usage of the sight by posting relevant discussions that should be seen in the future and also to tidy up the place and make it easier to navigate.

Unfortunately what actually happened was a kind of unclear mix of the two. Rather than having segregated game channels like before you now have segregated game genre channels, where groups are still talking about certain games, but now no one is sure of which channel it should be in and you are either having crossover discussions about the same thing or in the worst case repeated discussion. Also discussion isn't promoted across the channels but instead users just go to the channel they THINK there game is in and talk.

This is the first big reason this thread was made so people can not only post their opinions but also suggestions, and I stress this. Suggestions about a better alternative.

For me, the goal seems clear, we want more community discussion across the board in channels and less cliches or groups sticking to one channel and not talking to the rest of the community. On top of that we want more use in the forums by posting content that will be relevant for the future or that doesn't get lost in active discussion. For me if you want that to happen you can't have game specific channels. Whether that be by title, genre, platform, whatever. Once you start putting it categories that you can sort games into you are going to have a problem, ESPECIALLY if they are not clearly defined and it depends on opinion, or if they fit into more than one channel, such as genres. So where do you find the common ground? By having channels named after the things all games share in common, because then whenever you want to talk about a specific topic it doesn't matter what game it is because most (if not all) games share that topic.

So my suggestion would be a list of the things games share;

    News/Articles - Discussion about news info on games, or articles such as reviews or hot takes or analysis of video games.
    Updates/Patch - The patch bots could post here or you could have a seperate patch channel which can be referenced when discussing game updates.
    Party Up - Want to party up? Ping the the usergroup or members you want, use the event commands.
    Created Content - Youtube videos, Art, Let's Plays anything that has been made by the community (at large) that we want to share.
    Game Clips - We post a lot of Xbox Clips so I figured to not congest channels they could go here then just ping who you want to see.
    Marketplace - For all those sales that people find and various other marketplace related info.

Those are just a few I could think of but you get the idea. Channels not specific to games but to the things games share in common. What ever is chosen there needs to be some kind of voting to what method to use and then I guess the names of the channels.
 
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Monster
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Re: Discord Suggestions

Thu Jun 13, 2019 11:51 am

We admins are discussing adding an analytics bot to keep track of which games actually have enough discussion from enough people to warrant a channel. Game channels will be based on need and active current discussion as stated previously. That's separate from more general channels that serve a purpose at the very least for patch bot even if the genre is quiet for a while.
 
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Jackie
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Re: Discord Suggestions

Fri Jun 14, 2019 8:57 am

I have implemented part of the welcome page suggestion. We however will not be adding a list of all the channels with descriptions. It would take up an enormous amount of space in a stylized Discord post, would have to be updated frequently and therefore not be updated, and serves little purpose when all the channels either have obvious names or descriptions.

We have been discussing a potential system whereby if 5 people directly request a channel for a specific game we will make it when time allows. However, if the analytics bot reports 30 day activity below a certain threshold to be determined we would remove the channel. If interest in the game were to rise again, 5 people would then have to request it again. Of course this activity would be based on both message count as well as the number of people talking. Messages would be looked over occasionally to look for any spamming to raise message counts, just as we don't allow post spamming on the forums to raise counts.

With that in mind, I don't dislike Swift's general game channels suggestions. They could work well together, possibly with a new category. Admins will continue to discuss.

At the end of the day we will not be allowing an endless increase in channels that clutter up the Discord long term. We do not have a ton of active members at the moment, we do not need dozens of tiny channels for sparse conversation.
 
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Jackie
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Re: Discord Suggestions

Sat Jun 15, 2019 9:37 am

We have come up with a plan for what we will be implementing to provide a good Discord experience for both old and new members. We want to make the conversations easy to join for our members who's circumstances don't allow them to check in often during the day. We also want people to be able to discuss very active specific game topics without needing to worry about drowning out other more general or less active discussions.

Image

Games
This section will contain the general game related chat, the patch notes, the deals, the bragging rights. The combination of these subjects will hopefully encourage everyone to engage together similarly to how everyone engages over general E3 news. As well as attracting new players to various games as they see what others are interested in.

We're Playing
This section will be entirely dictated by demand and activity. Moving forward we will work out an exact reasonable threshold for what defines an active channel. Read the previous post for more info. This will evolve over time as overall community activity changes. We're Playing will be limited to a maximum of 8 channels at the moment, again with possible changes in the future. These channels will be added by request. Five members of the community must request a channel for a game to have it added. If activity in the channel dies down, it will be removed. If we manage to end up with 8 active game channels and more are requested we will discuss changes.


Possible changes pending further Admin discussion.
 
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Swift Strider
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Re: Discord Suggestions

Sat Jun 15, 2019 10:24 am

That looks great, best of both worlds.
 
Chaos
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Re: Discord Suggestions

Sat Jun 15, 2019 12:39 pm

I like it, nice and clean.

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