Hi all! Please read through this whole post before voting.
@Grant_Spiral and I have been talking, and we’re considering relinking the Discord server back to the main site.
However, there would be changes to how this would look in practice:
The Discord server will be an independent, ‘sister’ community to the site. Grant will retain sole ownership of the Discord server. He will be the final say on all moderation and community questions there. (And he’ll have final say on unlinking the server from the site, too, if he chooses to do so at a later point in time.)
Official site business will not be conducted on the Discord server. Site feedback, site polls, and site announcements won’t occur on the Discord server. All of that will continue to be conducted on this forum, which is officially a part of the site.
Site approvers/mods will be separate from Discord server mods. There may be overlap (aka, someone could be both a site approver and a Discord mod) but they are separate responsibilities. Doing one doesn’t mean you have to do the other.
Whether the Discord server will retain its current title of ‘Gay Erotic Fiction’ and keep its current logo, or whether the title and logo get updated, are both at Grant’s discretion.
The main site itself will, once again, have a link on the front page to the Discord server. This will allow new readers and writers of the site’s stories to find the Discord server, and join the Discord community if they’d like to. But it’ll be emphasized that the server is ‘unofficially’ affiliated with the site, and it has its own full autonomy.
So, in short, the main big change would be that there’d be a link again on the main site that connects curious readers to the Discord server.
But otherwise, in terms of how the Discord server is run vs. how the site (and the forum) are run, nothing much will change from the current way of doing things.
Separation of church and state!
We’re polling both the Discord server community and the forum community to see how you’d feel about this. I know there’s a lot of overlap between the two, but it’s not 100%. If either poll shows that one community or the other don’t want to relink the Discord server to the site, then we won’t do it.
So… please vote below with your preference! (I’ll leave this poll open for about a week.)
I think the site benefited greatly from having an associated Discord server, but one that focused a lot more on the writing aspects. With only one channel out of thirty-ish dedicated specifically to writing (and maybe the various caption channels too), I don’t think GEF serves that function anywhere near as much now as it did in the beginning. I’d be just as happy with a new Discord around the theme of writing (as was suggested in another thread) as with GEF being unofficially linked to the site. But then again, there’s the possibility of subdividing the community too much, so I dunno. Either way, I’m in support of some Discord being linked to the site again.
May I suggest putting up a site newsflash pointing to this poll?
The huge majority never bothers to look into the forum. Some of them would still use a Discord, if they knew there is one because it’s a platform they’re used to. Remember that a lot of guys probably never knew that there used to be a Discord server associated with the site.
As for my personal opinion: One of the reasons I stepped back a couple of months ago was to open up the possibility for this to happen. I wanted the users to choose themselves, and not my personal feelings or people’s feelings about me to stand in the way. I voted “indifferent” myself because that’s exactly how I feel. Dread and hope balancing each other out.
I’ve been really undecided on whether to make a site newsflash, I’ll admit. On one hand, it would definitely prompt a lot more of the site users to see the poll—the majority definitely don’t glance at the forum, and we see that reflected in the relatively low number of voters in the forum poll. (Especially compared to the Discord poll, which has 4x as many votes.)
On the other hand… I’m undecided on if the poll is aimed at the majority of the site users in the first place.
That’s what’s kept me from making a newsflash about it. I guess it’s that the poll is less asking the question from the average site user of “Would you all like a Discord server?” (because I think the answer would overwhelmingly be “yeah why not!”). And instead, it’s more asking the question to active forum members, “In the context of knowing the history and community of the existing Discord server, how do you feel about us relinking it to the site?”
We have a number of readers and authors who are already active in the site community, but who actively participate on the forum these days (versus, or in addition to, participating in the server). They know the history and community of the Discord server, too. They have the most investment in either linking or not, and they vote with knowledge and past experience. So if that majority are also supportive of relinking…Then I feel confident it’s largely a supported decision, and that the poll was fair and gave the relevant parties their voice.
And it does seem to be a supported decision so far—though, there is still a week before the poll closes, of course, so I won’t say anything is final until then!
I say, no announcement.,
My reasoning is as follows:
It’s been announced here AND on the discord.
Everyone who uses either of these has been notified. Without the announcement, we’ve perfectly hit our concerned demographic (‘cause if you don’t visit the discord or the forum here, then at best you’re indifferent to it all, at worst, you don’t care and-are-also-annoyed to be notified about it.)
I’ve noticed that with a lot of websites/forums that have an associated Discord server, they basically just splinter off into two separate ecosystems because most users have a preference for one format over the other. I don’t see an issue with linking it because while Discord drama gets WILD, it’s also easy to ignore.
The drama you’ve mentioned was the cause for a lot of malaise on my part in the last months. Mostly because I allow things to affect me way more than I should.
But you’re also right that some people prefer the Discord environment and that there is a tendency for a separate ecosystem to evolve there - which is exactly what happened.
My rushed decision to cut the connection between the site and the server early last year didn’t solve any problems, though. So @Nu-and-the-Nus and @Grant_Spiral are offering to fix this now, so everyone can decide for themselves which kind of community they prefer. Without the struggle to find the community on Discord.
Either way, I’m in support of some Discord being linked to the site again.
On one hand, it would definitely prompt a lot more of the site users to see the poll—the majority definitely don’t glance at the forum, and we see that reflected in the relatively low number of voters in the forum poll. (Especially compared to the Discord poll, which has 4x as many votes.)