The Pulse: Community Catch Up | 2WC 16 Oct

[Rossi]

I've always loved the forums, however, is there a point in using this anymore?

I know scripts are used or hooks that tie some functions to them or something like that. I feel the old gaming community relied heavily on a website, but now everyone uses discord.

Why spend money to keep this running rather than a seriously integrated discord that can mimic a website?

An interesting and important question. Let’s go over it.

• Firstly, the forums don’t really cost extra to run. We need to run our admin and game panels, so having the forums alongside that isn’t really a big issue cost-wise.
  
• Secondly, there’s a huge amount of history on the forums, going back so many years, we wouldn’t want to just delete that.
  
• Lastly, we’ve seen that discord doesn’t really work well for longer-lasting “discussions”, such as suggestions, bug or appeals.
  

With all of this, we wouldn't really be able to integrate a discord to the same level, we'd still need a site for a variety of things, ban listings, changelogs, steamid looks, character / dupes management.

Fair enough. So what would be the benefit of using the forums as opposed to Discord?  

They're two different platforms intended for player interaction. It's essentially splitting up the community into the ones who love to use the forums and the ones who will only use Discord. You have discussions on both platforms. 

I remember when the lowering player count was an issue in the community, and the solution was to remove a server and have everyone on one which caused an increase for a period of time. Why not do the same thing now? Don't delete the website or Discord, but make one or the other very limited so there is a clear option on what to use for everyday use, and what is only for essential items.

Discord as a million limitations that forums simply do not have.
Fearless owns their forums. Discord is a 3rd party chat/voip platform. FL is able to format and moderate its content however they wish to without the hassle and dangers of someone else's brand/corporate interests hanging over their head. Discord accounts and servers can be terminated for a great number reasons, which endangers FL's sovereignty as an organic community that has in the past succeeded just fine without giving away its balls to someone else to hold. 

There are 15 years worth of history and content, as well as account profiles and their post history, interaction history, and so on. Users who use Discord extensively may use it for business or many other personal endeavors. Here, in the FL forums, accounts are made specifically to partake in- and contribute to- the FL community exclusively. Not only does this allow users to partition their online time and online images/personas to their liking, but also offers the community a healthy degree of separation and independence from the pseudo-social-media character that Discord holds to a sizeable chunk to its userbase. 

Historically speaking, FL has never needed a 3rd party chat platform. Well before Discord the FL users resorted to Ventrillo, Teamspeak, and Skype- which, by the way, didn't harbor anywhere near as many problems as Discord or Discord-like platforms tend to offer nowdays. Those avenues more resembled the wild west in regards to moderation and restriction, and were by their very nature a more decentralized- and therefore more sovereign and secure- means to gather and talk shit, organize, etc.  That served FL's interests as a dynamic, living, breathing community, in the long run.

Wanting to move to Discord just because "everyone uses it" is reflexive and ignorant at best, and positively destructive & restrictive at worst. I am very happy to see that the current Administration of Fearless has shown no particular interest in such suicidal trends.

“Suicidal trends” ? As opposed to what? The community is dead, with very few forum members logging in and participating actively. Can’t fall down more when you’re already at the bottom. 

Can’t think of one scenario where big bad corporate discord inflicted on the operations of a CityRP community. Even if they have, there’s a reason I suggested not deleting either but making one more limited. 

Simply stating. The socializing aspect on the forums could go. If you want discussions and player interaction, leave it to discord as it’s done best, and yes, everyone uses it. Does that make me ignorant again? Oops. Leave the formal stuff (Applications, ban appeals, donations, and suggestions). Or don’t and keep it the same, doesn’t matter to me. Just voicing an opinion to consider. 

Gmod had 18,678 average players in October 2023. That’s the lowest numbers since December 2013. Just something to think about when trying to populate a forum website to a new generation of kids who use discord for everything they do.