Discord killed the forums. It's harsh, but accurate. Before discord, screenshots, episode progress updates, help questions and idle chitchat were posted on the forums. In their current state, the forums barely see any traffic at all. But people keep reassuring me that it's okay because discord is more convenient and everyone is still engaging with the game and community through discord.
So why care?
The forums are googleable, the discord is not. In order to enter the discord, you have to actively join it. In order to find conversations on discord, you have to search it. To people who aren't willing to join the discord for one reason or another, the community looks dead, because all they see is the forums. To people who join the discord, they are roped into the stream of conversation, which only fills the niche of the old IRC chat, rather than the parallel conversation threads that every forum thread can provide. It may be impossible to find an answer to a question posted 3 months ago, or to assemble all the project updates on one's favourite project (at least, without joining a different discord where said project is being discussed).
In other words, while the established community may be doing fine doing all their business on discord, what we lose is the outwards appearance of a living and active community, and conversations regarding community content can hardly be described as "archived" or "visible to newcomers". This hurts growth, as fewer people will be interested in joining, and knowledge, as a lot of information is hidden behind an account wall and a dubious search feature. There's literally a joke on the smbx discord of MrNameless answering the same question every few days with a link to the previous time they answered it. It's in good jest, but it shows just how bad discord is for long term sustainability of community knowledge.
When I first joined as a member, it was because I was inspired to see people's graphic packs, community project updates, trailers, levels and discussion of current community events. It's exciting to see the efforts of the community unfold in real time, and in order to help the continued health of the community, as older members leave and newer members come in, I think it is important to restore some of that excitement.
I go off on a tangent here about other changes in the community climate. This is not part of the main point I'm trying to make, but if I have your attention it might be interesting to you:So how can this be fixed?
1. Cross-post more progress updates on your work to the forums! This one should go without saying, but if you have a new screenshot for your episode, or a new screenshot for the screenshots thread, or a funny thing you found, make a thread for it! Even if it gets no replies now, people might see it in the future and be inspired. Carry your voice to the people you don't know are going to be watching!
2. Engage with more forum content! This is the other side of the coin. Level reviews, feedback on graphics and episode demos, attempts to help people with their graphic requests... It's true that there isn't a lot of incentive to do it right now, so there are some thoughts about systemic changes I've been mulling over that might help (but would require some level of administrative effort):
2.a. Allow people to opt-out of one-level-thread-per-user. I think a system with the best of both worlds would be a user-level-thread where users post progress on wip levels as well, with an OP that links to other level threads that are posted as soon as they're released. A fresh level thread is also more inviting to replies, at least in my opinion.
2.b. A karma or bounty system for replying to content in meaningful ways. This would encourage graphics/code request solutions, level reviews, episode reviews and such. If we had points per account on a forum-wide level, and posting one of these types of replies would grant you with extra points, it might feel like a game to post on the forums, while letting people be nice and helpful to each other in the process. The bounty system would basically catalogue a list of unreplied stuff, like unplayed levels in mario maker. People who feel inspired would naturally go down the list. I don't know how it would be kept up.
2.c. (Automatic?) Crossposts from discord. This one is kinda cheap and not true engagement, but turning discord content into forum content can be a thing. Either with a bot that auto-posts starboarded screenshots (for example) or assigning a job to a mod to post a "weekly digest" thread they post the newest developments of interesting stuff the community talked about, starboarded gifs and videos (crossposted to imgur for permalink) and progress on hype projects. It's kinda like the old newsletter, in a way. Wouldn't have to be high effort all the time, I think.
3. Level of the month, talkhaus "mosts" style community awards, or other such recurring events. We'd need someone who had the time to help organize them.
4. Contests and events. This is basically the only avenue I've worked on so far, and it has limited success. If you have cool ideas for events that would tap into the idea of reviving the forums, please get in touch and we can work on something.
That's my thoughts on this for now. I think if we don't treat the forums well, the lack of traffic will eventually bring the community to its knees. Discord regulars will be blind to it for a while, but the lack of newcomers will start to hurt bad, and making will no longer be fun. If we can at all help it, let's not allow it to get to that point.
Please post your thoughts on the matter below. I'm aware it's a quite doom-y post, but I think it's not to be understated that the publicly visible part of the community has changed for the worse in recent years, and the community size has shrunk dramatically. Personally, I want to see this community flourish. And I'm not in any of the discords, so I can't see it right now and it's a bummer.
Thanks for reading!
So why care?
The forums are googleable, the discord is not. In order to enter the discord, you have to actively join it. In order to find conversations on discord, you have to search it. To people who aren't willing to join the discord for one reason or another, the community looks dead, because all they see is the forums. To people who join the discord, they are roped into the stream of conversation, which only fills the niche of the old IRC chat, rather than the parallel conversation threads that every forum thread can provide. It may be impossible to find an answer to a question posted 3 months ago, or to assemble all the project updates on one's favourite project (at least, without joining a different discord where said project is being discussed).
In other words, while the established community may be doing fine doing all their business on discord, what we lose is the outwards appearance of a living and active community, and conversations regarding community content can hardly be described as "archived" or "visible to newcomers". This hurts growth, as fewer people will be interested in joining, and knowledge, as a lot of information is hidden behind an account wall and a dubious search feature. There's literally a joke on the smbx discord of MrNameless answering the same question every few days with a link to the previous time they answered it. It's in good jest, but it shows just how bad discord is for long term sustainability of community knowledge.
When I first joined as a member, it was because I was inspired to see people's graphic packs, community project updates, trailers, levels and discussion of current community events. It's exciting to see the efforts of the community unfold in real time, and in order to help the continued health of the community, as older members leave and newer members come in, I think it is important to restore some of that excitement.
I go off on a tangent here about other changes in the community climate. This is not part of the main point I'm trying to make, but if I have your attention it might be interesting to you:
Spoiler: show
1. Cross-post more progress updates on your work to the forums! This one should go without saying, but if you have a new screenshot for your episode, or a new screenshot for the screenshots thread, or a funny thing you found, make a thread for it! Even if it gets no replies now, people might see it in the future and be inspired. Carry your voice to the people you don't know are going to be watching!
2. Engage with more forum content! This is the other side of the coin. Level reviews, feedback on graphics and episode demos, attempts to help people with their graphic requests... It's true that there isn't a lot of incentive to do it right now, so there are some thoughts about systemic changes I've been mulling over that might help (but would require some level of administrative effort):
2.a. Allow people to opt-out of one-level-thread-per-user. I think a system with the best of both worlds would be a user-level-thread where users post progress on wip levels as well, with an OP that links to other level threads that are posted as soon as they're released. A fresh level thread is also more inviting to replies, at least in my opinion.
2.b. A karma or bounty system for replying to content in meaningful ways. This would encourage graphics/code request solutions, level reviews, episode reviews and such. If we had points per account on a forum-wide level, and posting one of these types of replies would grant you with extra points, it might feel like a game to post on the forums, while letting people be nice and helpful to each other in the process. The bounty system would basically catalogue a list of unreplied stuff, like unplayed levels in mario maker. People who feel inspired would naturally go down the list. I don't know how it would be kept up.
2.c. (Automatic?) Crossposts from discord. This one is kinda cheap and not true engagement, but turning discord content into forum content can be a thing. Either with a bot that auto-posts starboarded screenshots (for example) or assigning a job to a mod to post a "weekly digest" thread they post the newest developments of interesting stuff the community talked about, starboarded gifs and videos (crossposted to imgur for permalink) and progress on hype projects. It's kinda like the old newsletter, in a way. Wouldn't have to be high effort all the time, I think.
3. Level of the month, talkhaus "mosts" style community awards, or other such recurring events. We'd need someone who had the time to help organize them.
4. Contests and events. This is basically the only avenue I've worked on so far, and it has limited success. If you have cool ideas for events that would tap into the idea of reviving the forums, please get in touch and we can work on something.
That's my thoughts on this for now. I think if we don't treat the forums well, the lack of traffic will eventually bring the community to its knees. Discord regulars will be blind to it for a while, but the lack of newcomers will start to hurt bad, and making will no longer be fun. If we can at all help it, let's not allow it to get to that point.
Please post your thoughts on the matter below. I'm aware it's a quite doom-y post, but I think it's not to be understated that the publicly visible part of the community has changed for the worse in recent years, and the community size has shrunk dramatically. Personally, I want to see this community flourish. And I'm not in any of the discords, so I can't see it right now and it's a bummer.
Thanks for reading!
Statistics: Posted by Emral — Fri Sep 13, 2024 11:08 pm