We're Looking for Volunteer Moderators for an Official Discord!

Cordovan

Cordovan

Community Manager
Having a Discord has been a frequent ask from the community and as others have pointed out, most games have them these days. They've become very popular places for game communities to hang out, and their free built in voice chat is a good alternative for some players. Our forums have always been pretty popular, but they only capture a segment of the player base, and there are a lot of players who don't use the forums but would use a Discord.

An official Discord does mean some work, though, due to its always-on IRC nature, which is why I waited until we were able to have a legal-approved volunteer moderator program to help manage it.

It is for everyone? Probably not, just like the forums aren't for a lot of people. We'll see how big it gets, my suspicion is it'll prove pretty busy and popular, but we'll find out soon enough. Being able to drop a link in party chat to a voice channel where people have a lot more control over things and which offers much higher quality audio than our baked-in voice chat is going to be appealing for some, especially since a large percentage of our population is already actively using Discord. I also expect it to serve as a way for other Discords, guilds, content creators, etc to be able to reach the community. Should be fun! And a bit stressful, maybe a lot for a while. But should be good.
 
J

Jasparius

Well-known member
Sarpado Man said:
Why would anyone want to use a moderated discord when it's obvious that the point of using it is to be able to talk without any restrictions?

Coincidentally, one of the problems with this game is moderation. There is no World or Global channel where everyone can talk, and the moderation they apply is so poor that players use other programs to communicate. So it doesn't matter if they put up a Discord or not because it is the way of applying the bans that makes people use other programs to be able to talk.

People do that casually to break company rules. What you are proposing is as if I made my own forum about D&D and put in a moderator of yours. Is a nonsense.

You know what I think would actually be helpful? Be self-critical, do introspection, because several of the rules that you want to apply to the players, you do not respect.
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Moderation can mean anything from blocking personal abuse and politicking (or anything else not game related), or it can mean banning everything you dont believe in or dont like.

You'd hope its the 1st, but as with the modern world it will probably be far more of the 2nd.
 
H

Hobgoblin

Less Nerfy Nerfy more fixy fixy
perhaps a dumb question, but i saw that you cant use datamined stuff. does that mean you cant link the wiki?
 
vryxnr

vryxnr

Well-known member
One misconception I see people in general tend to have is they view discord as just another 3rd party voice chat app... while it had that functionality, that is not it's only function. If your only goal is voice, teamspeak focuses more on just that. Discord has text channels much like a forum, but that is not it's only function. Discord has build in easy to use streaming capabilities for small groups (I was so confused when zoom became a thing when discord already did something similar) but that is not it's only function. Discord streaming can be either a direct feed from your game, or a camera capture for yourself, or an actual screen share (sometimes useful for troubleshooting computer issues). Discord is all those things in one place. As such, discord is much more about community. It is voice and text and video all combined into one. It also stores what you send it, so it can also an archive.

For some people, privacy and security may be an issue. The archive aspect makes some people raise eyebrows, but like most things on the internet, it only stores what you choose to send it. Don't post private information, even in DMs (direct messages). If it being able to take a feed directly from your game to stream worries you, don't stream and turn those settings off. It's not perfect, but nothing is save for not being connected at all, and even then you gotta take extra steps to the point of paranoia to be perfectly "safe" from absolutely everything.

Again, discord is (in my opinion) much more of a community building tool, it's not JUST a 3rd party voice app. It's a place for fans of a product to hang out at any hour of the day and communicate (voice and text and video and images and memes) about their shared interests.

I'm personally not a fan of bots, but many discord bots exists that can add extra functionality like music sharing, dice rolling functions, discord based mini-games, etc.

Now, consolidating with the fan made DDO discord may be a challenge (or at least convincing those who are members there to also become members of the official one coming soon), but in time people will hopefully migrate.
 
J1NG

J1NG

I can do things others can't...
Hobgoblin said:
perhaps a dumb question, but i saw that you cant use datamined stuff. does that mean you cant link the wiki?
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Datamined in this instance means information obtained through non public in game means. Including but not limited to; use of software to mine data from game files, not yet revealed content that a player discovers in game that is not normally accessible, etc.

As most (if not all) the content on the wiki is publically available information, they are fine to use.

J1NG
 
Cordovan

Cordovan

Community Manager
Hobgoblin said:
perhaps a dumb question, but i saw that you cant use datamined stuff. does that mean you cant link the wiki?
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The intention is to not allow people to post things that are not yet public but acquired through data mining, and it is based on text required by the legal department in order to move forward with our volunteer moderator program. We don't intend to prohibit things like Wiki links and while there are some grey areas, the intent is to prevent NDA'd information leaks rather than police popular community tools.
 
Cordovan

Cordovan

Community Manager
vryxnr said:
One misconception I see people in general tend to have is they view discord as just another 3rd party voice chat app... while it had that functionality, that is not it's only function. If your only goal is voice, teamspeak focuses more on just that. Discord has text channels much like a forum, but that is not it's only function. Discord has build in easy to use streaming capabilities for small groups (I was so confused when zoom became a thing when discord already did something similar) but that is not it's only function. Discord streaming can be either a direct feed from your game, or a camera capture for yourself, or an actual screen share (sometimes useful for troubleshooting computer issues). Discord is all those things in one place. As such, discord is much more about community. It is voice and text and video all combined into one. It also stores what you send it, so it can also an archive.

For some people, privacy and security may be an issue. The archive aspect makes some people raise eyebrows, but like most things on the internet, it only stores what you choose to send it. Don't post private information, even in DMs (direct messages). If it being able to take a feed directly from your game to stream worries you, don't stream and turn those settings off. It's not perfect, but nothing is save for not being connected at all, and even then you gotta take extra steps to the point of paranoia to be perfectly "safe" from absolutely everything.

Again, discord is (in my opinion) much more of a community building tool, it's not JUST a 3rd party voice app. It's a place for fans of a product to hang out at any hour of the day and communicate (voice and text and video and images and memes) about their shared interests.

I'm personally not a fan of bots, but many discord bots exists that can add extra functionality like music sharing, dice rolling functions, discord based mini-games, etc.

Now, consolidating with the fan made DDO discord may be a challenge (or at least convincing those who are members there to also become members of the official one coming soon), but in time people will hopefully migrate.
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Just a heads up that at least for now our voice channels will be audio only. We could maybe open it up to video in the future, but there are some...problematic things that could happen if people start turning on video cameras.
 
Titus Ovid

Titus Ovid

Mover and Shaker
Cordovan said:
Being able to drop a link in party chat to a voice channel where people have a lot more control over things and which offers much higher quality audio than our baked-in voice chat is going to be appealing for some, especially since a large percentage of our population is already actively using Discord.
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Is this a hint that the ingame party chat will never improve?

Titus.
 
Kobay

Kobay

Kobold Union Specialist
Cordovan said:
Just a heads up that at least for now our voice channels will be audio only. We could maybe open it up to video in the future, but there are some...problematic things that could happen if people start turning on video cameras.
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And it just takes 1 person to ruin the fun for everyone else. LOL. You would have to have like 24/7 moderation on Videos and that's pretty difficult to achieve. Been there. Done that.
 
vryxnr

vryxnr

Well-known member
I'm tempted to throw my hat into the ring. I run my own server for my guild and am the sole moderator for it. It's small potatoes in comparison to what this one would be though. Mine has some 230+ members on it right now, but it's also by invite only. Sure, I give our link pretty freely to people on G-Land who join our groups, but it's still technically private. An official DDO discord would likely be an open link for anyone to join, even those who do not play DDO. There will be potentially thousands of members, including some who are actual trolls or worse (malicious actors who find open discord servers to join and cause trouble in, not just by posts, but by direct messaging members with dangerous links and such)... which is what a team of moderators would be for, amongst other things.

My reservation is, when I step away from the computer and come back to hundreds of new posts, my eyes glaze over. While I like to read and catch up on the discussions had, when it gets to that level of flow it becomes painful. On my server I will regardless, but on other servers I'm on I just skip to present when it becomes that active. Not sure if being an "official moderator" would help change that attitude or not. I guess it can also depend on how the mods are organized.

Would each moderator be in charge of a specific section we could then focus on, helping in other sections if/when we can... or would it be a free for all with all mods being equally in charge of everything (which is what I think most do, but imo would be potentially quite stressful with hundreds of new posts/messages all over the server after waking up from sleeping for example, to try to catch up on, and the biggest distribution of responsibilities being time zones/when we're awake or not.
 
Kobay

Kobay

Kobold Union Specialist
vryxnr said:
I'm tempted to throw my hat into the ring. I run my own server for my guild and am the sole moderator for it. It's small potatoes in comparison to what this one would be though. Mine has some 230+ members on it right now, but it's also by invite only. Sure, I give our link pretty freely to people on G-Land who join our groups, but it's still technically private. An official DDO discord would likely be an open link for anyone to join, even those who do not play DDO. There will be potentially thousands of members, including some who are actual trolls or worse (malicious actors who find open discord servers to join and cause trouble in, not just by posts, but by direct messaging members with dangerous links and such)... which is what a team of moderators would be for, amongst other things.

My reservation is, when I step away from the computer and come back to hundreds of new posts, my eyes glaze over. While I like to read and catch up on the discussions had, when it gets to that level of flow it becomes painful. On my server I will regardless, but on other servers I'm on I just skip to present when it becomes that active. Not sure if being an "official moderator" would help change that attitude or not. I guess it can also depend on how the mods are organized.

Would each moderator be in charge of a specific section we could then focus on, helping in other sections if/when we can... or would it be a free for all with all mods being equally in charge of everything (which is what I think most do, but imo would be potentially quite stressful with hundreds of new posts/messages all over the server after waking up from sleeping for example, to try to catch up on, and the biggest distribution of responsibilities being time zones/when we're awake or not.
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Splitting up mods into different sections would be entirely inefficient. Quite typically when it comes to these types of roles, it's a overall collaborative effort among all the individuals moderating.

The application lays out the details pretty well. I imagine there might be further instructions if you're selected.
 
vryxnr

vryxnr

Well-known member
Cordovan said:
Just a heads up that at least for now our voice channels will be audio only. We could maybe open it up to video in the future, but there are some...problematic things that could happen if people start turning on video cameras.
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Indeed, and that is very fair. Both camera capture and screen sharing can show... more than just personal information... yeah, not going there here.

I only brought it up because there are people who still don't know what discord actually is/does/can do. ?
 
vryxnr

vryxnr

Well-known member
Kobay said:
Splitting up mods into different sections would be entirely inefficient. Quite typically when it comes to these types of roles, it's a overall collaborative effort among all the individuals moderating.

The application lays out the details pretty well. I imagine there might be further instructions if you're selected.
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heh, yeah, I should actually look at the link *slaps self to wake up faster*
 
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