Membership Opinions IM's offsite (such as discords, skype, etc)

[Quell 249]

I don't like them personally.

 

But it doesn't bother me when I see members giving out their discord or Skype in the cbox or saying "I'll PM you mine". It's a natural progression for a lot if people. I'm just not of the opinion it has to be provided on site by the admins.

[Icewolf 258]

I discourage the use of off-site communication because it opens up the possibility of problems between members that you can't really deal with on site because you have no records of it that you can view. I also prefer the forum to have activity - you can't do that if it's hidden away on something like skype. Discord is different because admins have the option of creating one for the forum, so any rules that dictate people's conduct can be implemented, but only if it happens on your site's discord - if members chatted privately or on another discord server you couldn't really do that. Aside from issues between members, they could make people feel left out if people chat on another site about what they want to do with their characters on your forum if they aren't invited to it, so that's another reason why I don't like it being used. Having said that, you can't really stop members from using it but they must understand that if there's a problem, you can't deal with it when there's no evidence.

[valucre 19]

We don't have a site sponsored server and don't allow the posting of user run servers because it increases the possibility they think that what this random member does or allows is representative of the site / community as a whole. We allow people to exchange whatever usernames they want and self organize however they please because all we can really administrate is the site but we also make it clear that you join other people's chats or give out your email or whatever else at your own risk and that they are not in any way affiliated with the site 

[Rhindeer 217]

I don't care whether or not a site has a Discord or whatever, like some admins don't want to have to manage an extra thing and I get that, but I say a big fat "hell no" to admins who try to discourage players from communicating off-site. Communicating privately or off-site is just a natural progression of things, and sometimes people form friendships that transcend the RP. I'm not gonna micromanage peoples' business.

 

Me? I have Discords for both my games, and staff designated to moderate said Discords. I love it! I got rid of my cbox as soon as I got it, because ehhhh didn't really like the cbox anyway. Discord solves the issue that I hated about cboxes in that it allows one to create different rooms for different types of discussion. My games are chatty, so we'd run into the problem of too many people trying to have too many different discussions in the cbox at once, and thus people inevitably getting talked over. Discord? Boom, fixed. And I love the phone app so I can still be connected without having to be ON the site.

 

I also prefer IMs to PM communication, so yeah. All the love. 8D

 

I can't monitor what people do in private, but if people provide screenshots/logs, I certainly can (and have) take action where needed.

[StormWolfe 557]

We don't have or use plotters, shippers, and all of those things. We have a minimal set of OOC forums in fact as the sites are all about IC writing. This means Discord is our lifeline for plotting and planning. If a member is morally opposed to live-chat, they are welcome to set up PM threads with other members for plotting.

 

However, we do not include two live-chat options as a site sponsored option. We exclusively use Discord. If members wish to use other methods of communication, that is totally fine. If things go south, they cannot expect Admin to adjudicate any issues. We do not exist to wrangle private conversations.

[Hypester 28]

Yeah, it's hard to beat Discord in terms of community building. In my experience having players personally exchange information doesn't prevent offsite beef to any real degree, it always seemed clique-ish to me, and most importantly, the CBox is just too limited in terms of the size and breadth of conversations it can host. It's a very surface level of community building which is totally functionally for a smaller site, but let five people try to actively use a CBox at the same time, and it can get pretty hinky.

 

But yeah, if I've just got a basic non-premium site with less than 20 players, or doing everything for the site myself, I would not spring for a discord and widget and all that.

 

 

 

 

[Dragon 673]

I got rid of my chat box because I wasn't personally willing to invest in premium, they're clunky, messages get lost, and when members prefer discord they just make the site look dead. 

 

These days I won't even consider joining a site if there's no discord available. All of the sites I participate on now share members, Discord allows me to interact with them at once rather than have a bunch of tabs open for no reason other than chat. The ability to tag other players means I don't have to scroll back through pages of unnecessary nonsense to make sure I saw everything relevant to me. 

 

My personal rule is that if it happens off my main channel then its not my problem as a staff member. If two players go into a PM and have a disagreement they're not allowed to bring it to me unless it is specifically clarifying some kind of site plot issue or related continuity. It's not my job to babysit other adults - leaving the main chat forum obviously means leaving that site's protection. 

[StormyWays13 91]

I have been playing around with the idea of Discord or something like that. I need someplace for quick discussion for the site staff and professors. I have also thought about slack.