Discord 3.0

#1

So, without this turning into another ‘let’s burn the forum, all hail discord’ thread.
Any suggestion on how to make the Discord a better/more useful place?

First off: link https://discord.gg/m2XPQsGp

My suggestions (lots of them stolen from Lolirl, remember him?):

  • Individual channels , to reduce the amount of ‘talking to myself’ shit post, talk to your closest friends, post your wips, stuff like that;
  • basic rules, so keep the main channels free of nsfw, if you want post that stuff in your own channel;
  • Basic channels like food, share your music, movies, production tips and tricks
  • Any other suggestion?

At the moment it’s under used, it can be a more useful space without taking away from the forum.

#2

Man, I have not been on Discord in ages…I will check it out again and get back with any FB…I have just not been using it for anything, not just iDMF…there was a time I was living on that app.

#3

Here how it can be structured:

introduction/formal stuff
general talk
off-topic

/// audio related stuff:

audio production/sound design
software talk
hardware talk
audio programming
(optional) DAW 1 users zone
(optional) DAW 2 users zone

/// visual related stuff:

digital graphic design
drawings

/// other hobbies:

gaming
movies
etc

more things can be added by requests but this would be a solid skeleton, some channels could have rules like no memes, etc… Also there could be some feedback section, post your music.

#4

Yessss, I’ve always been a big proponent of discord for IDMf. Cool to see some movement

#5

Being on a couple of Discord servers that I’d consider pretty successful (in fact don’t feel cheated on but I’m dong the mastering for SeamlessR’s server in the Discord Server vs. Server music challenge), the thing I notice about all of them, from house to Seamlessr sound design lab, is how young they are. Like most of the people are either in highschool or college. I’m one of the oldest in almost every case. Seems like no one over 30 is in there.

So I have to wonder if it’s the right demographic for us to be targeting, because most of the people I know on IDMf are older than me. I don’t think we even have that level of user data, but anecdotally if I had to just guess the average age of IDMf, I’d say it was 30-40. But hey, if we want some new blood, Discord might be a great place to try and herd the next generation of IDM talent. TBH I’d try recruiting people on like Reddit or something, that’s how I found the forums in the first place - I wasn’t happy with the kind of feedback I was getting and lessons I was learning in the Reddit music communities, and I saw this place mentioned so I gave it a shot. Go tell those people like me about the Discord Server and let them discover the forums from there if they want.

I think with good categorization, enough dedicated, trusted mods who are on the platform, and enough people there to make use of it, Discord would be a great arm of the IDMf community.

#6

I don’t feel cheated on! Congrats on the mastering gig.

AND you bring up the very point I was going to ask about in a round about way–I was going to say I feel like most of you are somewhere near my age. I’m 38, one of the oldest Millennials. Someone explain the appeal of Discord to me. I am an old timey forum rat, I did use AIM and IRC but not for groups. To me Discord is just another platform throwing notifications at me and I feel like I have to present all the time to get anything out of it because the conversation isn’t easy to go back and read if you are not there in the moment.

I like forums because they are asynchronous and that I don’t have to stay up until 5am to catch my peeps on the other side of the world. A solid half the people I like interacting with here are not near enough time zone wise for much live chat.

#7

To be honest, it’s not an either/or thing, so we’re not moving from here to there, but it’s a platform we have available and we have more control of, so we might has well us it and try to grow both forum and Discord.
On the old age thing, I see what you mean, but it might help bringing younger people and new ideas forum side as well.

#8

Discord is like a really, really good IRC. It does chat, rooms/groupings, voice, file share, stream, bots, and really everything you could want in a modern ‘connectivity’ solution (think Teams or Zoom, but more hip). It’s also really easy to monitor or jump between several chats at once.

While it’s not really asynchronous, it does have some permanence in that what happens on the server stays there as long as it’s up - you can go back and search as long as there’s history (and you have access to that room) and pull up posts that have happened long ago.

The real issue (and I feel like I’ve harped on this before) is that there’s no indexing/crawling of a Discord server, it’s entirely internal. That means you’ll never get a search result that points you to IDMF Discord when you’re searching for Amon Tobin production techniques or whatever. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t find IDMF by looking for a place to talk about IDM, I stumbled across it searching for something, poked around and decided to stay. You lose that connection once you take it internal to Discord, and I think that probably hurts both new members finding it and retention of information in a globally searchable way.

It IS a really good platform - you can do stuff on it that forms can never replicate, and it is popular with a younger crowd (I’d guess because 20-somethings these days like to game, and there’s guaranteed to be a Discord server for the game you’re playing, sometimes dozens, so they’re used to it).

In general, I think:

  • Having an perpetually inactive Discord is worse than not having one at all, for the reasons mentioned above. It’d require a consistent and robust core user group to make newcomers want to stay. The corollary to ‘young people like Discord’ is ‘young people are out if a Discord isn’t happening’.

  • It would probably lead to people active on there being at least somewhat active on here, and would help grow the IDMF brand if it’s active and useful.

  • If a good conversation happens in Discord that seems like something that’d be useful in posterity and for users as a whole, there’s nothing stopping Discord mods from copying it to the forums (maybe a From The Discord section, that would help drive users both places if they see good info) which gets around the ‘doesn’t show up in searches’ thing.

It’s baby and the bathwater to just ignore that it’s an option. It’s just difficult to draw a solid line between the forums and Discord and not cut one or the other off at the knees.

#9

tbh i don’t think there’s anyone on this site who’s going to use a discord. There’s no one here. This site is dead. There is no community, except basically a handful of users that still linger around that have been here forever. None of us seems to really be pushing out music, and no one new is coming here, because it’s a forum, an old web format that hasn’t been popular since the 00’s. the site doesn’t offer much in terms of useful information or topics, you go to the front page and the Beat Battles are the only cohesive thing that stand out, and the Beat Battles have nothing to do with IDMf, which themselves are low attended because who wants to come onto a site that has barely any new users or any user base at all. All the IDMf releases seem to be by the same handful of people, and who’s heard of IDMf outside of IDMf? It’s just the same old people that were here forever ago not really pushing out music, being custodians to some nostalgic time in their previous lives. Let’s just move on.

The whole concept and idea is tired and defeated. IDMf never had much to do with IDM. IDMforums is a marooned life raft that has been floating at sea for decades. A community of 20 people unto itself.

I think Stu should just pull the plug.

I mean, what reason does anyone have to come here? There’s plenty of online communities we all could go to and continue talking about hardware, listen to Vlantis’ ongoing monologue, maybe even find some place where there’s people who are excited to be doing music. Let’s face it, we’re all old, we’re all pursuing careers NOT in music, we’ve submitted to the facts of bills, mortgages, some even kids. We gotta put food on the table, and it turned out music didn’t do that for us. Not that music isn’t great, I still love music, but this place isn’t growing. It’s slowly eroding. It’s not gonna get any better.

It’s the same 20 people posting once every fortnite, what’s the point? We get it, we’re all tired has-beens.

I vote Stu pulls the plug on IDMf and we all move on. This place is just a forgotten realm, I mean, our forum software is already 4 versions out of date. The site refresh was nice, but without backend updates, it’s only going to be be more vulnerable to the lesser desired things of internet purgatory, spam bots, scammy links. It’s not getting any better guys.

#10

Which is exactly why we’re trying to move on from that, not easy when the alternative is your monologue on Discord. So I’ll reply to you there on the Listening Booth thread, suggesting you start trying to post something more relevant, rather than memes and shitposting.

#11

Thanks for the thorough response. And yea, I think the main issue is how to make one benefit from the other. I wanted to understand what people like so much about Discord so that maybe we can figure out to make the benefits of each the forum and the Discord work together.

#12

I wasn’t really talking about Discord, I was talking about this site, but my “monologue” was my reply to you bringing up an issue with me in the main chat rather than in a pm. If you didn’t want me to respond to you in the main chat, why did you open up an issue in the off-topic thread rather sending me a pm?

#13

You have a point, I should have.

Regarding the forum, I partially agree, this place is not that alive , which is why we’re looking at alternatives/way to revive it a bit, hence trying to keep the Discord a bit more friendly, less shitpost based and a tad more content.

I totally agree on IDM, nobody cares about it anymore but I guess it’s an inherited name…

#14

@IO_Madness I think your comments have some truth I/O but if that’s your perspective I have to ask…

Why are you here?

I do take exception to your pushing out music claims. Everyone I associate with on here is making music on the regular. Maybe not pushing out releases and trying to get noticed, lol, but regularly making music none the less.

#15

Yeah @IO_Madness calm down :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

#16

Idmf chat has been done before…goes through phases of activity and inactivity.

Discord is a good new platform.

Like artificer said could do all sorts of cool stuff…like live stream music classes or something.

As far as forum goes…

There is no mystery behind music production anymore almost.

Other than that I’ll stfu cause of the stuff I’ve posted in the past I feel like ive forfeited my right to opine.

Also Im making the effort to shitpost less

#17

I think this is a major issue. So many people are giving it away for free on YouTube et al these days whether you use all vintage hardware or are into the newest and coolest software. The other forums I gravitate towards are gear oriented and for some reason that tends to generate more talk.

I feel like the LB is pretty active and I’ve tried to respond to more people’s posts there. That was always one of the best features of our forum. I felt like at the least you always got an honest response even if not detailed.

#18

How about we try it to use Discord more and see, I still prefer the forum format but I see the benefit of a slimmer platform.

#19

I’ll install it on my phone and log on a bit in the evenings and see how I feel about it.

#20

Yeah but we can still talk about art…and making banging art…

Even if the art isnt music…

I would like to try making metal sculptures…one day.