Discord Feedback Megathread

[rollerC]

I agree with pretty much everything that was said except for the comparison to Minus World; plenty of forums, including our site affiliates, have their own dedicated Discord servers, and regardless of what happened in the past, MFGG should be no different. You can list comparisons to Minus World if you want, but pretty much none of the top staff are even on Minus World.

Second, note that I'm considering #feedback a meta-channel from here on out, and any discussion about MFGG that I'm watching, I will regulate to #feedback. I'm not sure how the other moderators feel about this, but I'll ask.

Third, I'd like to note that we've actually discussed three out of the four points you've mentioned in the mod channel, and I think more discussion is necessary. Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment and refute the points you brought up to give an idea of why they haven't been implemented yet, and why we're hesitant to do so.

Anyway, I have a few different solutions in mind to try and make the Discord work:

• First off, the nuclear option. Gotta get this one out of the way first, it's the most obvious one. We shut it down and maybe try again later when we have a solid plan and feel like we really want it. I don't mind going this route if we've exhausted all other options, I think it'd let a lot of us rest at ease.
  

I'll be upfront in saying this is not going to happen unless something absolutely drastic occurs. This is the last resort of last resorts to me.

• Locking down specific channels when things get too heated. This is an old feature of IRC. You can *kind of* do this with Discord permissions, though it's not really the same. This is a good way to stop chaos in its tracks. This can't be the only solution to a problem, as just stopping it for a bit means its surely going to brew up again, but in a pinch this can be a great first step.
  

While I personally believe we should be more liberal with channel locks, it's tough to justify them after the fact. It could cause a lot of mod in-fighting and more arguments if people start having a meta-argument about why the channel should or shouldn't have been locked. Considering we didn't set a precedent of saying "We can lock channels if things get out of hand" before, it's a little late and difficult to implement now. In the end, the decision to lock a chat is usually one that can't be discussed prior; it's just a kneejerk reaction to stop the entire flow in one moment. That means it comes down to one moderator with one opinion, and if there's even a shadow of disagreement over why the channel should've been locked or about if we should lock channels at all, that's going to give that moderator a hard time and potentially cause an equivalent to wiki edit-wars, but with channel permissions.

• Being more liberal with kicks. IRC had kick messags which were great, apparently Discord doesn't? Weird to go backwards here. Kicking people who are going to far gets them immediate feedback that they need to reconsider what they're doing and briefly gets them out of the problem area. Kicks should always come with a direct message and the rule they were kicked for cited. If they come back and cause the same trouble again, I don't think there's any issue with banning them. This does not mean banning someone who comes back to discuss their kick in the #feedback channel- I think open and healthy discussion about moderator actions not only makes a better community, but shows we respect members enough that even if they did something bad, we can talk about it and try and resolve it for the future.
  

I agree we need to use the power of kicks more; they can certainly serve to cool someone off in a quick moment and have them return when they've thought things over. I could use a specific example to help that point, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that, so I'll refrain for now. We are also required to notify someone of why/when they've been kicked, and if that hasn't happened in certain instances before, then going forward know that that will not be the case. If they come back and start causing the same issues again, then our kick notice has given them a fair warning, and at that point I would be comfortable with a ban as well.
However, there are potential issues that come from kicking people. It's hard to DM someone before they get kicked with a notice, because often Discord won't let you DM someone if you don't have servers in common with them. If someone is being belligerent and it's gotten to the point where we have to kick them for sure, that usually needs to be something done fast, and that's not always possible if we need to give them a notice first. There hasn't necessarily been a situation where this issue has come up, but it is why I can say for myself at least that I've been hesitant to kick people.
Let's hope Discord implements kick messages.

• Because Discord lacks some basic IRC features, it might be worth considering some kind of moderaiton bot. I'm thinking something that can DM users with a kick or ban reason and then kick or ban them, maybe something that can tell them how long their ban is as well. It might be good for auditing who did what as well. Nothing too fancy; I don't want a robot moderating the channel or anything, just a bit of an assitant to make everyoen's lives easier.
  

We've actually talked about this a bunch of times, and Kirby's Adventure seems to like the idea a lot, but everyone is really hesitant to trust a bot with moderation powers. We do keep our own warn logs, and a bot would make that a little easier, but most of the staff don't really see much of a point in having a bot help out if we can do it ourselves. I think part of that reasoning does come from a place of ignorance, and I don't mean that offensively, I just mean that most of us aren't familar with these kinds of bots. I think there's merit to having a bot like Dyno, for example, but that's going to take some more discussion, some getting used to, a bit of planning, and a lot of trust. It's been mentioned that bots like Dyno can reapply the Muted role to people who leave and rejoin to get rid of it, like the raiders did, which has a lot of usefulness. Having a moderation bot will make it a lot easier to simply mute someone while we give them a warning/kick notice, or to just have them cool off if they're being unreasonable or something of that nature. Rest assured that we've discussed this, and we will continue to discuss it.

Thank you to both Kirb and Mario, I appreciate you guys taking the time to give your opinions on how to make the Discord better.

I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.