DONE Delete the Discord and start fresh in a few months

[VinnyVideo]

Is the Discord doing more harm than good? Maybe. I feel like the Discord experiment worked pretty well for the first few months, but over the past six months it's become a very unhealthy environment, and no one knows for sure how to fix it.

There are some MFGGers who say they'd leave if we didn't have a Discord, but there's also a good number of forum members who don't want anything to do with the Discord. To be honest, the only reason I'm still in the Discord group is because I'm a staff member here. I also don't know if the Discord would be a welcoming environment for a new person who was considering becoming active on MFGG - we've had to deal with some very spammy or hostile members lately who might be repelling good contributors.

The advantage that forums have over chat groups is on a forum, members are more likely to think before they speak. In a forum, you don't have the same amount of back-and-forth you do in a chat group, so discussions tend to be calmer and better thought-out. In a chat group, it's easy for a bad post or two to snowball out of control, even if a couple of moderators are active.

I'd also like to reassure everyone that we recognize that retiring the Discord is a fairly drastic step, and we wouldn't do that without giving everyone a chance to share their perspective.

Course clear! You got a card.