[zeta0134]

By far, the majority of my time "online" these days is spent in a Discord server for enthusiasts that are also interested in my hobby. Due to the server's small size and narrow niche, moderation is straightforward and we rarely have any issues with trolling. We don't allow political discussion, which mostly allows members of diverse backgrounds to interact safely, since triggering discussions don't come up very often.

It's not even a particularly novel idea, right? Chatrooms have been a thing just about since packet switching was a thing, this one is just a polished implementation of that idea. Trouble is, the one metric that matters to Google (inter-linking, engagement, etc) can't happen when the content can't be crawled in the first place. So our pleasant, intellectually simulating content stays hidden where the rest of the internet never notices it.

[samtho]

Chatrooms used to be for idle chit chat, banter, and quick questions, but are now being used for deeper technical discussions. Ironically, you find a lot of this on places like Reddit, including an excess of uninformed and repeat questions.

I am of the opinion that Discord does any niche community a great disservice by first locking content behind an invite link and, once invited, content is locked behind pages and pages of search results if the content is even still available.

I’m sure there is bias on my part because I cut my teeth on forums of the ‘00s to the mid ‘10s, but the siloing and fragmentation of information has ultimately divided up centers of knowledge into smaller and smaller pieces. Those in the know will know and those not will be shut out.

[zeta0134]

There are many within our community which share this viewpoint, and any time we do serious technical research the general sentiment is to move that onto our forums or wiki, specifically to make it discoverable.

I personally don't socialize on the forums though. My unfiltered thought process doesn't need to be searchable for the next century. It's okay for some communication to be ephemeral.

[iwontberude]

Political decisions and sex are part of being a human being so I encourage communities to sometimes do that. Not all of them, but we need more spaces for adults to be adults. Too many hacker spaces are sterile in this way. Moderation is worth the challenge.

[zeta0134]

The specific space I participate in is a game development community. Due to it's very nature, it attracts minors. Because we keep our doors open, we have a strong incentive to keep the discussion clean, and generally we find that political discussions get hateful extremely quickly, which is the main motivation.

Thankfully there are lots of other servers that have more lax inclusion of adult topics, if that's your fancy. I think it's okay for different communities to have different standards.