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PremierBromanov · 11-17-2022, 08:14 PM

I'll be damned if i don't try to get paid for this opinion.

Since I joined this league in mid 2019, a lot has changed. But what hasn't changed is how almost every team discord is laid out (that i've seen), nor my ire for how they are arranged. To put it simply, there are too many fuckin' rooms. There's a room for food, a room for music, a room for selfies, a room for pets, a room for general, a room for random, a room for sports, etc etc ad nauseum. And I think the bottom line of what this configuration says is "I don't care about those things, so i mute them". These fragmented spaces are a problem and my proposed solution is to just eliminate most of these extra chat channels and keep those conversations going in "general"

Now of course, there are great reasons to fragment the space. No one wants to have a conversation whilst asron bot is bringing up statistics. Its helpful to catalogue announcements, box scores, and other bot-centric information. And of course, running a dnd game in general chat is folly. These channels are functionally different from the usual chatter and serve an important purpose. They are similar only in nomenclature. A channel is a channel, but not really.

So here's my problem. A team locker room should be (often is) centered around the players themselves. The great joy of this league is getting entangled in each other's lives. You join a team, get to know some people, and generally the experience is positive. But I just hate that someone can effectively mute any conversation that isn't about their specific favorite thing.

That is not how relationships work, my friends.

There is no strong relationship between two people that is not without moments of boredom, disinterest, or even disgust. Part of the respect we give to one another is sticking around during those times. I don't give a shit about baseball. But when my friends talk to me about baseball, I listen and engage, because I love my friends and I am interested in their lives. It is therefore complete nonsense to separate our relationships into categories like food, selfies, gaming, sports, etc. I want to see your lives in one space and I want to foster engagement between the entire locker room, and not just whoever chooses not to secretly mute a channel.

I understand that typically in discord, a server can have a great many people. Scores, if not hundreds and thousands. And in these places, channels function as chat rooms. That is, you can have a conversation in one place (or at least broadcast a message to many people) without getting your wires crossed. Why should we try to have 4 conversations in one channel? It gets tedious and difficult.

But in the SHL, most LRs I have been in are serving fewer than 100 members and maybe a dozen or two actual active members. And a large number of users are part of many discords. Different conversations are frequently held between the same people on different servers. Because active users in a LR are so few, the fragmentation of channels hinders rather than helps. The league is already fragmented in the first degree, it need not be fragmented a second time.

Think of these channels are different destinations on a train. When there are many users, such as in the SHL discord, it helps to have many destinations to filter traffic and keep things going smoothly. But when there are fewer active users, having many destinations becomes tedious. And like a train, it does take small effort to change destinations. We would never develop a rail network with 15 stops for a town of 300 people. In the same way, it is unhelpful to have many rooms for a server of fewer than 20.

So, my suggestion to you is this: If your server has fewer than 20 active users throughout the day, you can lock your extra channels to archive them and drive all general chatter to one or two channels. Keep the channels that quarantine non-discussion messages, like bots and announcements and any channel acting as a database. Post your selfies to main. Post your pets to main. Show us your food. Talk to us about baseball. Share your favorite songs and memes and videos. Foster real relationships with your teams while you still have the logistical capacity to do so, before you grow so large as to require the fragmentation. Fix what can be fixed before it cannot be fixed. Cross the bridges that need to be crossed when you come to them.

***Frenchie*** · 11-17-2022, 08:36 PM

I agree with some of what you're saying here, not all but some. To me the issue with all the different J LR's, SHL LR's and every other discord server from GM discords to class discords to fed discords and all the many many other ones is not that they exist, but mainly that they end up excessively multiplying all chat activity and the various rooms. I understand the general reasons behind why most discords are built similarly, but in the end a user is limited in how much they can interact in the various spaces the SHL has to offer. I have no suggestion or solution for this and I doubt that it'll change any time soon, just thought i'd share my experience with it as a newbie.

PremierBromanov · 11-17-2022, 10:04 PM

11-17-2022, 08:36 PMItsFrenchie Wrote: I agree with some of what you're saying here, not all but some. To me the issue with all the different J LR's, SHL LR's and every other discord server from GM discords to class discords to fed discords and all the many many other ones is not that they exist, but mainly that they end up excessively multiplying all chat activity and the various rooms. I understand the general reasons behind why most discords are built similarly, but in the end a user is limited in how much they can interact in the various spaces the SHL has to offer. I have no suggestion or solution for this and I doubt that it'll change any time soon, just thought i'd share my experience with it as a newbie.

I think you're right. There are many disparate servers but what is our alternative? One giant server?

***sköldpaddor*** · 11-17-2022, 11:25 PM

i realize that you are just trying to get paid here so I feel like this isn't all that deep but also

people can collectively decide what they want their locker room to be. Almost every channel in Nevada that isn't devoted to a specific team purpose (TPE opps, announcements, etc) is there because somebody asked me "hey can we have this? I'd love to talk about this!" It's not about letting people ignore it, it's about letting people feel like they have a place to talk about that thing without necessarily derailing whatever other conversation is happening at the time. I want people to be able to come in and post a picture of food without feeling like they're interrupting the "I hate bigots" conversation going on in #general. Sometimes channels end up going dead and I dump them in the archive. But at the end of the day, the locker room is a product of the team that participates in it. We know which ones we use and which ones we don't. If your team is using channels as a way to avoid listening to other people at all, that's kind of a your team problem.

*Carpy48* · 11-18-2022, 05:26 AM

I do agree that there are (sometimes many) unnecessary channels in some servers, but just because they're unnecessary for me maybe they're important for others?

That's where the mute option comes in. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to mute those that you're not interested in? I do that with quite many channels too if there are simply too many of them and I don't constantly want to have to mark them read if I simply don't care about certain topics. Let the others talk in there. That's the good thing about having the option to mute channels, you can decide yourself how many active channels you want to have.

However, people should stay on topic and not drag topics that belong to general into other channels. Not sure how you want to enforce that, it's probably impossible.

PremierBromanov · 11-18-2022, 10:05 AM

11-17-2022, 11:25 PMsköldpaddor Wrote: i realize that you are just trying to get paid here so I feel like this isn't all that deep

thanks

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