Danbooru Discord server

I hope that builders will open up forum threads before making large modifications to the site, but the worst-case-scenario possibility of the future formation of a cabal that holds unrecorded discussions with almost no community input on a different site about how to run Danbooru has me kind of uneasy

I did consider this when I made this server. I do very much agree, it's a cornerstone of our community that all decisions are made in public and that everyone is able to give their input. The lack of hierarchy and the fact that anyone can (theoretically) get involved in decision-making is a vital thing. But in practice I think the culture of the forum greatly discourages new people from getting involved. That is something I hope the Discord can help with.

I think Discord is another step in this direction. The barrier of entry is higher, because instead of just clicking on the "Forum" link, a user has to install and configure a separate program before they can join the discussion.

You can use the web app (I do). You don't have to install anything. Admittedly you need a Discord account.

Most Danbooru users only set foot in the forum when the site breaks (the api limit bug, for example). We've set a precedent where "consensus" means "a handful of builders plus a mod or admin have signed off on it." So a small number of power users control the direction of the site with little input from the larger userbase, which doesn't seem to care enough about the decisions being made to get involved.

This is entirely our own doing. The culture we've cultivated on the site actively encourages this. Theoretically the forum is open to everyone, but in practice it's not easy to get started at all. It takes a long lurking period for new people to get comfortable speaking up. Even the most fundamental things, like requesting aliases and implications, are not well-explained.

When it comes to policy, we have over ten years of past precedent you have to be aware of. Most of our policy is not documented anywhere except in years old forum threads, which often died with no clear resolution to begin with. Even longtime builders are frequently confused as to what our policies are. Is it any surprise that our decision-making is so dysfunctional and that so many threads deadend when none of us know each other on a friendly level? It poisons discourse when your only interaction with people is bickering with them over stupid shit on the forum. It turns every discussion into an argument that must be won, instead of a conversation.

The "serious business only" nature of the forum is discouraging and intimidating for new users. It's also extremely time-consuming for those who do get involved. We've lost many active forum-goers over the years. In the past year, I can count on one hand the number of new faces we've had come in to replace them. That is a big, big problem.

Rant over. My goal with the Discord is not to shift things behind closed doors. It's the opposite, it's to foster a community so that more people get involved with the site. Danbooru is my home, but I find it deeply disappointing that in the ten years I've been here we've never developed any kind of real community.

PS: That lack of chat logs is a problem. I will look into saving the logs and making them public (which, by the way, the irc doesn't seem to have either).

Type-kun said:

That's true for general tag gardening and wiki efforts, but some more integral site components like flag or upload notices have been made editable as well. My opinion is that before editing those, or any wiki from "about" category, or before retagging a lot of posts, an open forum discussion is absolutely necessary, even if just to see that nobody explicitly disagrees within a few days.

Of course these things should be raised on the forum, and indeed they have been. So I don't see a problem yet. There are only ~10 or so active people in the chat, and I think everyone is smart enough to know that things need to go through the forum for formal discussion. But it is very useful to be able to get informal feedback on ideas before raising them on the forum.

If some member goes gung-ho off of Discord, another chat site, or just from their own initiative, making lots of changes, then that member should be counseled on proper behavior. Also, most of the important items on this site are versioned, making reverts a snap.

And if looking for an example of proper transition between chat and forum, check out what I did in topic #14041.

I don't think having chat logs will help much. Most of the problem is that stuff gets drowned out, by people insulting other users, people talking about American politics, other people insulting different users, people posting random pictures, people talking about random artists, and random small talk. If you're not online at the time that something relevant is discussed then it's difficult to find. And you can't just continue on the conversation.

And I'm not sure I agree with the idea of discord opening up the community to more people. It basically acts as a way of bringing select members of the inner circle within an existing group closer together, and excluding those who are not active on discord all the time, aren't prepared to read back through tons of text in order to work out what on earth people are talking about (these things are incomparably more time consuming than simply participating in a forum discussion), or are simply online at different times to the rest of the group. And by having the entry point to discord be in the forums, you pretty much guarantee that the only people who will be active on there will be those who are active on the forums already.

I've left the discord group, by the way. I really don't think that thing is suitable for any discussion of anything important barring quick questions with easy and uncontroversial answers. Anything beyond that should be on the forums, and preferably not even brought up on discord. It's just not a suitable medium for such a thing.

As for discussing something on discord and then bringing it up here, firstly this is a waste of time, as you can end up having the same arguments twice. And if one side "won" an argument on discord, they can often assume that this means that they are automatically in the right. Posts with "this discussion already happened on discord" tends to feel like it's being presented as a fait accompli, and the forum becomes something of a rubber stamping ground. It gives priority to those who were in discord and talking at precisely the right time, instantly promoting them in importance in decisions, and conversely pushing everyone else to a lesser importance, making them feel discouraged from participating.

If you want a place to chat and get to know people who use this place better, fine (though count me out). But there shouldn't be any part of the decision making process taking place there. As soon as someone brings up something that would warrant a forum post or thread, they should be sent to post it on the forum rather than having the discussion on discord.

This is just my feelings on the matter based on past experiences of discord rooms being created for a site or community and then invariably destroying the very thing they were supposed to serve.

That's my rant over as well I guess. Sorry if it's not very coherent (I blame the fact that I didn't get much sleep last night), and I don't in reality feel quite as strongly as the above may make it sound.

Type-kun said:

My opinion is that before editing those, or any wiki from "about" category, or before retagging a lot of posts, an open forum discussion is absolutely necessary, even if just to see that nobody explicitly disagrees within a few days. I've already seen some decisions being group-thinked by a few builders through DMail exchange and somehow treated as a consensus. Of course it's fine to discuss and think of something outside the forum, but you should make sure to start a forum topic and relay all the arguments before changing anything significant, if only for historical purposes - otherwise the change might be reverted sometime in the future, if the user who made it is not around anymore to explain their reasoning.

Just to be clear, I completely agree with this. When I said the current forum-based process is fine, I did mean that specifically, including a few days for objections as you said. I haven't been aware of private DMail-based decisions but I certainly wouldn't consider that to be the same thing at all - transparency was an important property of the current system that I mentioned.

evazion said:

The "serious business only" nature of the forum is discouraging and intimidating for new users. It's also extremely time-consuming for those who do get involved. We've lost many active forum-goers over the years. In the past year, I can count on one hand the number of new faces we've had come in to replace them. That is a big, big problem.

Rant over. My goal with the Discord is not to shift things behind closed doors. It's the opposite, it's to foster a community so that more people get involved with the site. Danbooru is my home, but I find it deeply disappointing that in the ten years I've been here we've never developed any kind of real community.

Is there any chance we could change the "serious business only" forum policy then? Not so much that it would just be a general forum, but enough so that things like requesting help finding an image / its source was acceptable, maybe? That's the kind of thing that aligns with the site, IMO. It's something that experienced users here might be able to help with and might encourage the requester to get more involved. I've seen threads like that and kind of wanted to help the person out but it was closed with "that's not what the forum is for".

I'm not sure how to make the forum feel more accepting of friendly conversation without turning it into "discuss your favorite anime". But relaxing the hardline stance ought to be a start. Am I missing some history on why that is the way it is? Or was the idea just to stay on the safe side? It is a difficult balance to maintain for sure.

Heavy use of the Discord channel might make more of a friendly community out of a subset of currently active contributors, but it would almost surely make it harder for new people to enter that group as well.

evazion said:

You can use the web app (I do). You don't have to install anything. Admittedly you need a Discord account.

An account on a separate site is still a significant bump for someone who isn't already invested. I think you're looking at this from the perspective of the site being a big part of your life for a long time, but new people have to go through the casual involvement stage before they get there. If you're primarily a lurker and are just fixing some tags or translating along the way, you're not going to go join the Discord channel if you want to ask about something. You're going to give up.

An idea, though not really a suggestion: If Danbooru hosted a server for some federated protocol like Matrix, and any Danbooru user automatically had a matching account there, and matching session even, you could just follow a link and immediately start talking. I know that's a big thing and I'm not volunteering to code it, nor asking someone else to. I'm not sure it would even be worth it. But if you want new people to join any kind of live thing, I think it would have to be like that - something you can really jump in just to try any time.

☆♪ said:

Is there any chance we could change the "serious business only" forum policy then? Not so much that it would just be a general forum, but enough so that things like requesting help finding an image / its source was acceptable, maybe? That's the kind of thing that aligns with the site, IMO. It's something that experienced users here might be able to help with and might encourage the requester to get more involved. I've seen threads like that and kind of wanted to help the person out but it was closed with "that's not what the forum is for".

I'm not sure how to make the forum feel more accepting of friendly conversation without turning it into "discuss your favorite anime". But relaxing the hardline stance ought to be a start. Am I missing some history on why that is the way it is? Or was the idea just to stay on the safe side? It is a difficult balance to maintain for sure.

Well, other communities/forums solve that by having pretty much exactly a “discuss your favorite anime” area, called something like “Off-Topic”, “General Chatter”, “Random Ramblings” or whatever you can think of.

Currently, the Danbooru forum throws everything together in one big pot and gives a few filters. Maybe it would be better to actually have different areas on the forum, with one of them being for free-for-all chatter? To lower the threshold to post something?

And I'm not sure I agree with the idea of discord opening up the community to more people. It basically acts as a way of bringing select members of the inner circle within an existing group closer together, and excluding those who are not active on discord all the time, aren't prepared to read back through tons of text in order to work out what on earth people are talking about (these things are incomparably more time consuming than simply participating in a forum discussion), or are simply online at different times to the rest of the group.

I only skim most of what goes on in the Discord myself. These days, the forum itself is too time-consuming for me to do more than skim for that matter. "Simply" participating in a forum discussion is far from simple. Even trivial matters can turn into pages and pages of dense walls-of-text, spread out over the course of weeks. There are many threads where I do have an opinion, but every time I have to ask myself, do I really want to write an essay and get sucked into this argument for the next week? Often the answer is no, this is not the hill I want to die on.

I think the lack of any kind means of casual discussion makes certain things way more difficult than they need to be. It encourages the forum to be all about lengthy effortposts (like I'm doing here, for which I apologize), when sometimes I just want to say "yeah, I agree / no, that's dumb" without having to spend a good hour writing out a full response.

And by having the entry point to discord be in the forums, you pretty much guarantee that the only people who will be active on there will be those who are active on the forums already.

If it were up to me there would be a news ticker announcement. Also if it were up to me, we would have a subforum for casual/off-topic discussions. But that's not up to me.

This is just my feelings on the matter based on past experiences of discord rooms being created for a site or community and then invariably destroying the very thing they were supposed to serve.

I understand this concern and believe me, I don't want that to happen either. But as I ranted above, I think the community has grown more and more insular over time, as top users leave and fewer people come in to take their place. Danbooru feels less active today than when it was when I first joined.

Wait, when was the Discord ever considered an area where site policies and major edits should be decided? I thought it was just a bunch of dudes from the same community spamming porn, talking about games, memeing hardcore, and generally being dorks with a Danbooru bot. The same as if this forum had a section that wasn't for site-mechanics use only.

Yeah, Discord requires you to create an account on another site. That's not a valid argument to say that it's filtering the userbase at all. Especially not any more than IRC does/did, or how some other small groups of users have taken to chatting on Steam.

If someone starts changing things en masse on Danbooru based on a Discord discussion without bringing it up on Danbooru, then it ought to be treated exactly the same way as changing a buch of stuff without discussion would've been handled a few months ago.

OOZ662 said:

Wait, when was the Discord ever considered an area where site policies and major edits should be decided? I thought it was just a bunch of dudes from the same community spamming porn, talking about games, memeing hardcore, and generally being dorks with a Danbooru bot. The same as if this forum had a section that wasn't for site-mechanics use only.

Yeah, Discord requires you to create an account on another site. That's not a valid argument to say that it's filtering the userbase at all. Especially not any more than IRC does/did, or how some other small groups of users have taken to chatting on Steam.

If someone starts changing things en masse on Danbooru based on a Discord discussion without bringing it up on Danbooru, then it ought to be treated exactly the same way as changing a buch of stuff without discussion would've been handled a few months ago.

Late comment, but I'm echoing this sentiment. I'm a lot more lax in private among a chat server than I am on a forum much like this one, where posts do have to have the quality discussion that essentially leads to a sort of standstill as evazion mentions in forum #131190.

The discord is never really meant for any discussions on big sweeping changes before a follow-up on the forum. However, bringing up topics there is valuable to get a basis going for more complex discussion (as BrokenEagle98 has expressed sentiment for) and also to just get small things done quicker. Nobody has to open up a new forum post and wait for someone else to respond to it since most users don't actively check the forums to respond to something -- only a few do. So it's a lot more useful in that regard also, especially when it comes to writing and pushing changes to the wiki or tag gardening, for example.

+ I'm for encouraging a more welcome atmosphere for all areas of contribution, and I think relegating it to just the forums along with a bunch of wikilinks and lengthy, somewhat esoteric explanations from comments of historic value isn't exactly the way to do it. We're humans too, and the builders here don't have to be around for years to know how to contribute to the site. Take myself for example.

I will thank @kittey for bringing up this concern though, I think it's important to always clarify what the usage for these things are. Again, the discord is mostly just derping around as OOZ said.

Updated the OP:

• Changed the invite link to point to #general instead of #nsfw.
• Added a list of commands supported by Fumimi.
• Added Fumimi's github: https://github.com/evazion/fumimi-discord.

@evazion How much longer does the Useful Threads Index topic need to have the Discord blurb in the title...?

I'll take it out. There are some other outdated things in that thread I need to sift through, and I want to avoid bumping the topic multiple times.

Bumping! We don't bite!

DeusExCalamus said:

Bumping! We don't bite!

Says you.

In response to the issue that happened on topic #17068, I think we really need to have a discussion about Discord and the forums and what are the rules of engagement for pursuing gardening or administrative actions again. Regardless of it still being the same or it needs to change, whatever it is needs to go prominently in the wiki somewhere, as well as being mentioned in someplace like the #rules channel on the Discord server.

So first off, is it still the same, or does it need to change?

What is “it”?

At any rate, I get that several users prefer Discord for chatting, but at least make a “Stuff that was decided on Discord” thread on the Danbooru forum and post discussion results/summaries there since not everyone uses Discord. Also, we have all discussions about tags and policies and whatever searchable on the Danbooru forum since the beginning of time, which is regularly used to dig up all the previous discussions when someone suggests something “new”. None of what goes on in Discord is searchable (AFAIK) or linkable, so whatever was discussed and decided there is lost forever and nobody will remember the reasoning for whatever change suddenly popped up over here if nobody posts a summary on the forum for archival purposes.

kittey said:

None of what goes on in Discord is searchable (AFAIK) or linkable, so whatever was discussed and decided there is lost forever and nobody will remember the reasoning for whatever change suddenly popped up over here if nobody posts a summary on the forum for archival purposes.

Not defending the "discussion in Discord only is fine" side but Discord doesn't delete chat logs in normal cases, you can search all the way back to the creation of the server even.

kittey said:

None of what goes on in Discord is searchable (AFAIK) or linkable, so whatever was discussed and decided there is lost forever and nobody will remember the reasoning for whatever change suddenly popped up over here if nobody posts a summary on the forum for archival purposes.

Discord has a search function for finding messages, be it private or in a server. It's still useless to anyone who isn't actually in the server, though, and the only way for anyone here to know about what goes on there is to have it shared here in some way.

Regardless of searchability, stuff "discussed" on discord should not really count as having being discussed at all. Partly because of the fact that some people aren't on discord, but mainly because things posted on there can disappear very quickly, with no indication for people who didn't happen to be in the right chat at the exact right time that any discussion had ever happened.

kittey said:

At any rate, I get that several users prefer Discord for chatting, but at least make a “Stuff that was decided on Discord” thread on the Danbooru forum and post discussion results/summaries there since not everyone uses Discord.

+1
Every major change, that´s not a BUR, should at least be posted in a seperate topic.