@EurasianLynx I'm going through all these replies but if I'm being honest I don't think user-made community Discords have been a problem and actually have the opposite effect to what you're talking about.

I've been in quite a few Flight Rising Discords; participated in auctions, dominance, art giveaways, trading, etc. I totally understand the appeal. But the difference is that user-ran means that:

1. the divided communities leave them less desirable than the forums in the long run for mainstay community interaction;

2. consequently, forums are still ultimately the place to go due to staff and community outreach being focused there.

I actually think user-ran Discords are wonderful. They're little pockets of discussion, and often people who are closer friends talking in a space away from site censors and on-site politics/etiquette. It's a completely different culture, but the point is that because it user-selected, there's still plenty incentive to view the forums as "community hub" while offshoot Discords are moreso "unaffiliated spaces." Said spaces organically develop subcultures instead of being forced to continually participate in on-site etiquette and culture.

Company/game endorsement of a professional Discord just spearheads this effect entirely. Community-ran Discords authentically form subcultures and niche communities which re-convene via forums. That type of organic development just cannot happen when the large, professionally endorsed hub is already third party.

@Faia We might have different definitions of dead, because a new forum post every 5-10 minutes or less is really far from dead to me! I would say those forums are bustling, if anything. Maybe it's not as golden as the good ol' days, but I'd largely argue that's due to an aged drop-off of the game in general rather than a dislike of specifically forums. The playerbase is pretty stagnant with less new players, but the forum to player activity ratio is consistent.

I think perhaps the UX of forums could be improved upon. Reddit, for example, is a great experience for forums/threads. Perhaps the current way is aged, but I still really dislike third party software being the mainstay community hub.

Edit: yeah you have a great point that the UX in general is lacking. I just don't think the solution is to rely on and professionally endorse something that's built better off-site.

@foxriddles I totally understand what you're saying, but I think that's an issue with forum etiquette and culture more than it is with Discord vs. not, which can be remedied with onsite encouragement.

What's really stopping you from posting questions like that? A general attitude and cultural interpretation that forums are for Serious Business and that casual discussions are Not Welcome. As well, probably a general QoL experience of forums taking longer to type out and wait for a reply.

But there must be a solution to this that doesn't use a third party as a crutch. Perhaps forums could be re-imagined in the wake of the "new age" of internet interaction. Would a messaging board on-site work for smaller questions? Could there be more encouragement such as a "no stupid questions" thread? I originally point to Reddit, because it's such a good marriage between forum-style interaction and fast-paced communication. Evidently, it's doing something right considering it is entirely forum-based a platform.

Also just as an offshoot: I really don't consider unaffiliated Discords a worse alternative, in fact the opposite. I think organic sub-community actually help to keep people onsite rather than direct them away, because there's a clear boundary between "community hub" vs "sub-community."

i post in the discord and forums but use them when im in different moods. i would be sad if one or the other went away. the forums need a UX update.

i don't think the discord users would flood the forums if the discord disappeared. maybe some of them would post here. but i think more likely, a lot of people just wouldn't talk, and some would form their own private user discords. the problem imo is with the forums themselves.

//

edit with more specific post-coffee thoughts: the forums are way too spread out right now. i have to scroll even on PC to see everything. subforum titles/descriptions have a TON of empty space around them. the only thing i think users should have to scroll to see is maybe like, a help section or user suggestions at the bottom. descriptions might not even be necessary. we don't have any icons next to the subforum titles to tell us whether there are new posts.

we don't have a mod activity feed.

quote function still doesn't work.

a "message user" button would be nice.

the ability to direct-link posts.

we don't have emojis! i would like lorwolf specific emojis and the ability to react to posts with them. this would need some care, we'd need to make sure we don't have emojis that turn into, you know, the forums equivalent of crapping on someone's post. like a teabag in an mmo if that makes sense or when people spam "BOOYAH" sarcastically in splatoon 3 lol.

the ability to assign emojis to a thread title (like the emoji appears right before the title)

it's hard to tell where people are posting... we only get to see new threads posted in the activity section, but not new posts in threads. the latter is how i navigate some forums to figure out where the action is. i would like to see this as its own Recent Posts side menu.

moderation adjustment -- encourage casual posting. allow double posting (but no more than that unless bumping a thread). let people post one-liners and goof off together. let them get more off topic unless it's a serious discussion thread. users who just want to talk are discouraged from posting atm because they don't have "enough" to say. spam control is important but atm it seems rebalancing is needed.

i also think it would help bring the forums and discord together if discord had a live chat widget somewhere on the site. it might be easier to have discussions across platforms that way. (say someone sees a discussion in the discord widget, then carries it into a thread on the forums).

more mod participation in the forums -- maybe they pick random wolves to be highlighted from threads, or highlight threads for a community spotlight type thing.

more Titles and goodies from posting. maybe a random chance to earn a Title through posting. or Random Events on refresh like Neopets has ("Your Lorwolf has found a piece of apparel!").

ideas that i dont know are possible: integrate trade functionality with forum posts so users can trade wolves in their threads (could also help build reputations for users). a function where we can queue together in arena (might encourage ppl to play together while posting about arena?). a direct link function for wolves that includes their image, birthday, and color profile. bidding function for auction threads.

i never posted on the FR forums (too big/intimidating, too much drama), but i do post on the Neoboards on Neopets (nice and simple, easy to find subforums). both are very active with very different communities. frankly i'd rather have something more like the Neopets one lmao they're a lot more relaxed.

ok that's my 2 pebbles bye friends!!

@Star You're totally right about forum culture being a big issue, but I don't think on site encouragement will fix it. I think part of it is generational and preferences towards instant messaging, since more people are growing up on platforms that have instant messaging versus some older folk growing up with forums. With the way forums work, they can't equally replace discord. It's just the differences in how forums and instant messaging groups function. At least on discord you can delete your own messages, you can't delete comments, you can only edit them down. Discord is more free-feeling.

I don't know if an additional "no stupid questions" thing would help, because there's already the questions forum that functions that way for questions related to the site. I don't feel comfortable asking for opinions in the questions forum.

The thing stopping me from posting things asking for others' opinions elsewhere is that I don't want to post a new thread for each question. It doesn't feel worth it to me to make a post for something extremely minor. It feels spammy. To me, forums are for discussions on things. Sometimes I just want a quick, single answer for something trivial that doesn't need a discussion. Pick a number between 1 and 50, that'll be the wolf I send on a hunt. First person to reply to the post gets to choose. Not asking these kinds of questions any more wouldn't drive interaction at all. Am I supposed to make a thread each time I want a number suggested? Do I make a general thread, and hope people return to it to keep giving me suggestions? How long do I wait, hoping for interaction, before just sending it out on my own? I will have to sit on here refreshing the website, whereas if I get a reply to something on discord, I get a banner notification about it. I can do other things without thinking "has someone replied yet?" It's little trivial questions like these that discord facilitates and the forums aren't good for. A lot of people like the casual discussion that these questions come from and are a part of.

Slowing down interaction between people is not going to make it increase. Forums are significantly slower than instant messaging groups. You will get more solid, on-topic threads on the forums, but if you just want filler talk, or a topic that's rapidly changing, the forums aren't the place for that. A lot of people like the filler talk. It helps the site feel alive. I really don't want to read through pages and pages of small talk on a thread about something else. Discord you can scroll easily to pass things and skim it, lorwolf you go page by page. It's slower.

I think native image hosting would help as well. Right now, it is significantly easier to post images to discord than it is to post images to lorwolf. There's just less steps, and you don't need an account on an external image hosting site to upload images that aren't specifically the {Wolf( )} code. People will take the easy route and it's so much more work posting images to lorwolf. I hate trying to post images on here that aren't the wolf code. It's annoying. I don't like having to upload everything to imgur in order to upload it here. The time it takes to do that really adds up. I started doing it for putting wolf scry goals in bios, but quickly gave up because it was just too much uploading and app switching for me to want to deal with. I'm not going to do something that frustrates me, not for a pet site.

As far as official versus unofficial discord, I'd prefer be in a discord I trust to be moderated, provide accurate rule information, and have a close connection to the devs. It just feels safer.

A lot of community things should be relegated to the site, such as sales threads and CA preorder threads, because sometimes those only get posted to the discord. I'm guilty of it myself. If the discord was kept more for those small talk kinds of topics, and things that affected the economy or solid conversational topics were brought to the forums, it might help the site get more interaction on here. I think it's better to work with the discord than against it at this point.

This seems to be a popular topic these days, for all sorts of communities, and, in my honest opinion, I think Discord is just an easy scapegoat. I don't think activity on the forums would be any/much better if there was no Discord. Mainly due to three factors:

1. Someone being active on Discord, doesn't indicate they would be active on forums without Discord.

As mentioned by others, Discord and forums are two very different forms of communication. They feel different. They operate differently. They have different physical and psychological feedback. They're also not mutually exclusive. A forum user isn't going to stop using the forums, just because Discord exists, and not everyone will start using forums because there's no Discord.

You'll see an increase in sales and trade threads, yes, but I don't really consider that community engagement. My experience in dealing with online trading is just: "Do you want this?" "Yes, I will give you this." "Thanks, here you go." "Thanks, goodbye." Any additional engagement it would provide to the forums is frankly bloat in my opinion, but I do see the benefit of making trading more accessible as a whole. It's not that I don't think these things shouldn't be on the forums, I just don't think forcing these things to be exclusive to the forums will do much to improve building a community.

2. Forums are a niche form of communication, and they've been on a decline for a while now.

No matter where you go, the use of forums is on a decline. I've been a member of and am currently a member of several stand alone forums where the forum is the community and they're either as or not much more active than the Lorwolf forums. People just don't use forums like they used to. Which, y'know, that's okay. That's how developing communication methods works.

People used to send letters all the time, but that was replaced by phone calls, text messaging, and even forums were responsible for "killing" letter writing. Letters are still valid, and still have a place in communicating, but they're not ubiquitous anymore, and they likely never will be.

3. Online communities are on a decline in general.

That's basically it. Online communities everywhere are getting more disparate. People don't talk like they did in the big boom era of online communication. Not just in forums and social media, but online games, too. I remember when people used to be lining up to help out newbies in games, but recently I struggled to get help setting up a solo company on FFXIV.

If you want a forum to thrive, I don't think focusing on alternatives and putting them down or hoisting them up as "community killers" is the way to go. All I see it doing is dividing the community further by promoting an us vs them debate.

Even if it's not what you're saying or what you're intending, debating whether or not the Discord should go is invalidating other people's playstyles and telling them that they're less valuable to the site. Some people prefer and only communicate on Discord and that's valid. They're still on the site playing the game, whether you see it or not. I have a friend who plays Lorwolf daily and maxes out all of the activities every week, but they don't engage with the forums or the discord. Everyone plays the game in their own way.

So, what can we do aout it?

I think a few good points have already been made in this thread about UX being the biggest flaw of the forums right now. A recent threads or recent posts feed like you might find on other forum providers would be nice. I know I suggested a while back that showing the most recent thread in a forum in place of the "latest" line would help in readability a lot, too.

Like I said earlier, I can see the benefit of making trades and sales exclusive to the forums, but I don't think they'll boost community engagement overall. I also don't actually do much trading outside of posting on the flea market, though, so I don't have any hard opinions on it.

tl;dr I think community focus should on discussing forum improvements, rather than creating division by suggesting nuking any other forum of communication.

Edit: The more I navigate the forum, and really look at it I do feel like there's absolutely no focus on which threads are active? There's almost no way to see which threads people are posting on beyond knowing that the most recent thread is the one on top. They don't show any information on the last poster or when the last post was just when it was created.

@Beetle

I'm going over all this inbetween cooking it's all really good discussion! I can concede on the scapegoat point, but yes the most pressing issue does seem to be UX design.

I have to let my thoughts simmer before I can come back with something super coherent, but right now I'm babbling like a baby and pointing at Reddit; one of the biggest social media platforms out there that is exclusively forum based.

I thought a little bit about what about Reddit's UX invites a casual eir while also fostering both community discussion and casual chitchat. I use it pretty frequently, and overall I notice things that the complaints here (forums are too formal, it's easier and more fast paced in a chatroom, I can't post my silly random thoughts) are all but alleviated on Reddit! You have slews of both haphazard posts and dedicated discussions.

I think I've come to the following conclusions on Reddit's UX that helps it compete in the modern digital world:

1. It's easier to stay aware of the topic. The main inciting forum post is always there and not 3 pages away. You get less information fatigue when you have a central point always visible.

2. Replies are also below one another and hierarchied instead of mandatory bottom of the line in sectioned pages. Chit-chat is easier without feeling like you're spamming, thus creating a more relaxed atmosphere for socialization.

3. The upvote/downvote system makes it so you feel represented by the masses by seeing your opinion uptop, or actively encourages you to reply to continue discussion. Due to the previous points, doing so doesn't feel formal. I'm not sure if the petsite community is really ready for an upvote/downvote feature as its done over there, but perhaps anonymous downvoting where the numbers aren't visible could work here. This also includes other reactions and such.

All this is to say: if modern forums adopted a UX similar to Reddit, would everyone here who says they prefer Discord be more inclined to stick around? We need to learn to adapt to the changing world instead of relying on megacorps to do all the work.

How do you guys feel about potential UX changes like this?

@foxriddles @Wisp

I do not expect LW to implement them, to be fair. But I'm entertaining the discussion. Would you want to see a UX like this for sites in the future?

you're being nasty and concern trolling over a discussion about forums and discord use on a virtual pet site... i don't have anything else to say. toodles

@Wisp

I'm confused. Am I being nasty? I really do apologize. I thought the discussion was very engaging. Is there something I did wrong?

Trolling? I'm asking people's perspective and explaining my own :( It's not wrong to disagree with me?

Edit: I had to look up what concern trolling is, I'm sorry. I just felt a little guilted over a philosophy and practice I do take issue with, and didn't feel my taking issue with how the devs handle things was an offense to anyone personally. So I wanted to put up emotional boundaries on that. I actually feel like there are valid viewpoints I want to concede to and am trying to ask for how those compromises could be made to help alleviate everyone's concerns and preferences! But again, I do apologize for sounding inciting or condescending. I understand there's a lot of tension around this topic, and I probably was not being very elegant in my intention.

Hi everyone!

Please remember to be respectful and keep a polite tone with your fellow Lorians!

Moonsblessings!