My biggest gripe about the Discord closing was the barely a few days notice. I have a plethora of other complaints and reasons, but it was super sudden, and because I don't always have the brain to read through lengthy news posts, I didn't immediately know until I saw people discussing it. They should have made a special post about it in the Discord the moment they decided, because it was all of us it was directly affecting, and not everyone was gonna read the news post right away, or they needed to see it in their alerts because again, not everybody checks everything super vigilantly. I also would have greatly preferred setting the server to just read only (or at least for a few days or so after closure), so that all the useful discussions and resources in the pins and those sorts of things wouldn't suddenly get scattered. Or at least a couple of weeks notice. Give everybody more than a few frantic days to get things in order and figure out what they need to save, who they need to add, etc. Especially since some people would be on vacation or things at this time of year.
I get people's frustrations with it, too. It was poor form for the staff to post news and updates in the Discord without posting them on the site itself first. And maybe that was one of the big factors, is that they just couldn't resist the temptation to or something. I don't actually know. They didn't tell us much besides that it was to "strengthen the community". Given everything, I might post in the forums less than before, because it's been frustrating and it just doesn't vibe the same. As someone's said, they're good for different things.
The Discord was also an integral part of the community, especially during the times when we all wanted to talk about things but the official site was closed. It was our only real method of communication at the time, and now it's just... gone. It feels like it was just shoved in the trash in a hasty, scared decision because of all the worst parts of it. Because of how they phrased it and how they went about it. (I'm not saying that's how it was, for anyone who's gonna get their hackles up about that. But that's what it feels like to me.)
Overall, I feel very burned by the whole thing. In a lot of ways, it feels like things are getting worse instead of better. I'm always trying to be optimistic, and I'm hoping maybe things will turn around, but it's getting hard to see that. I appreciate that the staff has at least been paying attention to some feedback, we've had some nice changes, too. But a lot of the recent stuff, the Discord server's death being the biggest contributor, has just been incredibly frustrating and disheartening.
That's my main two cents. I could probably find other stuff to gripe about for a while, but that wouldn't be very constructive or helpful for anyone, so I'll leave it at this.
DerpFox
It's AWOOOOOOO o'clock!!!
