Discord - The Backup Community?

[Fall]

Hello Lillytown People!

Do you or anyone you know use Discord?

AAm was recently brought down for several days due to possibly corrupted data, a bug of some kind, or an attack. I don't know for sure what it was. In the Mod Forum, Ben the site owner, had previously suggested Discord as a potential alternative or backup community to AAm should it ever go down permanently.

I'd like to make it clear that I am not advocating an abandoning of this site. I don't think an Alizée Discord server could really replace AAm. It's a different animal altogether, apples and oranges. CC mentioned in the chatbox that there are many years (since 2006) of history and information on AAm. That's fourteen years of posts and discussion that remains incredibly valuable to the fan community, even when taking into account all the dead links and blank pages. Should an Alizée Discord server exist fourteen years from now, you would have to scroll for many hours to find discussions you can find with a few clicks on AAm. So once again, we're talking about a different thing altogether.

Personally, I have never used Discord. However, I've seen it used many many times by other people, and many YouTubers, Twitch Streamers, and fan communities of all kinds use it regularly to discuss different topics. Like AAm, you can post upload pictures, link to videos, but you can also use voice and video chat. 10 years ago (!) for the tenth anniversary of Moi Lolita, many AAm members gathered on Ventrilo to celebrate. We used it on another occasion for the live updates on the UEDS polaroid shoot around the same time. Using it for the first time was clunky and awkward, but imagine if we could have features like that built in? A clever, interactive, and modern platform where you can also send PMs, use emoji, create custom stickers, and more.

I recently made a Discord account to follow a YouTube community I already followed elsewhere. I had the idea of creating a Discord server for Alizée fans around the world to congregate. As CC also mentioned, this is probably the last Alizée forum left standing. But what that says to me is that there are hundreds if not thousands of Alizée fans out there who have lost their "Alizée home." Sure, you can follow her and fan accounts on Facebook, Twitter, IG, and more, but there is no one place for all to come together and discuss news and music, etc. There used to be many fan sites for people all over the world. Mexico had several forums, a few India forums, there was even a Lillytown USA for a time. Alizée Forum had several subforums for different language users. For whatever reason, some of these folks never found their way to AAm. But they are still out there.

I wonder if we could find a few that use Discord to bring some of them together.

https://discord.com/

For those who don't know what it is, Discord is a platform for online communities.

In their own words:

[Kajue]

Yes yes yes! I wanted to bring this up one of these days. A discord would be a fantastic idea!

[Ben.Daly]

Looks like a good idea to get going. I've been thinking of getting active of Discord for a while now but never made the plunge, this would be a good place to start.

[CleverCowboy]

Some of us older members had discussed the future of AAm in the past, and we know that it falls into the hands of younger fans. We have a few threads that we started on updating our site and the features that members would like to see, and the younger members mentioned all the modern features seen on different social media platforms.

But here is the (potential) problem. Most, if not all, of those younger members from those threads are no longer involved on the forum. Maybe they are still Alizee fans and just follow her on IG and FB, maybe they just moved on altogether. So if AAm moves to another platform such as Discord, ownership and/or administration should be given to multiple members, if possible.

That being said, I have never used or seen Discord, but I will check it out. For those that have used it, is there a way to control membership to a community? Can a community be moderated and memberships revoked?

If you go back to the early years of this forum and read some of the threads, there are threads that got hostile at times and the conversation went off in some unpleasant directions. There is enough unpleasantness in the world already and I would not like our community to go down that route.

Now I will ask the question, why would we want to move to Discord besides that AAm crashed for a few days?

Will it attract more new members, and how?

[Kajue]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

Some of us older members had discussed the future of AAm in the past, and we know that it falls into the hands of younger fans. We have a few threads that we started on updating our site and the features that members would like to see, and the younger members mentioned all the modern features seen on different social media platforms.

But here is the (potential) problem. Most, if not all, of those younger members from those threads are no longer involved on the forum. Maybe they are still Alizee fans and just follow her on IG and FB, maybe they just moved on altogether. So if AAm moves to another platform such as Discord, ownership and/or administration should be given to multiple members, if possible.

That being said, I have never used or seen Discord, but I will check it out. For those that have used it, is there a way to control membership to a community? Can a community be moderated and memberships revoked?

If you go back to the early years of this forum and read some of the threads, there are threads that got hostile at times and the conversation went off in some unpleasant directions. There is enough unpleasantness in the world already and I would not like our community to go down that route.

Now I will ask the question, why would we want to move to Discord besides that AAm crashed for a few days?

Will it attract more new members, and how?

Like what Fall said, I personally do not advocate an abandoning of this site either, too much history, a Alizée Discord server would not be able to replace it. Especially cause Discord does not have threads.

However, I believe a Discord branch off could play a very key role in attracting the younger generation to become fans, and organize events, among other things in the future. A significant number of the younger generation use Discord, many use it to for certain communities, some others for gaming, and others for pure communication.

As for the question about moderation on a server. Discord does allow the owner of the sever to assign "roles" (which you can custom name) to different people. This will allow some members to be Administrators, Moderators, and etc.
As a admin or mod, you will be able too delete messages, images, add new sub-sections of the server, and even BAN users from the server if they ever get too hostile or inappropriate.

And as for the question of attracting new fans to the forum, that can be organized too. There are many ways to advertise Discord servers, and the people on discord are usually decently tech savvy. So I've been playing around with an idea. (It may seem ridiculous, so bare with me everyone)

I know there is still a general incentive on this forum to promote Alizée here in the US, as well as wish that Alizée should've been marketed more here in the US. Although it may seem pretty much hopeless at this point, I think a Discord server could be a major factor in making this happen.

If enough of the fanbase were to join the server I believe we could be able to organize pretty large campaigns targeting a US audience. Discord is primarily a messaging app, which you can access through the computer as a site, and through your phone as an app. You get instant notifications, just like giant sized SMS group chat. I think this could provide us the "Ease of Communication" which a forum doesn't really provide, to work on big collaborations and campaigns.

We could use the Discord to organize, maybe a crowdfund internationally (Patreon, GoFundMe, etc.) in order to be able to have the funds to promote Alizée, and the forum on the various social media sites (using targeted niche Facebook Ads, Instagram Promos, etc.) and for the Funds to be able to keep THIS site going, as well as money to go into making new improvements to the site itself.



IDK, I'm just being a idealistic youth. But hey, if there's a will, there is a way I guess.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Kajue

I know there is still a general incentive on this forum to promote Alizée here in the US, as well as wish that Alizée should've been marketed more here in the US. Although it may seem pretty much hopeless at this point, I think a Discord server could be a major factor in making this happen.

Most Alizee fans in the US just stumble upon her. Alizee, Mylene or any other French artist has zero airplay here. I'm not quite sure why, but there is a general distaste for French people in the US. Maybe it's because of how the movies generally portray the French as being rude and snobby to Americans? In my experience, I found that to be untrue, at least of those I had met.

I suppose there is a greater chance of people in the US stumbling upon Alizee on a Discord server than a standalone web site.

At this juncture, the Discord community would be an extension of this web site, not a replacement. When naming the community, I think it should contain "Alizee America" in it, or just be named it and nothing else. We can include a link to the Discord community on this web site, and a link to this web site on Discord. If it flops, we can dissolve it and we would still have this site. If it takes off as hoped, then we would have some decisions to make long term.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Ben

The last downtime was likely caused by bugs/limitations in our version of vBulletin. We haven't been able to update that in a long time due to loosing the original license when the site changed hands.

Thanks for posting about the license. I wasn't aware of this and it explains a lot.

Originally Posted by Ben

I can't take point now, but would be happy to support any community effort, and can re-direct the alizeeamerica.com address to the new home once it's fully established.

Any help you can give us would be greatly appreciated!

[Fall]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

At this juncture, the Discord community would be an extension of this web site, not a replacement. When naming the community, I think it should contain "Alizee America" in it, or just be named it and nothing else.

I disagree. When this site was created, it's name of Alizée America was meant to signify that its members were a community from the United States in general, and maybe Canada and the rest of the Americas. At the time and until recently, Alizée Italia, Alizée France, Alizée India, Alizée Brazil, Alizée Russia, Alizée Spain, Alizée World (from Mexico), and many, many more fan websites and forums existed to represent a particular country or region of fans in the world. The dream was to try and build a large enough community that it could be recognized and perhaps bring Alizée over to perform or tour.

We've had many members from all over the world, and today, maybe 5 or 6 of us active members are in the US, with everyone else representing other locations. I think at this point, if we want to build a community for all Alizée fans, we should come up with a new name. Especially if the Discord server is not meant to be a replacement for Alizée America.

[Ben.Daly]

Originally Posted by Fall

I disagree. When this site was created, it's name of Alizée America was meant to signify that its members were a community from the United States in general, and maybe Canada and the rest of the Americas. At the time and until recently, Alizée Italia, Alizée France, Alizée India, Alizée Brazil, Alizée Russia, Alizée Spain, Alizée World (from Mexico), and many, many more fan websites and forums existed to represent a particular country or region of fans in the world. The dream was to try and build a large enough community that it could be recognized and perhaps bring Alizée over to perform or tour.

Are all of these forums gone or are there still a couple that linger on? As someone who joined AAm only this year, I got the impression that it must've evolved into the place for English-speakers, and that perhaps there were other forums for those speaking Russian, Spanish, Italian etc. Considering how you see fans from all over the world in YouTube comment sections and on Instagram, are we sure all the other forums are gone?

Originally Posted by Fall

We've had many members from all over the world, and today, maybe 5 or 6 of us active members are from the US, with everyone else representing other locations. I think at this point, if we want to build a community for all Alizée fans, we should come up with a new name. Especially if the Discord server is not meant to be a replacement for Alizée America.

I agree with this sentiment, though it shouldn't really be too much of a problem either way. Guess we'd need a new name for it.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Fall

We've had many members from all over the world, and today, maybe 5 or 6 of us active members are in the US, with everyone else representing other locations. I think at this point, if we want to build a community for all Alizée fans, we should come up with a new name. Especially if the Discord server is not meant to be a replacement for Alizée America.

There is a reason why Alizee sites are regional, and that is because of language. As far as I can tell, there are no native auto-translators on Discord. I see there is at least one add-on that can do translations, but at a cost. The more it's used, the more it costs. Otherwise, do we really want an international community all communicating in their native languages? From a moderating point of view, it would be a nightmare.

Don't underestimate the importance of our brand, which is Alizée America. Alizée knows us well. She has received gifts from us and there are a number of YouTube videos of her saying hello to us. There are videos posted from Scruffy representing AAm. If you do a Google search with Alizée as the search word or part of the search word, AAm comes up as one of the top results. Our threads have been crawled by every major search engine out there.

It's my opinion that starting from scratch would be a mistake, but that is only my opinion. We had a member in here not that long ago promoting his new Alizee site. It lasted two months and no longer exists. If the majority decides to start fresh, then I'll go with the flow and no feelings hurt, but there is value in name recognition.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Ben.Daly

Are all of these forums gone or are there still a couple that linger on? As someone who joined AAm only this year, I got the impression that it must've evolved into the place for English-speakers, and that perhaps there were other forums for those speaking Russian, Spanish, Italian etc. Considering how you see fans from all over the world in YouTube comment sections and on Instagram, are we sure all the other forums are gone?

Alizee Ukraine still exists and I believe that Alizee Spain does to, but it is just a flickr site. They are mainly picture warehouses and no way to chat or communicate with other members. It just highlights the uniqueness of what we have going here at AAm. Before we all rush off and start a new thing, we need to consider what will be lost, and a bunch of old threads is not the only thing.

[Ben]

Hey all,

Just want to chime in: I'm all for any sort of backup, or even a migration to another platform.

The last downtime was likely caused by bugs/limitations in our version of vBulletin. We haven't been able to update that in a long time due to loosing the original license when the site changed hands.

I've been trying to keep things running, but truth is we're on borrowed time without a serious over-hall. That's probably not as time or cost efficient as moving to a new platform, and archiving everything here.

I can't take point now, but would be happy to support any community effort, and can re-direct the alizeeamerica.com address to the new home once it's fully established.

Thanks, and apologies for the downtime!