Discord - The Backup Community?

[Fall]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

Having a Discord community and separating the members by language into their own respective channels is no different than having an Alizee America, Alizee Spain, Alizee (pick your country). It still falls short of the original intent, which is to somehow bring together under one roof the world's Alizee fans where they do not have to worry about what language they speak. They would still be separated into their own rooms.

If we would have to recruit moderators by language, such as Jenny or FerAunger, they can just as easily start their own Alizee Discord site in their own native languages and we wouldn't have to worry about recruitment and being sure they are following up on their commitment. For all we know, there might be communities dedicated to Alizee on Discord already. If there is, and we create ours, what would make a new Alizee fan choose ours?

Kajue mentioned there is no way to create a thread. So I am assuming a channel would be like a fancy chat box with one long continuous conversation that can go in any direction. Is this correct? If so, what would you chat about today? Alizee's makeup line? Alizee does not produce breaking news. Maybe she will in the future if she ever releases a new record, but for now, I am envisioning that an unstructured chat would go off topic continuously. Or maybe people will get bored and quit coming. There are a lot of thread topics here, and most of them are reminiscing. But reminiscing of what Alizee was and what she is today and everything in between is interesting and fun. I'm not sure whether this can be pulled off in Discord.

So, I know I am being difficult here and I am not trying to throw cold water on the whole idea. I am just trying to talk this through and see if it makes sense to have a site in that format. Kajue volunteered to create a site and he should feel free to do so and see what happens.

The question of there being an existing Discord server was one of my earliest thoughts. After I created a Discord account, I searched for an open Alizée server but couldn't find one. I imagine that if one exists, it is non-searchable and invite only. What would make someone join ours instead? I don't think it's quite so black and white. They can easily switch between servers, like they probably also follow Halo, FIFA, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. servers as well. I think we would have to look at other servers if we wanted to "compete" to offer a better experience.

What would we discuss today? Well any number of things that come up. We can have multiple channels within the server, such as dedicated channels for her official music videos, for remixes, for anything. We don't need to "wait" for daily news to activate a conversation. Fans never wait to discuss things.

Speaking of, I believe you created one as well already. It was linked on your post, though it appears to have been edited out. What happened?

Originally Posted by Ben.Daly

Yes, that's essentially what it is.



You can create separate channels on discord all under the one server, with each channel being about a specific topic or subgenre, similar to how we have different megathreads here (Media, Discussion, News etc). So that would make things a bit more organized and help keep conversation on topic, at least more so than just 1 big chat.

It's still not the same as the Threads here where everything is more structured and you can have many more smaller threads within topic threads, but it would help. We would definitely have an off-topic thread which I suspect might be the most popular channel.

Exactly. We can have a number of threads dedicated to fun topics, activities, and games to keep it interesting.

Originally Posted by Bamagirl

My two cents’ worth is that while Discord could be an interesting adjunct feature for us, if we began using it exclusively it would pretty much end AA as we (and Alizée) know it. CleverCowboy rightly pointed out that she has a knowledge and a history with this forum. Also, Discord has been evolving, with features being added, removed and some now requiring a monthly subscription payment. My teenage daughter uses Discord. She chats with people about online gaming—which, I believe, is the main focus of most Discord use. She recently negotiated with us for a $4.99 monthly fee to add features. I could foresee a time when all users would be required to pay to access the service—or to upload videos, photos, etc.
I’m not sure how, exactly, the files are stored—I know that the software can be both cloud-based and also installed on a user’s hard drive. What happens to them if Discord starts charging for storage?
Bottom line: just like having a FaceBook page, I think Discord could appeal to some people and encourage interaction and participation. But I’d be very reluctant to see us abandon this forum for a totally different platform.

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

You actually bring up a very important point here - cost.

Having a site on Discord might attract current users of Discord because they are already paying a fee. However, would somebody join Discord and pay the fee only to have access to an Alizee channel?

I did some reading on the company. It has 300 million users and a $3.5 BILLION valuation. If you have been following tech trends, a hugely successful startup like this eventually gets bought out by big tech. For the two 30-something year old founders, the prospect of becoming an instant billionaire by selling out is hard to resist. The new owner can do whatever they want. Change the pricing structure and functionality are just for starters.

Each and every one of those questions about money can be asked about AAm too. So far, Discord is a free service. Sure, you can probably pay $4.99 for glittery text and a 3-D avatar or something. Can you go without it? Yeah. AAm is free to us, but as I understand it, it costs Ben space on a server he pays for. Neither he nor Brad ever charged members or put up ads, but that could change. If I'm not mistaken, Ricardo of AF began to ask for donations continuously and those who donated were granted special privileges. Personally, I think "donating" with the intention of buying yourself a say is a dangerous thing. Could that happen here? Yeah.

As for worries that creating a Discord server would threaten AAm, I posted this in the Mod forum to address those fears.

Originally Posted by Fall

You really needn't be threatened. I suppose I can simplify it further. Imagine a cloud of dots on a piece of paper. Each dot is an Alizée fan. Now draw a circle around some of the dots on the left. The circle is AAm, the dots inside are AAm members. Outside of that circle, remains a sea of dots. Those dots used to belong to a myriad of other forums and sites. Some of them, much bigger than this one. For whatever reason, they have not migrated into the AAm circle. Even with it being the last remaining circle. My idea (and it was only an idea, as I had not put anything into action other than asking if others knew or used Discord and what their thoughts were) was to draw a circle around the other dots and into the first circle.

So what you have is a Venn diagram. Some AAm members belong to both circles. Some only belong to AAm. The rest of the dots now have a new circle to hang out in. That is all. AAm, with all its security faults and lack of updates, has stood the test of time well beyond other forums. It is neither passé nor a dinosaur, that would be unfair. It's perhaps more like the pyramids, that have survived the other Wonders of the ancient world. There is no reason to dismantle or abandon it as long as we can work on updating it. However, that discussion has stalled for many years. We haven't even changed the Home page picture.

The Discord server would be an outside project that would be worked on by anyone here who can volunteer some time. Hopefully, the day never arrives that AAm disappears. It can't be replaced anymore than other forums have been replaced. What we can do is create a new, separate space where fans can interact. If you don't see any value in that, no harm done. AAm needs volunteers too.