Discord - The Backup Community?

[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.

[Fall]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

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.

If the purpose is to create an online home for Alizée fans, then naturally we would have dedicated spaces for different language users. As the need arises, Mods for those channels would have to be recruited to keep things civil. FerAunger, for example, whose videos have recently been discussed on this forum, is a fan from Mexico who could be counted on to moderate a Spanish language channel(s). Jenny, a well known German member of AF and AAm, could be a moderator for a German channel(s). SkeLeton could moderate a French channel(s) and so forth.

For one thing, the efforts of our members, more than our name, have brought us a couple of miracles. Besides that, it hasn't yielded any fruit. Alizée has been to the US many times, but only on vacation and nothing more. And again, a Discord server would not replace AAm any more than the AAm Twitter account has. That was Ben's suggestion in the event AAm was gone for good. But you're right that we're the last established name and for that reason I don't think we should offer users the choice between AAm and AAm Discord. AAm should continue to exist for its users and a Discord server can offer something different for those comfortable with that platform. And lastly, Google search results vary greatly by locations, not to mention by user. Google wants to serve up the most relevant results to you.

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?

Of the names I listed, I visited or was a member of, Alizée France, Alizée India, Alizée Brazil, and Alizée World. All of these were forums like AAm where fans posted about news, shared pictures, created threads, etc. From what I can tell, none of these exist as forums any longer. They only have IG, Twitter, Facebook accounts. The Russian community I believe existed mostly on a site called VK which is similar to Facebook. AAm was definitely intended for English speakers, as was Alizée Forum who used it as the standard langauge, but offered subforums for German, French, and Spanish I believe.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Fall

If the purpose is to create an online home for Alizée fans, then naturally we would have dedicated spaces for different language users. As the need arises, Mods for those channels would have to be recruited to keep things civil. FerAunger, for example, whose videos have recently been discussed on this forum, is a fan from Mexico who could be counted on to moderate a Spanish language channel(s). Jenny, a well known German member of AF and AAm, could be a moderator for a German channel(s). SkeLeton could moderate a French channel(s) and so forth.

For one thing, the efforts of our members, more than our name, have brought us a couple of miracles. Besides that, it hasn't yielded any fruit. Alizée has been to the US many times, but only on vacation and nothing more. And again, a Discord server would not replace AAm any more than the AAm Twitter account has. That was Ben's suggestion in the event AAm was gone for good. But you're right that we're the last established name and for that reason I don't think we should offer users the choice between AAm and AAm Discord. AAm should continue to exist for its users and a Discord server can offer something different for those comfortable with that platform. And lastly, Google search results vary greatly by locations, not to mention by user. Google wants to serve up the most relevant results to you.

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.

[Ben.Daly]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

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?

Yes, that's essentially what it is.

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

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.

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.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Ben.Daly

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.

OK. Thanks for the explanation. So for an international audience, we would need a Media (English), Media (French), Media (Spanish), Media (German), etc. and so on through all the different channel topics. I would think this would really spread the members out.

So, I really want to get sold on this idea. Right now I have hesitations. Maybe it's a generational thing? I come from a time when emails were the hot thing. I still like emails because it gives me time to think out what I am going to put in it. Posting on a forum is essentially the same. Younger generations seem to not take so well to email and prefer texts and social media where things move quickly.

[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.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Bamagirl

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?

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.

[Kajue]

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.

It seems to me, your daughter has "Discord Nitro" it's still discord but gives the user add-on features. The main discord features are still completely free, free users and Nitro users still have access to the same servers, and the same feature, except on Nitro those features are upgraded. However, I see your point.

Global emojis: Most Discord servers have custom emojis created by the community or the server owner. Typically, these can only be used on the servers on which they were made. Nitro allows people to use any emoji they have in their library, on any server.
Upgraded Go-Live streaming: Go-Live is a feature that allows you to stream your game to a small group of people. You can stream up to 720p at 30 FPS on the free tier, up to 1080p at 60 FPS on Classic, or at source quality on Nitro.
Custom Discord tag: Each Discord username has a random, four-digit number after it. Nitro allows you to change that number to anything you want, as long as that name and number combination isn’t taken.
Screen sharing: You can share your screen with your friends in up to 1080p at 30 FPS, or 720p at 60 FPS.
Increased upload limit: On the free tier, you can only send files up to 8 MB, but Nitro Classic and Nitro subscribers can upload files up to 50 and 100 MB, respectively.
Animated avatars: Paid subscribers can use an animated GIF as their avatar instead of a static image

^^^ Those are the main "upgrades." But it is completely not needed to create a server, and manage it, and voice chat, and live stream stream and share files.

[Kajue]

Alright everyone the Discord is up and running:

https://discord.gg/SMKpgP

[Ben.Daly]

Originally Posted by Kajue

Alright everyone the Discord is up and running:

https://discord.gg/SMKpgP

Looking good.

I encourage anyone who hasn't yet joined to get on it. The analogy of it essentially being an advanced version of the chat box is a good one I think, it will be interesting to see the balance between discourse on AlizeeAmerica compared to the Discord.

Hopefully it doesn't swing too far either way. It would be a shame if either AlizeeAmerica became a dormant archive of content, or the discord became inactive.

I'm sure we'll find out a good balance.