Bert wrote:Dr. Ambiguous wrote:ripping it in two with two chat rooms was a terrible idea, but oh well.
Tess kind of addressed this but I'm going to cover it a bit more. Since I stay online on both and log IRC constantly, like you, I can objectively back up her assertion that there was little activity in IRC before Discord started, and now there is regular activity in Discord and the same or less activity in IRC as there was before. I get that it is frustrating since IRC is your preferred choice, but it isn't fair to dictate other people's behavior based on your preferences that way. Which brings me to the important point.
There was no high-level decision to move everyone to Discord. A member had the idea of creating a TCS Discord server, they went ahead and created it, and ceded it to the TCS staff when a couple of us came over to it. Beyond that people made their own decision to use Discord or IRC. It could have gone the other way and everyone would be back on IRC, but it didn't. It seems like from your previous statements on this that you would prefer we have stopped everything and had a staff discussion as to if we were going to allow this to continue, which didn't happen. We let it run and TCS users decided with their feet, so to say, what they wanted to do. I'm only speaking for myself when I say this but I think it is more in the spirit of TCS for staff to step aside and let the users decide the direction the site takes, as much as we can, anyways.
Now, the majority of the real time chat users here have apparently decided they wanted to stick with Discord, despite ridicule and hints that they were dumb for doing so from some that prefer IRC (yourself included). That kind of stuff has really left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't have a dog in this "fight". I'm a moderator and I will continue to do my job in both, no matter where people end up. But this really doesn't have to be a fight, guys. Not everybody is going to like the same apps you do. It's a fact of digital life. They can have good reasons for doing so and aren't obligated to stick with your choice. It isn't personal. These are just ways to talk with each other, not tribes to get up in arms about.
So let's shut this down right now, cause this misunderstands and misrepresents my position. I never said that Discord killed IRC, or that it was some bumping place prior to all this. It'd been pretty dead for a long time now, and I've been saying as much since before TCS Discord was a thing. I've also never tried to dictate which one anyone uses. I'm very vocal about my opinion on the matter, but I've not once tried to stop someone from using Discord. So let's not imply that I have.
Which brings me to my main issue with Discord, and it's not even that it's a shit text client. I'd use it anyway if things had been handled more properly. It's that there wasn't any sort of staff discussion on it, not before, not during, not after. Not until now anyway, a few months after the fact. I literally woke up one day to "hey, we're using Discord now, but we're only testing it." Yeah, a user set it up, but if a user is going to do something, then we, as staff, should discuss it and come to a consensus before officially endorsing it. That hasn't happened. Now sure, Discord hasn't to my knowledge been officially made the official TCS chat platform, but it effectively has been. There needs to be leadership, there needs to be someone in charge, the staff manage the site, and if we want user input about something, we should discuss it as a staff first, then present it to the wider site. Not just let whoever has an idea run willy nilly with it and see who jumps on the bandwagon.
Sure, most users have decided to switch to Discord, and that's all fine and dandy. But let's not act like this was just the users, and let's not pretend that you're some neutral party with "no dog in this fight," cause you aren't. You've been pushing Discord since Day 1, or damn close to it. Tess has too. And if that's what you guys prefer, then that's fine. But let's not pretend you're truly neutral and "just doing your job." And let's not pretend it was purely the users who wanted this. And let's not pretend that the handling of all of this has been abysmal. Not everyone's problem with Discord is purely at the client level, or even primarily. I'm sure for some reason it is, but I'll let others speak for themselves. We're not all a bunch of children who are just upset that our favorite toy isn't the most popular anymore.
Furthermore, since I forgot to say it earlier, Discord has infact had a negative impact on IRC activity. Whether anyone actually cares or not, or if they consider that to matter is another point. IRC may have been largely dead before, but the split has made it even more dead.
And all of what I've been saying is stuff that I've been saying since the get go. Normally we discuss things as staff, reach a consensus, and then move from there. This was an out of left field "we're using this now too" with no discussion whatsoever, prior to this.