Hey folks! Given recent issues with the Radworks Discord, I wanted to start a conversation here to discuss how we want to move forward.
Since the split of product community servers earlier this year - Radicle moving to Zulip and Drips to their own Discord server - the Radworks Discord server has primarily served as a gathering space for token troll FUD - rather than a forum for fruitful community discussions.
This Discord was originally created with a different purpose in the earlier stage of the project. It served as a true community discussion forum where product development, community updates and governance announcements were shared and discussed. Now that most development conversations have moved to their irrespective servers, and serious community discussions have moved to the forum, the main purpose it serves is to share governance & community announcements. It even seems that most Grants discussions happen on the forum now, although I would love to get @bordumbās input on this.
I am curious to hear what others thinks, but I currently see two possible outcomes:
We make some changes to try to reduce token trolls (better onboarding requirements, moderation, etc.) and let it exist primarily as a notification/announcement & support ticket platform
We sunset this Discord server and refit the Discourse and implement other tools (TG group for governance & community announcements?) to continue to provide both a space for meaningful community discussion, share necessary announcements & updates and provide support
The questions I currently have that I would also like to hear from others on:
What purpose does the Radworks Discord currently serve vs what purpose should it serve/does the community need it to serve?
If we were to get rid of the Radworks Discord, what are the āgood partsā of the Discord that we would need to find alternative solutions for? (e.g. community & governance announcements, events announcements, core team channel, etc.)
I want to start the discussion in this thread, but maybe we also organize a call to discuss live mid-/late January? The more input & feedback we get from folks here, the better the solution will be!
so I donāt think we should entirely get rid of the discord. I think that would seem weird especially since thereās so many links to it all around the Internet. and also i still think itās a good place to chat about things. But I think we can have the Discord be read-only for non contributors. bit weird, but would fix the problem
Thanks for the thoughtful note, Shelby. From my perspective, I think thereās definitely value in having a place where we have open dialogue between contributors from across the Radworks ecosystem. This is important for building & maintaining culture across our team, which is helpful for marketing as well because it gives us a place to see our values in action and thus inspire content & campaigns we can put in place elsewhere!
I think Discord serves this purpose reasonably well, as a tool. I think the main issue is that we donāt have enough conversations thereā¦ in other words, contributors donāt know which types of conversations are appropriate to have there or donāt prioritize doing it. Perhaps we can brainstorm how we might put some sort of regular program in place that takes place in our Discord in order to make it a more lively place (and one that could potentially get outsiders interested in becoming Radworks contributors when we have openings).
Tactically, I think the idea of making a few relevant channels read-only in order to decrease the costs of moderation somewhat (while staying true to our build-in-public value) is a good one as well.
Hope thatās helpful - Iād be happy to participate in a follow up session as well once weāre ready!
Hey everyone! I wanted to share an update on some changes we have made to the Radworks Discord in an effort to make it a more pleasant and productive place to hang out! This is an initial batch of changes we are trying out. Please note that none of them are final and we will monitor the effect over the coming days and weeks.
Change Log:
Made the general channel read-only for everyone except for Radworks core contributors. Anyone is still allowed to react to messages with emojis
Made the events channel read only for everyone except for Radworks core contributors. Anyone is still allowed to react to messages with emojis
Renamed the off-topic channel to #random
Updated the random channel description & settings - anyone is still allowed in this channel
Moved the announcements and governance-updates channels under the Communityš section to clean up Start Hereš± section
Updated the channel-directory to reflect these changes
The intention behind these changes are as follows:
Encourage discussions in the general channel to be more focused on Radworks-related topics and provide a space for contributors of the various Orgs to share and discuss their work and ideas!
Move any potential negative or spammy discussions to the #random channel. This channel will still be moderated in accordance with the server guidelines (see welcome-read-me).
As many use this server to receive DAO-wide updates and announcements, moving the announcements and governance-updates channels to the top of the Community section will hopefully make these more visible for folks while also cleaning up the Start Hereš± section.
We have cataloged a long list of other potential changes or experiments to try over the coming weeks as well. We will be sure to announce any major additional changes here as they are made. If you have any feedback on these changers or additional ideas, please feel free to share!
Adding an additional change that was just made today:
Archived #governance-updates announcements channel to merge all announcements into the main # announcements channel. This way all Radworks announcements will be in one place. The hope is also to make governance feel more like a natural part of the project rather than a separate thing.
Note: Folks can still follow the @notifications-proposals tag to received notifications on governance-specific announcements. See the #start-here channel for details.
This is an initial batch of changes we are trying out. Please note that none of them are final and we will monitor the effect over the coming days and weeks.