Tips for setting up a professionally-oriented discord server

January 5, 2024 9:19 AM

I'm involved with my professional community (architecture), mostly in the realm of design technology. One of the requests we had this year was a locally-focused forum that could connect professionals, academics, and students. As it skews young and supports midjourney Discord was suggested. I'm a light user but have never set up a server before. Is this a good idea? Any tips on success?

There are several public servers focused on Architecture but not on tools and not really involving the professional community. I have interest but am nervous about a) creating a forum that connects younger folks with adults (though the goal here is college students), and b) Setting up moderation duties in a situation where AI image generation is possible. Let me know if you have any tips or opinions about this kind of initative, or any server setup tips generally.

posted by q*ben to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Given your requirements I do think Discord makes sense, and will be much cheaper than trying to run a Slack server. Most of the professional groups I belong to as a programmer have transitioned to Discord because of the high costs of trying to run a large open slack server. The largest professional Discord I am in (Unreal Source) has 25k people online so it definitely scales up. That large discord has 80 different channels focused at all aspects of the industry, although it didn't start with nearly that many.

I would try to figure out ahead of time what channels might make sense to help you organize the thoughts. You will probably end up with some channels for professionals, some channels for college students, and some very-specific topic channels where both hang out. I have all of the college/newbie channels muted on Unreal Source. You will definitely want the midjourney channels to be strictly separated from the discussion channels. I would recommend having very specific channels for finding work/internships so that discussion can stay in one place. Good job boards are hard to find these days and Discord can be a good place for that if you set it up with some automated processes.

You will also want to write up a good list of server rules, probably 10-15 rules. That can be shown to new users as they join and used as justification for banning people. For a professional server you want to have pretty literal rules so they can be easily applied by any volunteer moderators. And you are going to need some volunteer moderators. I would recommend finding a small group of people to work out the initial planning as doing this all yourself would be very difficult.

I haven't done this myself, but from what I have seen it definitely can be done well.
posted by JZig at 10:51 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]

I teach teens and they consider Discord to be sketchy, fwiw, and to be avoided. This is impressive considering a lot of them likely do sketchy stuff online on other platforms. So, yes, it has an appeal to many younger people but also is off-putting to some. I also know a lot of 20somethings who are not a fan; I am in my early 40s.

I was part of some local community creative groups online that were not monitored well: I was so disappointed/disgusted by what some men hiding behind anonymous avatars were saying to me as a woman -- publicly without really any consequences to them-- that I deleted my Discord and have no plans to return. And most of the people would identity as left or at least liberal. I found a lot of women weren't participating for those same reasons -- not the most welcoming space. I hope you can get more positive perspectives from active users of all ages, genders, races, locations, etc. because I'm obviously negatively biased based on my personal experience. It's so, so different from Metafilter, where things aren't always warm and fuzzy but moderation is outstanding and community caring is strong.

CLEAR user guidelines are essential and strong moderation is important. However, that's hard to find without paying people for the huge amount of time it takes to follow what can be potentially constant multitudes of posts. Volunteers could be helpful but they need training and guidelines as well as someone double-checking their decisions. Trying to do damage control or kick off members can be a disaster that makes people angry. Also, I would guess that a lot of older professionals who are unfamiliar with the format might find the barrage of posts overwhelming and sorting through them a waste of time.

Is Discord imperfect but the best option for your group? Maybe. Might everything go great? Maybe! Is there something better out there? I don't know. I'd run by idea by more of the students, academics, and professionals who are interested to gauge their interest and hear their concerns.
posted by smorgasbord at 3:36 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]

Discord makes me cry. I am currently prevented from participating in a chat in a community I paid to be in, thanks to a bug in Discord role setup. Not the first time I see this.

So I asked my Women In Tech community, which is home to a bunch of experienced sysadmins and DevOps people, which platform they thought was buggier: Discord or Slack.

Here's the sole response:

"I admin our company’s community Discord and I so so hate it. If Slack had better pricing for community groups I would kill off our Discord in a minute."
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 9:08 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]

I've been considering this very question myself. Discord has some features that I like better than Slack, which is why I've been gravitating toward it. There are a lot of alternatives (none perfect for my purposes), but maybe also look at Revolt.

I get the impression—correct me if I'm wrong—that the sketchiness of Discord is not the platform itself, but the people on it. It is possible to set up an invite-only server simply by giving the "@everyone" role no permissions in your server. Setting up roles correctly seems to be an important aspect of Discord administration, much more so than, say, Slack.
posted by adamrice at 9:20 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]

I use Discord a good bit for some hobby stuff. I like it. Technically I have my own server, too, for when I want to host a smaller group--I invite them in and then kick them out later. Super easy to do. But I'm not engaging with the admin or tech stuff in any fancy way.

The selling point is, as a friend put it, "small social media." On many servers I'm in there's the feeling that you either know people or might know them in real world (or at least on a remote call); people aren't trying to make a reputation just with an online persona. They tend to be calmer places until they get very big.

So seems to me like it should work for your purposes. I don't know if it's the best option (I don't use Slack.) My general advice is to definitely recruit two or three other admins who will help get up to speed on the technical setup (like creating "roles" and adding plug-ins) and write & enforce moderation guidelines. Don't take this on if you can't find anyone else in the group willing to help. There are ways to force everyone who joins to agree to acknowledge guidelines before they get posting or even reading rights, which seems worth it. (The bigger servers I'm on that are still OK have pretty active moderators; one will publicly announce every time they ban someone for e.g. unwanted DMs or shitposting, which gets the point across.)

For your specific concerns, item (a) seems inherent to what you are trying to do and concerns would apply on any technology you use. I'm not sure what the AI image concern is? In both cases spell out expected behavior in the guidelines then enforce it.
posted by mark k at 11:10 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]

I've been thinking about this some more, like what are ways that could help conversations stay friendly and productive. I'm currently dealing with hateful and negging comments by men hiding behind avatars and sparsely populated accounts on Instagram after commenting on a satire account -- a comment that the creators even liked -- so it's a painful reminder of how real the gender-based harassment can be on social media. I know men deal with lots of crap online, too, but let me tell you, it's hard to imagine the intensity of toxic comments and harassment women-identified people go through in a lot of online spaces if you haven't dealt with it yourself. I agree that, yes, it's the people on Discord that give it the sketchy reputation but, arguably, the people are the ones who are the life of any platform so I see it as one and the same.

I think a way to make it safer would also be to require people to use their real name -- could just be a first name or a company name -- and include a link to some form of social media, like a LinkedIn page, Instagram, college portfolio, professional website, etc. That way it's not at all anonymous -- you could also make a thread where people in the group can ask anonymous questions -- because the accountability piece is the biggie that's so often missing from social media. (Also why some dating websites are presented as being nearly 50/50 but are actually 80% male and 20% female/non-binary -- the rest are scammers and bots!) The whole point is to help people connect so I'd think most would be happy to share their real information. Also, older professionals who are interested in mentoring or advising can list the ways they prefer to be contacted off the platform, too, like by email or text.

I hope this works out! I'm glad you're really considering the options and you've gotten a lot of feedback here too.
posted by smorgasbord at 11:28 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]

I've set up and run a number of discords, including one with a couple thousand members that swells up a bit larger during an annual online convention.

Here's what I can think of off the top of my head for you to consider as you're setting things up:

- What roles do you want, and how will you assign them to people? The largest server I'm part of has a lot of opt-in roles which are really handy, including industry role, pronouns, and contact preferences ("Open DMs" "Ask to DM" "Do not DM" "Open to giving advice" etc). We also lock down some channels based on roles we assign - during the convention we have a "green room", for instance, which is just for convention presenters to freak out in semi-private with the staff and generally ask questions and prepare themselves. "Presenter" is a role we assign manually, though, not self-assigned.

- Moderation. Discord has some ok-ish (better now, but still in need of improvement) auto-mod tools, but having real humans and real written policies for them to follow is super important. I strongly recommend having a private space on the server for mods to discuss things, and making it clear to users that it is both a moderated and professional space.

- Definitely have a "moderator" role and specify that it's listed separately from other roles. The easier you make it for folks to get in touch with a mod, and the more visible your mods are, the less likely you'll need to lean on them, in my experience.

- On the topic of moderation, you can set some cultural norms and rules up front with discord and that's really handy. Letting people know up front what sorts of things won't be tolerated sets the tone. Also, since you're going to be welcoming students and young folks are well as people established in the industry, it's good to let folks know that it is an ok space to learn in. People make mistakes, a gentle correction is not the same thing as the ban hammer coming down. This is a thing I've got some active practice in, as the big sever I set up and maintain is specifically for connecting beginners and established professionals in a field. Feel free to reach out if you'd like an invite to that server or just want to chat.

- Think about what kind of activities you may want to do in the server. Do you want to run a bookclub? Have a weekly "meet a pro" kind of chat? Do regular virtual work sessions? There are a lot of things that could help bring your community together, and thinking about it before and during set up will help a lot and save you some reorganizing pain down the road.

- Utilize categories. Even if you're not going to have a ton of channels, putting things in categories ("Professional Chat" "Off-topic and banter" etc) will help people ignore things that aren't relevant to them, and help your mods keep tabs on things easier. Also, definitely have some off-topic and banter stuff, because people are gonna just shoot the shit and share pet photos and memes and such, and having a dedicated channel for cute animal pictures or recipe sharing or whatever makes it more likely that folks will talk and not just lurk. Folks will still post off-topic (and that's fine honestly), but having the right space exist will make it easier to keep conversations flowing.

- Discord has threads now, and they're actually pretty great. If a conversation starts to drift a bit, or if there are several things happening simultaneously in a channel, suggest that folks start a thread so that they don't talk on top of each other and possibly get confused. This is ESPECIALLY useful for contentious topics or things that need high moderation attention.

- If you're expecting to have a kind of high traffic server, you'll want to have an introductions channel, and probably make it clear that the "lobby" (which is the default place where discord sends a little hello message to new server members) isn't a great place to chat, because conversation can get buried in the automatic messages in that channel.

I think that's everything. I know it sounds like a lot, but I honestly think discord is great, especially for this kind of community building. Good luck!
posted by lriG rorriM at 4:26 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone, I think we’re going to make a try of it. I’m getting some local leaders on emerging professionals and inclusion/equity involved to help figure out an organizational and moderation strategy. Cautiously optimistic!
posted by q*ben at 5:19 PM on January 8