FAQ: Why Don't You Just Make A Discord?

[undeadorion]

This is a question that people asked when I told them I wanted an actual forum. It's even a question I asked myself. It's easier to get people to join and participate in a discord server, after all. There's existing services for discoverability. More people are familiar with the format in general. It's really the go-to option anytime anyone wants to build a community.

That's not the sort of community I'm trying to build. Discord is very present and in-the-moment, and it can get to be very fast paced. But that extremely time based type of interaction can lead to some strange mentalities around online communication. What sparked me to ultimately choose a forum format was an interaction a friend had that I was witness to. There had been a somewhat heated discussion in chat that had gone silent for about an hour, but no one had said anything in that time so it was the most recent messages. My friend logged in, saw the most recent messages, and just said something along the lines of "Oof, that was heavy." She was then scolded by a mod for referring to an old conversation that had ended.

But what does that have to do with forums? Unlike Discord, time is less important on a forum. With everything broken down into threads, the same conversation can carry on for days or weeks. I've seen threads go on for years. The only time that time really matters is if a thread's been dormant for several months, and even then it's not necessarily taboo to respond to it.

That's another thing you see on social media quite a bit. If something's older than a day or two, you're supposed to ignore it. I've seen claims that it's weird to look back at people's older posts on IG or Twitter. But as an artist, that's what I WANT people to do. I want them to go back and look at my old works. I want them to leave comments and likes on months old posts.

Personally, I find that a slower paced, asynchronous format with zero algorithms involved is far more suited to the comic making crowd. And those who feel the same are who this community is made for. This is for all those creators who have a story to tell but can't meet the arbitrary deadlines of an algorithm where we're pitted against everyone and anyone regardless of what we're putting out on the internet. A place to store and share resources that anyone can access. A place that can be archived in the event the forum eventually goes away.

Discord has its place, but not for the sort of community I want to build.