Organizational changes to Discord server, Part 2

Announcements
1

Hi,

today we are moving forward with Stage 2 of Discord reorganization project.

We have reviewed all the feedback you have provided so far, and we appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us. Thank you!

I would also like to expand on the motivation behind each stage in more detail since I did a bad job explaining it during Stage 1.

Stages 3 and 4 still have no ETA, and proposals are subject to change.

We are still actively looking for feedback on Stage 3 and Stage 4. Post it in the Discord thread or reply to this topic.

General feedback or feedback on previous stages is always welcome in Feedback.

Stage 2

With these changes, we want to re-focus on real-time community support for Stash.

At the time these object-specific channels were created, the idea behind them was to encourage more structured conversations where the most qualified people in that area could step in and share their expertise. Time has shown that this level of organization is just not practical on Discord.

Discord is not meant to be replaced by the community forum. Instead, the community forum should be seen as an additional resource. It indexes all the previous answers and makes them easily linkable to quickly reference when the same questions come up again. Or if you haven’t gotten a response in some time, posting it on the community forum increases the chance it will be seen by someone who knows the answer eventually.

  • #help, #docker-help and #bugs channels moved to Stash category.
  • #feedback moved to the top of the channel list below #announcements.
  • Empty Support category removed.
  • #scenes archived.
  • #images archived.
  • #groups archived.
  • #galleries archived.
  • #performers archived.
  • #studios archived.
  • #tags archived.
  • #admin-discussion renamed to #stash-box-admin-chat.

Stage 3

Note
All proposed changes are not final and are subject to change based on your feedback.

Downsizing of the StashDB presence on the Discord server. StashDB admins always had a hard time communicating with only StashDB users due to the shared server. Simply not everyone is interested in StashDB who uses Stash, and pinging the whole server to announce some StashDB-specific news always felt bad.

The change was needed for a long time, and while the community forum wasn’t the original idea for solving this issue, it does achieve it nicely.

For most people, this would have two major changes:

  • Invites would no longer be tied to Discord (lately, invites were also available through the guidelines site, but ironically most people only learn about the site from Discord). The community forum is public and requires no registration to create a read-only StashDB account.
  • For editors, the requirement to be available for comment would switch from Discord to the Discourse forum, requiring an account.

The current idea is to keep the #stashdb-general as it was for quick questions, real-time discussions or mentions. StashDB General chat on the community forum is a alternative option for those that are not comfortable with Discord.

For #stashdb-guidelines, Discourse topics present a more suitable format. We have the ability to embed polls, utilize built-in templates, and ping editors as needed. With Discourse now being the required platform for accounts, all active editors will transition here.

Regarding the #ministry-of-truth, the rationale behind this change is twofold: First, extended discussions about guideline changes or interpretations are genuinely more appropriate as forum threads for the reasons previously outlined. Second, there has been a general lack of clarity regarding which types of conversations belong in the ministry versus general channels. This practice did little to assist in organizing discussions by topic; it merely resulted in two channels that required monitoring instead of one. Although we have previously explored the idea of combining these channels, it often felt like we were deferring the decision simply because we liked the name. The distinction between threads on Discourse and chat on Discord now offers a clearer separation than the ministry versus general ever did.

  • #stashdb-guidelines archived.
  • #ministry-of-truth archived.
  • #stashdb-invites archived.

Stage 4

Note
All proposed changes are not final and are subject to change based on your feedback.

Archival of community contributions category. These channels are primarily used for support or showcase of new projects. But as a result of Discord’s real-time conversation style, most of the important posts can be easily lost. With the archival of these channels, those posts would naturally move to broader support or developer-focused channels. They would be less structured without dedicated channels, but at the same time, there are already multiple conversations happening in these channels at the same time.

We are hearing your feedback about wanting to keep at least some of these channels. We are actively talking about different options. Below is just a suggested proposal, not the final one.

  • #scrapers archived.
  • #plugins archived.
  • #theming archived.
  • #ai-projects-feed-the-machine renamed to #ai-chat and moved to Misc. category.
  • #ai-recog-tagging archived.
  • #funscripts-and-handy archived.
  • #community-projects archived.
2

I think before we continue with Stages 3+, we need to commit to the discourse migration and set up proper procedures

and proper tag-edit role requests

3 Likes
3

That is the plan.
There are several ongoing StashDB projects (including procedure for guideline proposals, BOT role, EDIT_TAGS role and more) that need to be completed before Stage 3 can be finalized hence no timeline or ETA.

2 Likes
4

please use Matrix, not closed Source Discord. I can’t get anonymously a Discord account

thanks

1 Like
5

We used to have a Matrix space, but sadly we had to close it. Matrix is just not scalable at the moment. Too many unresolved issues and unaddressed pain points. Below is our closing post explaning why:

We regret to inform you that the stashapp Matrix space will be closing soon, which will also result in the disconnection of the two-way Discord<->Matrix bridge.

While decentralization and federation are powerful concepts that enhance user control and ownership over data, allowing individuals to select their service providers and maintain their privacy, these concepts also present significant challenges. Currently, we have encountered numerous issues related to moderation, bridge disconnections, and the proper federation of messages. Some of these challenges stem from our size, while others are linked to the functionality of the bridging technology. As a result, managing the space has become increasingly time-consuming.

Despite our best efforts to make the platform work, after extensive discussions with the team, we have made the difficult decision to close the Matrix space.

We recognize that not everyone is comfortable using privacy-invasive services like Discord. Therefore, we encourage you to join our community forum as an alternative platform for discussion and engagement.

https://discourse.stashapp.cc

Thank you for your understanding and support.

2 Likes
6

These are my thoughts on stage 4:

  • ⁠#scrapers is useful for real-time communication around scraper development and support. It should probably remain or be split into a channel for dev and one for support.,
  • similar thoughts on #⁠plugins,
  • I don’t understand why we need two ai channels. If there’s a need for an ai-specific channel then perhaps we could just combine the two into a general ai channel. Haven’t received any feedback about it though. edit: just realised this is actually covered in the current plan,
  • ⁠#funscripts-and-handy is very low traffic. I’m not against its existence, but there’s not a clear purpose for the channel.,
  • ⁠#community-projects has a place imo. We should encourage announcements etc for community projects to be in the forums, but having a place to discuss and support them in a real-time environment is a good idea.

I don’t have any strong opinions regarding stage 3 - I’ll defer that to those actively involved with stashdb administration and participation.

I have a further suggestion that’s not covered here. I’d like to repurpose #off-topic into a general #chat channel and bump it up the list in the same area as #feedback is now. Having it up there and renamed might drive more community engagement, and hopefully contribute to fostering a sense of community.

2 Likes
7

Firstly:
To all Devs, Admins, Mods and Contributors, you have my utmost gratitude for the constant hard work, dedication to keeping this project not just running, but evolving, and for your tireless efforts of filtering through the noise to take note of things like bugs and feature requests, and then actually listening and working on them!

I agree the Discord has become a bit disjointed & I want to support as much as I can. Both through feedback and through embracing the whatever the new model is (i.e. not joining in with the whinging and complaining about it :rofl:).
Some of my specific thoughts are below:

  • #scenes, #performers, #studios & #tags should be ‘recreated’ under StashDB, and be specifically around conversations regarding items on StashDB. Conversations like clarification on merging performers etc. (example from a post for FansDB):
    image
    image1459×160 17.6 KB
  • Then, potentially retain the #stashdb-guidelines as a static page with current overarching guidelines and links to Discourse and https://guidelines.stashdb.org/

I understand the separation of Stashapp and StashDB, but think there is still need for a StashDB Discord (and two completely separate channels is overkill)

  • I also agree with @WithoutPants regarding #scrapers, #plugins & #community-projects.
    • Live scrapers, plugins & projects should have their own discourse page (and likely GitHub) for major bugs, issues and development updates.
    • Discord could then be about specific real-time issues (#support) and community #development of existing and new ones.
  • Suggest keeping theming but renaming it to UI, potentially with subtopics for each theme, & one for general UI.
    • This may be duplicated with the Discourse topics, so could either be in addition to that for more feedback/commentary, or for specific topics.
    • Mainly with the changes from v0.29, keeping the conversation alive could help.

Some of these may create more work, and/or are not specifically related to Stashapp itself, but I believe keeping the forum in place for these associated topics and projects would ultimately benefit Community, and the project overall. And, if these ideas don’t work, they can always be removed later, rather than the conversations potentially never happening.

2 Likes
8

Pinging @AdultSun for thoughts on this one. I’d probably include the stash-db- prefix in them. The question is whether there’s enough traffic across the different types to warrant dedicated channels for them, or if such queries should be routed through #stashdb-general or a stashdb-editors channel perhaps.

1 Like
9

Like WP brought up, I don’t think we get enough StashDB-specific traffic on Discord to support that many channels. I’m already in favor of combining the general and ministry channels as it is, so I don’t think splitting them again would accomplish much.

From my perspective, I can’t see a situation those channels would better serve than the current plan. If you want a quick answer to a direct question, I expect a single stashdb-general channel would get more eyes on it and increase your odds for a timely answer. Splitting everyone’s attention across multiple topics would likely just create more friction and slow down the process. But if it’s organization you’re after, I think we can handle that better on Discourse. We’ve already discussed how the forum structure makes saving, organizing, and retrieving information much easier, and that would be the case here as well, whether that’s by using tags or sub-categories to label everything.

I’m also not entirely sure how useful this would be. If we want to point current and potential editors to an overview of the guidelines that contains helpful links, then is a static channel in Discord the best way to do that? It takes time and effort to both write that overview and keep it up to date (the guidelines themselves are not static after all). Better to spend that effort somewhere that is more likely to be seen by its intended audience.

Right now, the guidelines site already has an onboarding guide for potential editors. It provides that overview of the guidelines along with everything we require from new editors. Because that’s really the intended audience: current and potential editors. I don’t think your average StashDB user and/or Discord member needs to know any of that stuff otherwise. So while pinned comments/posts to provide a link to that guide would be useful, a dedicated channel just for that seems like overkill to me.

2 Likes