Why is tower chat still IRC?

[Xander Silverstar]

Oh yea, I completely agree with this. I have no interest in vocally speaking with people in this setting.

 

[Alyccea Nymaessene]

Hear hear! (oh, that's ironic ) But yes, I agree. Aside from the fact that I just don't like the idea, there's also the fact that a lot of people probably wouldn't understand my Aussie accent, and I might not understand their accents either. As it is, there are already one or two people here whose autocorrect issues make their posts barely intelligible to me, but it seems to me that voice chat would be a whole new kettle of fish.

 

[Alora Sionn]

I don't like voice chat

 

[Jaryd Kosari]

Voice chat is an absolutely optional feature. It's available to everyone, but you have to choose to join it.

 

[Stephen Lightheart]

If you choose not to use it, would you not start missing big chunks of conversation?

 

[Aduiavas Ida]

Not to mention that voice chat is a real pain to moderate

 

[Kelgan al'Moranwin]

Not to mention that voice chat is a real pain to moderate

And that's why it's not happening. We are considering alternatives to IRC, but for this and other reasons, Discord has been ruled out.

 

[Aduiavas Ida]

Is there no way to use Discord and disable the voice chat feature? I like the general layout of Discord

 

[Ilyana Mandorallen]

Yes, just don't join a voice channel. You can mute your microphone and headset at the bottom.

Just made a new test server - admin can just delete the voice channels and then there is no voice chat.

If people want to use the voice chat, if they are added as friends, they can start a private group chat where calls can be made.


Source: Discord Admin for my WoW guild

 

[Ivien Tarkand]

You can disable voice chat on Discord by setting permissions that no one can connect to channel. There may have to be one, I think, since it default, but you can set that only specific rank can connect or simply no one but server owner. Like Ilyana said, if people want to voice chat, they can add each other as friends and then privately chat.

Discord has a lot of flexibility with permissions, can be super private or completely public. You can mute notifications completely or only enable them when someone mentions your name or to get notifications for specific channel.

As someone who uses telegram and discord, I believe discord is nicer for this kind of communication. Layout is easier to track and read, especially for multiple channels with many people.

I know fully how to set up anything on Discord, except bots, so I can probably answer any question someone may have. :P I made server for my GW2 guild and it has private, semi private and public text and voice channels with different ranks and permissions.

 

[Jaryd Kosari]

I am really curious what reasons there are other than voice chat to not use Discord. It is easily the most versatile, free, ad-free, pretty to look at, truly accessible client that exists. It's very perplexing and disappointing to see it set aside so quickly.

 

[Ilyana Mandorallen]

^ Especially when it is so easy to remove the voice chat options.

And I also know how to install some bots on discord, so that shouldn't be an issue either.

 

[Erin al'Denael]

^

What they said.

If it's a matter of moderating voice...why would you have to? Is it impossible to just explicitly state moderation would be for text only?

 

[Kelgan al'Moranwin]

I am really curious what reasons there are other than voice chat to not use Discord. It is easily the most versatile, free, ad-free, pretty to look at, truly accessible client that exists. It's very perplexing and disappointing to see it set aside so quickly.

The problems that we have aren't just the voice chat, though we recognize that that's relatively easy to disable. We're concerned by the persistence of chat logs - a user shouldn't be able to log in and see the whole history of #wheel, for instance. We're also concerned by certain items in their terms of service and privacy policy. First, anything uploaded to Discord, they get a free and clear perpetual license to, and that includes our message history and Tower graphics. We're not thrilled about that. Second, the message history is notably absent from the list of things they don't allow their partners/affiliates access to. We're not pleased about that either. We take the privacy of the membership seriously, and we're not interested in having our members' Tower lives datamined by third parties.

 

[Ivien Tarkand]

On Discord you can set up so people can't see history or anything written before they joined the channel. From what I remember from testing it, anything you were not present to read, you won't be able to read, nor you can read previous things you participated in. Once you go offline all talked about in that channel is erased for you, same way it is on IRC for example.

So preventing members from just reading all discussed before is possible. As of Discord collecting things, I guess that is something to be a concern for those who care. I assume there are people who do, so I can understand it for their sake. I personally don't, google and facebook already have enough data about me. xD

 

[Jaryd Kosari]

Yeah, you can turn off chat history if you really want to, though I've found that having it on actually encourages more chat and keeps the flow of conversation going, since people who join can jump right in. It also VASTLY lessens nasty blow ups and gossip. Like...they don't exist on my most frequented network, and we regularly have 10-20 active people on there at once.

I think this might be a case where that kind of change would actually be a really good thing.

 

[Stephen Lightheart]

I've not witnessed any "nasty blow ups and gossip" in #wheel in the past two or so years. Though I suppose the forums have plenty of that, and those messages don't just disappear.

 

[Laralelle Susandrea]

I second that. I don't think I've ever seen nasty gossip or blow ups, at least none that weren't in a private message.

 

[Jaryd Kosari]

My experience comes from watching a community go from a lot of nasty gossip to zero nasty gossip and a large, friendly, tight-knit group as a direct result of switching from IRC to Discord, and the two things that made the biggest difference were chat history and the super accessible app.


It's an affirmation of very positive results in a different community.



Edit: Think i'm done editing now. lol

 

[Alyccea Nymaessene]

For what it's worth, I've seen plenty of nasty blow-ups and gossip in #wheel. Not so much in the last couple of years (though #wheel has been much quieter), but before then... certainly. And bullying that the mods weren't able to do anything about because it wasn't captured in chat logs.

I'm not necessarily saying that we should switch to a system where chat is perpetually logged, but I do believe Ninya's example has merit.