Is this still an alternative to Discord?

Jonnie PekelnyContributor - July 3, 2023

Hi, folks. I’m back to prepping after a pretty long fallow period. Miss my ThePrepared peeps, but I’m having a pretty hard time with the switch to Discord for discussions. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but forums or email lists or even Facebook groups (not my first choice) work so much better for me. I can come back after a day or a week and the info hasn’t scrolled away. I can keep my discussions organized instead of all of them being in one long string. And I can come back to the useful information exchanged months or years later.

None of this seems to be an option with the TP Discord, so I’ve found myself just not going to the Discord chat very often and therefore not knowing how to plug into the community. (I do volunteer for a very busy organization that uses Slack a lot. But our Slack discussions are broken out into multiple channels and all the info in each channel stays indefinitely available. The TP Discord doesn’t seem organized like that.)

I’m glad to see that some people are still posting in this forum. So is this still an option, or are we just the remnant that’s failed to adapt to the Discord future?

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“I’m glad to see that some people are still posting in this forum. So is this still an option, or are we just the remnant that’s failed to adapt to the Discord future?”

Hi Jonnie – welcome back again! 🙂

 I’m active in both and think there’s no problem choosing the one you like better. Some of ThePrepared’s best material are very old forum posts and guides. I occasionally like to find one of those and resurrect it with one more comment.

 

Lol Jonnie 

I understand where you’re coming from – I really cba with discord! I have enough IT systems to get my head around I think my poor GenX brain has gone on strike – just another drain on my already limited time.

Every now and then I’ll pop on here to see if there’s anything new but that’s it really and not as often as I used to – the forum was a great space to learn from others experiences 

 

Oh fooey.  I didn’t even know what Discord was until a minute ago.  I wondered what happened to the forum and miss it so much.  Thought everybody had gone back to work after Covid lockdowns were lifted.

No more social media platforms for me.  It’s been great folks.  See ya in the funny pages.

 

I’m guess that I’m one of the remnants.

At first, I had thought it was my imagination that the number of posts had fallen off and then realized it was because of Discord.  There use to be a good steady flow of information but that has severely tapered off.  At least there is still good info in the old posts.  As for Discord, I can’t stand having my picture taken and I don’t FaceTime the kids either so there is no way I’ll join up.  I actually have tape covering the camera on my computer because it bugs me.  Yep, I know, I’m a dinosaur.

I have always had extra food and supplies on hand because that’s how I was raised.  When your family is mostly military and farmers, it’s a habit. Couple years ago I got a nagging feeling that something is going to happen and realized there was holes in my knowledge base and went looking for info and after working my way through the kooks, crazies and loonies, I found this web site.  Was very impressed with how everyone focused on prepping and not on politics or conspiracies.  Enjoyed the flow of conversations and everyone’s input but now it seems that Discord has almost killed the forum.

Oh great, now l’m going to have Video killed the Radio Star running through my head.

 

“As for Discord, I can’t stand having my picture taken and I don’t FaceTime the kids either so there is no way I’ll join up.  I actually have tape covering the camera on my computer because it bugs me.”

I also cover my camera with some tape. And Kopite uses a mic blocker so no one can hear him. You’re among your kind here. 😉

Our Discord does have voice events every week or two. I attend those with my camera off. Outside of those events we mostly use Discord as a text chat. You may or may not like it, but I think it’s worth checking out.

https://discord.gg/PThjsaat?event=1114378241273241690

 

I am still active on this forum. If the four other people in this thread regularly post on the forum again then it will be an active forum again. That’s literally all it takes.

The big change wasn’t Discord – it was Carlotta. She was so active finding interesting things to post about that it made everyone else also want to spend more time talking here. I’ve tried to fill the same role, but I just can’t devote the amount of time to it that she did.

The forum is still here. And I’ll at least leave a few interesting bits to read in the news thread each week. If a few other people do the same, this forum will again be what it was.

 

So, what happened to Carlotta?

I’m not opposed to Discord on principle. I just can’t figure out how to use it effectively.  It seems good for saying hello, or asking a casual question to which you expect a quick answer — and can just watch for it as it comes in. Anything beyond that seems to lack organization and continuity. If there’s something I’m missing there, I’m all ears!

(P.S. I think I could wrap my head around it more if there were more topics and the information was kept indefinitely. In other words, if it operated more like a forum. This is the way the nonprofit I volunteer for does it with Slack.)

 

“So, what happened to Carlotta?”

Carlotta was full-time staff. A big part of her job was to produce news roundups that gave the rest of us something to talk about. ThePrepared cut back on staff due to a fundraising issue. We still kinda have those roundups in the weekly news threads, but it’s a much smaller number of news items contributed by community members. Here’s the last official roundup from December.

https://theprepared.com/blog/news-roundup-for-fri-dec-09-2022/

“I think I could wrap my head around [Discord] more if there were more topics and the information was kept indefinitely.”

There are currently 7 channels. Are you thinking of making that around 20-30? Or making new channels every day with each conversation? If 20-30 let’s talk about a list and I’ll try to get that approved. If it’s channels per conversation that just means using the threads feature more often.

I think that messages are kept indefinitely. I still see some of my favorite messages from Sept 2022 when we first started using Discord.

 

I’m really inexperienced with Discord. My main comparison point is about six months of participation in the nonprofit where I volunteer, which uses Slack extensively. There was definitely a learning curve for me with Slack, and I also still fairly often miss messages. Threads are somewhat hard to follow if I don’t know where to look.

But, we have maybe 25 channels. Discussions are pretty strictly broken up into those channels — if you post in the wrong channel someone will note it. Discussions also tend to be organized by thread within the channel. That is, someone will start a topic and the discussion will follow in the replies to that initial post, although that’s not always true. And the entire history (from March 2022 when the organization formed) is searchable and navigatable. Although I have to say that I feel like the search doesn’t always show all the hits and I have to scroll back and back to find what I need or else get creative in my search conditions. Oh, and I really like that I can save messages in my private area for future reference. 

Contrast to my experience with TP Discord — which is my only experience with Discord.  There are seven channels, but most of them are quite niche.  I can’t imagine referencing memes and quotes very much, or national preparedness month. Mostly I look in general. If I used it more I’d probably also look in craft and care. Also possibly news, although that’s very nonspecific and I don’t see on first blush how it differs from general discussion. So, really I’m thinking it currently has two or three main channels.

Within the channels discussion doesn’t seem to be organized in any particular way. I don’t see topics being organized into threads. People just seem to post. Sometimes they respond to someone else’s post and sometimes they post something new, but I can’t particularly see why they choose one over the other, unless they’re directly addressing the OP. This gives me a very fragmented feel and information about a single topic is hard to find.

You said that you thought that Discord messages were searchable infinitely far back, but I remember having a hard time finding old messages on the TP Discord and asking about that. I believe I was told that old messages are archived pretty quickly. I don’t know how quickly or what it means when a message is archived, but I assume it’s not available in the same way once it is. 

In the nonprofit I volunteer for we also have an extensive file system where we keep more permanent documents. The TP discord doesn’t have this as far as I know? So that would make it more important to keep discussions well organized and make sure they were easily findable later, if we’re actually trying to create a community knowledge base and build on it. Otherwise, honestly, I don’t know why I would participate in just chatting, unless I just wanted to say hi or had some quick question I thought somebody could just answer quickly before the discussion scrolled away.

That’s how it seems to me. But, as I said I’m a very inexperienced user and may be missing something,

 

“So, really I’m thinking it currently has two or three main channels.”

That’s about right. I think we need some more but want to be careful that all the channels get enough use and that it isn’t hard to decide where something goes.

“I don’t see topics being organized into threads.”

That’s mostly true. Like you said earlier it takes some time to learn how to use these features properly. I start threads when I start a topic that I think will go longer than a few messages. There’s no clear rule about this.

“In the nonprofit I volunteer for we also have an extensive file system where we keep more permanent documents. The TP discord doesn’t have this as far as I know?”

I think the forum is that more permanent place. We had a Discord discussion about wildfire smoke and copied the most interesting parts to the forum for greater reach and permanence. I posted a 30% off deal for my favorite respirator brand in Discord’s deals channel but didn’t think that was worth copying to the forum because discount codes don’t last forever.

“had some quick question I thought somebody could just answer quickly before the discussion scrolled away.”

I think it is actually not common for questions to get ignored like that. 😉

If someone is more comfortable on the forum or on Discord, it’s okay to participate in just one of them. Your contributions are appreciated either way. 

 

Jonnie, I agree with you about Discord. And I loved the forum and the site when it was being added to or updated, but honestly, I kind of (maybe wrongly?) feel it has been largely abandoned… I used to check in here all the time. Wasn’t there at one point rumors about a new site being put up?  By the way, it is great to see you here again, Jonnie! And thank goodness for Eric!

 

“Wasn’t there at one point rumors about a new site being put up?”

Yes, the new forum site was almost ready. I’m curious about that as well. I hope they’ll still be able to complete that upgrade.

There’s also been some work on a new courses site that will be separate from the forum site.

 

What (where) is the new site?

 

there is a discord? that explains things

 

I agree that Discord has nearly killed the forum and site traffic overall. I really enjoyed Carlotta and others Blog activity, but if you want to maintain site traffic, you have to continue to breath life into the user forum, blog and other site updates. Nearly all of that has stopped, which is really sad to see. I know I have done nothing to help since this is my first post to the forum, but I have been an active reader for a long time.