Open thread on the future of this community in the wake of the G+ shutdown

38 thoughts on “Open thread on the future of this community in the wake of the G+ shutdown”

1. Let’s do a discord!

2. Or a slack. Slack is just better than discord. But not as popular among gamers.

3. Jon Lemich I agree that Slack is better, but unless it’s a paid community, the longer term storage and unlimited file space is a little better with Discord 🙂

4. I think Discord’s mobile app handles switching between Discord communities better than slack does, but maybe it’s just more intuitive to me somehow?

5. Hamish Cameron I definitely agree with that as well. The only thing that would be awesome that’s in Slack but not Discord is threaded chat.

6. What about this ?

   mewe.com – MeWe: The best chat & group app with privacy you trust.

7. I’m not familiar with discord but I’ve recently joined reddit. Either way I’d but up for whatever. Gotta keep this community going!

8. With a community of perhaps three to four dozen on a somewhat-active Slack workspace, I cannot count the number of times I have seen that message informing me about how old messages aren’t visible because we’re not using a paid plan. While up to 10k messages seems like a lot, that includes the direct messages between users as well as a dozen of so messages of “Welcome!” when new people join. In our main channels, we have messages going back to July 10th, June 12th, and June 21st. We’ve had Slack running for two years.

9. Thomas Deeny yeah, that’s a major negative about Slack. What limits does Discord have in this regard?

10. It may be worth seeing what the gaming world as a whole is going to do. There are LOTS of conversations about it right now. Google+ shutting down is a long ways off at this point (unless that changes for some reason). We may even see changes to existing products to make them more Google+ like.

11. That’s a great point. 10 month’s is a long time in tech!

12. What about Google Groups? Discord and Slack are great for real-time discussions, but I don’t think that’s the paradigm here which is more of an asynchronous forum.

13. There’s also Mastodon (there’s a couple tabletop oriented instances already out there), but it’s not super great for group-oriented stuff at the moment.

14. Does Discord still require invites? Can it handle threads and discussions that are more than a week old? Can it be searched easily?

    I’ve only joined a few Discord servers so maybe there are some features or settings I’m not hip to and none of the things I’ve mentioned are actually issues anymore?

15. I have been seeing a lot of mention of MeWe in other conversations but I have never used it myself.

16. Reddit seems like a viable option. Threads seem important and we definitely don’t want to lose discussion and content.

    I’m on Discord as well. Not familiar with whether threaded conversations are a thing. A community on discord seems less visible than a subreddit

17. I’ll throw in another voice of support for MeWe, at the very least as an immediate replacement, but I don’t (personally) like it as a long-term solution. I also don’t have a suggestion for a long-term solution. I don’t think either the Mastodon/Twitter model or the Slack/Discord model is going to be good for this kind of forum.

18. Why not RPGGeek? Ok, the interface takes some getting use to, but it also has built-in features for Play-by-Forum and offers exposure to a much larger community of RPGers. I have found that community to be open and welcoming.

19. MeWe seems to be the choice for a lot of people. It works in a similar way to G+ and the stream of refugees is growing.

20. Why not making a normal forum… Proboards if u want to make it free could be a solution.

    I enjoy way more how forums are organized, information is more easily accessible.

21. I’m on a couple of forums with Proboards and the free option works pretty well.

22. Reddit has several flaws, consider that it’s like a forum with just a single section, where stuff will start to accumulate, and become hard to find very fast.

    In a forum, topics, even from the past, can be searched more easily, and can be divided in several subsections to sort them better.

    Discord is just a chat. you can make subchats but the lack of organization will definitely harm the availability of the content for a search. It would be nice for a direct answer, but no one would ever scroll conversation back to find particular answers. Also google searches are impossible.

23. As a tangential comment: Google Plus is really not a good platform for PbtA games anyway. Hyphens automatically cause strikethrough (so typing 7-9 results is tricky if you mistype, and typing pick lists is fraught), asterisks bold stuff (again with pick lists), the plus sign tags people, so typing +tags is also fraught.

    When suggesting alternatives, maybe watch for things where we can use bullets in the markup, and where the plus sign doesn’t do anything in the markup 🙂

24. Also RPGGeek is a good call, I think. Does it do notifications like G+ does?

25. Throwing in my votes for Reddit and Discord! The existing RPG communities there are great!

26. Discord: No files, no threading, invite needed. Can’t discuss something unless you catch the discussion as soon as it happens. We might be small enough now that it’s OK, but that could change.

    Grade: C

    Slack: Like Discord but with threading and files. Space limit unless you pay for it makes it untenable. Hamish isn’t exactly making a fortune from this game.

    Grade: D

    Reddit: Might work. I like upvoting. Hive of scum and villainy as far as users are concerned, from what I hear.

    Grade: A-

    MeWe: The Gauntlet seems to be going there, so it might be good to follow. Seems to have good functions. Might be a flash in the pan, though. Most of us don’t know jack about it, too. (Update: Gauntlet is NOT going there. Something about too many Nazis.)

    Grade: A-? C- if Nazis. Need more info.

    Facebook: That damn algorithm means we’ll only see SOME of the posts from the group. Ray Bans 75% off today only click here!

    Grade: C-

    Twitter: Already on it. No good for long form or interaction. Also has a shitty algorithm and shitty randos. We want to converse about cyberpunk dystopias, not converse ON a cyberpunk dystopia.

    Grade: C-

    RPG Geek: Established forum, threading, files, moderation (not sure how it works though). Lots of other games have a home there. Dedicated to RPGs. Does it do email push notification for activity in selected communities like Google Plus? That might make it an A+

    Grade: A-

    Other forums: Custom forums are meh.

    Having to maintain a server is meh. ENWorld might be OK, but too F20 focused.

    Grade: Various. Mostly B

    Email stuff: Yahoo groups, Google groups: Threading, files, searchable, have web forums, email digest options. Generally good ideas. Highly email focused, but that can be a good thing. That’s what I liked about G+ after all: Selective push notifications.

    Grade: B+

    Livejournal: Just kidding.

    Grade: Baaa!

27. I kind of think G+ is the best place to stay for another 6 months. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see someone like Discord add functionality to their program to make it a great G+ alternative. Or someone to come up with something brand new that imports from G+ backups. There is an opportunity here for someone. Though G+ is free so that might discourage a lot of developers. I’m not sure how Discord makes money for example.

    Definitely agree on no MeWe if there are too many nazis! Sounds like there are some other issues with MeWe as well.

    Thanks for the roundup Jon.

28. MeWe has good privacy controls and everything is private. And the developers are trying to address the G+ diaspora with open arms. We’ve got 10 months to see if it works out. I don’t think Slack is really an option without paying and that makes it a non starter for most. Mastadon and most of its siblings is too twittery, pleroma has some pros but will probably require setting up dedicated pod/ server. Not enough discord experience to comment

29. And the right wing nuts found a place on MeWe because it’s hard to hassle them there. Shouldn’t be any cross over, and they will find it just as hard to hassle us as it is to hassle them.

30. I like the idea of the group migrating to a service that’s RPG oriented – does RollD20 offer a similar forum situation to RPG Geek?

31. Roll20 has been using Reddit as a forum, though they also have their own forums.

32. And that worked well for Roll20 didn’t it.

33. It’s worth noting that their is already a subreddit devoted to The Sprawl. I need to get in the habit of checking in there more often.

34. Jon Lemich On RPGGeek, you can “subscribe” to a thread, and get a notification when there is a new post in that thread. There’s even a button in multiple places to jump to the next subscribed item with new posts.

35. Those Google Plus termination warnings/reminders are starting to make my teeth itch.

36. I see a good deal of activity on Reddit. Is that where we’re going?

37. I’ve been scouting out two options over the past couple of months: the Reddit group and a Discord that I found via the Reddit group. I’ll post links later today/this week.

38. Here’s the subreddit: reddit.com – r/thesprawl

    Here’s the discord: https://discord.gg/HpDp9et

    I don’t run either of these groups, but they both seem to be positive and well-moderated community-run places. If you know of any other such places, I’d love to hear about them!

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