Creation of an official Discord server for the Node.js project

[ovflowd]

Discord is a massive hub for collaboration, communication, and projects to reach their audiences.

It's becoming trendy for massive open-source projects and tech companies to have Discord Servers (ie, Cloudflare, Sentry, GitHub Education, etc.)

The upcoming Ambassador Program gives us even more reason for allowing users to interact with Node.js ambassadors and take a closer part of the community.

The goals of such a Discord server are simple:

• Yet another space for sharing announcements (mirror of RSS feeds and other sort of announcements)
• A space for Node.js enthusiasts to talk and discuss together
  • GitHub Discussions never worked out, and usually, we see Node.js technical discussions happening in places such as Twitter/X, Stackoverflow, and others, which happen not to be the most ideal form of asynchronous communication
• Although we have a Slack instance (community governed), rarely anyone joins or communicates there (the same with the IRC server)
  • With the Discord server, we could officially shut down both our IRC nodes, which have been moderated/managed by a single person (@ljharb), and the same applies to the Slack instance.
  • It also allows the OpenJS Foundation Slack to focus on OpenJS-related discussions and communication for existing Collaborators (more internal conversation rather than community-facing)
• The appeal for users to use Discord is way higher, due to:
  • One account for all your Discord Servers
  • Way better chatting, communication, and sharing features
  • Numerous integrations that could leverage our experience and collaboration with our Community
  • Way better Moderation tools
• With the Discord server, we could easily have channels that vary from:
  • Feature Feedbacks
  • Support Threads (which could allow Node.js developers to help each other and quickly find existing/prior questions)
  • Run Community Surveys/Polls with ease and way better granularity and reach (since many people don't use X/Twitter anymore)
  • Host streams from Node.js Collaborators / Ambassadors
• The instance could be moderated by the Moderation Team + Volunteers and managed by the TSC + trusted volunteers

Running a Discord server could be better for our community and our ability to reach the outer layers of our community.

[targos]

Previous discussion: #53

[ovflowd]

Previous discussion: #53

Cool. Also the state of Discord and its features today vs 2018 has been very different.

[avivkeller]

I'm +1 on the incorperation of a Discord server, as like you mentioned, it gives the community a quicker way to connect, as not everyone will want to make new Slack account / download an IRC client

Not to rush things, but if we were to do this, we should probably reach out to Discord's legal team and get https://discord.com/invite/nodejs

[richardlau]

FWIW I'd be unlikely to move over to Discord -- it would be an additional communication platform and I wouldn't create a new account there (or anywhere else) just for Node.js.

[ovflowd]

FWIW I'd be unlikely to move over to Discord -- it would be an additional communication platform and I wouldn't create a new account there (or anywhere else) just for Node.js.

No one is forcing you there 🙏; You don't need to be there if you don't want to, and I agree yet another platform, but that would be for the community 👀

We definitely don't need all collaborators to be there. And to be honest this could be a pilot program to see how it succeeds.

[richardlau]

The third "goal" mentions potentially shutting down Slack, or is that specifically the non-OpenJS Foundation one?

[ovflowd]

The third "goal" mentions potentially shutting down Slack, or is that specifically the non-OpenJS Foundation one?

It was an idea to slowly phase out the "Node Slackers" slack server that Jordan maintains by himself, but he said that he is not interested in shutting in down so that's fine 🤷

But we would be able to let the OppenJS Foundation Slack at least for Node.js to be more for collaborators and contributors and less for asking support/help. Which it is also not used much for that, but still some people ask support there.

[GeoffreyBooth]

This doesn't sound like an improvement to me. We already have the official Slack workspace, and GitHub of course. Adding another official channel means yet another place to check.

[mcollina]

Growing a community on Discord is useful. The official OpenJS slack is for our communication, while Discord would be for end users.

I think it would become quite popular, too. It's also a great marketing channel, and what I would set up today instead of the unofficial Node.js slack.

The fundamental question is who will moderate this and provide Node.js knowledge to the users.

[targos]

I agree that growing a community is useful. There are probably already existing communities, though, so we would kind of be in competition with them.
As a user, if I found and invested myself in an existing Node.js-focused Discord community, with well-defined rules and many moderators and helpers, I would need a very convincing argument to switch to an "official" one (what does the official stamp change?).

[ovflowd]

This doesn't sound like an improvement to me. We already have the official Slack workspace, and GitHub of course. Adding another official channel means yet another place to check.

Each one has different roles. It's agreeable that we see users asking/seeking help on the help repository and other platforms, including OpenJS Slack. The idea is that people will naturally switch over to Discord over time. It's ridiculous how popular Discord is nowadays for hosting tech communities.

I still believe many users would use our help repository, but I can see many of them going over Discord.

[ovflowd]

The fundamental question is who will moderate this and provide Node.js knowledge to the users.

I don't mind if we ask for volunteers to set it up (I wouldn't mind at all). Still, ultimately, I believe the Moderation team would be responsible for moderating it + some volunteers. We can draft something more concrete. There's some energy lift in setting it up.

[ovflowd]

As a user, if I found and invested myself in an existing Node.js-focused Discord community, with well-defined rules and many moderators and helpers, I would need a very convincing argument to switch to an "official" one (what does the official stamp change?).

For better or for worse, I haven't found any big community. That said, smaller-ish multi-purpose communities might focus on Node or more considerable general-purpose programming Discord servers with channels for Node.js. (The only community that comes to mind is Nodeiflux. Which has 14K members)

The main difference between the official one and the other is that the former is an official community consisting of collaborators, ambassadors, streams, announcements, etc. People tend to go to official communities because they are official.

Since there's no official JavaScript Discord server, I can see people with JavaScript interests going over our Discord. After all, it is also the most popular language (JavaScript) among teenagers, young adults, and even folks who code Discord Bots 🤷

[ovflowd]

There are also benefits in being an official community, as Discord gives some perks to Community servers.

[RomainLanz]

I am all in for that!