Discord and Gaming and Mods, oh my!

Hey all,

I'm pleased to share some updates encompassing some new features for our supporters and our community. We're also on the lookout for some folks to join our moderation team!

To start: On Discord...

Our Discord server is a big focus of today's updates. We're excited to share some significant expansions to our presence on Discord:
  • SFF.N content feeds: New announcement, news and trade channels are now available to all SFF.N members. These channels are updated with posts in their respective forum sections, making it easy to keep tabs on the latest SFF.N announcements, SFF-related news, and buy/sell/trade listings on the forum.
  • New channels: We've updated the name of the public channel to general, in order to better describe it as the 'default' channel for all SFF-related discussion. We've also added three more channels, in order to segment and better organize the common topics that the community has been discussing on the server: advice, gaming, and off-topic. The advice channel provides a dedicated area for community members to get advice and input from others, regarding anything from part recommendations to troubleshooting. The gaming channel focuses on the games everyone is playing and enjoying, and will soon tie into some other features on and off of Discord. Finally, off-topic is a helpful catch-all for anything that isn't SFF related, or doesn't fit in other channels.
  • Server commands: We've added a selection of commands that community members can do to better interact and use the Discord. These are as simple as polls and reminders, or as useful as highlighting or performing WolframAlpha queries. The new faq channel outlines these, as well as rules for the server and other important info.
Our use of Discord will continue to grow and evolve as we try new things and get feedback from the community. We've learned a lot from the simple approach we've started with, and hope to make the Discord an even better compliment to the forum with these additions.


Introducing SFF.N Game Servers!

It's been a long time coming, but we're finally ready to launch game servers for the SFF.N community! To start, we've stood up a Survival Minecraft Java server that's accessible to all SFF.N supporters as thanks for their financial support. Better yet, this server is integrated into Discord and SFF.N, sharing the same chatroom as our dedicated SFF.N supporter channel, while synchronizing SFF.N ranks and displaying Minecraft banners beneath players on the forum. Finally, within Discord, the server will enjoy a corresponding voice server to make it easy for members to communicate while playing online, if they so choose.

As the name implies, SFF.N Game Servers will grow to become a resource for everyone. While we've started with a Supporter-exclusive instance, the groundwork we've laid to create it will enable us to expand into servers for additional games that will be available to all community members. Further, we expect (and can't wait!) to leverage these game servers as a means to host remote tournaments and other events for the SFF community. So stay tuned on the forum and on Discord for more information on these.


One last thing: We're expanding our moderation team!

SFF.N has been spoiled with consistent growth over the years, so it's time once again for us to recruit some new moderators to help us keep the SFF.N community growing and thriving – particularly as we scale not only within the forum, but across our Discord and game servers as well.

Moderators within SFF.N enjoy high visibility into SFF.N's operations, as well as supporter benefits and a higher degree of influence regarding how we run things day-to-day. In exchange, they as a team shoulder the important responsibility of enforcing our rules, and keeping our community healthy. If you're interested in learning more, or want to be considered for the team, feel free to reach out to me on Discord or here on the forum.

This time around, we're recruiting across all time zones, but know that we're on the lookout for community members with at least a year of history and engagement within the community. If that includes you, get in touch ?

– Joshua
 

ignsvn

By Toutatis!
SFFn Staff
Apr 4, 2016
1,707
1,646
@PlayfulPhoenix happy to hear the updates about the progress happening around!

About Discord, is there a way to embed Discord into the forum itself?

After 10 mins of Google-fu I didn't found an official way, but saw some 3rd party implementations like https://github.com/TitanEmbeds/Titan or https://widgetbot.io. I don't know whether they'll work though. (In the past, we can always embed other websites in an iframe, but I don't think nowadays we can easily embed cross-domain websites anymore)

User experience wise, I think it'll be a better experience to those who's just starting to know Discord (like me). No need to switch browser tabs or browser - Discord app.
 

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
About Discord, is there a way to embed Discord into the forum itself?

After 10 mins of Google-fu I didn't found an official way, but saw some 3rd party implementations like https://github.com/TitanEmbeds/Titan or https://widgetbot.io. I don't know whether they'll work though. (In the past, we can always embed other websites in an iframe, but I don't think nowadays we can easily embed cross-domain websites anymore)

We've actually been evaluating Widgetbot.io for some time as a beta feature for SFF.N supporters and staff, even since the v1 days. We've debated at various times launching it for everyone, but have been reluctant due to performance/reliability issues of Widgetbot, and some usability issues (mainly that the chat is reset every time you navigate to a new page, which we can't easily change).

For the moment we'll probably keep that 'beta' but know that we're ready to launch it once we feel that it's a generally positive experience.
 
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