Discord changes (simplified)

[mochet]

Purpose

• Vast simplification of this: https://github.com/Joystream/marketing/issues/72 (that is more a very lengthy, deep, piece of research and analysis looking at our reliance on Discord and also several other crypto projects). You can read the full thing if you want to, but it is very long and detailed, it is more of the "why" and not so much the "how".
  • A briefer version is available on the forums: https://pioneer.joystreamstats.live/#/forum/threads/873

Channel Types

This is the best simplification possible. I am not making any decisions about what channels should be, but this is a simple description of how to look at all channels.

• regular channel - This is a channel in which participation is open.
  • These would be channels like #general and any channels that a new user must be able to access fully.
• limited channel - This is a channel that has some limitation on participation. The specific subset of users will have to be decided, but the idea here is that there is a limitation on who can participate.
• bot-only channel - This is a channel in which the only participant is usually a bot. These are "read-only" channels--they are like a radio station. They serve to inform, not to create engagement on Discord (perhaps except for emoji ratings). If they create engagement, it should be on-chain.
  • This would be the #video-bot or #forum-bot channels right now
  • We may need some channels in which users can access a bot by writing commands.

Bot ideas & requirements

• A metrics bot
  • This would summarize information from each 24 hours and include information about the number of new uploads, the number of new threads, the current number of workers and the number of new memberships and maybe also the total budget or payments.
    • Ideally it should show the total and new over 24h values (example: 2435 video uploads, +432 in 24h)
  • This particular data is highly valuable in showing the current levels of activity to new participants.
• A role bot that monitors chain activity for changes in roles and not only announces changes, but also adjusts Discord's roles to reflect on-chain roles.
  • Each Discord Role will then be able to be tagged (i.e. @storagewg) as a group (once the server feature is enabled by JSG: https://github.com/Joystream/marketing/issues/100)
  • This could also be used to restrict write access to channels, ensuring that only the relevant elected workers have access and minimizing noise from outside participants (who can still use the forum to raise any issues they may have)
  • I guess it would make sense for this bot to also mention changes in worker payments
• A forum bot that can show forum activity that is only relevant to a specific Discord channel
  • For example, the storage channel would only show forum notifications from the storage category/subcategory
  • We would still probably need a general #forum-bot channel that shows all activity
• An opportunity bot that mentions all new lead or worker openings
  • There should be one channel that mentions all opportunities (including new bounties). This would basically end up being the place to tell new users to monitor if they're interested in participating in anything.
  • Each WG channel could also mention the relevant information.
• A mint/budget bot
  • The way budgets and mints work in olympia is changing, so there may be adjustments to exactly what this should show.
  • Each WG will still have its own budget, but we may also need the current tokenomics bot to begin breaking down the platform-wide spending (similarly to how the overview page on the current testnet works)
• A membership bot that can verify ownership of a Discord account from on-chain membership
  • This one may have some design considerations adjusted once olympia launches
• A council bot that mentions election related information
• A proposal bot (this is already done and being improved AFAIK)
  • Note: for personalized announcements (reminding users they haven't voted) it is possible to utilize "invisible" messages (our CAPTCHA bot currently uses these, they aren't viewable to anyone besides the person who receives them, which might help a lot to reduce notification spam)
• A blog bot (for the upcoming blog module on olympia)
  • Since this isn't released yet its not a big priority just yet. It may be that announcements from this end up in the announcements channel.

Additionally:

• The bots are highly important, and the uptime of them is important to maintain
  • I am not sure of how to work with this particular issue, but I created a GitHub issue explaining it here: https://github.com/Joystream/marketing/issues/32
• Incentives v3 bots
  • Given how complex the new incentives scheme is, it may be worthwhile having one or more bots to help improve readability of the system
  • This may be simple, such as just the relevant tokenomic/value information or it may be far more complex.
• The faucet bot
  • With the new incentives system, this bot will have a much more important function on the project, but it is still unknown exactly how to manage it.

Goals / Changes

(not necessary to read unless you want to)

• To try and make the platform 24/7. This is a two-pronged approach which tries to push more activity on-chain as well as show more on-chain activity.
  • While we have a lot of users within similar timezones now, there are many events that can trigger automatically by the DAO at non-peak timings. If we have new users join in our non-peak hours, they will still be able to see on-chain events even if there are minimal users currently online.
  • Pushing more activity on-chain is critical to increase the value of the project. We should be aiming for a mainnet launch that has a very good amount of on-chain content.
    • It is also the case that pushing activity on-chain means the forum structure and other aspects of working groups are far more improved than where they currently are.
• Cut down extensively on expensive manual work required to announce important events on the Discord.
  • This work is obviously extremely valuable but it is also extremely wasteful and automating it would greatly improve communication and make sure everyone starts to focus on working with the DAO instead of communicating what the DAO is doing.
• To make our Discord experience for new users move to dramatically focusing far more on our platform's features as well as respecting the inbuilt roles and hierarchy that the DAO decides, rather than what Discord decides. This also should help new users to really learn and understand what our DAO does and what makes it unique compared to other projects. This will heavily utilize bots.
  • Many DAO Discord servers suffer heavily from information overload and have 50-100 or even more channels. The research I did shows that this experience for newcomers is often extremely overwhelming.
  • Critically, by showing on-chain events we are not only making working with the DAO far easier for its current users, we will also hopefully be giving new users a much easier understanding of DAO events.
    • The amount of time it takes an average person to understand Joystream to a decent level is extensive at the moment.
• Act as a guard against any huge amount of new users.
  • There are ongoing marketing initiatives and if we have a lot of new users join at once it may seriously stress Discord's current value for our community to use for communication.
  • This part is ambiguous because we do not have that many new users joining yet, but based on seeing other DAO Discord servers, a large number of users makes management far more difficult.
  • Note that while it may be useful to restrict access to working group or the council channels, all users would still be able to see them all. So if the gatekeeping method were employed it would purely be to try and limit new users from chatting too much in highly valuable channels, like the WG channels.
    • This would mean that if a new user had a question about something like where to find documentation for the storage node role, they could ask in a help related channel instead of the WG channel.
    • Any form of gatekeeping would obviously have to be thought off and what works for some channels might not work for all channels.