TheJoker3131
Peer Supporter
Hi, I was thinking about making a discord TMS server. Would other people be interested? Forums are a little 2009 for me!
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Discord Server
- Thread starter TheJoker3131
- Start date
JanAtheCPA
Beloved Grand Eagle
Interesting question, so of course I googled it. A quick search only found this topic being discussed amongst gamers, but the responses seem to be pretty consistent - and surprisingly relevant! I particularly appreciated the thoughtful responses exchanged on this thread (along with a poll, heavily favoring forums). A number of the responses are so spot-on, they could easily have been written about our forum. It was started in 2022, not too long ago - post-COVID, anyway.
You don't even need to read more than the first page to get the gist, which is, as a number of commenters noted, that while there may be a place for an instant-chat format in any type of online community, the value of a properly-moderated and curated forum is in the long-term archive of information and the development of a deeper community. Descriptions of discord discussions full of memes and multiple waste-of-space reactions were not appealing! FWIW, our own weekly real-time TMS Chat has fallen by the wayside due to lack of use.
Real-time chatting can be fun and energizing . It's also easily forgettable, which makes it ultimately shallow. And I can't tell you how many times someone on the Chat asked where they could access a copy of the whole session - which by design does not exist. I stopped hosting the Chat because I prefer to spend my time responding to the same questions in a permanent venue where more participants can join over time.
There's also a significant issue, when you're hosting a personal and sensitive topic like mental health, which is how to maintain civility. Unfortunately, there are a lot of suffering individuals out there who need desperately to convince the rest of the world that they are victims of their conditions and that the medical world is conspiring to keep them sick. They despise Dr Sarno and will spend a lot of time and energy trying to discredit him. A forum can be carefully moderated to minimize disruption by such.
I wonder if this is a generational thing - or maybe just an age thing. ie: with age comes the recognition that there's value in depth. Or maybe it goes to the issue of focus.
You don't even need to read more than the first page to get the gist, which is, as a number of commenters noted, that while there may be a place for an instant-chat format in any type of online community, the value of a properly-moderated and curated forum is in the long-term archive of information and the development of a deeper community. Descriptions of discord discussions full of memes and multiple waste-of-space reactions were not appealing! FWIW, our own weekly real-time TMS Chat has fallen by the wayside due to lack of use.
Real-time chatting can be fun and energizing . It's also easily forgettable, which makes it ultimately shallow. And I can't tell you how many times someone on the Chat asked where they could access a copy of the whole session - which by design does not exist. I stopped hosting the Chat because I prefer to spend my time responding to the same questions in a permanent venue where more participants can join over time.
There's also a significant issue, when you're hosting a personal and sensitive topic like mental health, which is how to maintain civility. Unfortunately, there are a lot of suffering individuals out there who need desperately to convince the rest of the world that they are victims of their conditions and that the medical world is conspiring to keep them sick. They despise Dr Sarno and will spend a lot of time and energy trying to discredit him. A forum can be carefully moderated to minimize disruption by such.
I wonder if this is a generational thing - or maybe just an age thing. ie: with age comes the recognition that there's value in depth. Or maybe it goes to the issue of focus.
cafe_bustelo
Well known member
My brief experience on a Discord server for, let's say, people who mostly have TMS but don't yet know it, was awful. The way that one person can come in and immediately dominate the conversation is really hard to moderate unless you have mods on the clock 24/7. In this case frequently very scared people would come in and need someone to talk them down about their symptoms, but usually they would just encounter other scared people and feed off each other's fear. I truly believe this is NOT a good use case for Discord; it can be a fun social hub for lighter, shallower social interaction as Jan was saying, and I've also seen it used successfully for online classes but where TMS is concerned, I think something like that can only amplify fear.
The forum isn't perfect, and it's easy to spend too much time on here, but the slower pace of posting is preferable and moderation is much more manageable; you can just lock or delete a thread when it gets out of hand instead of having to ban someone or delete hundreds of messages. Also as many have found I think the format of a forum post allows for some journaling-like self-reflection to occur (especially with the SEP being available) where it simply wouldn't in a chatroom.
The forum isn't perfect, and it's easy to spend too much time on here, but the slower pace of posting is preferable and moderation is much more manageable; you can just lock or delete a thread when it gets out of hand instead of having to ban someone or delete hundreds of messages. Also as many have found I think the format of a forum post allows for some journaling-like self-reflection to occur (especially with the SEP being available) where it simply wouldn't in a chatroom.