0xa8688227…9e63sent to0xf790a5f5…1365·#22,330,604·view on Etherscan
canonical-nouns-discord-comebackSomewhat crude thoughts below — i think this is an important discussion to have, especially since many current community participants were not around during the OG Nouns discord era (or at least didnt have access to token-gated channels, where most of the issues arose).
The way i see it, the biggest problem with an 'official' discord server is that it inevitably becomes a toxic battleground where people who dont like each other, and/or stand very far apart on core discussion points, compete for mindshare and dao control. An analogy would be forcing reps and dems (and lunatics) to live in the same house. In my experience you never really resolve anything, you just go in circles fighting the same battle over and over, but with less good faith and more toxicity for every cycle. Sort of like twitter, but if twitter was 200 people and most your close friends, family, users or colleagues.
This problem is accentuated if members feel entitled to join (eg token holders) or if banning troublesome members is awkward. Spreading control across voter blocks, parties, etc doesn't help resolve this issue, it makes it worse. Pinning ownership on the duna admins also does not help, it just puts them in a terrible position when inevitable things to south.
Perhaps my main gripe is the idea that an official discord can/should be 'neutral'. That does not work, it simply enables max PVP. 'More moderation' does not help because that breaches the core value of being neutral. Credible neutrality is not compatible with discord servers.
The reason the original discord was shut down is because it notably made nouns culture worse. Its not because the moderators were lazy or absent. We have cultural problems now too, but im hesitant to speedrun the same cultural missteps we took in '21-22.
That said, im not against the idea of a "perfectly functioning discord" per se, I just want to highlight the actual issues and urge anyone excited about going down this path to come up with plausible arguments/rules to resolve the 'eventual toxic battleground' issue.
While not a full or perfect solution, I think having (multiple) 'private' and opinionated servers is the better model. Nouncil does this well. Nouns.gg too. Private (not necessarily closed!) servers where there is no pretense of neutrality or entitlement by token holders etc has an advantage as they can do whatever is good for the servers growth/health/utility.