MFAD Town Hall - Topic of the day 9/18/23
The mods like to hear feedback from the community, so let's have some meta-talk about the MFA Discord server. How are you liking the Discord server so far? How does it compare to the subreddit? What do you like better or worse? Is there anything about the Discord that you would change? Do you have any suggestions for the moderators? P.S. our inbox is always open, use the /modmail command if there's anything you'd like to bring to our attention directly.
28 Replies
Pros:
- I like the community a lot more
- Much lower barrier to entry to ask a question
- I've explored more stuff and brands in more depth thanks to things like the brand threads
- The WAYWT thread is objectively better than the recurring thread
- I'm a huge fan of having a separate feedback thread and show-off thread
Cons:
- I still think Reddit's mechanisms for comment threading and voting are really great for varied opinions and multi-threaded long-form content and discussions
- Having the long-form content (substack) mainly separate from where the discussion is (discord) kinda sucks. I understand that this isn't really a solvable problem, but still a con of the current environment
- Barrier to giving advice is lower and I think there's a lot more bad advice being given
- The nature of the threads and categories means that there's some odd duplication/overlap and gaps. Main example is the #fashion-discussion is seeming to hold generic threads like #Jewelry or #Denim but also articles/blogs that generally have a different traffic pattern like https://discord.com/channels/1116793467654381685/1149410154106851379
- My main con is discovery of r/MFA is easy while I've never stumbled on a discord before. ik there's ways to make it more findable. Like Q's can get indexed by google iiuc? If we're gonna be a place for beginners to get fashion advice I think a key component is being easily discoverable by people who know nothing about the hobby and are just googling around. (I'm not sure this is terribly solvable since places like IG, YT, TikTok, Reddit, etc. all are explicitly social media platforms of a different type than discord.
The cons list looks longer, but they're all basically the same thing and very difficult problems to tackle in the current format of the sub. I think overall the move to discord has been incredibly positive.
Loving the move to discord. Feels more like a community
But i agree that the format isn’t the best in certain discussions as things can get lost in the chat
Pros:
- WAYWT experience is 100x better. More content, can post whenever, quicker to view, love the thread concept is awesome.
- Brands, general interests, etc. are great to have continuity on across days rather than getting dropped into QOTD formats or getting a one-and-done thread. eg. love taht F/W drops get threads brought back!
Cons:
- Fewer Q&A questions from new folks and the advice itself is less consistent. Also a lot of people immediately dumping Qs in #general-chat that used to get filtered by AutoMod.
- Substack divide is not great. Wondering if there are ways of better integrating or calling up the guides via bots.
- Personally feels like things are atomizing-whereas I used to look at pretty much every regularly posted thread, I pretty much stick Q&A, spotlight, and WAYWT. Once #general-chat or an #interests hits 50+ comments I'm not going to try to catch up.
- Related, the lack of threading makes it really easy for discussions to get derailed, eg. https://discord.com/channels/1116793467654381685/1150823070295146558 here where the first 40% of this was concern trolling.
Exact same takeaways as @ll.beansandrice - pros easily outweight the cons for me but the most useful part of MFA subreddit was asking, giving, and picking up on advice via daily threads. There are 5-10 questions here daily compared to the hundreds a day there used to be on reddit. I worry about the discoverability of the discord, whether folks are generally able to learn 101 content, and whether the substack is engaging and used (maybe mods can pull up metrics)?
Oh a pro I forgot is that search-ability is wayyyyy better than reddit
Being able to just pull up all of someone’s fits is crazy
Now if we could index items worn and search that, a lot of “how to style this” qs would be solved
Imagine if you could search “denim jacket” in waywt
i have no idea if this would be supported on discord, but what you're asking for here is some sort of a tag system, yeah? so if youd search by the key words theyd pop up
Yeah its too much work for tags to do anyway though, we’d have to switch to a forum channel and have like every possible clothing item to tag
It’s really something that’s not possible but would be amazing
Like we could port everything to another platform that can get indexed by AI and make a searchable database but that’s psychotic
Con : Meme Channel is only for regular role !
I do not view this as a con, for one.
I don’t want to see your memes
clothing taxonomy for a tagging system would be a fucking nightmare
Pros:
Love how the community has blossomed here. Can feel overwhelming when you don't partake in discussion for a few days, but since the conversations are always ongoing it isn't too hard to pick it up whenever you have time for it. Discord searches for user posts work really well.
Cons:
Agree with llbeansandrice that the Discord is definitely harder to find than r/MFA. If the MFAD is going to survive in the longer term (thinking 2+ years and beyond), it needs to be discoverable. Would hate to see this place fizzle, even if that happens years from now.
Denim jacket
What color?
Raw?
Distressed?
Type I/II/III?
Other jacket types made from denim?
Is a boro jacket a denim jacket?
Yeah it’s fully impossible
Discoverability is a big thing for sure
Trying to figure out a more public facing way to funnel people in is something we’re talking about
I've really liked the move to discord. On Reddit I mostly read guides and posted at most once a year. Discord makes it so much nicer to interact with everyone. But yeah agree with all the points above.
I do miss the guides, wardrobe capsules, and inspo guides. I assume those get posted to the sub stack but it would be nice to capture those here too.
Do you think that just tagging the brand and making it searchable would be valuable? Or do you think all of those details are necessary
i wouldnt even know how to write a guide designed for discord. i dont think the format lends itself well to that kinda stuff sadly
I think trying to manually index items in fit pics is a fool’s errand. I can’t even be assed to tag brands in my own posts or I don’t want to so how is it supposed to work on a community level?
Plus, creating and curating inspo is critical to actually develop good taste imo
we're working on getting more content on the substack, getting more people involved in making stuff for it, and highlighting stuff that goes on there on discord more, stay tuned
Yeah that makes sense. Curious to hear what makes you want to post on WAYWT but not tag the product (aside from it taking time)?
And wdym by that?
I'm not gonna tag the stuff I wear in fit pics I'll just answer if someone asks
re: discoverability, is the server on like disboard? I know that's where another one of my discords gets traffic from
What I wear isn’t interesting enough to tag the brand tbh
I guess searching “denim jacket” on the discord waywt fits would be a good source of inspo that you can curate so that thought is a bit tangential
it isnt - but adding it right now!
We're about to hit the 90 days mark I think, which may itself increase our vis
The only downside to the discord for me is you have to actively search out content whereas Reddit presents it to you. I’m sure there are some channels I haven’t explored on here but I don’t think there’s a way to fix that.
Agreed with LLoafing here. I also liked being able to respond to something in general like 8 hours later and still getting responses from multiple people