Fellow blind and disabled Discordians: Just putting initial feelers out there. Who among my followers and Dragon's Cave local buddies would be interested in running/modding a safe space for disabled Discordians? It will primarily be a social space, but I'm planning on having channels similar to what I've seen on four other safe space Discords for ableds. Here's what I have in mind based on how I've seen them run things:
* a check-in channel. Every day, a bot will ask how you're doing using a daily check-in question template. Feel free to answer any or all of the check-in questions.
* A vent channel. If you feel marginalized anywhere on the internet, when dealing with your family, or others in your community, this would be a channel to vent about it. Channel members will only respond when they have the spoons to do so. A series of short messages or a wall of text behind spoilers is preferred, out of consideration to sighted folks who find reading walls of text to be more time consuming.
* Support channel. This is for folks who feel they are being mistreated due to a protected characteristic, such as disability, race, gender identity, or choice of religion. In this channel, when people have the spoons, they would offer advice on how to address the person who or community that is making them feel marginalized. I don't expect people to bash online communities here. So, I'd expect that someone could say they're having a problem in a given community, but DM's would be the place to say the community's name. I'm not here to run a bashing platform. No thanks.
* Book club channel. We could talk about books written for marginalized folks. Discussions would be informal, but I'm happy to run a book club with enough interest.
* game night: Accessible game nights to be run by, whatever disabled gamer wants to run them! Just pick the gamer role.
* Voice chat: Those with the voice chat role can be pinged for voice. 18+ channels included.
If this interests you, please ping me.
@SingingNala interested, but really don’t know a damn thing about discord. I use it for some of my online daily fantasy sports sites… But that’s about all I know about it.
@SingingNala @wesderby discord is awesome! I don’t understand why folks are still insisting on using team talk when there’s discord. That said I think that blind groups might be the only ones who still think they need to die on the team talk hill. Lol.
@amy0223 @SingingNala nothing really wrong with either platform. It’s all a matter of preference. I know discord was originally created for gamers and things like that, but I’m sure it has other uses. Actually, I don’t even know too many blind people using TeamTalk. Many of us are using Clubhouse at this point as well as discord.
@wesderby @amy0223 Discorde actually has a lot of controls to help keep users safe. More than TeamTalk honestly. I spent a bunch of time yesterday looking at the server administration panel and how role permissions work. And if you (general you) truly want to server with vetted individuals only, Discord is the best accessible platform on which to do that right now.
@wesderby @SingingNala right. I understand the technology aspect of keeping people safe. But so many out here are inherently toxic, emotionally abusive narcissists for instance. One person might be friends with someone like that and due to their exceptional snow job not see or be in denial about their true colors and character. I’m not sure how you keep that element out of your supposed safe space. It sadly is more common than not around here.
@amy0223 @wesderby @SingingNala Moderation ultimately isn't a problem with a technological solution. I mean there are technological things you can use to get the job done, but if you don't get the social bit right it'll fail. Also, modera tion is impossible to do well at scale, so if you can try to keep the community small, or have enough moderators to handle specific channels, or one moderator for every 10 or 20 people. +
@arush @amy0223 @wesderby I've been thinking long and hard about scalability, Amanda. Because I agree with you that it's very easy to do the social bit wrong. And that's a serious concern for me. So right now, I'm only having people I personally know join. I've put the link out in two safe space Telegrams that I'm already a part of. I'm keeping it word of mouth until I have a mod team that is sizable enough to handle scaling. If it needs to stay small for awhile in order for it to get off the ground and establish solidity and social norms, I'm fine with that. I don't mind taking six months to a year for it to start gaining momentum. Longer if need be.
@SingingNala @amy0223 @wesderby If you can, make joining something requires prospective members do something like write a simple thing about why they want to join. It won't solve all your problems but it'll add some friction that the problematic people will not want to deal with.
@arush @amy0223 @wesderby Already done. So far, an intro will get you into casual chatter only. Once there, there's a safe space intros area asking why you'd like to be a member of a safe space. People who don't fill out the intro template or otherwise explain why they want to join a safe space will be considered not yet vetted and will be barred access until proper vetting questions have been asked and answered.