#scholastic once banned political discussion in the Animorphs official community boards way back when.

[superdillin]

I think that sometimes that the normalizing of discord servers as a necessity for your online branding has made us forget that what it is is a fan space that the creator has control over. That's not been normal since AOL was our primary internet provider.

It benefits the creator more than the audience, and so if we choose to have one - which full disclosure, I have one and so does the Atomless - then it's our responsibility to make that a safe place for the fans to exist. That means that when a server gets big, it will need a trained moderator team.

If you don't have a discord server, fan communities will still form, you can't stop that, we do what we want. But if you want the privilege that comes with having your fandom in your eyeline, immediately accessable to you, that comes with extra work. I don't like that it's the default to create an "official" discord for everything because I think it should be more of a deliberate choice that is budgeted for and planned.

Anyway this is not really meant to be a vague post, because although it's inspired by what transpired through dropout, I think they ultimately stumbled their way to the right call, and this is just something I've noticed as a trend in general, with them far from the most serious example.

#Fun story #scholastic once banned political discussion in the Animorphs official community boards way back when. #Industry rant