This week, Discord will begin testing a number of new features in some of its major communities. The social audio and chat platform has begun to connect players for online play , but has evolved over time to become one of the main ways to build an online community , complete with custom emojis, live events, thematic channels, and a whole suite of third-party plugins.
The organization claims that as the number of servers increases , things may become unmanageable . At any given time, some of Discord's most popular communities have hundreds of thousands of people online at once . A Discord server is a bit like a subreddit in real time, where instead of joining and leaving the conversation a large number of people chat live, all together. For smaller communities, the mechanism works well and it's easy to keep up with conversations, but as servers grow, it's easy to miss conversations that matter .
The first new feature provides servers with a forum-like channel for “more organized conversations” . The idea is that people can enter and exit these special channels asynchronously and not get lost , just could do it on Reddit. Plus, it's also a way to bring out older but still relevant content and put people in a continuous thread.
Aside from forums, Discord will try out a new home page-style feature that collects important (or hot) topics, providing a snapshot of timely content that is important on that server at any time. Many servers now use dedicated news channels to accomplish something similar, but those spaces aren't very dynamic and often don't offer much beyond highlighting important announcements.
As for moderation , Discord is testing new automated tools that bring some of the functionality that communities get with third-party mod tools . While the company hasn't revealed many details, some of the more popular Discord bot mods automate welcoming new users, scan for misbehavior, and even hunt people when they break the rules.
The experimental features are for now only available via a closed beta , on large servers, and this may be just a taste of what the company is working on, even if there aren't any. further information.
