An alternative to Discord for project comms

Hi everyone :wave:,

Key question: Can we do better than Discord for project comms?

One thing I’m super interested in is comms and transparency. How to make it as easy as possible for Citizens to know what’s going on. This is incredibly important to ensure we make the best collective decisions and get the most out of our talented citizens.

As a relatively new citizen (this week), my experience has been that Discord can be suboptimal for understanding what’s going on. Here’s why:

  • large number of channels makes it hard to know which ones are active projects
  • very fast moving discussion makes it easy to miss important messages
  • often key info is posted at the top of a channel making it hard to navigate to
  • no good longform text support for readmes etc
  • people keep asking the same damn questions! :laughing:
  • no way to separate key updates from the ‘noise’ of general discussion

In summary, for those who are not on 24/7 it’s very easy to lose track of what’s going on and miss key updates.

Now, having said all that, I love Discord, I use it all the time, and it’s particularly good for voice, so I’m not advocating for its removal. However, I think we can supercharge our community comms by:

  1. Separating out key updates from the noise
  2. Providing more async mechanisms for people to stay up-to-date. e.g. For those in other time zones who can’t make weekly voice calls
  3. Making it easier to discover which projects are active

I also realise that there are key project docs on Notion, however while it’s great for docs, it’s less good for updates and doesn’t allow for discussion/feedback as not everyone can have access (due to cost). Again I’m not advocating to remove Notion, however I think there’s space for something else alongside. Something which solves the issues I’ve mentioned above.

A possible solution

I have a personal platform (one I’ve built) that might work for project comms/feedback.

Here’s how it works:


Each project has a readme

Projects support discussion threads (very similar to GitHub issues) to let citizens and team members discuss the project, ask questions, and get feedback/ideas

Citizens can ‘follow’ projects to receive blog style updates (via email and also on the site) when posted by the project team

And there’s an overview page so new people can see everything going on in one place

You can take a look at the live site here which I’ve populated with some example data: https://macroapp.io/workspace/80


Naturally, as a Citizen, I would let the DAO use the site for free and every Citizen would be able to sign up, follow projects, and discuss them in one place.

Ultimately, I have a dream where all Citizens can see the active projects in one place, see all the info in a clear readme, and ‘follow’ projects to receive async updates when posted by the team.

How would this work in practise?

  1. Each project team would add their project along with a readme
  2. Each project team would post project updates (e.g. once a week) to let project followers know how things are going.
  3. Citizens can ask questions and provide feedback to the project team via threads

We can do better than Discord for projects!

Let me know what you think. Would love to hear if the problems with Discord for key updates/info/project tracking resonate, and whether the new site I’ve developed could help. :relaxed:

ps. I haven’t shared the CityDAO site elsewhere, and the underlying site (Macro) is a WIP so new features are being added regularly.

pps. To be doubly clear, I’m not saying get rid of Discord, just that this might be a better way to keep the community informed and engaged with the DAO projects.

6 Likes

I love the idea of visually tracking all progress on one place. It’s like central progress update hub where anyone can track the projects along the journey. As a citizen, I fully support this alternative platform for project comms.

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I like this concept especially the timeline aspect - I would be careful to avoid any redundancies/overlap with what is provided via our notion site (is there any room/capability for integrations with discord/notion/forums?), but I could definitely see this applicable as a “town board” type of utility where tracking open, in progress, or scheduled quests/projects for the DAO.

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Yep. I understand not wanting any overlap. The way I can imagine it working is this:

  1. docs + todos (notion) - this is mostly for the project team and those who want to know the details
  2. project updates and discussion/feedback (Macro) - for all citizens to follow what’s going on at a high level in an async way (i.e. scalable and works for all timezones)
  3. voice and realtime (Discord) - fun, chats, and urgent/real-timey discussions

The bit added (2) is currently being done in Discord but it’s not very good for it - hence the millions of repeat questions, everyone asking where everything is, constantly scrolling to see if you’ve missed anything interesting/important etc etc.

Notion is awesome for docs but it isn’t built for community updates or discussion/feedback.

With 10k citizens I think it’s worth a bit of extra effort to keep everyone in the loop - even if it means another tool. (I know I’m biased haha but I genuinely think this).

Hope that makes sense.

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Agree, there are many servers and channels in Discord, and it is indeed easy to miss some important notifications. It would be much better if there is a dedicated CityDAO website to explain and promote :laughing:

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If anyone’s interested, I’m writing up the Website refresh project on Macro as the project takes place. You can see it here.

I definitely agree with you and support your ideas mentioned in this post.

Discord is an easy and effective way to gather people quickly but i believe it is not the ideal platform for following and governing a DAO especially which has around 5000 citizen from different countries, timezones and backgrounds. So many channels, lots of noise and circulation of people…

I would like to follow what is going on and how can i contribute but for the same reasons it is hard to keep up with the conversations. Therefore, i feel myself like just a little investor not the part of the community.

Your website seems amazing and could be the solution that we are looking for. Thanks Tyro, hope your efforts finds their value in our community :slight_smile:

1 Like