The Splinterlands Watering Hole
I'll just say it. Splinterlands is a lonely game.
You buy (or rent) your cards alone (probably alone in your basement, if you are like me). You are matched to an opponent anonymously, who you will most likely never meet. You pick your cards quickly and in secret. The game auto-battles for you. Maybe, you might join a guild, where you do the same thing but try to get points with your guildmates - and no one needs to speak to anyone. That's the basic gameplay - kinda depressing when you look at it that way.
But, Splinterlands players actually love this game, love to talk about it, love to strategize, love to compete. So we've found all sorts of other ways to build a community. Let's take a quick look:
Some Popular Options for Community
- Join the Official Splinterlands Discord
- Chat on Telegram
- Use the no-nonsense in-game chat functions for guilds or on the mobile website
- Blog, especially on Hive, with any Hive compatible frontend (like SplinterTalk or PeakD)
- There used to be a Splinterlands Forum but it's been abandoned - presumably because not enough users were visiting. (yes, the link is dead)
Some Pros and Cons
Each of these has various advantages and benefits. It seems that the majority of the community has landed on Discord, and that has become the "unofficial official community". However some users aren't fans of Discord for various reasons, and these players can feel left out of the loop. And conversation in Discord moves really quickly so it's hard to stay focused on a topic for long. As a result, it's not always a useful medium to communicate complicated ideas.
Meanwhile, the Hive blog functions are great in that they allow anyone to get information out there, and it's possible to outline a clear idea. However, there is so much content that discovery becomes the challenging part. If a good post gets enough visibility, then conversations and ideas can be exchanged easily. However, the organizational structure can make it difficult to find relevant content, and in order to effectively share ideas, you need to have visibility, which means spend a lot of time building up your reputation and followers.
Abandoned Forum, you say?
Should we revive the Forum idea? This entire post was prompted by an inquiry in Discord:
Mina199 — Yesterday at 6:17 AM
[...] As I see it, we as community need some kind of solid structure for communications inside community. First, hopefully we can have dedicated and properly moderated places/spaces where people are welcome to give their feedback. Second, another place where people are welcome to share their ideas. The community leaders task would be to make sure what people are heard and welcome to share, and the team is aware and is taking into considerations these ideas/feedback/etc (or at least most pressuring issues). We also should be aware what here on discord we have just a fraction of our community, means it would be much better if we can figure out the structure and tools/platforms where we can integrate all of us(not just discord users). If we don't have better option and continue to use discord for this, at least we should push for announcements on other platforms as well(web, telegram, etc) what if one wants to participate in community discussions, whey are welcome to do it here on dedicated and properly moderated channels, once we figure it out and have all the structure ready for this.
[...]
I think we can make it really much faster if we somehow may have some funds dedicated to pay people(rotated?) to do this community management 'jobs' (community structure/communication managers and moderators, leaders (or representatives?), writing ('official' community texts (announcements/proposals/requests etc)), feedback/ideas/proposals collecting/processing, (social)platform managers(to include non-discord folks, if we stay on discord), + maybe some coders for website, etc.... this is very vague and abstract list, just what came to my mind, surely we can talk about what we really need(what kind of 'jobs') if needed at all. But, most of all, IMO we need people who would actually make sure what everyone is welcome to share and to be heard and considered. And if DAO can actually share some of it profits on such task, IMO it's a very good precedent for DAO and company and win-win for all community long-term. And, I really appreciate any feedback! ❤️
In short, there are players that we aren't reaching, and they feel out of the loop. How do we reach them?
Forget about funding (for now). But Community Volunteers...
While Mina199's suggestion has some merit as a community tool, I don't see any chance that the DAO would approve funding to pay any jobs for community management at this time. Most of the largest SPS holders are comfortable in Discord. Plus the DAO is still very new, so there isn't yet any consensus on DAO priorities - I don't think it's likely that someone could swing a supermajority vote for funding paid community moderation positions with DAO funds.
I myself was wondering whether wonder a frontend could be developed on top of Hive posts that could mimic the organization system and strengths of a forum... while still being one set of underlying data (ie like Peakd vs Leo vs splintertalk). Maybe with community curation as a form of moderation or something. If someone felt that a Forum was needed and would be used, maybe there would be volunteer moderators or a way to create that frontend on top of our established Hive system.
What about you?
- Are you happy with Discord?
- How would you improve in-game communications / notifications?
- Would you use a Splinterlands Forum?
- If so, would you volunteer as a moderator?
If this is really important to our community members, I recommend they should form a focused volunteer Community Committee to explore some ideas further.
It's your DAO... what do you think?
there are some good reasons for a forum.
For example, if i'm looking for good counters for alric. i'm pretty lost at the moment. i would search for alric in a forum, then i would see all the topics and could read about it directly.
sometimes really good calculations etc are shown here. if you weren't there when it was written, you'll probably never see it.
which could be quite intriguing especially now with land.
we have pretty smart arranged people in the community who will make very good calculations and guides.
but probably hardly anyone will see them. because either you have to be in the right discord channel at the time it is written or you have to follow the right person on peakd who will share it and then you have to save it.
Sometimes I see really good posts on Discord or Peakd and people who don't follow the person don't see that post and it just disappears from the scene and a forum would be a good archive. I think it's a shame that a lot of good posts aren't seen by anyone because the people who write them don't have followers and none of the popular people share the post.
which in my opinion also leads to quite a problem for a decentralized system. we have a handful of people who have a significant reach. things that are not shared by them will probably never be seen by most people. this creates the problem that these people have the power to determine what opinion is spread and what is not!
e.g. there was once @rosiew . they had made really good town hall summarys. in every respect better than those shared by splinterlands and above all much faster. those were mostly published directly after the town hall and with those shared by splinterlands you can sometimes wait 3 days and then important details are missing. nevertheless they didn't share those of rosiew. which clearly shows that there are already quite monopoly positions here. and it's not really about quality here...
here is an example https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@rosiew/splinterlands-town-hall-september-26-2022
and thank you for the work @oaaguy 😘
I agree, I like the idea of better organization and communication, and I've struggled to find information like that sometimes too. I also like efficiency of writing things once instead of having a bunch of different places to look. That's why I think a better interface on top of Hive would be pretty amazing.
Like, what if there was a page like splintertalk, but instead of being just top ranked bloggers doing "Share your Battle" and Giveaway posts, it was more like a forum setup. For example, if it had a pinned list of high quality, heavily curated topics on the side for the important announcements, dao stuff, quality curated articles with analysis, and then categories for “giveaway”, “art” and “amazing battle” and so people can find them if they want those things. Probably natively managed with Tags. It could still work on Hive and probably even still earn Hive rewards for authors, but you'd need a curation function to get into the top curated topics lists.
Call it "The Splinterlands Buzz" (C 2023) 😆
I remember those summaries! They were great!
Come back @rosiew - Splinterlanders need you!!
Hey, about @rosiew , I recall her, and I think it's good example of how we can often lose very valuable people just because they don't feel needed/appreciated/etc (I might be wrong in her case)
Great work @oaaguy of describing current situation regarding used communication platforms and Pros and Cons of it...
However, my initial message i wanted to convey was focused on a slightly different aspect of it....(it's more on general approach to community questions and more about feelings of people who want or try to be part of it) (and also of possible 'conspiracy' theories behind the scenes of some fractions of community which may choose to play win-lose game(I hope where is not ATM))
I put here rest of other quotes of my discord posts regarding the topic, to make sure it's not out of content..
https://discord.com/channels/447924793048825866/1014243925529206854/1089855662697234483
Mina199
—
"03/27/2023 4:17 PM
Yes , apparently there is 'conflict of interests' and we should be aware of it...
And this is the reason why I would not ask for the team to do this community job , We apparently have multiple 'fractions' (The team ; SPL Company; many kinds of whales/investors/flippers/hoarders/SPS stakers ; or people just loving this game/game-play ; potentially interested folks ; Etc) and they all may have some kind of different priorities/strategies, often conflicting each other.. But all of them are part of community, and we can't exclude some of them. So, IMO we should figure out this community communication structures ourselves, without waiting for the team or someone else to help with it.
But, surely we all can find and agree on our common values, priorities and goals, maybe like quality of life, user-base growth, new player experience, asset value growth, etc., where we all have common interest, so it would be a win-win game.."
But I don't feel like to spend much my time and energy to elaborate on this questions HERE ,since most of posts on Hive,etc are quickly abandoned and forgotten IMO (back to main issue), I am still struggling to feel confident what I am actually reaching people(guess I am not alone with this feeling), since we don't have proper DEDICATED space for meaningful long-term community communication...
About abandoned forum, I fugure it was very long time ago(beta time), and it was abandoned even before I joined the game(likewise for most of us I guess), so, now it could be different IMO...
About funding, I think it's simple, as it is up to SPS stakers anyway(no need to ask the team etc), and off course I am not trying to push to do this as 'official' proposal, at least before we have this idea clear and structured. (And I am not interested myself to do some paid jobs)....
However, I probably can help with moderator task on discord DEDICATED channel(s) (like feedback, ideas, etc) part-time(not everyday),(as long as we don't have better alternative) if we have other community members who share same ideas and willing to share this task....
But overall, if we are just a few of us who are concerned with this questions, probably I just stop wasting my time on this.. but again, may be it's just because we are not reaching a lot of people here, or on discord, due to aforementioned reasons.
And, I hope you guys understand what if I(or someone) share stuff here, or on discord, it
does not imply she is willing to do any volunteering!
Thanks @minisvt.
I'll leave aside the possible 'conspiracy' theories, because I think focusing on that will just get people debating, instead of helping your goal of improving communication.
You are absolutely right - there are a variety of embedded interests, and they can be conflicting at times. I do think that everyone wants an inclusive community, with as many participants and opinions as possible, but it is also up to the community to speak up when they aren't feeling like they are part of it.
This is critical here. Funding ONLY happens with an official proposal, because there is no other mechanism for SPS DAO to fund anything except what is in the white paper or approved by DAO. And unless you can convince the largest SPS holders that it is in their interest, you won't get a DAO vote through.
And you are right, posts can easily be forgotten or buried - that's unfortunately the reality for most platforms, and forums are susceptible to this as well, when an old, unpopular topic falls to the bottom of the list. It is the job of those who are interested to make sure a topic stays current. The more people that vote, or comment, tweet, blog or scream about these issues, the more it shows that this is important to people, and it gives the idea some momentum.
So unless there is another way, share this with anyone that seems like they would share the same opinion and want a better communication medium. Have them vote and comment. Show the DAO and the company how important this is. You don't need to be the one volunteering, and you don't need to be the one taking a paid job. But if it's important to you, spread the word by any means you can.
And if it helps, this is a safe space to come back and brainstorm or rally support.
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@bcarolan639 had an interesting idea... it was a long post, so I'll paraphrase the idea:
I haven't spent much time looking at SPT and its DAO, so I don't have a comment on whether it is even feasible or not. But it sounds like an interesting concept. Maybe we can get some more thoughts on this...
Discord does not allow separate conversations like a forum would. Discord is a chat room without separate discussions we lack the core structure a community needs where everyone has equal chance to start a discussion. Forums are much needed and wiki pages and email lists so that all players have a fair shot of earning from their time and attention they invest. This will help retain more players too.