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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Following the guide at https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-... it seems I cannot add a "Forum Channel" to my own Discord channel. I only see the types "Text" and "Voice" when trying to add a new channel. Is this something that is rolling out over the next couple of days or should be possible?

Seems strange to announce something before it completely rolled out to everyone, so thinking something is wrong with my setup.

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Same here, I imagine they'll roll it out to all servers over the next few days/weeks.

Edit: from the blog post, it's working it's way out and is for Community servers:

> Forum channels are slowly making their way to Community servers starting today — keep an eye out on your own server to see when you’ll be able to create Forum channels! Don’t have Community enabled? Check out what features enabling Community brings to you and your server here.

Aah, I see. That wasn't at all clear from the "Forum Channels FAQ" linked above. Hopefully someone from Discord sees this + previous posts and includes the requirements for getting forum channels :)

I think this is a feature for community servers, so make sure you've converted yours to a community.

Begs the question, why is this locked behind community mode? Most of what they add seems to be these days, and while in some cases it makes sense, in this case it does not.

My guess is that a lot of small, tightly-knit (i.e. everybody knows everybody already) servers don't need or want all of the extra "community" stuff. Community features seem like they're mostly for managing loosely-knit communities that are big enough to need different trust levels, onboarding procedures, announcements etc.

In fact, the Discord UI says as much: "Don't [convert your server to Community] if your server is just for you and a few friends. Community servers are for admins who are building larger spaces where people with shared interests can come together."

I'm not sure any of that answers my question. If I don't want a public or large community I'm not supposed to convert to community, okay, but I can still want thread channels for organizing information. They aren't useless for small groups of people, and the same is true for some of the other community-locked features.

And enabling community mode isn't necessarily the solution either. It comes with a bunch of dubious nonsense attached:

> Scan media content from all members: this will scan all media sent in the server and delete any content that contains explicit content

I don't trust an automated algorithm to make moderation decisions for me.

> Rules or Guidelines Channel

Useless in a private community.

> Discord may check the contents of your server to make sure it’s safe!

I don't need a paternalistic american tech company invisibly making judgement calls on what my private community does or doesn't do.

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047132851

I think we just have a difference of opinion (or a different use case) when it comes to threaded channels. Personally, I don't have any use for them in any of the small Discord groups that I'm in, so I'm perfectly happy with having them classed alongside "Rules channels" and the like. Based on their decision here I suspect that Discord sees it the same way. Obviously, you feel differently.

mostly because Forums look to be 95% just messages in a channel with a thread for the conversation, just with a forum UI frontpage. on your small servers just make a channel, topic messages are sent to it, and then people talk in a thread.

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