Sectorgame

I proposed this on HLP I don't know how many times, but my proposal was pretty much ignored. I guess I'll give SG a try as it seems more prone to change.

The FS community has gradually changed, and it's no secret that activities tend to be focused on Discord channels. These are useful, to some degree, when it comes to rapid interaction between members in the case of technical issues, however they are not as effective as the forums at "recording history". Still, variability is the key so I strongly believe it's totally OK to have both.

There's a problem, however: the broader FS community, and by that I mean thousands of players who don't even have forum/Discord accounts and simply play the game, may not be aware of the latest developments. Moreso, if they take a look at the forums alone (which, unlike Discord channels, are totally accessible), they'd have the impression of some sort of dying community when it's not actually the case.

Therefore, I propose to do the following: implement links to specific Discord channels/subchannels on the main board. I was thinking of using this column here:
Each board would be matched by the corresponding Discord subchannel/channel. This would allow visitors, no matter whether they are FS fans or not, to learn about the existence of active Discord channels, and eventually join them. I'd say to start with Discord, but this feature could be easily extended to ModDB profiles (such as the main FS2 Open engine page), the FreeSpace Wiki, and so on, possibly including YouTube channels.

There's a lot of activity out there. This community lives. Let the visitors realize that.

I'm not opposed to this idea, but there are some issues.

1. It could make both the forum & discord too cluttered - for example do we really need an EVE or Descent section on the Discord?
2. Wouldn't it be better to implement something on the sidebar instead, in addition to the users currently online being displayed?

I am sure there are a myriad of ways to get engagement. Just showing a Discord exists is a good start We can expand from there..

What do other people think?

I’m personally in favor of Mobius’ idea, given that there would be more (optional for each board) elements: wiki link, moddb link, Knossos link and so on.

Of course, I’m open to Hunter’s approach too, but I’d like to see a mockup how it’d work.

My proposal was to just add the #twisted_infinities link at the end of the board description. Everything else would make it too cluttered imo

Dont think we need it for every board.
I made Eve and Descent threads in the #gaming channel of the Discord bc that's halfway between not being there at all and having channels that are unlikely to be used more than every once in a while.

And what if we had a landing page at Sectorgame.com? We could have project links there and nothing would be too cluttered at that place.

The front page could be light on content indeed. Maybe a newsfeed showing the latest newspost, something like "Campaign XY has been re-released, check it out here"; links to FSFiles, the Forum and the project websites at the bottom and that's it