Brickset forum moving to Discord
Posted by Huw,
We launched our forum on 2nd April 2011 and for many years it was a thriving community with thousands of members and copious posts every day.
Unfortunately, in common with many other traditional forums, its popularity has declined significantly recently, in part due to the rise of social media. It's now at the point where it is no longer viable to continue to fund it on its current platform (Higher Logic Vanilla), which has raised its fees significantly, pricing 'hobby' sites like this out of the market.
The forum is therefore moving to a new platform, Discord, which may be familiar to some of you already. We've been testing it for a couple of months and it looks like it will suit our needs. We hope that moving to a modern platform for discourse will encourage more people to participate, particularly those that have been put off joining the 'old-fashioned' forum.
Here's the link to join our community and I very much hope to see you there.
Switchfoot55, who has very kindly and competently taken the initiative to get things moving, writes:
"Please know that as you enter the Discord, things are still very much a work in progress. We are learning as we go and will continue to make improvements. All we ask if for your support of the community as we all figure this out together.
"There will surely be a learning curve, even maybe for those familiar with Discord. However, the feedback we've received so far from individuals brand new to Discord is that it functions much differently and more smoothly than originally anticipated.
"Time will tell if this will be the permanent landing spot for our group. But we will at least have a place to continue our conversations, traditions, and community.
"Please introduce yourself when you join in. Whether you're keeping your current username or using a new one, connecting the dots will hopefully help establish our current community more quickly. "
The old forum will go offline early in November, and it is hoped that a read-only copy of the conversations can be made available somewhere else in due course.
I'll be modifying the Forum link on the main menu here in the next few days.
131 likes
95 comments on this article
Didn’t even know there was a forum
@Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)
Joined! Could use some improvements though.. You might want to make a suggestions channel ;)
Member since before November 2010 and also never knew there was a Brickset forum, never seen it on the news page, never notied the forum button. Just goes to show come here to read the news each day, use the set database etc. never considered the idea of a forum on Brickset, so never looked for it. Oh my ;-)
@Tuzi said:
"Joined! Could use some improvements though.. You might want to make a suggestions channel ;)"
Done.
Member 8 years, visit nearly every day and I’ve on and off from the start and I had forgotten there was a forum as well. Forums are dying all around and there’s nothing to arrest that decline. But if I had forgotten, then that’s a serious design issue with the site.
@Huw said:
" @Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)"
Never have a need to use the menu
If you visit this site on a mobile device, you would only know about the Forum if you click the Menu tab for the drop down list. There are so many other shiny objects to click and read you may never see it. I have been a member since before time began, but the Menu only gets a click when I want to see my user data. There's just so much to do here!
Oh boy. Moderating a public Discord can be a much greater challenge and time commitment than moderating a dedicated forum, as anyone can just waltz right in without having to make a dedicated account for the website. Hope you all are adequately prepared!
Do be sure you keep things like image and file sharing permissions disabled for new joins, otherwise malicious troll raids can get out of hand VERY quickly. There are a number of auto-moderator bots out there that can help filter out spam and inappropriate content, might be worth looking into setting one up to help ease the burden. Discord's built-in filters aren't very effective.
Best of luck on this new journey!
I had a feeling that many users were oblivious to the Brickset forum. The link is right below the one for My Sets on the menu which is hard to miss IMO.
Big thanks to @Switchfoot55 for all his efforts getting our new Discord set-up.
I'm with @Reventon and @Paul_DLH; I never noticed the forum either! Never used it, naturally, and I don't think I'm be using Discord either.
Maybe put a new permanent link to the discord forum at the top of the mobile Brickset site.
@beige said:
"I haven't used discord (or the forum for that matter) but I assume it is much more efficient. "
It is not. It is a completely different type of the social interaction. One is like, well, a forum — something like a microsom of separate pages, each covering its own subject stuctured for the ease of searching, and the other is an ongoing textwall of chit-chat, pure chaos.
Overall, it's yet another rotation in an everending cycle of people migrating from forums to chats, then from chats to forums, and from forums to chats once again to pursue a brand new thingy -_-.
After following the link, creating an account, providing my phone number, email address and birthdate, I received the following email:
Account Disabled - Violation of TOS/Community Guidelines Notification
Discord has disabled your account for spam and/or platform abuse. Our anti-abuse measures may have flagged your account for any of the following behaviors:
Sending a large number of direct messages in a short span of time
Participating in a server dedicated to spamming Discord
Automating your user account or self-botting
Taking other actions on Discord — for example, joining a ton of servers — faster than humanly possible
Attempting potentially fraudulent activity
Sincerely,
Discord Trust & Safety
WTF??
The problem with Discord or other modern platform is that they do whatever they want with your community and data, the discussions are locked behind account registration and search engines are locked out so no new people can come through search results. All this data will be lost one day or another. Old discussions on Discord are kind of lost anyway.
I hope it will more alive than the forum (that I don't use) if it's the goal
I am a brickset user since 2016 and I know about the forum but I never had the need to use it. We have the comment section, the facebook page and group, tweeter, instagram. And then there is lego reddit on top of it. Too many places to share one's thoughts. A dedicated forum seems to me like a very outdated thing from a different era of the internet. Whenever there's the top read articles list with unusual entries they are almost exclusively because of reddit, why not focus on this place instead of building another community on discord?
I'll miss the simplicity of the forums but welcome the initiative to keep it alive. It'll be a relief for some of the older members I'm sure. I'll be DPDesign on Discord instead of iso3200. Kudos to all involved.
@ICAbricks said:
"Wait... does this mean Brickset.com is getting shut down, or merely getting a new Discord server?"
Of course not.
https://forum.brickset.com is shutting down.
I understand why the change was made, but still the mass consolidation of every forum to reddit/discord leaves a lot of change discretion to the platforms they are on...
I knew about the forum, i’ve been using brickset for most of my life, never used the forum though. Guess that makes me part of the “IN” crowd. Heyo
Is there any age restriction like the previous forum?
EDIT: Never mind, I pass the age limit of the previous forum.
EDIT 2: 18? I guess I can't join. :(
A forum? I feel propelled back into the mid 1990s.
Our Windows XP PC is very outdated, so we're replacing it with a Nintendo Switch.
Honestly, this is a great idea as everyone has Discord and it's more trendy.
This is a mistake
Ah... so this explains all the new peeps. I was so ever curious.
I don't think I'm a fan of Discord but maybe it'll grow on me. I'll miss the old forum for the short time I made use of it as a registered member. I really do prefer a forum to what Discord is offering thus far. But it's not so much about the platform, it's about the community using the platform. I had a fun time doing my LEGO thing alone (before the sibs were old enough and after they were seemingly too old). It has been most fun in recent years communicating with others who are all about that LEGO life too. I have learned a lot!
There is a lot of good information on some threads of the forum that I found searching the net, hope it is possible to keep a read only version somewhere.
@tomahawker said:
"After following the link, creating an account, providing my phone number, email address and birthdate, I received the following email:
Account Disabled - Violation of TOS/Community Guidelines Notification
Discord has disabled your account for spam and/or platform abuse. Our anti-abuse measures may have flagged your account for any of the following behaviors:
Sending a large number of direct messages in a short span of time
Participating in a server dedicated to spamming Discord
Automating your user account or self-botting
Taking other actions on Discord — for example, joining a ton of servers — faster than humanly possible
Attempting potentially fraudulent activity
Sincerely,
Discord Trust & Safety
WTF??"
You forgot not praising Bionicle & Clikits that's a major offense.
Getting on my iPad:
Safari can not open the page because the address is invalid.
When clicking on the accept invite link
All of you saying you never knew about the Forum... You never looked around Brickset, to see what other features there might be?
I don't understand. I really don't.
Brickset had a forum? I know it’s in the menu, but I use the menu only to get to my collection. I had never noticed the forum. Or maybe I saw it but just did not care.
But at the same time, I don’t know what Discord is (don’t throw big ugly rocks at me!). I think I may have heard of it, but I’m not even sure. I tried Twitch with Jang and really disliked it. I understand they are both different, but I don’t feel the need to join something I’m likely never going to use. Like, at all.
Good luck anyway!
> We hope that moving to a modern platform for "discourse"
You mean "Discord"? Or "Discourse" (the other modern forum platform)?
but will this website still be running? With daily posts and all?
Or is EVERYTHING moving to discord?
@Ridgeheart said:
"Hail Eris."
All hail Discordia.
@letyparty said:
"but will this website still be running? With daily posts and all?
Or is EVERYTHING moving to discord?"
Read the article and the comment section!
"The old forum will go offline early in November, and it is hoped that a read-only copy of the conversations can be made available somewhere else in due course."
I second this! It contains a huge amount of info that would be great to have still searchable somewhere.
I never paid attention to the forum either--all my Lego forum needs were (and are) met by Eurobricks, but maybe this could have been an option too
@Spazman said:
"Getting on my iPad:
Safari can not open the page because the address is invalid.
When clicking on the accept invite link"
Same problem with my iPad.
Hmm, not a huge fan of Discord. But I guess it's better then Facebook or nothing.
Not the biggest fan of discord, but I am glad to see the forum live on in some way! I know I haven't been around much for a couple years. Mostly in the shadows just reading here and there. But the forum and its community was always very good to me... even with my constant struggle in and out of my dark ages lol.
I had no idea there was even a forum. I just come every day to this site to read the reviews and see the latest LEGO news.
I knew there was a forum, Huw! I just never used it.
I’ve never used Discord, but I don’t trust it because the name is stupid. Why would you name something that’s supposed to increase communication the opposite?
That’s idiotic.
WHAT?!
I tried to sign up for the old forum a couple of years ago, but it didn't work for some reason. Don't know if I'll bother with the replacement whatever-it-is.
I had been using the Brickset forum very frequently in the first few years after I joined, but after some years I switched to only commenting on the main site.
I had been a member on quite a few forums back in the early days of the internet, but most of them either don't exist anymore or I haven't used them in a long time.
@Reventon said:
" @Huw said:
" @Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)"
Never have a need to use the menu
"
There’s a menu?!?
Switchfoot55 is a wonderful username.
Great band!
I’m pretty familiar with discord. I’ve even made/moderated a few servers myself.
The biggest reason I didn’t use the Forum here was because it felt too detached from the main website. You need a whole other account to use it, and it felt very different from normal Brickset.
Nooooouuuuuuu!
Maybe I'm a bit a boomer, but the I find a forum the more comfortable home for a community.
Ok, Brickset is an uncommon community, it lives on the homepage and the database above all, so the forum is a sort of secondary thing.
I'm one of those who used the forum very rarely, partially due to its low integration with the main website, partially because of its uncommon "shape", I find it uncomfortable and a bit confusing. But I liked the idea that a forum would always been available.
I don't think I will use discord, it is even less comfortable and very data greedy (including unresolved privacy issues). Besides there are too many silly limitations with free accounts.
Did you consider to use a free board with a cheap hosting instead than close the forum? If the community on the forum is small there is no need of a powerful server and huge traffic. That would help to maintain the forum sustainable.
Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid.
I kinda hate Discord. But I was never a big user of the forum anyway, I do most of my forming on Eurobricks and Serebii
I knew there was a forum, but I found out years into using Brickset and felt a little overwhelmed by it, so I just ignored it. I find Discord relatively approachable, but I believe that I'm in the minority, as someone who was introduced to it as a way of communicating with gaming friends.
I also just want to defend the people who didn't know there was a forum, as others have pointed out it's not easily noticeable on mobile and is on another site, with different formatting and a different login. I know it sounds weird, but I find the forum button very easy to miss, despite being in the top-center of the screen on desktop.
I'm curious to see how the discord works out. I tend to find that the comments section of articles covers all my discussion needs, so maybe the more in-the-moment and less archival nature of Discord relative to a forum will be better suited to folks like me.
For a while there, it was the place to be and I’ll forever cherish those times and great discussions with quite a few of you that still participate here as well as too many that mostly moved on. We discussed so many things including set and theme acronyms, forthcoming EOLs as well as set bag counts for those of us venturing into damaged box and aftermarket purchases. And we created a beast of a thread for investing and valuation. :o)
For me, it just became too much of an effort to keep up with while also raising so many little ones. It was pretty awesome, though, for those first couple years.
Cheers to all of you who helped make it great and to all of the interesting discussions. I’m thinking of you Huw, Rocao, Atkinsar, Bluemoose, Boo, Dave, CCC, Pitfall, LostinTranslation, Siders, MCN, Model, Hoya, Mad, prof, 560, Switch, Chap, Bumble, Kungfu, Russell, Rancor, Astro, Pix, BMW, 1265, and so many others. And even LegoFanTexas. :o)
@PixelTheDragon said:
"I’m pretty familiar with discord. I’ve even made/moderated a few servers myself.
The biggest reason I didn’t use the Forum here was because it felt too detached from the main website. You need a whole other account to use it, and it felt very different from normal Brickset. "
I agree, the forum should have been integrated to the brickset website, not a "you're now leaving brickset for another site" That made it feel like it wasn't really a part of brickset.
Instead of Discord effort should have been made to move the brickset forum to Eurobricks. That would have been the best of both worlds - maintain a traditional forum, and have it still be public for everyone. In my opinion, the move to Discord will only decrease participation in the forum, not increase it, which I thought was the goal.
@Tony_Bob said:
"I knew there was a forum, but I found out years into using Brickset and felt a little overwhelmed by it, so I just ignored it. I find Discord relatively approachable, but I believe that I'm in the minority, as someone who was introduced to it as a way of communicating with gaming friends.
I also just want to defend the people who didn't know there was a forum, as others have pointed out it's not easily noticeable on mobile and is on another site, with different formatting and a different login. I know it sounds weird, but I find the forum button very easy to miss, despite being in the top-center of the screen on desktop.
I'm curious to see how the discord works out. I tend to find that the comments section of articles covers all my discussion needs, so maybe the more in-the-moment and less archival nature of Discord relative to a forum will be better suited to folks like me."
Same here, I found the forum a couple months in but gave up at the complexity and separate login, I'm much more familiar on Discord so I'll gladly join the conversation there! similarly though, the discussion in the comment is enough for me most of the time...
I dislike discord intensely as it's a giant mess of chats and text, none of it easily searchable or categorizable. I'll be sad to see the forum go, but I'll admit I barely used it.
I think I'll keep using eurobricks and the comment section here for my discussion needs.
@beige said:
" @Jackthenipper said:
" @Reventon said:
" @Huw said:
" @Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)"
Never have a need to use the menu
"
There’s a menu?!?
"
There's a website?!?!?"
There's an internet?!?!?!?
I'm not sure I'm ready for a Brickset Discord community :|
Bit sad to see; never used the forums but just generally annoyed at this mass-migration from web-searchable, relatively-stable forums to live chats that aren't web accessible, are hard to search, and are inherently doomed whenever the chat program dies (which in Discord's case might not actually be very long from now, given some of the business decisions they've been making along with just their general existence as a VC-funded thing). I definitely understand the reason for closing the forums though, if you can't really reasonably afford it. I do hope you manage to put up a read-only archive of the forums sometime.
@yellowcastle said:
"For a while there, it was the place to be and I’ll forever cherish those times and great discussions with quite a few of you that still participate here as well as too many that mostly moved on. We discussed so many things including set and theme acronyms, forthcoming EOLs as well as set bag counts for those of us venturing into damaged box and aftermarket purchases. And we created a beast of a thread for investing and valuation. :o)
For me, it just became too much of an effort to keep up with while also raising so many little ones. It was pretty awesome, though, for those first couple years.
Cheers to all of you who helped make it great and to all of the interesting discussions. I’m thinking of you Huw, Rocao, Atkinsar, Bluemoose, Boo, Dave, CCC, Pitfall, LostinTranslation, Siders, MCN, Model, Hoya, Mad, prof, 560, Switch, Chap, Bumble, Kungfu, Russell, Rancor, Astro, Pix, BMW, 1265, and so many others. And even LegoFanTexas. :o)"
Aww, thanks!
@yellowcastle said:
"For a while there, it was the place to be and I’ll forever cherish those times and great discussions with quite a few of you that still participate here as well as too many that mostly moved on. We discussed so many things including set and theme acronyms, forthcoming EOLs as well as set bag counts for those of us venturing into damaged box and aftermarket purchases. And we created a beast of a thread for investing and valuation. :o)
For me, it just became too much of an effort to keep up with while also raising so many little ones. It was pretty awesome, though, for those first couple years.
Cheers to all of you who helped make it great and to all of the interesting discussions. I’m thinking of you Huw, Rocao, Atkinsar, Bluemoose, Boo, Dave, CCC, Pitfall, LostinTranslation, Siders, MCN, Model, Hoya, Mad, prof, 560, Switch, Chap, Bumble, Kungfu, Russell, Rancor, Astro, Pix, BMW, 1265, and so many others. And even LegoFanTexas. :o)"
Yes they were happy days and it was a great community. It's a shame it has died a gradual death as people has moved on or gone elsewhere.
@Huw said:
" @yellowcastle said:
"For a while there, it was the place to be and I’ll forever cherish those times and great discussions with quite a few of you that still participate here as well as too many that mostly moved on. We discussed so many things including set and theme acronyms, forthcoming EOLs as well as set bag counts for those of us venturing into damaged box and aftermarket purchases. And we created a beast of a thread for investing and valuation. :o)
For me, it just became too much of an effort to keep up with while also raising so many little ones. It was pretty awesome, though, for those first couple years.
Cheers to all of you who helped make it great and to all of the interesting discussions. I’m thinking of you Huw, Rocao, Atkinsar, Bluemoose, Boo, Dave, CCC, Pitfall, LostinTranslation, Siders, MCN, Model, Hoya, Mad, prof, 560, Switch, Chap, Bumble, Kungfu, Russell, Rancor, Astro, Pix, BMW, 1265, and so many others. And even LegoFanTexas. :o)"
Yes they were happy days and it was a great community. It's a shame it has died a gradual death as people has moved on or gone elsewhere."
I agree, but like I said I am guilty of moving on myself.
My discussion and communication needs are excellently satisfied by the comments sections here on the articles themselves.
Plus, since I've partly moved on from LEGO to other manufacturers (and other hobbies too) I simply don't feel that much need for discussion on all topics LEGO anymore.
Therefore I don't think I will use this new forum on Discord, a service I have not yet tried before anyway.
@beige said:
" @Graupensuppe said:
" @beige said:
" @Jackthenipper said:
" @Reventon said:
" @Huw said:
" @Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)"
Never have a need to use the menu
"
There’s a menu?!?
"
There's a website?!?!?"
There's an internet?!?!?!?"
There's a planet?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!"
Planet, Schmanet, Janet.
@beige said:
" @Graupensuppe said:
" @beige said:
" @Jackthenipper said:
" @Reventon said:
" @Huw said:
" @Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)"
Never have a need to use the menu
"
There’s a menu?!?
"
There's a website?!?!?"
There's an internet?!?!?!?"
There's a planet?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!"
There's a solar system?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??
Perhaps you should change the forum button on the Brickset main page to "Discord" and put the link there @Huw
I've used the forum a few times only and I'm very comfortable with Discord as I game there.
I really like the MOC section that is already up and going, easy to flick through some great MOCs, can't wait to see more.
Great idea of @Tuzi to add suggestions, as it does need a bit of fleshing out, but fantastic start. Great job @Switchfoot55 .
I used to use the forum a lot more when the main Brickset site had links to what's hot in the forum in the side bar (anybody else remember those days), it used to intrigue me to find out more. I did find that some threads would go totally off subject at times. To be honest these days I tend to use it just for the Modular Building rumour and speculation link each year.
I’m surprised and saddened that a reputable website such as Brickset is comfortable promoting Discord given its poor record in protecting children on the site and dealing with child sexual exploitation.
@beige said:
" @bealegopro said:
" @beige said:
" @Graupensuppe said:
" @beige said:
" @Jackthenipper said:
" @Reventon said:
" @Huw said:
" @Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)"
Never have a need to use the menu
"
There’s a menu?!?
"
There's a website?!?!?"
There's an internet?!?!?!?"
There's a planet?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!"
There's a solar system?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??"
There's a universe??!?!?????!?!??!!!!!!?!?!??!??!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!"
No!
“In November of 2011, the LEGO Group officially announced its decision to close LEGO Universe”
I thought this was the forum.
@noshowjoe said:
"Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid."
I got this too and solved it by adding the Discord app as I didn’t have it previously. Once the app is added you can register an account and then be able to accept the invitation here.
I don't like big groups on Discord, I find they get overwhelming too fast for me: I prefer to only use it for chatting privately with small groups of friends where I can easily keep on top of everything, so I don't see myself joining up to this one. The Random [x] of the Day comment sections give me all the regular Lego discussion that I need!
Pretty disappointing and a bad decision. While I don't use the forum here, I've seen multiple other communities make the same dumb move.
Discord is where information goes to die. It's hidden away, unindexed, unfindable, unsearchable and inaccessible from the web (and entirely inaccessible even to view without a Discord account -- which many people can't get because Discord hates, e.g., Hotmail or custom domain email addresses and/or forces mobile phone verification.
@beige said:
"I haven't used discord (or the forum for that matter) but I assume it is much more efficient."
You'd actually be surprised: It's rather the opposite. It's part of the modern Internet where things don't live on the web, can't be searched, are walled of in separate, non-interoperable fiefs, and are available at the sole whim of some company's policy.
@yellowcastle said:
"For a while there, it was the place to be and I’ll forever cherish those times and great discussions with quite a few of you that still participate here as well as too many that mostly moved on. We discussed so many things including set and theme acronyms, forthcoming EOLs as well as set bag counts for those of us venturing into damaged box and aftermarket purchases. And we created a beast of a thread for investing and valuation. :o)
For me, it just became too much of an effort to keep up with while also raising so many little ones. It was pretty awesome, though, for those first couple years.
Cheers to all of you who helped make it great and to all of the interesting discussions. I’m thinking of you Huw, Rocao, Atkinsar, Bluemoose, Boo, Dave, CCC, Pitfall, LostinTranslation, Siders, MCN, Model, Hoya, Mad, prof, 560, Switch, Chap, Bumble, Kungfu, Russell, Rancor, Astro, Pix, BMW, 1265, and so many others. And even LegoFanTexas. :o)"
I remember back in the day when there was always some deal or clearance on LEGO posted on the forums. These caused me too spend too much, but save a lot on LEGO. I seem to remember LegoFanTexas getting heat from others for hoarding LEGO and then LEGO started the clamp down on resellers.
I don’t think the magic of the Brickset Forum will be recaptured again. Thanks, Huw and all.
Don’t worry Huw! Many of us knew about the Forum, even if it wasn’t on the top of our priorities while using Brickset.
I refuse to use any social media (unless YouTube counts?), but this seems like a logical evolution for those who do. I used Google+ daily until the day it bit the dust, but haven't touched Insta-snap-tweet-redapp for the sake of my sanity.
I also find is amusing that this app that people keep using to build "communities" is literally named a word that means disagreement and lack of harmony: Discord.
@michael4me said:
" @noshowjoe said:
"Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid."
I got this too and solved it by adding the Discord app as I didn’t have it previously. Once the app is added you can register an account and then be able to accept the invitation here."
See, the amount of work that takes simply isn't worth it
So the forum no-one used is moving to a location no-one likes? That’s the perfect way to make it ‘go away’.
A lot of people who never used the forum have a lot of opinions on what to do with a forum they didn't interact with thus securing its demise.
Hilarious.
Ah I hate Discord, Facebook and stuff like that. Why can't the internet just remain forums? The golden age of internet is long gone.
I will never sign up for Discord.
It's a shame it has come to this, but hopefully it will cover what is needed, or like was mentioned can try to find another venue.
I liked the forum and the layout, but times gotta change so we must adapt.
I'll sign up/take a look at the discord stuff, but I can imagine I won't be on there like I was on this forum.
God, I remember arguing so much at the forum announcement because of the over-16 age requirement.
Aaaaaand of course my first comment there is mine... absolute cringefest, avoid like the plague. :P
Never ended up joining it in the end, oh well.
Still find it a shame that it's closing, think traditional forums should still have a place on the Internet for more "thought out" discussions instead of the usual "off-the-cuff" messages like on Discord, Twitter, or social media in general.
The irony is that I personally experienced a closure of a forum I frequented quite a lot, but the alternative, another forum but with God-awful apparently custom software, was so rubbish that I joined a Discord server of the forum's same subject matter, so I am somewhat familiar with the platform... and the problem. :P
But in any case... I don't think I'll join the Discord, I still have a passing interest in LEGO (hence why I still visit Brickset every now and then! ;) ), but not enough to dedicate a lot of time discussing it.
Hope it works out well for you, though! :)
Thanks for the call-outs @yellowcastle :) It’s been real.
@Ridgeheart said:
" @beige said:
" @bealegopro said:
" @beige said:
" @Graupensuppe said:
" @beige said:
" @Jackthenipper said:
" @Reventon said:
" @Huw said:
" @Reventon said:
"Didn’t even know there was a forum"
Perhaps you need better glasses, there's a huge great 'Forum' button on the menu :)"
Never have a need to use the menu
"
There’s a menu?!?
"
There's a website?!?!?"
There's an internet?!?!?!?"
There's a planet?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!"
There's a solar system?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??"
There's a universe??!?!?????!?!??!!!!!!?!?!??!??!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!"
Not for long. ROYAL RAINBOW!"
But... how does this compare to the shadow box version?
I’ll admit I never really got onto the Brickset forum, and as life has gotten more complex, the importance of other forums has also declined for me.
However I would strongly echo the sentiments of other users who are sad to see the gradual decline of forums. I am a journeyman DIY’er and have found forums an invaluable source of information for all sort of obscure queries over the years. It’s far more efficient to be able to do public searches through records going back years, than to have to go to front pages of communities to ask what may be quite basic questions.
Hopefully the old forum can be archived as read-only somehow rather than just having a decade's data go up in smoke...
I'll toss out another request to see if any users here are familiar with running a Discord Server and may be willing to help get some bots established to keep things in order and productive. Although I may have helped spearhead something, I still very much feel like a little fish in a big pond.
Thanks to all who have already joined! (Now more than 1k members)
As noted in the original post here, it is very much a work in progress. All the suggestions we can get will be helpful!
@tomahawker said:
"After following the link, creating an account, providing my phone number, email address and birthdate, I received the following email:
Account Disabled - Violation of TOS/Community Guidelines Notification
Discord has disabled your account for spam and/or platform abuse. Our anti-abuse measures may have flagged your account for any of the following behaviors:
Sending a large number of direct messages in a short span of time
Participating in a server dedicated to spamming Discord
Automating your user account or self-botting
Taking other actions on Discord — for example, joining a ton of servers — faster than humanly possible
Attempting potentially fraudulent activity
Sincerely,
Discord Trust & Safety
WTF??"
To be clear, I have done none of the above actions that should cause my account to be disabled. I have sent several requests to the Discord support team with no response. I see that the forum link here at Brickset now leads to the Discord site so I have no way to contact any of the Brickset team supporting this transition.
Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue?
I knew about the forum, but haven't used it much so maybe my input shouldn't be given too much importance.
But discord is one of the worst choices that could have been made!
Most of the problems have been mentioned, so I won't repeat them, I'll just say the same that I say everywhere else that considers moving to discord:
Discord is proprietary crap!
@MrBob said:
"Oh boy. Moderating a public Discord can be a much greater challenge and time commitment than moderating a dedicated forum, as anyone can just waltz right in without having to make a dedicated account for the website. Hope you all are adequately prepared!
Do be sure you keep things like image and file sharing permissions disabled for new joins, otherwise malicious troll raids can get out of hand VERY quickly. There are a number of auto-moderator bots out there that can help filter out spam and inappropriate content, might be worth looking into setting one up to help ease the burden. Discord's built-in filters aren't very effective.
Best of luck on this new journey!"
Even employing dedicated long time useres of brickset and the forum as moderators would help curb the spammers and trolls
I'll talk to a few friends of mine who run a minecraft server as well as a discord. Il see what they recommend for automated moderation.
I sady was one of those people who moved on. I even stoped using brickset for a time
@yellowcastle said:
"For a while there, it was the place to be and I’ll forever cherish those times and great discussions with quite a few of you that still participate here as well as too many that mostly moved on. We discussed so many things including set and theme acronyms, forthcoming EOLs as well as set bag counts for those of us venturing into damaged box and aftermarket purchases. And we created a beast of a thread for investing and valuation. :o)
For me, it just became too much of an effort to keep up with while also raising so many little ones. It was pretty awesome, though, for those first couple years.
Cheers to all of you who helped make it great and to all of the interesting discussions. I’m thinking of you Huw, Rocao, Atkinsar, Bluemoose, Boo, Dave, CCC, Pitfall, LostinTranslation, Siders, MCN, Model, Hoya, Mad, prof, 560, Switch, Chap, Bumble, Kungfu, Russell, Rancor, Astro, Pix, BMW, 1265, and so many others. And even LegoFanTexas. :o)"
Similarly it brought me joy and bags of laughter for many years before life got too busy to handle. But I made IRL friends from it and even a trip to Bilund which I will never forget <3
@emQ said:
"...and/or forces mobile phone verification."
I've used discord for years and I have never owned a mobile phone so the "and" is not correct.
I'm unable to join using Chrome on my Chromebook laptop. When I click the join, I get:
"Whoops, unable to invite" and a lot of errors in the debug console.
Nov 13
7:52 PM EDT