In our discussion of the Discord plugin initiative , @wchargin makes a case for having a “cred free zone” in the Discord plugin.
I actually kind of like that the Discord doesn’t have any cred attached to it right now.
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There’s also a totally separate sense in which it’s nice to have a “cred-free zone”: it creates an environment without any weird transactional dynamics. I can freely use a :+1: reaction to indicate that I agree with a comment, or to vote in an ad hoc poll, or to simply convey that I’ve seen the message and don’t have anything to add, without having to think too much about what exactly I mean and what the ramifications of this are. I try not to give too much thought to these things, anyway, but they’re always there to some degree—and I know that others have felt this, too.
In the replies, I make a case for why having cred in Discord does make sense: both because it feels more fair :
it feels more compassionate to SourceCred’s users. Saying “we aren’t going to allow anyone to value your contribution unless you go through the extra effort of writing a Discourse post” feels heavy-handed to me, and will bias cred flows towards people who are willing to both jump through hoops, and self promote.
In the past, some community members have expressed that they’re less comfortable posting on Discourse than on Discord; is it appropriate for people who mostly participate on Discord to not have any first-class way to get cred?
That said, I agree that running SourceCred on Discord will change the vibe on our forum. But I think we have a responsibility as a community to lean into that complexity.
Having cred minting on the Discord may change the vibe. (Why didn’t anyone
That said, this isn’t really an issue that’s specific to having a Discord plugin–it’s a tension at the very heart of SourceCred as a social system. By turning SourceCred off in our Discord, we’re avoiding a rich source of dogfooding. As the people building SourceCred, I think we have a responsibility to lean fully into the paradigm, even in instances where it may be uncomfortable.
Suppose that having a Discord plugin really does create social problems for us, or harm our community. If so, it is right and proper that we discover this first–and try to understand how to improve it, or what boundaries should be set. If we don’t do this ourselves, but still create a plugin system that invites a Discord plugin, then we are inviting others to follow where we don’t lead.
Since this affects the community, I would love to get feedback, thoughts, and feels from others. (And – thank you to @wchargin for clearly surfacing this valuable concern.)
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