Knowledge is a tool, but a tool can cause harm if one is not prepared to use it right. Knowledge is liberating, knowledge is also a curse.
With this idea in mind, I welcome my readers to contemplate and weigh on a the following question:
At what stage of someone's journey on Steemit should they be introduced to Discord?
... that is the question.
Some months ago I wrote a post about how I joined Discord and how I discovered GinaBot called:
"GINAbot - How I Outsourced My "Stalking" of Others"
Since then, I've invited many other users to join Discord, but the results were very varied...
My theory now, is that a user should only be introduced to Discord after they've spent enough time on Steemit to understand how it works, they recognize it's short-comings on many levels, and also figured a way to work within the confines of these obstacles. It is my experience that being exposed to challenge generates commitment. While if a a challenge is taken away from a person, their commitment is softened.
We, the more experienced users and community builders, take Discord for granted, and at this stage we cannot imagine how we could operate without it - without Ginabot, without PAL, without private messages... but there was a short time in our journey where we had to make do. And only after we started asking the right questions did someone came around and guided us to Discord.
In my case, the first question was:
- How can I chat privately? (oh yeah, at that time steemit.chat still existed, so I went there...)
But the next questions were:
- How do I keep up with the particular people that I want to support (on time)?
- How can I organize my feed to show me the topics that I am actually interested in?
- Also is there a way to know who resteemed your post?
The first question came to me when I was rep (35 - 45), so pretty early on... but the following questions came to me when I reached rep (50+)... This means, that up until that point I managed to keep up with the people I followed, and didn't yet feel the need to reach people in order to grow on the platform ( in many ways thanks to @curie's great support which so many newbies rely on). Also I didn't yet know anyone on a more personal level to have the need to chat privately; which also means, that at the time, Steemit was still something I wasn't feeling committed to, or engaged with.
Furthermore, after I got on Discord, it took me a while to figure things out, luckily I had friends and familiar faces from Steemit who helped me out... but the main issue, was that it started to consume more and more of my time, while I already was finding Steemit quite time consuming. Of course being on discord also saved a lot of time for me - Ginabot is completely vital to me at this point! In other words, I had to adapt...
So what might happen, when someone like me - who views Discord as a vital part of growth on Steemit, tells a new Steemit user about Discord as soon as they joins the platform? They get overwhelmed, they get disoriented, they confuse their priorities... they were given knowledge - a tool, but they didn't yet developed the muscles to wield it correctly. And so, what I've seen happen is people simply get fatigued from all this information, notifications and interaction rushing at them - like a relationship that got too intimate and serious too fast.
My conclusion is that a person should only get introduced to Discord when they either start asking the right questions, that only being on discord can answer... (generally around rep 45 - 50+)... or when they start to express how difficult it's getting to keep up the pace.
Essentially, It's really important to let people figure out the system at their own pace.
Your thoughts
This is of course an invitation for discussion. I think there can be other perspectives that i haven't taken into consideration, and if anyone has some thoughts or experiences to share on the matter, please leave a comment.
Thank you so much for reading!
-A N K A
