Discord is a great platform for members to chat and share sports strategies with each other. We can also use it to send notifications when we have uploaded coupons, pushed tools live and updated results pages.
Discord is not an appropriate forum for the BBTeam to engage with members. This is because:
- Any comment, feature request, question or bit of feedback can get missed or lost over time on Discord. Having a support system allows us to create a manageable log for action.
- Discord is a 24/7 platform. In the past we have been tagged with requests as early as 4am and as late as 1am. It is not possible to provide immediate feedback on a 24/7 platform with finite resources.
- The BBTeam are held to a different standard to members in conversation. If someone asks us to calculate 2+2 we may answer 4. On a public forum anyone can argue that it is 5. This member isn’t held to the same standards as we are, and we then need to prove 2+2 equals 4. The ideal way to communicate this is through logic, data and clear reasoning. This is suited to blogs and support tickets that we can take our time on – but it is not appropriate for live two-way conversation on Discord.
- We need to make decisions on what work takes priority on any given day. Often we are dealing with the absolute priorities of (1) keeping the site online and (2) keeping the scrapers live and odds up to date. This often leaves us with no time to attend to member requested projects, and we have to push these back.
- A large community of members will naturally have conflicting opinions as to:
- What features should be a priority
- Which IT features to implement
- The seriousness of bug fix requests
- What strategies to report in blogs
- The allocation of finite bbteam resourcing
We need to make decisions on each of these and it is often a case of doing what is best for the community as opposed to the individual.
For these reasons we ask members to submit feature requests, bug fixes and questions to us via support. We are able to take it offline, and give it the attention it requires in a timescale that works under the finite resources we have available. Historically members were able to @ us on Discord and get an immediate reply, but this got to the point it was no longer sustainable. We appreciate understanding in this domain.