To answer the question of whether I would want to see more or less of these kinds of articles: absolutely yes. You basically put into words the reason I joined ProleWiki (and more so the reason I became a Marxist-Leninist in the first place). Having reminders like this really puts me back on track when my life's becoming a bit stale and I fall off of doing the things that really matter to me. Keep on writing, comrade!
This resonates deeply with my experience as a former admin of a sizable Discord community plagued by systemic challenges and chronic struggles.
Many of the things you outline mirror our three-year effort to salvage a drowning community. While we successfully diagnosed the core, urgent problems, none of it mattered because the server owner ghosted, disagreed with, or refused to implement critical decisions—despite those decisions being made democratically by the few active staff members, who truly understood the server’s conditions. No amount of prototyping, member surveys, or iterative improvements could compensate for his refusal to address critical technical and structural limitations. He was also unwilling to prune inactive mods and admins who were close to him (the owner himself was perpetually absent) and dismissed culture-building as “overkill.” We couldn’t even attempt to automate a YouTube/Twitch video notification channel without pushback. A harsh lesson emerged: even the slickest design thinking collides with immovable walls when leadership (in this case, the owner and his close inactive friends in the staff) lacks genuine investment in the community.
Thank you for articulating these principles so clearly—they’re a toolkit I’ll keep carrying forward, albeit now tempered by a lesson on organizational inertia.
Thanks for your comment, I'm really glad to hear this helped you! Yes, unfortunately, good intentions don't exist in a vacuum and there will sometimes be friction caused by perceived loss of control or similar insecurities. Sometimes, the best solution might be to bail and take what you can with you haha. Conserving effort is also a huge part of design, imo, and if the owner wants to rule over a pile of dirt, let them.
Only three staff members remained active for a while (two mods and one admin). After exhausting all possible avenues to move forward, we concluded that continuing made little sense if the server owner remained absent, uncooperative, or unwilling to support our ideas and decisions—since implementing them without his approval was impossible.
The three of us agreed to do a few final critical changes (without consulting the owner or his inner circle) before stepping down, prioritizing the safety of the community members, who would be left without any active staff support. Then, we left. The server is now virtually dead.
Beyond the owner’s disengagement, there was an irreconcilable divide in how the server and community were perceived. Two conflicting visions existed within the staff: the "conservative" stance (held by the owner and his inner circle), which viewed the server as merely a casual chat space with no broader goals, and the "progressive" stance (supported by most staff, ex-staff, and community members), which aimed to expand the server’s features to align with the community’s interests and aspirations. Despite our majority, we lacked the permissions and authority to turn this vision into reality.
To answer the question of whether I would want to see more or less of these kinds of articles: absolutely yes. You basically put into words the reason I joined ProleWiki (and more so the reason I became a Marxist-Leninist in the first place). Having reminders like this really puts me back on track when my life's becoming a bit stale and I fall off of doing the things that really matter to me. Keep on writing, comrade!
Thanks for your feedback! I'm glad this was useful to you. I might prepare more design articles every now and then, then.
This resonates deeply with my experience as a former admin of a sizable Discord community plagued by systemic challenges and chronic struggles.
Many of the things you outline mirror our three-year effort to salvage a drowning community. While we successfully diagnosed the core, urgent problems, none of it mattered because the server owner ghosted, disagreed with, or refused to implement critical decisions—despite those decisions being made democratically by the few active staff members, who truly understood the server’s conditions. No amount of prototyping, member surveys, or iterative improvements could compensate for his refusal to address critical technical and structural limitations. He was also unwilling to prune inactive mods and admins who were close to him (the owner himself was perpetually absent) and dismissed culture-building as “overkill.” We couldn’t even attempt to automate a YouTube/Twitch video notification channel without pushback. A harsh lesson emerged: even the slickest design thinking collides with immovable walls when leadership (in this case, the owner and his close inactive friends in the staff) lacks genuine investment in the community.
Thank you for articulating these principles so clearly—they’re a toolkit I’ll keep carrying forward, albeit now tempered by a lesson on organizational inertia.
Thanks for your comment, I'm really glad to hear this helped you! Yes, unfortunately, good intentions don't exist in a vacuum and there will sometimes be friction caused by perceived loss of control or similar insecurities. Sometimes, the best solution might be to bail and take what you can with you haha. Conserving effort is also a huge part of design, imo, and if the owner wants to rule over a pile of dirt, let them.
What ended up happening with the server?
Only three staff members remained active for a while (two mods and one admin). After exhausting all possible avenues to move forward, we concluded that continuing made little sense if the server owner remained absent, uncooperative, or unwilling to support our ideas and decisions—since implementing them without his approval was impossible.
The three of us agreed to do a few final critical changes (without consulting the owner or his inner circle) before stepping down, prioritizing the safety of the community members, who would be left without any active staff support. Then, we left. The server is now virtually dead.
Beyond the owner’s disengagement, there was an irreconcilable divide in how the server and community were perceived. Two conflicting visions existed within the staff: the "conservative" stance (held by the owner and his inner circle), which viewed the server as merely a casual chat space with no broader goals, and the "progressive" stance (supported by most staff, ex-staff, and community members), which aimed to expand the server’s features to align with the community’s interests and aspirations. Despite our majority, we lacked the permissions and authority to turn this vision into reality.