User:Викидим/Discord from Discord

Recently more and more Discord communities pop-up on Wikipedia. I have witnessed the disastrous results of introduction of this tool on Russian Wikipedia, and would like to offer some observations and highlight problems. For the ones who do not have time to read this long text, an executive summary: Wikipedia is not a social network, this is one of the main reasons why we can create encyclopedia here in an atmosphere of relative civility. Keep it this way, do not allow social networks (Discord included) to split us into users and non-users.

Now, point-by-point:

1. For a variety of reasons, I do not not use social networks beyond what is absolutely necessary for my real job. There are many editors with the same preferences, I daresay - majority among the ones who preach WP:exopedianism. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not a recluse, but simply prefer face-to-face interactions.
2. I do not have Discord client installed, and even if I would install it, I will not monitor messages from it on a timely basis, because of #1. For the current user of Discord (who is already there for whatever previous reason, and for brevity is referred to as "user" here), the cost of joining and monitoring discussions is low: they already have a stream of messages to deal with.
3. There is a noticeable demographic difference between wikipedians who happen to be Discord users and the ones who are not (referred to as "non-users"). I cannot precisely define this difference, but I know it when I see it.
4. As with any demographic split, there is a multitude of issues on which the opinions are markedly different across the divide. These are not confined to the unholy trinity of sex, religion, and politics, but spread wide and include a very broad set of topics. On Russian Wikipedia a hot point of contention was, for example, use of neologisms in the text of our articles.
5. Discord allows for a fast feedback. In my opinion, there is no benefit here: with the exception of fighting the vandals, there is nothing in writing an encyclopedia that warrants a truly speedy resolution. There is an important drawback to the speed, though: the users are able to discuss the issue and come to a on-Discord consensus before non-users like me are even aware that the issue is being discussed.
6. When the users finally arrive on-wiki, they already have a pre-baked solution, which in their opinion is, naturally, consensual, even though the non-users so far had no say in it (and are unable even to easily read the deliberations).
7. Due to #4, it is inevitable that sometimes the non-users are near-unanimously opposed to the proposal suggested by users, but they are not organized and lack the tool of coordination. The declared open-to-all nature of Discord makes the announcement there about a particular on-wiki discussion formally not a subject to the restrictions on WP:canvassing, even though in practice the announcement will only reach a quite selected group that, per the same #4, might be united on one side of the issue.
8. Once #6 happens, the non-users stand little chance of having their opinion taken into account due to the large mismatch in the people count: where a minor issue without Discord might attract one or two other editors who really care about the article, and with whom it is therefore relatively easy to build a consensus, with Discord a non-user might face five users, four of which had formed their opinion based on what the fifth one shared, unopposed, in Discord. The discussions are not pleasant and feel pointless to both users and non-users.
9. All this can happen within the confines of WP:AGF, with users and non-users doing their best to improve the encyclopedia. Russian Wikipedia already went down this rabbit hole: an "us vs. them" divide very visible since 2020, with one party well-represented on Discord, and another mostly avoiding it. The only recourse available to the non-users in practice is in voting, and the election of new admins, in particular, became near-impossible, with the ensuing effort to push the members of the one faction (guess which one?) out to resolve the issue.

Summing up:

• Discord (like Wikipedia itself) is not for everyone. However, the ability to write encyclopedia and affinity for social networking are not correlated, so Discord by its nature is not inclusive of all active wikipedians;
• use of social networks for encyclopedic work creates a cohesive subgroup of editors, the users of these networks;
• non-users like me get the short stick, Wikipedia as a whole loses.

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