Letterpress Community on Discord - a virtual meeting space

Hi everyone! I wanted to let people know about a new group on the site Discord that’s dedicated to all things Letterpress!

If you’re not familiar with Discord, it is designed for quick, informal discussions. It allows for more immediate feedback and answers to questions than traditional forum posts would allow. It’s like a chat room mixed with a forum.

We are calling this community “Type High Letterpress Collective” – If you’re interested in joining us, the invitation link is https://discord.gg/zEFYGQk

Thanks and have a great day!

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it’s a good idea, and I wish you well.

Unfortunately, you have to give them your e-mail and sign up before you can even look the site over or read the comments / posts of other users. Personally, I’d like to be able to at least get an idea of what sort of people hang out there before signing up

Dave
aka Winking Cat press

A valid point, Dave. I will just say that so far we have a nice international assortment of pressfolk. I assume most are more technologically inclined, but Discord is not too complicated. Certainly a caring, respectful group as I’ve come to expect from the letterpress community.

I’m attaching a screenshot of the group in the Discord app. Specifically the Show and Tell channel which is just what it sounds like. There are other sections for discussing letterpress as a Business, share introductions, troubleshooting equipment, discussing paper, and so much more. We are always open to new ideas to make the group even better though!

image: Show and Tell - Letterpress Discord Group

Show and Tell - Letterpress Discord Group

Sounds like a good forum. However, I tried to sign up and after three or four of those ridiculous ‘I’m not a robot’ choose -a-picture things they told me my email does not exist. I may try again if I get over being fed up with trying.

@David Brewer,
Could it be that you were using the sign-in email and password boxes before having set up a Discord account?
The registration link is tiny if this is the same screen as you’re seeing.

image: Discord account registration

Discord account registration

Many thanks Panther Face Press…..I don’t belong on a computer, but thanks to you I got it right this time…..even managed to successfully prove I’m not a robot…..

Glad to see you made it! :)

anyone get on using Mac I will try again later far as I see I got signed up.

@Todd, I did see a notification that you’d joined the group.

Another discord group…..

discord is fine for quick chats and almost-in-person interaction however it does/can not replace the functionality that most web forum software provides. For one- DC channels generally aren’t archived or searchable from outside of DC. Another is the need to use the DC client instead of your choice of web browser. I could go on :).

I hope people enjoy it, but this old git is on enough systems already.

This group is certainly not meant to act as a substitute for traditional forums like this. The quick chats are really the main appeal here.

If you’re on a computer or tablet you can totally just use Discord from the browser. I still prefer the dedicated software, but it’s not necessary.

As a whole, Discord groups are not public, and require an invitation link like the one I included above. So it makes sense to me that a private chat group should not be searchable by non-members. Content is fully archived and searchable for group members though.

As with any platform though, there will be little quirks and drawbacks here and there.

I’m curious and willing to expose my ignorance: how does Discord have more immediate feedback than briarpress or letpress or reddit (assuming there is a letterpress group on reddit)?

Discord is an almost-real-time chat system- what you post almost immediately appears to other readers of that channel/room. Also, it’s geared to short messages, like single sentences, not longer ones like this. Also, as a chat system, there can be multiple discussions going on in the same channel/room, which can make then harder to follow.

BP & other web fora, such as reddit, don’t automatically update the screen with each new message, you need to refresh the page (although some fora -do- say “there’s a new message here, do you want to see it?”). Their message composition window is better for longer responses where you might want to go edit things before sending.

z!