Hello everyone,
Today, we are incredibly excited to announce that we have launched the official Framework community Discord!
We hope to start hosting events with all of you using this platform and release some fun new community initiatives over time using this server.
If you have any questions regarding Discord or how to use the platform, please feel free to ask!
We hope to see you there!
Glad to hear you have been busy. Nice for those who are into it.
But having been on Discord and (gag) Facebook, please donât make things only available there.
Keep us folks in mind who donât want to be forced to use Discord or Facebook, especially for âperksâ.
I would rather see progress with the core mission and more products than ways to play with others.
Keep it simpleâŚ
We will be sure not to! We will be dedicating as much time to all of our community platforms/social platforms as we will to Discord! Some things may be easier to have on Discord, but each platform of course has its own perks that we will be using/looking into!
That is definitely the focus! My job, however, will be all community/social related things so whenever we do something for the community or social media, does not mean we are taking away from the development of anything else as we have a dedicated team for our core mission/products. My job is to just have fun with you all and ensure our community is happy! 
iâd personally prefer a service which supports open standards.
i know this is often a trade-off between usability, cost, accessibility, and openness and maybe Discord is the right trade-off for this community. but iâm curious: did you consider more open alternatives such as Matrix, Zulip, Mattermost, RocketChat, IRC, Jabber, etc? it seems like these would align better with your teamâs philosophy.
of course, at the end of the day itâs more important to me that the hardware, firmware, and software on the laptops themselves are open (as you have done by releasing the EC source code), and if taking an easier route for something like chat enables the community to more effectively do that, maybe thatâs the right trade-off to make.
We for sure have looked into these platforms and there is always a chance we use them in the future! We just chose to use Discord for now as Discord is widely known and used by many! So, it should be the easiest for someone to join and use as another way to interact with our awesome community :>
I totally see the point of the other commenters here. There is value to staying pure/true to the cause, so to say 
But I wanna throw in that especially right now you could totally argue that this choice of an additional platform is in line with Frameworks mission on the aspect of outreach.
Without (new) people getting to know (and engaged with) the company and its product, Framework wonât go far.
Itâs not even about open alternatives providing a worse experience per se than commercial platform XYZ - but their userbases are comparatively tiny and made up of people who more are likely to (get to) know Framework anyway.
The product itself is so obviously trying to be something anyone could by, as in not only the people who already care a huge amount about right to repair etc. And I really like that, because it gives me a bit more confidence in the potential and longevity of the company.
Thus to me it seems consequential that the community management also adopts an approach where (at least in the beginning) you try to find some acceptable compromises to get the message out there.
People are just more likely to join a new server/group/whatever on a service theyâre already using than setting up with a totally new network.
Simple platform economics - unfortunately, as I totally see why in a perfect world open alternatives would be better. But having some professional experience with such decisions myself, there might also be more reasons why Discord might be especially interesting for the Framework team like e.g. targeting a different demographic than the one that is likely to participate in this forum.
Although I have it easy on this topic 'cause I use Discord, based on the last few months Iâd say Framework has probably earned some trust that they at large will actually practice what they preach.
There is an unofficial matrix server over at https://matrix.to/#/#framework-space:matrix.org, and itâs bridged with unofficial discord server as well.
Invite link appears to be invalid/expired
Didnât even realise they were having issues but all is well now
@FrameworkBee @Nandor_Hulverscheidt
As far as I see it, the choice of a real-time communication platform doesnât have to be an exclusive one! Framework can run their Discord and use a free Matrix bridge. One of the advantages of Matrix (and other federated systems) is that Framework doesnât even have to run their own âofficialâ server. Everyone can join the bridged Space from their own server or any public server like matrix.org.
I bridged the Community Discord to Matrix some time ago, using Travisâs amazing free bridge âserviceâ. That was a one-time setup of about one hour and from then on, it just ran with no further input from my side. There are people on the Matrix side who didnât even realize that the space was bridged to Discord.
If you want to take it a step further you could then use Matrix as a hub and add bridges to Telegram, IRC, etc. and let everyone just use the service they prefer and still be able to talk to everyone else in the community. I think this is a very powerful tool that should not be quickly dismissed.
Unofficial IRC channel #framework on irc.libera.chat. Will look into a bridge with the other services as well.
For everyone mentioning the bridge. We definitely have plans to look into it. But, it is unfortunately not at the top of our list at the moment so we can support other initiatives! However, we hope to support it soon!
Just popped in there with an alt xmpp account I bridge to IRC with. So far it is just me and the channel bot. 
Thanks though!
@FrameworkBee Awesome! Discord seems to me exactly the right place for an extended Framework community, potentially reaching a new audience on a more widely used platform, without descending to Metaâs level of commercialism.
It will be interested to see how how Discord can be seeded so there are lively conversations there, nothing is as dead a silent channel, whether its IRC or Discord - integrations/bridges as others have mentioned may help,
Just thought itâd be worth mentioning here since it wasnât clear to me before I joined it - the goal of the Discord is apparently to be a sort of âcommunityâ, a gathering place for people with (presumably) a shared interest (their Fw laptop) but to discuss largely unrelated things.
There are channels for memes, art, pets, general software and hardware, saying âomg cant w8 4 my lAptOp!â, and âwot monita shud i by?â, etc., but not anything actually particularly on-topic. I suggested a channel for people interested in tinkering with third-party expansion cards for example, but apparently it wouldnât be used âenoughâ, whatever that means. When I joined I expected to find that, and perhaps âDIY hardware suggestionsâ, and âtroubleshootingâ, but no, none of that.
So I really wouldnât worry about it taking over from the forum (and forcing you to sign up or miss out) any time soon anyway, since it essentially only âcompetesâ with the âGeneral Topicsâ section, which describes itself as:
Need a break from talking about Linux or expansion cards? With this category, you can talk about your pets, send memes, talk about your day, etc. This category is for Framework lovers and those who just want to hang out.
It seems a bit odd to me, (but fine, whatever, I just left) especially since it was mentioned on the mailing list (as here) without explaining. Surely Iâm not alone in expecting it to be (at least predominantly) on-topic Framework-related stuff?
@OJFord Not sure when you joined (and left), but based on feedback like yours, a âFrameworkâ channel category was recently created for more on-topic discussion.
We love to listen to user feedback as itâs very important to us! There will be a few channels/topics, however, that we will keep native to specific platforms mainly due to the ease of access. We have thought about introducing a development channel to our Discord but right now until given certain platform updates, we donât see a need unless we see more of our community asking for one. However, most use the forum for their developments especially due to the organization it provides.
As much as we would love to add every channel requested, we do need to ensure it will be used just from a moderation standpoint and to not overload the community with content/channels. That is why we will archive channels if they stop being used for weeks at a time to introduce new ones as we want to make this a space for everyone!
To address additional points mentioned by @OJFord is that not everybody in our community enjoys the technical side of it and why they use our off-topic channels. This is why we had recently introduced a category for more Framework related content as Feesh mentioned to ensure everyone enjoys our Discord in a way.
Our biggest goal with using Discord is to build a community, host events, and create new initiatives that cannot be used on any other platform. We offer the Forum, and Reddit for more dedicated Framework content and now our Discord Framework category.
Weâre sorry to hear that the Discord wasnât right for you and we do absolutely appreciate your feedback. We had recently launched our Discord so have been changing it as we go as we have a growing community and are learning how we can best cater to everyone!
That sums it up well - I just assumed it would be Framework focussed (otherwise why am I in the Framework Discord server, not the whatever else (local, friends and family, colleagues, whatever) server?) but having had that discussion there it seems I just donât âgetâ Discord or use it the way most people do.
No worries, you donât owe me anything! I donât have a problem with it existing as it is, Iâd just suggest making it a bit clearer - I joined from the newsletter âhey weâre on Discord nowâ and it just wasnât at all what I expected, surely itâs not just me that would imagine it to be like the forum (same sort of sections/categories as channels) just more real-time & chatty? The first response here was worrying that it would take over and forum use decline.
