[Suggestions] Discord Community & (User) Privacy on Discord Servers

I love Discord for many things. One use I've been talking about with some people, and am currently trying to work on, is a Discord Community for nerodiverse people. There are just a few things that if we could add, that would make Discord amazing for communities like this.

Discord Communities

Discord is amazingly awesome for communities, in some ways. However, the ability to add a forum like channel would be amazing, IMHO. Sure, you may argue that there are better platforms than Discord for this. You're right. This is just a concept, one I'm not entirely sure on myself. It's just a thought, and maybe the community (and the developers) will like it, maybe they won't. Never know unless I post, right?

Anyways, the idea is you can create a Text Channel, a Voice Channel, or a Thread Channel (name is TBD). Instead of the system being focus on messages, like a Text Channel, it's based on threads and collections, and should be searchable. Even if these thread based channels don't support categories, like normal forums, that's okay. We can just create more thread channels to add that functionality. At minimum, a user should be able to go into a thread channel, and create a post. Similar to a forum post. They add a title, then the body. Normal Discord text capabilities, mentioning, markup formatting, however with a much larger text length limit, if any at all. Other users can open this post, and comment, similar to a forum system.

I know Discord isn't a forum platform, it's a chat platform. However, the uses of Discord have changed over time, and I think this could be helpful. Like game developers who use their Discord to collect feedback and suggestions, a thread based system would be very handy for organising content! 

We only need two new formatting things. The first thing is the ability to link to another post, similar to how you can link to channels, maybe using a format like "#threadchannel0#monkeyfish" (monkeyfish is the ID, not the post title. Using words to represent very large digits is a easy human readable way to identify them) or "#threadchannel0/monkeyfish".

The second thing that needs added is the ability to quote a user. Seriously Discord, we have wanted this for a long time now. It is a really really useful thing. If I'm in a busy channel, and I ask a question and then go to sleep, responding to messages I received overnight is kinda confusing, since it isn't always obvious what my response is, so they need to dig around for my previous message. If I could just quote their previous message, providing a coherent context thread, that'd make things so much easier.

User Privacy on Discord Servers

For some servers, like my Nerodiverse Discord, sometimes you don't want to broadcast who you are. That's why I am suggesting the ability to make a Discord Server support anonymous mode. When you join a server, or via the server settings, if a server supports anonymous mode, your profile on that server won't directly link to your Discord profile. This has some big reasons. For example, I have a "Depression" channel in my Nerodiverse Discord, and not everyone might feel comfortable posting their stories there since everyone can see that they posted it. Instead, users posts would only be associated with their username within that server. Even if they send a friend request, they wouldn't be able to see what other servers they are in. The user would be able to choose if they want to share their real identity when sending and accepting a friend request, or if they want to use their identity from that server only. Administrator users would be able to see the owner of a profile within their server, and there'd be a new permissions roles can have to see this too.

Another method to fix this, is what I call "Discord Personalities". Instead of having a "fake" username for each Discord, you can create a Personality on your Discord account. When you join a Discord server, you will have the option what Discord Personality to use, and possibly even change this via settings. It works almost like an entirely new Discord Account, except they're all associated via the same owner account. Again, admins can see who owns it, and have a permission they can give roles to do the same. Either that, or if you don't want admins to see the owner, if a user get's banned from a Discord Server, it doesn't just ban that profile - it bans their account itself. This means they can use the same Discord Personality in multiple servers, but keep specific servers private. If you don't want your friends in the "Call of Duty Discord" knowing you're also in the "Fortnite Discord", you can just create a new Discord Personality. Change what information is shared on each Personality, to make privacy easily customisable.

Last Remarks

I am a huge fan of Discord, in many ways. I have a lot of suggestions that I want to share, however, I don't want to cram this single post about every single idea I have, that's stupid. I'll likely be creating more posts. I have a notebook just filled with suggestions I have for various companies, and Discord has at least a page or two just for itself. Please do respond. I want to hear what you agree and disagree with. My biggest suggestion is the second one, about privacy. The first one is just something that'd be handy, but I'm not as concerned with. Thanks for reading!