Join Us in Our New Discord Community!

Mark Rosenberg

We are thrilled to announce that this upcoming week, we will be launching a new communication platform alongside our traditional forum software. As part of our plans to expand and revitalize our focus on community and engagement with other collectors, we have created a Discord server that will provide a range of exciting new features to enhance your experience on our marketplace and help you connect with other collectors.

Our Discord server will be the hub of our revitalized community program, with engaging content and activities for our members. We'll be hosting weekly giveaways, trivia and discussions, exclusive promotions, product updates, video Q&A sessions, and interviews with prominent collectors, all designed to bring collectors from around the world together and help you connect with new collectors.

If you're unfamiliar with Discord, it is a modern messaging and voice chat app, which you can access via desktop app, mobile app, or directly from your Internet Browser. It's designed to be user-friendly and easy to use, offering many advantages over traditional forums, such as:
1) It's much more interactive and engaging. Instead of posting messages and waiting for responses, you can have real-time conversations with other collectors.
2) It offers a range of features that make it more fun and social, such as voice chat, video chat, and emojis.
3) The mobile app allows our collectors to stay connected with the community and participate in activities on-the-go.

For the time being, we plan to continue to run our traditional forums alongside our new Discord community; but new community efforts and updates will focus exclusively on our Discord community. Eventually, we may retire our traditional forums as our Discord community grows.

With the above in mind, we'd like to give everyone here a chance to get an early start on joining the new HipStamp Discord, which you can do by clicking on the following link and following the instructions:
https://discord.gg/BTncV3haXq

We encourage you to give Discord a try and see for yourself how easy and fun it can be. We have big plans for our Discord community, and we are excited to see it become the hub for stamp collectors worldwide.

Thank you for being part of our community, and we look forward to connecting with you further!

Best Regards,
Mark Rosenberg

Ted Tyszka

I’m in.

Luree Hughes

I'm there

HT Putney

Me too.

Dave Bennett

It looks pretty neat . . but I don't have a cell phone (needed for verification) so I guess I'm OUT for now.

George DeKornfeld

Ditto.

Henry Brooks

Ditto. Business computer custom ordered without camera or mic on monitor. Use for ordering, listing, and forums only due to time constraints.

Mark Rosenberg

We don't require phone number verification for our HipStamp Discord community (other Discord communities may), so you should be able to create a Discord and just verify your email address, which should then let you join our Discord.

While I have not tried this myself, if anyone can try the following and let us know if this works, that would be great!
https://storiesdown.com/how-to-make-a-discord-account-without-a-phone-number/

George DeKornfeld

The instructions on the page don't synch with what my laptop sees, but its workable once figured out. I got to the Hip Discord page, but I get a message: "You do not have permission to send messages in this channel."
Now what? Do I need to download the app?

Henry Brooks

Google helps out a bit here - Short version of Wikipedia states " Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "servers",

Google gets you to their main site with more information and a number of user reviews.

Robert Maddox

I joined. Need to get used to the interface. Glad to learn something new!

Bob

Rene Bravo

i'm there

Bob Woodbury

Why do we need yet another way to communicate?

Francois Deliot

Hi Mark
Read this is focused on sdtamps but do you plan to enlarge it to Comics and Postcards?
Best!
Francois
cpaphil

john o'neil

No idea how to use this

Henry Brooks

Reading through the site and comments it seems like it's a Facebook with lights, bells and whistles. I haven't figured out to post to Facebook yet - hope they keep the forum where you can jump in, ask a question and come back later when time permits.

Ted Tyszka

I joined another philatelic Discord group some time back, and I just quit going there. I just don’t like the Discord interface. You can’t easily follow one particular discussion thread the way you can on a forum like this one. To me it’s more trouble than it’s worth, to try to follow multiple discussions.

Henry Brooks

I get the feeling it's for people who want to be online chatting a lot - sort of like the old party lines - showing my age here. Seems most of us utilize our time buying or listing rather than chatting. I belong to an antique car forum that gets a lot of traffic - ask a question and you may receive 20 answers in the first 30 minutes but it is organized by thread like this forum.

Ted Tyszka

I think that’s it, Henry - why I don’t care for it. It’s meant for live chat. That requires diverting time and attention away from all one’s other multitasking

Bill O'Malley

I agree with Henry and Ted

Steve Maurer

Think I will prefer it the way it is now

john o'neil

I too will pass

Pete James

Bad idea. Mark, reminds me of the old saying: if it ain't broke, don't Discord it.

Mark Rosenberg

To address a few misconceptions here: on Discord, we do have the ability to create forum channels/categories organized by topic/thread - exactly as we have the 5 categories organized here - and we're doing that. We've set this up on select channels, such as support, feature-requests, bug-reports, help-identifying, help-valuations, and more.

You'll see they're organized into topics with their own threads, exactly the same as in these forums, ie:


That being said, we're also using non-forum channels/categories, which are organized around a single ongoing conversation. We've used these for such channels as show-and-tell and new-collectors, where we believe one ongoing conversation that everyone can participate in and jump in and out of at any time makes the most sense. However, even here, you can easily create a single thread based on any message, which will split it off into its own topic to follow, etc.

If you haven't already checked out our Discord, I'd encourage you to give it a chance!

john o'neil

Mark. Are you seriously suggesting you may close this forum?

Scott Payton

I'll reserve my judgement as to the uptake and success of this.
However, I think this dilutes the forum and the site overall. Do you really want people to leave the Hipstamp domain while they're already on the site?
I am already a Discord user for other discussions. Discord in my view, is more geared to mobile device use. I literally don't use my mobile devices for posting to the forums, browsing stores or listing items. I get that Discord is Hip among the younger internet users. But beware leaving your user base alienated, they are the core to the sites revenue generation.
Is this really the best usage of time and energy for the site and for the future of philately to push Discord?

Greg Doll

I dived in a bit ago and signed up. First blush, it appears there will a "learning curve" but I expect to get there. Then I started thinking about the word "discord". I thought I remembered that word from years ago during my first and only divorce. I looked up the definition of the word and found this...

dis·​cord ˈdi-ˌskȯrd
Synonyms of discord
1
a
: lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas)
… must we fall into the jabber and babel of discord while victory is still unattained?
—Sir Winston Churchill
b
: active quarreling or conflict resulting from discord among persons or factions : STRIFE
marital discord
discord between the two parties

Maybe "Discourse" could have been a better name for the platform.....just saying...LOL!!!!!!

Henry Brooks

"Mark. Are you seriously suggesting you may close this forum?"

Here is your answer, apparently those of us still struggling to figure out how to even get on "Discord" have no voice. That was quick. Oh well, I can still list and hopefully buy even if I never figure it out. One might have expected a bit more notice.

"Moving forward, we'll be managing all new Feature Requests in the #feature-requests forum channel of our Discord.
Please join us there, and let us know how we can improve our Marketplace!"

Bill O'Malley

This is very very stupid. Nobody will like it.
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Remember KISS

Steven Wilner

Well I signed up fpr Discord and the app was added to my desktop on my laptop. I signed off and I am trying to get back in but I seem to be in an endless loop now I put my userid and password in and it keeps going back to the sign in screen. I have no idea what is going on with this - it does not seem easy to use for the average user at first glance. Any ideas of how I can get back in now ? Steve

Bob Hatch

I have an issue with the HipStamp "Get a $5 Credit" Discord promotion: $5.00 IS NOT FREE when you have to make a $15.00 purchase to get it. IMHO it represents the worst kind of deceptive advertising. Honest Abe is rolling over in his grave!