General Thoughts On Organizational Methods - 2022 Edition

Lessons to be learned from my old Discord server: don't let 95% of your Epicurean community consist of non-Epicureans.

On a more serious note, and something I suspect that even the Epicureans of the Garden in Athens had to deal with was the balance of free and open admission and that of secure, closed circles of members. The problem with the Discord was that its population was majority Stoic by an overwhelming margin. Some were platonist, or Nietzscheans, or Christian, atheist, etc. yet the Stoics were by far the most populous, and it seems that they have flooded a good chunk of the public "intellectual avenues" online, to the point, that most of the server partnerships became inextricably linked with Stoic-aligned groups and servers.

While their mere presence alone was not perfect, the issue came with random users speaking to others in the open general chat. Those random users claimed to represent or claimed to be able to speak with some matter of authority or clarity on the matter of the philosophy. As such, the ad nauseum dichotomy between gluttonous hedonist and ascetic was constantly repeated, there were too few Epicureans to rebuff the constant claims.

Unlike the forums here there were no set tiers and no confidentiality beyond myself and my staff members, as everything would be sent via private messages on Discord itself. Meaning that, even if there were a significant number of Epicureans on the Epicurean Discord (a crazy idea it seems), there was hardly the infrastructure to maintain and keep them in close communication.

So, my advice is to keep well protected safeguards around your community.