As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We’ve implemented several small but impactful changes over the past month, so we wanted to fill everyone in on what’s new. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!
Table of Contents
Staff Changes
We are delighted to welcome Anthony A. to the team as an intern moderator. Aside from lending us an extra pair of eyes during the daytime in the US time zones, Anthony A. will be cooking up some delicious meals for the staff cafeteria and pruning the bonsai trees in our meditation hall. Happy to have you on the team, Anthony A.!
Server Guide & Channel Changes
Our community is now using Server Guide, a new Discord feature which is still in limited beta. After completing the onboarding questions and joining the server, 80% of new users will be shown the Server Guide, which includes a welcome message, a list of new member to-do’s, and some resource pages. The remaining 20% will see the previous onboarding experience. Read more from Discord about the Server Guide Beta.
Members who have completed the full onboarding process, including current members, will only see the resource pages. Resource pages are ordinary read-only channels that are displayed without avatars and message bars to make them look nicer.
Channels selected for use as resource pages will no longer show up in the channel list unless you enable Show All Channels in the server settings (see below). As a result, you may no longer see the following channels in your channel list: #about-us, #practice-guide, #event-schedule, #partners, and #mental-health. To view these channels, visit the Server Guide, which is located at the top of the channel list (also shown below).
We have also added crisis hotline/helpline links and meditation-specific resources to #mental-health. The “Resources for practitioners with a diagnosed mental illness” thread in the meditation-specific resources section was created by Sean. Please contact him if you know of any resources worth adding.
New & Updated Website Content
We have added several new pages to the website. The Discord server rules and guidelines, along with some info about our moderation process, can now be found on the Community Guidelines page. Each rule can be expanded for further explanation to help clear up any questions about intent. We also added a Monthly Intensives page to give a quick overview of the event and offer some ideas and sample schedules for community members who are interested in participating. Finally, check out the new Recommended Listening page if you’re looking for some good podcasts or audio resources.
We also updated several popular resource pages. Our Free Meditation and Mindfulness Apps page now includes several minimalistic timers, a handful of method-specific apps, and a couple of apps for sutta/sutra study. We have also added Habit-Building and Yoga categories to our Recommended Reading page. And finally, our Free Meditation and Mindfulness Courses page has been updated to include a free course which introduces the Unified Mindfulness system, developed by Shinzen Young.
Odds and Ends
The number of options allowed for customization questions in #Channels & Roles has been increased. Thanks to this, we were able to consolidate Religious and Philosophical Frameworks and Meditation and Mind-Body Practices into single, multiple-choice drop-down questions.
We also noticed that slash commands were disabled for members with no roles, which meant that those members could not use Bloom features following the transition to slash commands. This has been rectified, and all members should now be able to track their meditation times, make server suggestions, etc.
Finally, please note that if you have enrolled in our free four-week mindfulness course using a direct link to the course, you may not have access to the course-specific channels. These channels feature pins with the home practice and links to additional resources and can also be used to discuss the content with other course participants. To get access, simply visit #mc-info and follow the instructions there.
That’s it for our April update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!
