discord Archives - Meditation Mind https://meditationmind.org/tag/discord/ A thriving community of people with a passion for Mindfulness Sun, 01 Mar 2026 12:19:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://meditationmind.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/cropped-Webp.net-resizeimage-1-50x50.png discord Archives - Meditation Mind https://meditationmind.org/tag/discord/ 32 32 Community Update: March 2026 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-march-2026/ Sun, 01 Mar 2026 12:17:18 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=19418 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a few updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Thank You to Our Donators Community Milestones Non-Friend DMs Disabled Channel […]

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As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a few updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Thank You to Our Donators
  2. Community Milestones
  3. Non-Friend DMs Disabled
  4. Channel Changes
  5. Bloom Bot Updates
  6. Weekly Group Meditations
  7. Odds and Ends

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to repeat donator will-o’-the-wisp and to all our current monthly supporters: Agnosia, awendela, Sarah B., Ouistiti, rudra, Peru S., mc, Nineven, Johnny, Sean, Anthony A., Sandy S., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, and Candace.

Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here, now with our long-time supporters and community guardians featured more prominently.

Community Milestones

In early November, we celebrated our 9th anniversary with an updated version of our 7th anniversary scavenger hunt, along with another small giveaway 🎉

Later that month, we reached 13,000 members, and in late January, we hit an incredible 80,000 sessions of meditation tracked using Bloom!

On November 20th, Anthony A. celebrated the 1,000th day of his (still-unbroken) meditation streak, and on February 28th, Mr Frundles achieved a 365-day streak!

Non-Friend DMs Disabled

Due to its size, our community is commonly targeted by spammers and scammers who rely on unsolicited DMs to avoid moderator intervention. To help ensure the safety of our members, we have disabled DMs between non-friend members.

If you would like to DM another member, you must add them to your friends first, unless you share another server. This does not apply to moderators or bots. Please remember proper etiquette and ask before sending a friend request, unless it is clear that the person welcomes requests.

Channel Changes

We have added a #quick-start channel to help new members decide where to post.

We know that the size of the server can be overwhelming, which is why we created our Curating Your Experience guide. However, for those who want to jump in as quickly as possible, #quick-start offers a concise guide to our most frequently used channels.

Bloom Bot Updates

We have made several updates to our community’s custom bot, Bloom.

Behind the scenes, we have upgraded the database and Discord API library to their latest versions. This brings performance and stability benefits, as well as the potential to use some of the latest Discord features, like new components.

  • Starboard Overhaul: New Components!

    The starboard has received a massive overhaul and now uses Discord's new message components. This enables support for more types of content, such as media galleries with up to ten images/videos, multiple files embedded within a message, and much more. And it looks better too!

new starboard
  • Improved Tracking Data Imports

    Bloom's powerful /import feature just got even better! Instead of relying on potentially confusing slash command options, /import now opens a modal pop-up. Just upload your file, change the import type, if necessary, and click submit.

This command can be used in the #meditation-tracking channel or in a direct message with Bloom. In a DM, there is the additional option of uploading your file to the chat, right-clicking or long-pressing the message, and then selecting Import Tracking Data from the Apps context menu.

bloom-dm-import

Session conflict checks for Waking Up and VA Mindfulness Coach imports have also been greatly improved, making it safer to choose the “all entries” import type for users of these apps. Learn more.

  • Delete Own Moved Messages

    If Bloom moved one of your messages using forwarding, you can now delete it by reacting to the forwarded message with the ❌ emoji. This will only work if you are the original author.

Weekly Group Meditations

Sumit is back for another round of guided group meditations, every Sunday at 6pm IST/12:30pm GMT!

On January 4th, we kicked off the new year with a new series of weekly sessions guided by Sumit. Audio and video recordings from previous sessions are available on our Guided Meditations page, and a playlist of the videos is available on YouTube.

If you can’t join us on Discord, Sumit is also streaming the sessions live to YouTube on his channel. Don’t miss out!

Odds and Ends

Congratulations to our newest mindfulness course graduate, Ouistiti! If you’d like to take the free, four-week course, you can enroll in #mc-info, or on the web at Thinkific.

Role colors have been removed from meditation time and streak roles due to a visual bug that corrupted the emojis on certain platforms.

We added the Healthy Gamer community to our #mental-health resources. This is a great option for those looking for peer support and active voice chats.

Last but not least, we have received our very own promo code for a free three-month subscription to the Waking Up app, which many of our members love. This code is for community members only, so if you’d like to use it, join us on Discord and ask!

And that’s it for our March update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @Tickets or /suggest!

The post Community Update: March 2026 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: October 2025 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-october-2025/ Sun, 26 Oct 2025 18:28:25 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=19153 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a number of updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Thank You to Our Donators Community Milestones Channel Updates Bloom […]

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As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a few updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Staff Changes
  2. Thank You to Our Donators
  3. Community Milestones
  4. Spirit of the Community
  5. Channel Changes
  6. Tickets Panel
  7. Bloom Bot Updates
  8. Odds and Ends

Staff Changes

Ronald aka Mr. Moon aka MoonOwl aka that mod whose name I can’t read has stepped down from his moderator position and stepped away from Discord to focus on building something special. Thank you for your many years of service, Ronald!

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our new donators: SilentInsight, Ouistiti, and GeGe. Special thanks to our two new long-time supporters, rudra and Sarah B.

And as always, a big thank you to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Agnosia, awendela, Peru S., mc, Nineven, Johnny, Sean, Anthony A., Sandy S., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, and Candace.

Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here, now with our long-time supporters and community guardians featured more prominently.

Community Milestones

On September 24th, we reached an incredible 50,000 hours of meditation tracked using Bloom! And since our last update, two more members have achieved a one-year streak, earning the 🐉 role: Nineven on July 8th and sa_ on July 29th.

Spirit of the Community

We updated our Spirit of the Community section in #about-us to further clarify the type of participation we want to encourage within the community. The following has been added as a general guideline regarding intention of engagement:

Channel Changes

After much deliberation, we have decided to rename #the-lounge to the more descriptive #casual-off-topic. This is meant to be a space where members can engage in light-hearted social chat, without worrying about being exposed to serious on-topic discussion, much of which can be triggering for some. We hope that the new name and description will make this intention clearer.

We also moved #practice-discussion into the Meditation category, which is more intuitive, and reordered the Meditation category slightly. The General and Meditation categories now appear as follows, when all available channels are shown.

Tickets Panel

Earlier this year, we replaced ModMail with Tickets, which offers the /new slash command for opening a new ticket. Since then, we have also added a panel in the #contact-us channel. While the bot officially supports DM tickets, we recommend using the slash command or panel, as they seem to be much more reliable.

Bloom Bot Updates

Just one small, but noteworthy, update to our community’s custom bot, Bloom.

  • Starboard: Opting Out

    It's now possible to opt out of starboard eligibility by reacting to your own message with the ❌ emoji. This can be used to remove a message from the starboard, or to prevent a message from being added.

    Note that eligibility will be restored as soon as the reaction is removed. In other words, if the message has the minimum number of star reactions, it will be added back to the starboard immediately.

Odds and Ends

Book club finally has a landing page on the website! This makes it much easier to see all the books we have read and find recordings. We also added a home for our partner communities on our website, which also includes our requirements for communities interested in partnering with us.

And that’s it for our October update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @Tickets or /suggest!

The post Community Update: October 2025 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: July 2025 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-july-2025/ Mon, 30 Jun 2025 19:03:06 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=18591 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a number of updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Thank You to Our Donators Community Milestones Channel Updates Bloom […]

The post Community Update: July 2025 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a number of updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Thank You to Our Donators
  2. Community Milestones
  3. Our New Server Tag
  4. Guidelines and ModMail Changes
  5. Bloom Bot Updates
  6. New Guided Meditations
  7. New Partner Community
  8. Thank You to Our Community Sit Hosts
  9. Odds and Ends

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following new and repeat donators: Kaz, will-o’-the-wisp, and teacups. Special thanks to our three new long-time supporters, Nineven, Peru S., and m sea, and new community guardian, Sandy S.

Thank you as well to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Agnosia, awendela, rudra, John, Sean, Anthony A., Sarah B., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, and Candace.

Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here, now with our long-time supporters and community guardians featured more prominently.

Community Milestones

On May 29th, we reached an incredible 45,000 hours of meditation tracked using Bloom!

Since our last update, three more members have achieved a streak of two years, earning the 👽 role: BabyComeBack on March 10th, humblelittleowl on April 20th, and Anthony A. on April 22nd. More recently, on July 3rd, will-o’-the-wisp achieved a one-year streak, earning the 🐉 role.

And finally, on February 27th, John earned the 🔥🔥 role, awarded for tracking a total of 150,000 minutes—another server first for John!

Our New Server Tag

Server tags have finally rolled out to all guilds and we now have our very own: 💛kind. Kindness—both toward oneself and others—is a core value of our community, and we hope our new tag will help spread a little more kindness throughout Discord.

The server tag is available to all community members, regardless of Nitro status. Find out how to set your server tag here.

Please note that the tag does cost us three server boosts. If you have a Nitro subscription and have any unused boosts, please consider using them on us. We have fallen to level two, rendering some of our emoji and stickers unusable. Thank you!

Guidelines and ModMail Changes

We have made two small-but-important changes to our community guidelines.

Rule #6 now reads: Keep server nicknames, tags, custom statuses, and avatars/pfps appropriate. We changed “SFW” to “appropriate” to indicate that these elements must be in alignment with all community guidelines. We also added server tags. Due to their high visibility in chat and the member list, both tag content and the server info they link to must be in alignment with our community guidelines.

We have removed our previous rule #5, which asked members to avoid unsolicited DMs unless the recipient had the DM-friendly role. This rule was created before users could manage their own per-server DM privacy settings. Now that this is possible, we ask that members be responsible for their own DM privacy, as we generally prefer to avoid moderating behavior outside of the server. Learn more about DM privacy settings and Message Requests.

Please note that spam, scams, and other solicitation are an exception and we ask that you continue to report these to server staff.

Until recently, the best way to contact staff was by sending a DM to the ModMail bot. While ModMail remains functional, we have replaced it with Tickets. In addition to DM support, Tickets provides the /new slash command for opening a new ticket, which is much easier and is not affected by individual DM privacy settings.

Bloom Bot Updates

We have made some exciting updates to our community’s custom bot, Bloom.

  • Meditation Tracking: Personal Bests

    Ever wonder which day you meditated the most on and for how long? The most times you meditated in one day? Or your top month? Bloom's new /stats bests command can answer all these questions and more!

    When viewing your overall personal bests, which is the command default, an image will be generated that shows your best day, week, month, and year for both time meditated and session count (bottom-left). Visibility honors the user's stats privacy setting, but can also be optionally specified when using the command.

    In addition to overall bests, you can view a Top 5 or Top 10 list for each combination of stat and period (top five weekly times shown at bottom-right). Top 5 and Top 10 lists are shown privately regardless of privacy settings to prevent flooding of the channel due to their size.

  • Meditation Tracking: Voice Channel Tracking

    Bloom will now offer to log time spent in meditation voice channels automatically! After spending at least five minutes in an eligible* VC, Bloom will ping you and ask if you would like to log your time upon leaving the channel.

    In addition to Yes and No responses, you can also choose Always or Never to specify a default response and prevent further prompts.

    *Eligible VCs include both #meditate with me channels, #group meditation, and #Meditation Hall (Silent)

You can also change these settings directly by using the new /customize vc command. In addition to enabling or disabling meditation VC tracking, you can also specify how you would like to receive tracking notifications when using anonymous tracking: private thread (default), direct message, or not at all.

  • Meditation Tracking: Seconds Reporting

    Bloom has supported seconds logging since the /import command was added, but until recently, it retained the original behavior of only reporting minutes when using the /add command.

    Now, time added is shown in hours, minutes, and seconds, as seen below. This is both more accurate and more intuitive—no more wondering whether Bloom lost those precious two seconds!

  • Meditation Tracking: Privacy Enhancements

    Bloom offers several options for fine-tuning the privacy of your tracking and stats. However, certain combinations can produce potentially unexpected results. For example, enabling anonymous tracking without setting your streak to private would allow others to view your streak even though your adds are anonymized.

    To avoid such surprises, a warning has been added whenever anonymous tracking is enabled or disabled, and the user is offered the option to automatically adjust the relevant privacy settings, as shown below.

  • New Feature: Random Pali Canon Sutta

    By member request, Bloom can now provide a random Pali Canon sutta, courtesy of the SuttaCentral.net API. The /sutta command will display a random sutta from the Suttapiṭaka, or Basket of Discourses, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato.

Optionally, specify the collection (choices shown below) from which the random sutta is chosen. By default, up to 500 characters of the sutta are displayed, to limit screen space required by the command. However, when the visibility option is set to private, up to 3,500 characters will be displayed.

  • Improved Mobile Experience

    Several of Bloom's commands require the user to input a long and complex ID, e.g., when removing a meditation entry or bookmark. Previously, these IDs could not be selected on mobile, resulting in a suboptimal user experience.

    In a recent update, Discord made code blocks copy-able on mobile with a simple tap. We have taken advantage of this by changing the ID fields to code blocks for a much better experience—simply click the ID to copy it!

  • Starboard: Star Requirement Lowered

    Posts originally required three stars to be featured on the starboard. By community request, this was increased to five stars. However, this has vastly reduced the number of posts that reach starboard, so we have lowered the requirement to four stars—hopefully a happy medium!

New Guided Meditations

After a very, very long wait, the recording of our special event with Henry Shukman is now live on our YouTube channel. The video can also be accessed from our Guided Meditations page, along with downloadable, audio-only versions of both the full event and the guided meditation only.

The Guided Meditations page also features a new guided meditation from Sumit, and another from guest teacher Eve Verne.

Eve is a mindfulness trainer and facilitator, the founder of Deep Resilience – Applied Mindfulness, author of Emotions are like Farts (a mindfulness book for children), and an RYS 200 certified yoga teacher. She will be joining us twice monthly, every 2nd and 4th Wednesday, to lead a guided meditation.

New Partner Community

Neurofields is a space to study nervous systems at all levels, from molecules and cells to neural networks, and everything they give rise to, such as cognition and behaviour. We aim to unite curious minds, passionate learners, and seasoned professionals in an academic environment enriched with carefully selected resources and channels for various branches. As a mindful and inclusive community, we encourage thoughtful discussions, mutual respect, and the pursuit of knowledge in a supportive atmosphere.

We are happy to welcome Neurofields as a new partner community, as of January. (Click the image or name above to join the Neurofields server on Discord, or visit the Neurofields website here.) The owner, WizzY, is a dedicated meditator and a long-time member of Meditation Mind, and the community features channels for contemplative neuroscience, as well as general mindfulness, making it a perfect fit.

Thank You to Our Community Sit Hosts

We currently have three consistent daily (or almost daily) group meditation events that are hosted by members of the community. These events are a massive contribution to the community and would not be possible without these dedicated hosts: Nineven, TheWiseOrganizer, will-o’-the-wisp, and BePresentWithIt.

While she is no longer with us, it was Sarah B. who initially established the momentum for these events—just one of her many contributions to our community.

Thank you so much to our hosts, and thank you to those of you who show up to take part in these group meditations. Your participation is a gift, to yourself and to others.

Odds and Ends

We would like to congratulate Randōmnesş on being the newest graduate of our free four-week mindfulness course! Over 370 people have now enrolled in the course. All course material can be accessed via Thinkific or within our Discord community.

All voice channels now require the @Grasshopper role or higher to speak. The requirement was lower in meditation VCs to allow newer members to use voice when organizing group meditations, but this has proven unnecessary and the discrepancy was confusing to some, so it has been removed.

We also removed the @hang out in voice chat role. It was largely unused, and since significant participation is now required to receive voice permissions, the option during onboarding was potentially misleading.

And that’s it for our July update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @Tickets or /suggest!

The post Community Update: July 2025 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: December 2024 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-december-2024/ Sun, 08 Dec 2024 21:07:10 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=18172 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a handful of exciting updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Thank You to Our Donators Community Milestones Channel Updates […]

The post Community Update: December 2024 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a handful of exciting updates from the past few months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Thank You to Our Donators
  2. Community Milestones
  3. Channel Updates
  4. Bloom Bot Updates
  5. Odds and Ends

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following new and repeat donators: Sarah B., will-o’-the-wisp, and teacups. Special thanks to our new long-time supporters: Sean, awendela, John, and Philipp.

Thank you as well to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Agnosia, rudra, Peru S., m sea, Nineven, Ronald, Anthony A., Sandy S., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, and Candace.

Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here.

Community Milestones

On October 18th, our community finally reached 10,000 members! Congrats to asmallpanda on being number 10,000, and thank you to all of our members for making this such a special place.

Roughly three weeks later, on November 7th, the server turned 8 years old. While we have not officially celebrated either of these milestones yet, we do have something fun in store, so stay tuned!

Channel Updates

For a very long time, #mindful-discussion served as our primary on-topic general discussion channel. In fact, it’s where you’ll find the first message ever posted on the server! However, due to a tendency for abstract, rather than practical, discussion to dominate the space, we decided to dedicate it to such discussion, rebranding it as #deep-dive and moving it to the “Meditation” category.

As a replacement, #practice-discussion has been added as a new space devoted exclusively to practice-centric discussion. Due to its positioning, this is one of the first channels new members will see, and for those new to meditation and mindfulness, we feel this has far less potential to be disorienting. If the channel is not already in your channel list, head over to Channels & Roles to enable it.

Finally, we have made some slight adjustments to the channel description for #the-lounge to emphasize that—despite its casual, off-topic nature—it is still meant to align with the overall friendly and wholesome atmosphere of the community. It is also not a suitable place for venting, and we ask that members be mindful of not dominating the space with serious, on-topic discussion that would be more appropriate elsewhere.

Bloom Bot Updates

We have made some exciting updates to our community’s custom bot, Bloom.

  • Import Meditation Tracking Logs

    Bloom can now /import your tracking logs from some of the most popular meditation apps: Insight Timer, Waking Up, and VA Mindfulness Coach. It also supports meditation timer sessions and breathing sessions from Finch, and if you have an Apple device, you can import Mindful Sessions from Apple Health data, which expands support to many more apps.

    *As part of this update, Bloom now also supports adding seconds to your meditation time. This is primarily to support more accurate imports, but feel free to specify the seconds when /adding time!

    The /import command can be used in #meditation-tracking, and even in a DM with Bloom! Donators can also use the command in the private donator channel. Note that due to the large file size, Apple Health logs will need to be processed prior to uploading, using the Bloom Parser utility. Learn about importing here!

  • New Stats Charts

    Bloom's /stats charts have been revamped with a cleaner design that also generates more quickly than before. As part of this update, we added two new styles: a combined-data bar chart (below image, left) and an area chart (below image, right).

    These charts are available to all members, and they support custom colors for subscription-based donators. Just choose your preferred style when using the /stats user or /stats server commands.

  • New Stats Leaderboards

    In addition to the above revamped charts, Bloom now offers /stats leaderboard charts, as shown below. Both Top 5 and Top 10 leaderboards are available in four timeframes (daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly), sorted by minutes, sessions, or streak, with support for both light and dark modes.

    Leaderboards honor individual tracking privacy settings, meaning that private streaks will not be shown and members who have anonymous tracking enabled will be shown as "Anonymous." Dark mode leaderboards are pre-generated and refreshed frequently for near-instantaneous access.

  • Bookmark Search

    In our last community update, we announced the addition of bookmarks. Now search your bookmarks with the /bookmark search command! Search is based on the description entered when adding a bookmark, so be sure to add relevant descriptions to make the most of this feature. Learn more here.

    *Because bookmarks use database resources, regular members are limited to 20 bookmarks. Unlimited bookmarks is a perk for our subscription-based donators. Support the community with a subscription on Ko-fi or Patreon.

  • Starboard: Tenor GIFs

    Starboard will now embed Tenor GIFs when a URL is the only content included in the starred message. In order to display and update correctly, the format is slightly different from other starboard messages, as seen below.

  • Glossary List Pagination

    /glossary list now features proper formatting and pagination, instead of just displaying a big jumble of terms. Unlike most commands with navigation, buttons are usable by anyone, so feel free to browse through the list when the person who used the command is finished. Buttons will disappear after 10 minutes.

  • Glossary/Whatis/Help Autocomplete

    /glossary info, /whatis, and the single-command version of /help now feature autocomplete functionality for ease of use. Just start typing the term name or the command name and the list of options will automatically be updated.

  • Random Quote with Keyword

    Finally, as a fun little perk for our subscription-based donators, an optional keyword or phrase can now be specified when using /quote to limit the pool of quotes that the random quote is pulled from.

Odds and Ends

Our Free Meditation and Mindfulness Apps page has been updated, once again, with some great general mindfulness and well-being apps. We also added The Way, which is a paid journey-style meditation app, but we love it enough to make an exception.

We noticed that #practice-guide never actually mentioned what meditation is and why you might want to try it out. That has been rectified (albeit very briefly).

Dyno offers a number of helpful custom commands that were previously undocumented: ?resources for commonly requested resources, ?crisis for mental health crisis resources, and ?engagement for skillful engagement resources. These commands are now included in the pinned message in #bot-commands.

And that’s it for our December update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!

The post Community Update: December 2024 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: September 2024 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-september-2024/ Sun, 08 Sep 2024 09:21:31 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=17146 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We only have a handful of changes since our last update, but they’re important so we wanted to share them with everyone sooner than later. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Thank […]

The post Community Update: September 2024 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We have a handful of exciting updates from the past couple months to share with everyone today. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Thank You to Our Donators
  2. Community Member Milestones
  3. Curating Your Experience
  4. Bloom Bot Updates
  5. New Event: Buddhism Book Club
  6. New Channel: #self-care
  7. Odds and Ends

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following new and return donators: rudra, will-o’-the-wisp, teacups, and awendela.

Thank you as well to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Agnosia, Peru S., m sea, Nineven, Philipp, John, Ronald, Sean, Anthony A., Zachary, Sandy S., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, Candace, and Rebecca W.

Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here.

Community Member Milestones

On August 25, John achieved a two-year streak of tracking meditations using our custom bot, Bloom, making him the first community member to receive the 👽 role! Thanks for the inspiration, once again, John!

We would also like to congratulate Stargazer on being the newest graduate of our free four-week mindfulness course! Great job, Stargazer!

Curating Your Experience

With almost 10,000 members and over 60 public channels, the Meditation Mind Discord community can be overwhelming if you don’t curate your server experience to fit your own needs. Since not everyone is a Discord expert, we’ve created a new article to guide you through the process of doing just that: Curating Your Experience.

The article features a short video overview, created by community member Sarah B., which you can also view below. Thanks, Sarah!

Bloom Bot Updates

We have made some exciting updates to our community’s custom bot, Bloom.

  • Meditation Challenge Stats

    We have added challenge stats for those participating in our monthly and/or 365-day meditation challenges.

    Just use the /challenge stats command in #meditation-tracking. The command defaults to stats for the monthly challenge. Use the optional "challenge" parameter to display stats for the 365-day challenge.

    Stats include total and average time and sessions for the challenge period, and current and longest streaks (all-time), as shown below. Streak stat visibility honors individual tracking customization settings.

  • Longest Streak

    As part of the above update, we added longest streak calculation. We have also implemented this stat into the /streak command, as shown below.

  • Personal Bookmarks

    Yes, bookmarks! Community members can now bookmark messages for their own personal reference.

    To add a message to your bookmarks, right-click or long-press any message and select the Add to Bookmarks command from the Apps context menu. Specify an optional description in the pop-up dialog, or just click submit.

    To view your bookmarks, use the /bookmark list command. To remove a bookmark, use /bookmark remove and specify the bookmark ID*, which can be found in the bookmark list.

    *Note that the ID is not a valid link. This is a workaround to make IDs selectable on mobile clients. To get the ID: long-press, copy, paste, and then remove "discord://" from the beginning.

    Because bookmarks use database resources, regular members are limited to 20 bookmarks. Unlimited bookmarks is a perk for our subscription-based donators. Support the community with a subscription on Ko-fi or Patreon.

  • Starboard: Multi-Image Embeds

    Our starboard now supports multi-image embeds! Previously, when a message with multiple images was added to the starboard, only a single image would be preserved. Now, up to four images will be visible in the embed. An example with two images is shown below.

  • Course Enrollments

    Bloom now handles enrollment and withdrawal for our courses. This was previously handled by Dyno, but the commands were confusing and responses were via DMs, which would not be delivered if the member had DMs turned off.

    Now, just use /course join or /course leave to enroll or withdraw. The commands can be used in any channel where the user can send messages, and an ephemeral (private) response will be shown in the channel where the command was used, as shown below.

    The commands currently default to the Mindfulness Course. When more courses are added, the optional "course" parameter can be used to specify the course you would like to join or leave.

New Event: Buddhism Book Club

Join Sarah B. and fellow community members to learn about and discuss the noble eightfold path, the path taught by the Buddha to achieve freedom from suffering. Participation is open to all, Buddhist or otherwise.

Members meet every Friday at 4 pm Pacific Time to read and discuss On the Path: An Anthology on the Noble Eightfold Path drawn from the Pāli Canon by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, which is available for free online. For those who can’t attend in-person, Sarah uploads recordings each week to help everyone follow along: On the Path Book Club.

New Channel: #self-care

In late August, we added #self-care as a place to share acts of self-care to celebrate oneself, build positive momentum, and motivate others to do the same!

#self-care is already off to a great start, so be sure to come check it out. If the channel is not already in your channel list, head over to Channels & Roles to enable it.

Odds and Ends

Did you know we maintain a Google Calendar of official server events? You can always visit our Community Events page to view the calendar, but you can also add it to your own Google Calendar using this link (learn how), or to other apps using the iCal link.

We have updated #practice-guide to make it much more readable, especially on mobile devices. We also added a short RAIN meditation, guided by Tara Brach, to the examples of meditation techniques for beginners to try.

Farewell, Nero. We have kicked our music bot. The reason we added Nero was because it was one of the last music bots to support YouTube links, but no more. YouTube has blocked Nero’s IPs, so we said goodbye. Guided meditations can be streamed using the Watch Together activity, or directly by sharing your screen.

And that’s it for our September update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!

The post Community Update: September 2024 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: July 2024 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-july-2024/ Sun, 07 Jul 2024 20:30:44 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=16886 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We only have a handful of changes since our last update, but they’re important so we wanted to share them with everyone sooner than later. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Thank […]

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As always, thank you for being a part of the community! Just a quick update to fill everyone in on what’s been happening over the past couple months. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Thank You to Our Donators
  2. Community Milestones
  3. Meditation Tracking Updates
  4. Channel & Permissions Changes
  5. More Meditations with Sarah B.
  6. Odds and Ends

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our newest donators: m sea and Peru S. And very special thanks to our newest Long-Time Supporter, Ronald, and our newest Community Guardian, mind exploration.

Thank you as well to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Candace, Nineven, Agnosia, awendela, John, Philipp, Sandy S., rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, Anthony A., Sean, Zachary, and Rebecca W.

Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here.

Community Milestones

On June 15th, our humble YouTube channel reached 10,000 views!

In the Discord community, John reached 120,000 minutes tracked with Bloom earlier this month, making him the first to claim our new 🔥 meditation time role! Once again, thanks for the inspiration, John!

Meditation Tracking Updates

Upon request, we have made a small addition to Bloom’s meditation tracking stats. The footer now includes the average minutes or session count for the period chosen, as shown below.

Channel & Permissions Changes

We have narrowed the scope of #mindful-discussion. Being our primary on-topic channel, we want discussion to revolve around our primary themes: meditation and mindfulness. The channel had begun to stray into a wide range of only tangentially (if at all) related topics, so we hope this will help keep discussion more focused, and ideally, practice-centric.

We have also made significant changes to voice chat permissions. Our community guidelines apply equally to voice chat, but it is very difficult to moderate with our small team of staff. Unfortunately, this is being taken advantage of by some. To rectify this, speaking permissions are now reserved for members who participate in the wider community. VC text chat may still be used freely by all.

Full changes: #the hangout is now restricted to regulars (Cypress or higher). Grasshopper or higher is required to speak in #general voice and #watch together. Additionally, to prevent trolling, Seeker or higher is now required to speak in #group meditation and both #meditate with me channels. Finally, due to inactivity, the #gaming VC has been removed.

More Meditations with Sarah B.

Sarah B. is a rock star! In addition to her Thursday body scan, Sarah now guides a sound meditation on Wednesdays at 7 am Pacific Time. She has also been sharing her morning practice with the community in the form of Silent Sits at 8 am Pacific Time on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Please join her!

Sarah also guides body scan meditations in VR on Sundays at 8 am Pacific Time and Wednesdays at 3 pm Pacific Time, using the ENGAGE platform.

Odds and Ends

We have added a new book to our Recommended Reading list and several new apps to our list of Free Meditation and Mindfulness Apps. Check them out!

Finally, our free four-week mindfulness course is now available in full on the server! Members no longer need to sign up for an external service and leave the Discord app to take the course. Just visit #mc-info to get started!

And that’s it for our July update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!

The post Community Update: July 2024 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: May 2024 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-may-2024/ Thu, 02 May 2024 07:34:38 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=16681 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We only have a handful of changes since our last update, but they’re important so we wanted to share them with everyone sooner than later. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Thank […]

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]]>

As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We’ve implemented a number of changes over the past couple months, 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

  1. Thank You to Our Donators
  2. Community Milestones
  3. Meditation Tracking Updates
  4. Channel Additions & Changes
  5. New Event: Weekly Body Scan Meditation
  6. Odds and Ends

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following new and return donators: teacups, Sky, and Nineven. Special thanks to our newest Long-Time Supporter: Anthony A.

Thank you as well to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Agnosia, awendela, John, Philipp, soulhack, Sandy S., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, Ronald, Sean, Zachary, and Rebecca W.

Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here.

Community Milestones

At the beginning of April, our Discord community reached 9,000 members!

Several of our members have also recently (and not-so-recently) reached impressive individual milestones: John (Aug. 27), BabyComeBack (Mar. 10), humblelittleowl (Apr. 20), and Anthony A. (Apr. 22) all achieved a one-year streak of tracking meditations using our custom bot, Bloom.

John also reached an incredible 100,000 minutes tracked on February 27th! Thanks to all of you for the inspiration!

Meditation Tracking Updates

We have made several small updates to our meditation tracking experience.

The grace period for maintaining a streak has been extended slightly to account for the largest possible time zone difference. Note that setting your own custom UTC offset is still a better solution, but streaks should no longer break due to time differences.

We have also added new meditation time (120k, 150k, and 200k minutes) and streak (1,825 days / 5 years) roles, as shown below.

Channel Additions & Changes

In March, we added #the hangout, a new voice channel for members who just want to hang out and enjoy casual chat. For access, grab the @hang out in voice chat role.

In April, we opted out of the traditional April Fool’s shenanigans and had Potato Appreciation Week instead. As part of the festivities, we asked participants to post potato-themed images in a new gallery-style forum channel. After the event, we opened #potato-love up to all community members.

For access, grab the @potato role or enable the channel in Channels & Roles. Be sure to read the Posting Guidelines before posting!

potato love
Finally, after almost one year of using forums for our #weekly-discussion, we decided to transition back to the standard text channel format. The ability to consolidate each topic into its own thread was convenient, but the inability to ping roles reduced visibility and participation. We hope this change will help revitalize our weekly discussions!

New Event: Weekly Body Scan Meditation

We are thrilled to be able to offer a new weekly group meditation! Every Thursday at 8 am Pacific Time, Sarah B. guides community members in a Vipassana-style body scan meditation. Sarah keeps her camera on for personal accountability and greater sense of connection. While completely optional, members are welcome to do the same.

Sarah B. joined our community in February and quickly became an active participant, answering member questions and inviting others to join her for her own daily practice. She also wrote a lovely review of our community, from the fascinating perspective of a media psychology doctoral student. We happily accepted when she offered to guide body scan meditations for the community on a weekly basis.

Sarah also guides body scan meditations in VR every Wednesday at 3 pm Pacific Time, using the ENGAGE platform.

Odds and Ends

We have made a number of changes to permissions.

Regulars (members who have a participation role of @Cypress or higher) can now access all role-locked voice channels: #🧘 meditate with me, #🧘🏻 meditate with me, #watch together, #the hangout, and #gaming.

To make ad hoc meditations and watch together events more accessible, all members are now able to see and join the #🧘 meditate with me, #🧘🏻 meditate with me, and #watch together channels. To speak, non-regulars will need to grab the corresponding role (@meditate with me or @Watch Together).

Finally, we have limited use of the new native polls feature to moderators and event moderators, and because voice messages can make moderation far more difficult, we have limited their use to regulars, with the exception of the #languages-and-cultures channel, where they can be useful for demonstrating pronunciation.

And that’s it for our May update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!

The post Community Update: May 2024 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: February 2024 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-february-2024/ Sun, 11 Feb 2024 08:13:39 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=16404 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We only have a handful of changes since our last update, but they’re important so we wanted to share them with everyone sooner than later. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today! Table of Contents Guidelines […]

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]]>

As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We only have a handful of changes since our last update, but they’re important so we wanted to share them with everyone sooner than later. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Guidelines Updates
  2. More Bloom Bot Updates
  3. New Channel: #intentions
  4. New Partner Community: Taoism (English)

Guidelines Updates

While people often associate meditation and mindfulness with mental health, it is important to note that Meditation Mind is not a mental health server. Views and opinions on the server are not intended to be a substitute for professional advice and should not be presented as such.

As members of our server staff lack the qualifications and expertise to adequately moderate certain types of mental health discussion, to ensure the safety of all involved—both active participants and lurkers—we have established the following guidelines to promote responsible engagement with topics related to mental health.

Mental Health Discussion Guidelines
  • Diagnosing should be done by a qualified professional, within the proper context.
  • Do not attempt to diagnose others.
  • Do not attempt to confirm or refute others’ diagnoses.
  • If you choose to self-diagnose, do not ask others to confirm or refute the diagnosis.
  • Personalized advice should be given by a qualified professional with adequate knowledge of the patient and their circumstances, within the context of a physician-patient relationship.
  • Such advice should be delivered privately, to prevent a third-party from attempting to follow advice not meant for them, to their own detriment.
  • Sharing personal experiences in a general context (i.e., not in the form of advice, directly or indirectly) to provide inspiration or background context, achieve human connection, etc. is OK.
  • Advice that is non-personalized, generally applicable, and recognized as implementable by a non-qualified individual with little to no potential for harm is OK.
  • Discussing general mental health/well-being, such as everyday struggles with fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, and/or other thoughts or emotions, is OK.
  • Sharing of resources should also satisfy the above rules.
  • Examples of acceptable resources: Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing (Treleaven) or The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness (Williams, Teasdale, Segal, Kabat-Zinn)

At noted in the details above, discussion of general, everyday mental well-being is relevant and welcome. However, the line between general mental well-being and diagnosable mental health conditions can be fuzzy. When in doubt, please err on the side of caution, for everyone’s safety.

We do offer a small selection of mental health resources in #mental-health, including crisis hotlines, meditation-related resources, peer support servers, and a resource bot. We also have a ?crisis command for quick access to crisis resources.

In our general guidelines, we have also added “avatars/pfps” to rule #7 (shown above) for clarity. Like server nicknames and custom statuses, avatars/profile pictures are immediately visible in the member list and in channels when posting, and should be appropriate for an all-ages server with a wholesome atmosphere.

Bloom Bot Updates

Once again, we have made some exciting (and long-awaited) updates to our community’s custom bot, Bloom.

  • Personal Customization Profiles

    In the previous update, we introduced time zone and privacy customization to individual commands. Now you can create your own personal profile to store your customization settings and automatically apply them to commands.

    Profile settings include: UTC offset, anonymous tracking, streak reporting, streak visibility, and stats visibility. Use the /customize group of commands to view and modify your profile.

  • Stats Updates

    Dark mode stats graphs are back! And this time we have also added a theme option to /stats for those who prefer the white background.

    While the default bar color is orange (shown below), stats for members who are monthly supporters on Patreon or Ko-fi will be shown using the member’s custom role color, which is a donator perk.

bloom-stats
  • Quick Term Lookup

    Wondering what some meditation-related jargon means? Try using the new /whatis command to get a quick definition! Since results are usually compact, the command may be used in all channels, but please use it reasonably. When in doubt, use #bot-commands.

    The /whatis command actually provides an abbreviated definition based on data from Bloom's new glossary, a long-awaited feature. More info below!

  • Glossary Features

    After multiple attempts to introduce a glossary feature over the years, the /glossary group of commands is finally here!

    Use /glossary list to get a list of available terms, /glossary info to get full details for an entry, /glossary search for an AI-powered search, or /glossary suggest to suggest a term for addition. As several of these commands produce significant output, usage is limited to #bot-commands.

  • Help Menu

    Bloom's new help menu now provides info for subcommands when a parent command is specified using the optional command parameter. For example, below is the output for /help command: glossary.

help for commands

New Channel

On January 1, we added #intentions as a place for community members to discuss intentions, both for the turn of the year and beyond.

The channel is similar to #accountability, but less focused on check-ins and consistent practice, and more centered on discussion and supporting each other with new habits, goals, etc.

New Partner Community

A community dedicated to the serious and respectful exploration of Taoism. We explore the rich tapestry of Taoist philosophy, meditation, and practice, including in-depth Dao discussions, meditative practice, qigong and martial arts, feng shui, and more.

Join us to explore the full spectrum of Taoism—from the philosophical to the mystical. Let's embark on this thousand-step journey together.

We are happy to welcome Taoism (English) as a new partner community. While Taoism/Daoism is included in our server themes, in-depth discussions are uncommon. Taoism (English) will help fill this gap, offering a welcoming environment and intelligent conversation. We hope this partnership will be beneficial for members of both communities. (If invite is broken, join via Disboard.)

And that’s it for our February update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!

The post Community Update: February 2024 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: December 2023 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-december-2023/ Fri, 22 Dec 2023 21:42:43 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=16168 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! It’s been several months since our last update and lots of little changes have been happening behind the scenes, 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! […]

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]]>

As always, thank you for being a part of the community! It’s been several months since our last update and lots of things have been happening behind the scenes, so we wanted to fill everyone in on what’s new as 2023 comes to a close. If you’re not already a member of our online Discord community, please join us today!

Table of Contents

  1. Staff Changes
  2. Thank You to Our Donators
  3. Community Milestones
  4. Role Additions & Changes
  5. Channel Additions & Changes
  6. Website Resources Updates
  7. Bloom Bot Updates
  8. Odds and Ends

Staff Changes

John finished his intern period way back in August and has been busy trying to beat Jeffrey’s user dispatch record, but it seems there can be only one The Hammer. Glad to have you on the team, John!

We’re sad to see James step down from his mod position for a break after years of devoted service to the community. James has been around since the beginning and has helped make the server what it is today. We appreciate you and we’ll keep your seat warm until you decide to return!

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following new and return donators: S. P., Agnosia, thelinguist, awendela, John, Zachary, Gabriele S., Philipp, and soulhack.

Thank you as well to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Sandy S., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, Candace, Ronald, Anthony A., Sean, and Rebecca W. Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here.

Community Milestones

We have recently hit several big community milestones. In late September, we reached 8,000 members on Discord, and in early December, we surpassed 30,000 hours of meditation tracked with Bloom on the server!

30k-hours-tracked

And finally, we recently reached 200 sign-ups for our free four-week online mindfulness course. (See #mc-info to learn more and enroll!)

Role Additions & Changes

In mid-August, we added the @Watch Together role, which can be used by members to organize impromptu watch parties, similar to how @meditate with me works. Since late September, it has also been used to organize official server watch together events weekly on Sundays.

In early November, we added the @hang out in voice chat role, which is also similar to @meditate with me and can be used to invite other members to casual voice chat. You can grab either of the new roles in #Channels & Roles > Customize.

On the changes side, the @Teachers/Coaches role has been renamed @Meditation Teachers and we have added a new @Certified Yoga Teachers role. Learn more about what these roles mean in #about-us.
about-us-teachers

Channel Additions & Changes

In late August, we added #science-geekery for all the science geeks interested in the intersection of science and contemplative practices. (There are a lot of us!)

We also added a second #🧘🏻meditate with me voice channel to accommodate concurrent impromptu sessions while still offering the security of a role-locked channel.
mwm-2

On the changes side, most of the channels that previously required self-assignable roles to opt-in have been unlocked since the new Discord Onboarding feature offers the same functionality without roles. Head over to #Channels & Roles > Customize and select the desired options or enable channels directly in Browse Channels.

Website Resources Updates

We’ve added lots of new resources to our website for the benefit of members and non-members alike.

In late August, we hosted a guided meditation and Q&A with guest teacher Toby Sola, creator of the Brightmind meditation app. Then, at the end of September, we rebooted our weekly group meditations, facilitated by Sumit. Recordings for both are available on our Guided Meditations page and our YouTube channel.

Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams & Danny Penman has been added to our Recommended Reading list. This is a great, comprehensive introduction to mindfulness meditation, based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

Our Free Meditation and Mindfulness Apps page has had three additions: Brightmind, which is not free, but includes a special code for a one-month free trial and is worth making an exception; Shellevate, a gamified meditation timer; and Mediate Your Life, which combines the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) framework with mindfulness.

Finally, we have added The Open Buddhist University to our Free Meditation and Mindfulness Courses page. With 16 courses available, you can study everything from the basics of Buddhism to Pāli and Chinese for Buddhist texts.

Bloom Bot Updates

We have made some exciting updates to our community’s custom bot, Bloom.

  • Time Zone Customization

    Meditation tracking entries use UTC by default, but you can now specify a UTC offset for your local time zone when adding an entry. Just use /add and set either western_hemisphere_offset (UTC-XX) or eastern_hemisphere_offset (UTC+XX).

  • Tracking and Stats Privacy

    There is now a privacy option for the /streak, /stats user, and /add commands.


    When set to private, streaks and user stats will be displayed privately using ephemeral messages. When a new meditation session is added privately, an anonymous entry is displayed in the channel to motivate others, but personal information (total meditation time, streak and role info) is shared with you privately via ephemeral messages.

private-add-time
  • Context Menu Reporting

    You can now report a message to server staff anonymously using the context menu. Just right-click (or press-and-hold on mobile) a message and select Apps > Report Message.

context-menu-report
  • Challenge Management

    Opting in or out of the monthly and 365-day meditation challenges is now done using Bloom. Simply use /challenge join or /challenge leave.

challenge-bloom
  • Help Menu

    Bloom was missing a /help menu for a while, but no more! The new help menu looks much nicer than before and you can also get info about a specific command with the optional command parameter.

help-menu

Odds and Ends

We have made some small modifications to Rule #10 of our Community Guidelines. We replaced the word “fake news” with “disinformation,” which has a wider scope that includes fake news. We also added a note about drug talk exceptions and linked to information about identifying conspiracy theories.

community-guidelines-rule-10

We removed the MEE6 bot, which has continued to paywall once-free features to the point of being largely unusable without a premium subscription. Leveling is now handled behind-the-scenes (i.e., no cards, leaderboard, etc.), as too much attention to levels tends to encourage low(er)-quality engagement. Birthday announcements are also much prettier now, thanks to Birthdayy.

The number of stars required for a post to be added to #⭐starboard has been increased from three to five. Last but not least (maybe?), Server Guide now has icons and cleaner descriptions!

server-guide-icons

And that’s it for our December update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!

The post Community Update: December 2023 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

]]> Community Update: July 2023 https://meditationmind.org/community-update-july-2023/ Fri, 21 Jul 2023 06:42:11 +0000 https://meditationmind.org/?p=15389 As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We’ve implemented a number of changes over the past few months, 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 Thank You to […]

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]]>

As always, thank you for being a part of the community! We’ve implemented a number of changes over the past few months, 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

  1. Staff Changes
  2. Thank You to Our Donators
  3. Channel Additions & Changes
  4. Goodbye, Public Mod Logs
  5. Upcoming Special Event
  6. Odds and Ends

Staff Changes

We are delighted to welcome John to the team as an intern moderator. Anthony A. finished his intern period some time ago and now owns a shiny ban hammer, although so far he just keeps using it to tenderize meat. We’re lucky to have you both!

Thank You to Our Donators

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following new and return donators: mendaxis, Anthony A., эZ, teacups, Ronald, Sean, and awendela. Thank you as well to the rest of our current monthly supporters: Sandy S., mind exploration, rustybikes, acidjames, Krish, and Candace. Meditation Mind operates 100% on donations, so this community would not be possible without you. See a full list of present and past supporters here.

Channel Additions & Changes

In late May, we transitioned #weekly-discussion to forums. This is a much better fit for the weekly discussion format, as discussion for each weekly topic is consolidated into a single forum post, making it easier to revisit and continue to discuss past topics.

The downside to this change is that mentioning roles with more than 100 members in a forum post does not ping the members. To make sure that you aren’t missing out, go to #Channels & Roles > Customize and select Weekly Discussion or enable the channel in Browse Channels.

Weekly Discussion Forum

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the #languages-and-cultures thread, we have created a new channel by the same name in the Casual category. We already have threads in the channel for learning Spanish, Chinese, Malay/Indonesian, Japanese, Sanskrit, and more. Whether you’re learning a language or just curious, come join the fun!

We also changed the descriptions and/or names of several channels. The description for #the-lounge now better reflects our wish for members to be kind and engage mindfully, even when hanging out in the lounge, and the description for #venting-void now clearly states that messages may still be seen by others, even with message history turned off.

To encourage members to use Bloom’s meditation tracking functionality, even when not participating in the monthly meditation challenges, the #meditation-challenge channel has been renamed to #meditation-tracking. We want as many members as possible to benefit from this unique feature of the community.

Finally, the iconic #laughing-buddha is now #wholesome-fun. Laughing buddha was a great name, but it proved to be ambiguous as to the purpose of the channel. We hope the new name and description clarify the intent and we look forward to even more wholesome fun! (Note that the channel is still affiliated with r/laughingbuddha.)

Goodbye, Public Mod Logs

In April 2021, we introduced #public-mod-logs for greater transparency in moderation. Now, just over two years later, we have chosen to retire it.

The moderation bot we originally added to introduce public logs, Auttaja, not only lacks customizability, but is also unreliable. Because of this, we stopped using the moderation functionality long ago. We left the bot running for the logs, but it remains unreliable, and many moderator actions never make it to the logs.

More importantly, we have never been fond of the public shaming aspect of public logs. During two years of using the logs, we have seen no evidence that the tradeoff is justified. Our staff members hold each other accountable, and we believe the community trusts us to moderate with integrity. We remain committed to transparency and members are always free to contact us about moderator actions via @ModMail.

Upcoming Special Event

We are pleased to announce that senior meditation teacher Toby Sola will be joining us to offer a guided meditation and Q&A. Toby is the co-founder and CEO of Brightmind and the creator of the Brightmind meditation app, which teaches the Unified Mindfulness system, developed by Shinzen Young.

We will be polling the community to decide on a date and time in late August. In a separate poll, community members will be able to vote on one of two possible themes:

Decision Making
Three key takeaways: (1) How to use meditation to make better decisions; (2) Experiential understanding of the components of self (mental talk, mental image, and emotional body sensation); and (3) A new perspective on a current work or life decision.

Meditation Buffet
Familiarize yourself with the three basic families of meditation techniques: noting and labeling, nurture positive, and auto focus.

The Unified Mindfulness system already enjoys significant popularity within the community, so this will be a great opportunity for those who are unfamiliar to find out what the buzz is all about! (Big thanks to Anthony A. for making this happen!)

Odds and Ends

We have added four practice roles and two framework roles: @Death Contemplation / Memento Mori, @Four Elements Meditation, @Mantra Meditation, @Wim Hof Method, @Achintya-Bheda-Abheda, and @Universalism.

Members can also now choose the @Ping-friendly or @No pings please role to let others know their preference regarding being pinged. Note that this is an indication of preference only. While we encourage members to honor each other’s preferences, these roles are optional and may go unnoticed. If you feel strongly about not being pinged, please adjust your Notification settings for the server and/or client.

Ping Preferences

Below the ping preference roles, you will now find the two options shown below. Key to the Archives grants access to channels that have been retired to the archives, which currently includes #questions-old and #weekly-discussion-old. Gold nuggets await those willing to search. Potato needs no explanation. The above roles can be found in #Channels & Roles.

Archives & Potatoes

Did you know we have a Soundboard (shown below)? Soundboard is a collection of audio clips that can be used in a voice channel. Clips can only be triggered on the desktop client, but mobile client users will also be able to hear them. Note that you must be Cypress or greater to use Soundboard.

Recently, we have had several cases of users joining the server seeking help in the midst of a mental health crisis. Our community is not a mental health community and we do not have staff who are professionally qualified to handle crisis situations. We have added a ?crisis command to quickly display information about major crisis hotlines. The command is available to all members, so please feel free to use it when deemed appropriate.

Crisis Resources
Last but certainly not least, congratulations to the newest graduate of our online mindfulness course: @Ru! And that’s it for our July update. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to get in touch via @ModMail or /suggest!

The post Community Update: July 2023 appeared first on Meditation Mind.

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