Could we use a private Facebook group, or private Discord

[Stan Shinn]

Could we use a private Facebook group, or private Discord perhaps?

I also highly recommend using Google Docs with the commenting feature -- it's perfect for these sorts of real-time group collaboration exercises. You can even do version numbers and it is super-easy to use, and can export to Word when needed.

Anyway, just trying to float options that could ease your frustration and increase productivity

[Albiegamer]

I separated this post from the original thread since it is on a completely different topic.

*** Social Media ***
Facebook (and messenger) are good for being 'social'. Pictures of your cat or grandma's birthday but they conversations are too easily fragmented, drift to other topics in the same "discussion" etc.

Discord could be very helpful. Separate text chat channels for each topic (chapter) plus general conversation - even a voice channel for us to meet up and discuss in real time. That said I know personally I am already on like a dozen-plus discords (including owning two).

Forums allow organizing conversations, keeping discussions on different topics separated, and an easy to search archive of conversations.

*** Google Docs ***
I could just use the annotation feature on Word if that was the goal - inline edits of material.

*BUT* the powers that be at ADB have decreed that the material only be passed out in a (relatively) un-editable form heavily watermarked. The company's concern is any of the playtest stuff ending up in someone's hands who decides to publish it as the 'finished product'. I have to honor that restriction.

I hope that comes across how I intend it to.

on 'Discord vs Messenger/Forum' What do the rest of you think?

[Stan Shinn]

I think Forums can work well, however, the issue here is that the forums we're using here are finicky to the point of being what I would call buggy -- multiple users have lost content because of stray characters the forum doesn't like, which truncates your content without warning.

Is there an upgrade possible for the forum's we're using here that would fix the issue about posts getting cut off?

[Steve Cole]

I have never found such an upgrade. Rather than letting it annoy me, I just make sure not to use curly quotes and check my posts to be sure they were not truncated. Works fine.

[Albiegamer]

I think Forums can work well, however, the issue here is that the forums we're using here are finicky to the point of being what I would call buggy -- multiple users have lost content because of stray characters the forum doesn't like, which truncates your content without warning.

So far I've found it's the "smart punctuation" that causes the problem. The apostrophes, quote marks, ellipsis, EM dashes are the problem as they don't fall in the normal range of letters/numbers/special characters.

I've learned when using something like Microsoft Word, to first copy/paste the text into something like Notepad then go through remove all the smart punctuation, then copy/paste into the forum. I only hit my head on this when I haven't been on a forum for a little bit.

I've also learned to copy my complete post text over to Notepad before using preview or submit. Preview doesn't catch all the problems with smart punctuation (only showing up when submitted). By keeping a full copy in Notepad I can find why the post got cut off, fix it, and repost it.