Discord is Wild HQ’s shared conversation room. Use it for quick questions, early ideas, pairing, incident coordination, and the ordinary human chatter that helps a distributed team feel like a team.
Discord is not the source of truth for work. Messages scroll away, people join late, and no volunteer should need to be online at the right moment to participate.
If it matters later, write it where it lives
Move durable information to the system that owns it:
- task scope, status, and blockers go in Wildbase Work;
- code discussion that changes an implementation goes in the pull request;
- an established practice goes in this handbook;
- product behaviour belongs in product documentation; and
- a public incident gets a public explanation once it is safe to publish.
A link to a Discord message can provide colour. It is not a substitute for a summary, because not every future reader will have access to that channel or server.
Use channels and threads before direct messages
Ask routine questions in the relevant shared channel or thread. That gives another volunteer a chance to answer and leaves context for the next person.
Use a direct message when the subject is personal, non-operational, and genuinely only concerns the recipient. Do not use private messages for credentials, customer data, vulnerability details, conduct reports, team decisions, avoiding review, pressuring someone for a faster answer, or creating an invisible support queue.
A private message is not a confidential reporting system. Wild HQ does not currently have a confidential or independent conduct-reporting route; the volunteering page explains the limitation.
If a decision begins in a direct message or call, put the outcome and necessary reasoning on the task before acting on it.
Write for different clocks
Assume the reader may arrive tomorrow.
- Put the request in the first message instead of posting only “hello”.
- Include the relevant task, pull request, page, or error.
- Say whether anything is actually time-sensitive and why.
- Use one thread for one subject when practical.
- Summarise a long discussion before asking for a decision.
- Prefer a reaction for simple acknowledgement over several “seen” replies.
A declared no-objection window may let the named decision owner proceed after the window closes. Silence is never recorded as agreement, counted as a vote, or treated as evidence that someone was available.
Mentions are interruptions
Mention a person when their particular knowledge, access, or decision is needed. Mention a group only when most of that group needs to act.
Do not repeatedly mention someone who has not replied. Update the durable task, find another volunteer, reduce the scope, or let the work wait. Volunteer time is not an incident-management dependency unless someone explicitly accepted a coverage window.
Calls are optional and interruptible
Use a call when talking together will resolve something faster, but keep participation optional. Share an agenda for planned calls. Afterwards, record decisions, owners, and open questions in writing.
No decision gains extra authority because it was made by the people who happened to be awake.
Keep sensitive material out
An access-controlled Discord channel is still not a password manager, customer database, legal archive, or security-reporting system.
Never paste passwords, tokens, private keys, recovery codes, unredacted customer data, or exploitable security details into Discord. Wild HQ does not currently operate a secure channel for receiving that material. The contact route opens ordinary email, so use it only for a redacted notice that identifies the affected product and the kind of problem. Leave out the sensitive material and any detail that would make an unfixed vulnerability easier to exploit.
If something sensitive is posted accidentally, do not quote or copy it. Limit access, rotate or revoke the exposed credential where relevant, and tell a maintainer that an exposure occurred without repeating the material.
Make room for actual people
Directness is welcome. Cruelty is not. Read ambiguity generously, especially across languages and time zones, and ask what someone meant before escalating tone.
Discord should help the work move without asking anyone to live in Discord.