We will no longer host comment sections for new articles starting on January 27th.
January 24, 2025 by Orion Burt in Other
After more than a decade of hosting public comment sections on Ultiworld, we have decided to discontinue them starting on Monday, January 27. For discussion of articles, news, and everything else in the sport, our Discord server is a wonderful place to chat. If you have any notes or corrections on an article, you can find ways to directly reach our staff on our About page. We can also be reached on a variety of social media platforms; check out our header and footer for links to all of them.
For those concerned about the paywalled nature of our Discord servers, along with this announcement we are adding access to our ultimate Discord server1 to our lowest subscription tier, the Mini Plan ($3.99/month). Previously you had to pay for a Standard Plan ($12.99/month) to access our Discord server, but now you will get that same perk at the lower price point!
We have used a variety of commenting platforms over the years, from built-in WordPress comment sections, to forums-powered Discourse topics, and our longest-lived choice Disqus threads. All of them had their pros and cons and ultimately all of them helped us learn more about how our audience most wants to interact with each other and with us.
In the early years of Ultiworld, public comment sections were common on media websites and ours were frequently used. Most posts would receive a comment or two, many would receive a handful of comments, and some would receive in the tens or on occasion hundreds of comments! Nowadays a post receiving a comment is the exception rather than the norm and a commenter’s chance of receiving any meaningful back-and-forth after a comment are slim-to-none.
We began using chat apps internally at Ultiworld in 2014 with Slack, eventually opening up our Slack to subscribers in 2018. We immediately saw an increase in the quantity and quality of conversations with our readers, although there were a number of areas where Slack wasn’t perfect.
In 2020, seeking a better place for our subscribers and staff to stay in touch online while sports were on pandemic lockdown, we moved from Slack to Discord. Things immediately clicked and we saw even better adoption and engagement with our readers than we had with Slack. Discord has continued to grow tremendously and so have the Ultiworld Discord servers (we have one for ultimate and one for disc golf).
Here is a sampling of what we now offer in our Discord:
- A #live-ultimate channel where people follow along with the every livestream.
- Charlie and Keith do live recordings of the subscriber bonus segments for Deep Look in #subs-voice.
- Our #mailbag and #votes channels let our listeners and viewers make suggestions for our podcasts and broadcasts.
- #new-on-uw will make sure you don’t miss anything on Ultiworld with updates as soon as any new content is released.
- We have a separate channel for every division we actively cover at Ultiworld so people can go deep on whatever they follow.
- Fun channels for other shared interests: #music-league, #fantasy-football, #gaming, #puzzmo, etc.
- Moderators and staff members are always around to dish on what’s happening at Ultiworld and to keep discussions respectful.
- And much more!
Since our switch to Discord, Ultiworld comment sections have continued to decrease in value amidst the larger backdrop of many websites limiting or removing comments. With discussion of articles increasingly taking place in our Discord rather than in the comment section on the website, it felt like the appropriate time to fully move the conversation there.
We will no longer host comment sections for new articles starting on January 27th and in their place we will offer links to our Discord (for discussion) and our masthead (for contacting our staff).
To all of our subscribers: join our Discord if you haven’t already!
And to all of our non-subscribers: consider subscribing today to access our Discord and to support all of our coverage of the sport!
Our disc golf Discord server was already available to subscribers on the Mini Plan. ↩
