I started my own discord server for Final Fantasy 14 stuff. Originally, it was a place for me and a small group of people to go in order to get away from a space that we shared with someone none of us liked and that kept dropping in when we’d hang out in one of the voice chats. They are close friends with one of the officers, who enables their terrible behavior (odious perosnality traits, not something actively harming other people by any means other than annoyance), so we didn’t really have a way to address the problem without causing a bigger problem in the discord. When we all realized that we’d rather stop hanging out with each other than continue to spend time with this person, I turned my idle musing about creating a discord server for my Final Fantasy 14 crafting workshop into a reality. They’re easy to make and, since it was just the four (and then five) of us, there didn’t really need to be much to the discord. Eventually, though, I started using it for other reasons, to handle alternate characters, my FC for said alts, and then as a safe place for a small selection of poeple to gather in private. Once that happened, I started building out the server a bit more, with roles and hidden channels and various pieces of infrastructure as I realized that this was quickly turning from a place for me and a handful of my friends into a small community space. Now, while I still keep the invitations locked down to just myself and single-use only, I am not necessarily super familiar with everyone in the server now. Which is how a lot of internet communities work, regardless of their size, but I am trying to keep it small enough that I can actually get to know people and better manage the community as a result.