Discord has announced the introduction of Stage channels, a new channel type that aims to provide “focused” conversations to make it easier to distinguish between speakers and listeners for events like AMAs and interviews.
With the new channel, participants will be sorted into speakers and audience members, so that only those who are meant to speak will be able to do so. “No more having people talking over each other thinking it’s their turn or that long awkward silence before someone goes ‘…oh, am I up?’” says the Discord blog.
As shown in the image below, Stage channels will display the speakers at the top of the screen, while the audience’s profile pictures are positioned below with an “audience” label above them. The layout reminds me of cinema seat booking screens, to be honest.
Audience members can still get the chance to speak by “raising” their hands and having a stage moderator “help them up to the stage... then move them back to the audience afterward”. Stage moderators also have the power to add, remove, and mute existing speakers.
To use Stage channels, you’ll need to have Community enabled on your server. The feature is now live on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and browsers via the Discord web app.
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