As someone who's not a professional, who's more of a hobbyst, most of the times I've started and stopped drawing it was because of a lack of sense of community. Having people to just chat about lessons as if it were a real classroom in real time is lacking in many platforms. I sorely miss something like that. Definitely in favor of something like this.

No, I disagree. Discord is great for small group that want to study together, not for full community. In the end it's a mess and push solo-centric behavior instead. Plus no archiving possible... Proko roadmap already plan to add a chat inside the website, in my opinion this would be more than enough. If people want to make rooms to talk to/see each other outside of proko, more power to them, at least they can group in smaller numbers that are workable. Also, Proko forum has its set of rules and Discord has its own, which can change on a wim. One of them being no nude rules if the server is public. For an art platform it is going to be a problem sooner than later. We can also have a serious headache with copyright material posted in Discord :) Better not add complexity where it's not needed, right ?

I agree. However, there are pros and cons to it, and examples of it working really excellently. Pros: Real Time Feedback, a constant sense of community, voice and video sharing, chances for people to announce that they're streaming. Cons, and really this is the big one: It's going to pull foot traffic away from the website. If there's just a better, more accessible platform than proko, why would people visit proko? There's a solution for this, however: keep the lessons on here. Announce when a new lesson is going up in a #announcements channel. It's also going to take a whole lot of manpower and server expertise. I don't know if Stan has the know-how to do that, and paying people to do it takes money; it would need to be a tightly moderated community, since Proko is a brand now as opposed to just a content creator. Examples: Ethan Becker and Sinix both have thriving discord communities. They've built up places for people to grow, learn, and share experiences. Overall, I think the suggestion for a discord is a phenomenal one, and I'm fully in support of it, but I wonder about the efficacy of actually getting it off the ground.

I really think this site is missing out on this great opportunity. I want the best for Stan, the site and all his team. I hope they will take notice: at least 2 of your colleagues in this art video tutorial business use Discord with success. Force drawing has just added it. I cannot fathom any reason why not to ADD its functionality to this site to create the community atmosphere you desire with Proko 2.0. The BBS or blog or forum model being used here is not adequate in this day and age of real-time, streaming, audio/video simplicity. Thank you.

I'll provide the counter-opinion that I'd prefer the community remain as much as possible within this platform. It feels like Stan and the team have put a lot of effort into this site and I see the huge benefit of them being able to customise it and prioritise features that most meet community needs, rather than taking what you get through Discord.