ditch discord!

person backing up his car exploitable with the following four panels:

  1. person looking ahead. the text below him says, "wow a cool software. let’s check out the community"
  2. screenshot with the text > Community

    The main place where the community gathers is our Discord server. Feel free to join there to ask questions, help out others, share cool things you created with Typst, or just to chat.

  3. hand on gear shift zoomed in, switching to reverse
  4. person looking behind with the text “nevermind”.
bleistift2,

I can’t ditch discord. They won’t even let me in via browser because I “failed the captcha”.

(Not that they’d tell me this somewhere in their UI, this is the server response.)

TropicalDingdong,

Same. This happened to me so many times, I just can’t suffer it any more.

lemmesay,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

my failed attempts at registering on discord:

  • use temporary email: locked out
  • use real email with VPN: locked out
  • use real email without VPN and Firefox: locked out
  • use real email, no VPN, le lion(brave): registered. join a community. community requires phone verification. deny it. locked out.

every damn time they require a phone number.

Feathercrown,

Only the big ones

laurelraven,

I’m not doubting that some servers do, but I’ve yet to run into one myself

anyhow2503,

Discord itself arbitrarily requires a phone number to register, which is already enough of a hurdle.

laurelraven,

I’m pretty sure I never had to give them my phone number, though it has been more than a few years since I signed up

someacnt_,

Phone verification is the worst!

androidul,

but why?

wrenchmonkey,

cant speak for everyone but there are the ever present provacy concerns of all your messages being scraped to feed LLMs and other data structures, and any monopoly for communications that develops is bad in principle. Also running a chrome app is a no for some people.

GroundedGator,

Your comment intrigued me as there is one that is just about the opposite of yours with a slightly different take.

You are concerned with your data being used to feed a private LLM. the other comment was concerned with three conversations being hidden from the public, more specifically not searchable from the outside and therefore hiding a knowledge repository.

I get both takes but they seem to be in conflict with each other. LLMs are important for accurate and useful AI, but there should also be a way for an open community to block them from consuming their data. It seems we missed a step somewhere. Providing data to an LLM should be opt-in.

wrenchmonkey,

providing data to the public should be opt in.my messages to family and friends arent any domain but my own.

9point6,

Amongst many other reasons, my biggest is it’s not searchable by search engines.

If someone else is having the same problem as me with some software, and someone else has figured it out, it should show up on the first page of a Google search regarding it.

If it doesn’t, the tool the community is using is entirely unfit for purpose.

Open source communities should be all about tearing down walled gardens, not living in them.

OsrsNeedsF2P,

Amongst many other reasons, my biggest is it’s not searchable by search engines.

That’s why we made forum.2009scape.org for our project. Yet the SEO is so bad that nobody finds anything we put there anyways.

9point6,

At that point it still has an advantage over discord in that if I know it exists I can narrow the search on Google (if it’s still not showing up, then there’s a misconfiguration going on)

With discord I have to join the community and hope that discord search isn’t shit.

Oh and I’m not gonna install discord on my work laptop—so if I’m looking at something for work I’m shit outta luck

OsrsNeedsF2P,

If you explicitly add site:ourforum or quotes around large blocks of text, our forum does show up, but to appear anywhere near the front page naturally is a full-time job and not something we have the resources to dedicate.

I think, unfortunately, things like GitHub discussions are the best place for users to find things off Google, but at the end of the day you’re still trusting a profit driven proprietary company

9point6,

Yeah I’d agree it’s a bit shit that it often has to end up somewhere like GitHub, but it’s at least searchable, which (for me at least) is an absolute necessity for any community where people go to troubleshoot.

Tbh, using “site:blah” is what I’m referring to when I say about narrowing the search. Kinda just do that if I know roughly where I’m looking in order to cut through the shit, but I’ll put my hands up that maybe that’s not especially typical.

CliveRosfield,

I don’t think you understand how terrible search engines are for niche communities. I’d bet most lemmy posts don’t show up. You’re far better off just joining the community and doing a search within discord than wasting your time scraping through bad search results.

9point6,

If I know the community exists, I can narrow the search on Google

… Unless it’s on discord because in that case it’ll never show up

And if the community I’m looking for is regarding something I’m working on, I’m not putting discord on my work laptop, so shit outta luck

CliveRosfield,

If I know the community exists, I can narrow the search on Google

Doesn’t work most of the time for my communities.

And if the community I’m looking for is regarding something I’m working on, I’m not putting discord on my work laptop, so shit outta luck

Sounds like a personal problem you don’t want to work around.

9point6,

I’m sorry, you want everything that’s on your discord going through whatever monitoring software your work puts on your laptop?

A lot of places won’t even let you install third party software without going through IT—and I’ll bet you most IT departments aren’t going to authorise you installing discord.

This is a very common situation, not a personal problem.

Weird take.

CliveRosfield,

Just like every other job you bring it up to the IT department and work around it.

9point6,

Tell me you’ve never worked with a corporate IT department without telling me you’ve never worked with a corporate IT department.

It’s not a professional tool, and it’s clearly not positioned as one. There’s no way in hell you get that through any remotely professional IT department. Aside from many other reasons, they can’t lock it down from an information security perspective (effectively legally required to avoid falling foul of things like GDPR), that alone makes it a massive denied response.

Ottomateeverything,

Amongst many other reasons, my biggest is it’s not searchable by search engines.

Well gee, I hope you don’t use texting, phone calls, emails, private forums, social media DMs, or talk to anyone IRL, because those aren’t searchable either!

This argument seems like reaching for something to complain about rather than having a legitimate problem with discord. If anything, you don’t like the “large group chat” paradigm, but that’s like hating a screwdriver because it’s not a hammer.

9point6,

This is about the official community around a piece of software being shoved inside a opaque box. It’s shitty.

I have plenty of social groups on discord, that’s the correct usage of the tool.

Your example is more “everything is a nail when you’re holding a hammer”

androidul,

that makes sense, thank you for explaining

You are right, when I was trying to get acquainted with Gentoo for instance, I found most of my problems solved in a forum or wiki, if they had discord I wouldn’t have gotten nowhere probably and would’ve just ditched it

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

It would be nice if more people used Matrix. From my experience though it seems like not a lot of people check in on it regularly because the niche communities they follow are on Discord and even though bridges between Matrix and Discord do exist they are often neglected and fall of out sync.

topinambour_rex,
@topinambour_rex@lemmy.world avatar

It would be better if they used a web forum. It’s so easy to search in threads.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Like an independent forum or something like XDA Developers?

I feel like it really depends on the topic and level of engagement. I find traditional forums a bit hard to follow at times because of people branching off and bouncing around discussions. I might run into the same issue I do with Matrix channels where I’m not regularly checking in. Logging in is also another thing.

topinambour_rex,
@topinambour_rex@lemmy.world avatar

The issue with login ?

You just unlock your password vault and let it autofill.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I meant for people who use external password managers. Creating a new account and remembering to delete it if you ever stop using it is another issue though.

GravitySpoiled,

There is an unofficial matrix room for typst. Join it and use it, and it will replace discord.

Typsts documentation is the documentation for their IDE. I have no idea why anyone would mix that.

Ever made a table in typst? It sucks. Latex tables are easier. As always, markdown is king.

furzegulo,

instead of discord, people should use revolt which is a foss clone app.revolt.chat

thantik,

Revolt is the “I’m not Discord!” version of Discord. We have that shit with presidents in the USA right now and we hate it.

possiblylinux127,

Stay away from it as it is centralized and the moderation practices are questionable at best.

crazyminner,

You can self host your own instance, no? github.com/revoltchat/self-hosted

possiblylinux127,

True but at that point go with something like Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix or Mattermost

topinambour_rex,
@topinambour_rex@lemmy.world avatar

No, just a webforum.

CliveRosfield,

Wow another discord bad thread. Daring today aren’t we?

Kecessa,

It’s become the new “DAE Win 11 bad?”

lemmesay,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

because it is?! if your goal is to have a non-indeaxable support forum, at least use matrix which is far far better than the horse manure that discord is.

CliveRosfield,

Ah yes let me switch to a chatting app that is missing half the features from discord with a worse UI. Epic!

S410,
S410 avatar

Meanwhile Discord misses half the features Matrix has. It's almost as if they're different projects with similar, but different goals.

One tries to be a flexible, interoperable, and secure protocol for communication, that's free for anyone to implement and use...

The other is a for-profit company that cherishes its centralized nature and far reaching control, allowing them to sell you random bells and whistles, collect your data unobstructed, and lure in investors and advertisers.

CliveRosfield,

One tries to be a flexible, interoperable, and secure protocol for communication, that’s free for anyone to implement and use…

The other is a for-profit company that cherishes its centralized nature and far reaching control, allowing them to sell you random bells and whistles, collect your data unobstructed, and lure in investors and advertisers.

Barely anyone cares about any of this. This stuff will never outweigh the features and QoL Discord has over everything else.

xigoi, (edited )
@xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Features such as being locked in to a bloated proprietary client that doesn’t even respect your date format settings? Or having to give your phone number to a shady company?

skydivekingair,

I’m at a point where I wish our support forum was at least on Discord, the majority of my community is pretty old but it spans down into a handful of Gen Z with more Millennials and Z coming in as the Boomers get out. Even so the main forum is a Facebook page. Splinter groups using WhatsApp, Signal and iMessage. It’s not like the older gen is technically inept, for the most part, it’s just they’re entrenched and moving them would take a massive, easy to use software that is far superior to FB’s viability. Personally using Discord and it’s seamless jump from PC-Laptop-Phone is nice, admittedly I’m in the same mindset of those in my groups on FB as I haven’t tried anything else.

variants,

I finally got our drone community on discord but now they are all gamers and don’t want to talk about drones anymore

possiblylinux127,

It rwally does suck though

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I don’t get discord at all. It seems like the worst parts or IRC and the worst parts of webforums mashed together with no redeeming values added. I can’t find anything, I can’t tell what conversations are over, I can’t figure out any of the in-jokes. If the place is too dead it’s completely devoid of anything of value, if it’s too big everything of value gets buried.

I’ve tried to take part in a couple of servers, those attempts have never last more than a couple hours.

Kushan,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

The barrier to entry for IRC is very high for non technical users. It’s also archaic, has little to no customisation and can be difficult to moderate at high volumes.

I’m not defending discord here, but the IRC comparisons are silly.

SaintWacko,

I’ve always found that Discord’s search works pretty well!

variants,

Yeah that’s what I use most to see if people have asked the same question I have then I jump to the discussion they had and that leads me where I want to go, but I do get it would be really annoying for someone who isn’t logged into discord or uses it to chat with friends

DocMcStuffin,
@DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world avatar

Forums do it better, can be indexed by a search engine, can be bookmarked, and can be archived using the wayback machine or a similar service. Important information shouldn’t be buried in chat logs. And discord’s forum feature was an idea they tacked on and is a poor substitute for the real thing.

SaintWacko,

Those are definitely some excellent points

GBU_28,

What do you mean find anything?

Discord is used like this:

Text message: you wanna play today? Yeah.

Discord: here’s the server address. Thanks

Discord voice chat: I made us a bunch of supplies. Cool I dug up a diamond.

darkmatternoodlecow,

And if we were talking about hooking up with our friends to play Minecraft, that’d be a great point.

GBU_28,

Everyone is like "discord is a bad project discussion and documentation space! "

Which could be read as “it’s very hard to cut this steak with a plunger!”

People are complaining about using a tool incorrectly.

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

We’re complaining about having to use it incorrectly. We can’t help if the software project (that’s part of a software project, that’s part of a software project we need) only offers support via discord.

To belabor your metaphor, you’re saying that we shouldn’t complain if we want a steak and the only place to get steak only offers plungers as utensils.

GBU_28,

You don’t have to. Fork it, make it better. Crush the existing developers, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their Patreon donators.

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Sure. If you need software support, build a support system and get everyone else to use it. Makes perfect sense. I hope you live exclusively by this principal.

GBU_28,

What? This is about documentation and maintenance of an open source project, this isn’t a SaaS situation.

If your documentation sucks, you’re no better than the discord hell the original project came from.

And yes, I only work with open source projects that are run well, or I fork them and maintain them for personal use.

LainTrain,

I’m interested, what’s your process for ‘personal’ forks? Any extra steps?

GBU_28,

The one discord thing I do is mention I am making the fork, then spend the first while doing the documentation I wish existed. I set up the repo to accept issues and allow discussion.

yuriy,

if you don’t like this restaurant, just open your own!

GBU_28,

It’s open source software. Forking and improving is a core feature.

If people have a decent idea but a shit implementation, supercede them.

CosmicCleric,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Crush the existing developers, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their Patreon donators.

Conan the Developer has spoken!

someacnt_,

Does that really happen? I only used discord for limited socialization, discussing e.g. math in specific channels.

thanks_shakey_snake,

Well the specific context here is software projects using it as the platform for their community… So it’s kind of like going to a steakhouse and being given a fork and plunger to eat with. It makes sense to both complain about the steakhouse, and remark on the shortcomings of using a plunger for the purpose it was imposed on you for.

Now of course, it’s wrong to say that Discord or a plunger are bad tools per se-- They are both occasionally useful for when I need to deal with some problematic shit. They are unpleasant, but I just hold my nose and thoroughly wash my hands after.

Actually the plunger analogy tracks better than I expected.

GBU_28,

To which I’m saying anyone who engages with discord in a project space that is silly. Creators and users. Software dev happens elsewhere. Fork it and make it better.

thanks_shakey_snake,

Fork… what? The software project that you’re trying to get help with? The problem isn’t that you need to change the code, the problem is that you want to be able to leverage the community.

GBU_28,

Oh sorry are you not familiar with GitHub or other branching code managers?

thanks_shakey_snake,

Haha that’s not the issue, but it’s pretty clear that you’re deliberately misunderstanding at this point.

GBU_28,

I understand it fine. People are intrigued by a useful project, only to find the junk devs run a discord for community engagement, issue tracking, devlog, and so on.

People feel helpless they they have to engage with discord in this way, because it is shit for that stuff.

People have no ability to self correct their experience, even though the system has built in features to allow them to improve the project by forking it and raising the standards.

thanks_shakey_snake,

Great, I knew you could understand if you wanted to (hence the “deliberate” part).

So… Yes. Exactly. The complaint is about poor choices in the implementation of the project’s community. Not everybody who would want to use the software (e.g. Typst, in this meme) knows how to code at all. Those people are reliant on the community for support, and may choose to avoid a project if the community isn’t good for them. That’s the premise of the meme, and orthogonal to any properties of the version control system.

Among those who can code, it’s still reasonable that someone might consider the community when evaluating the cost of integrating the project… Especially if they plan to be an end-user of the application.

It’s great if you grok the source of every project you use and accept the burden of maintaining them yourself in lieu of a good community. That’s really neat. But I don’t think it’s practical for everybody to do that for everything they might want to use… Yes, even though the Fork button is right there.

GBU_28,

So generally people would prefer to complain that improve? Very cool. Just flail and meme

thanks_shakey_snake,

Lol yes, people would often rather avoid getting involved with a piece of software at all (and perhaps complain about it), instead of taking over the burden of developing and supporting it themselves. Kids these days, right?

GBU_28,

Sucks to suck I guess

laurelraven,

It’s great for smallish groups of friends bs-ing or collaborating, but bigger than that I’ve always found it painful

But, some people can apparently keep up with the firehouse of comments on Twitch streams while they make me not want to bother with it at all, so…

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Yeah. My D&D group uses it for audio and video feeds and a little bit of between session chat. I appreciate how good the audio settings are.

TrickDacy,

I am guessing they advertised the right time in the right place. I agree, it’s absolute trash

Mango,

Are you old?

yuriy,

I’m 25 and share all these woes, what is old to you?

Mango,

Old is when you don’t try to understand the interface anymore.

Discord enables so much that’s never been so convenient before. Can’t say I like the company, but it’s pretty much the best at what it does.

LainTrain,

I joined reddit at 23 like 3 yrs ago from Tumblr/4chan(tttt)/VK/irc and already used discord before. It’s just shit and you’re coping

Mango,

K? Coping with what exactly?

xigoi,
@xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I’m 21 and completely agree.

eager_eagle,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

28yo here - Discord feels as if ADHD was a piece of software

LainTrain,

As someone diagnosed - you couldn’t have said it better 10/10

YurkshireLad,

It has probably the worst UI of any site or app. I can never find the settings I need to modify or what the heck I’m looking at. It tells me that there’s a new reply specifically to me but I can never find it because it has long scrolled up in the history.

I tried posting an image using the app on my phone but it kept ignoring it. Somehow I magically hit the right button and it included it in my reply. I had no idea.

The content is hidden from the world unless you sign up and join, so the knowledge captured on a discord server is essentially useless.

It’s definitely a mashup on irc and web forums, but infinitely worse.

someacnt_,

I think it is only used more than IRC because you can post images.

LilDumpy,
@LilDumpy@lemmy.world avatar

That’s was my exact experience on a pokemon go server. So many channels and conversations that notifications are useless and searching for the information I needed was difficult. Just one giant group chat which is awful for storing needed, retrievable, information imo.

Made me never want to step into discord again.

strangebananaman,
@strangebananaman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Same thing with EVERY SINGLE GORILLA TAG SERVER. Way too many mentions. Not straight forward enough. I can not express this enough. It’s insane!

fastandcurious,

I am OOL, why so much discord hate lately? I have never used it…

tubaruco,

its not open source, meaning its spyware

now seriously, i think its only issue is that it doesnt run well, and its even worse on phones. it works very well as a tool to create communities and talk to people.

cucumberbob,

I don’t think people hate discord as a host for some communities, but there definitely is a growing rejection of it among FOSS contributors.

It sucks as a place to store knowledge. The search sucks, it’s not indexable by search engines, and requires an account to use. As another commenter on this post said, it combines the worst parts of IRC and webforums.

There are better ways to organise a FOSS project, and people are unhappy that some projects still choose discord.

friend_of_satan,

Discord is a real-time communication system that also has a built-in history feature. This type of communication promotes conversational interactions, which are really hard to search for complete ideas about problems and their solutions, and those solutions are not indexed by internet search engines, which makes it extremely difficult for people to discover useful information on the platform even with the available history.

The asynchronous nature of web based forums promotes communication in more complete ideas (though this is clearly not always how communication happens) and they are indexable by search engines.

Just look at how people discover solutions in Reddit posts so frequently when searching Google, but nobody finds solutions in chat logs, even IRC which has been around for decades and is often archived in a search indexable site where chat logs are posted.

Edit: I swear that wasn’t written even a bit by AI.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

No one wants their private/semi-private chats to be indexable or searchable. The whole POINT is to not have what you say broadcast to all and sundry.

glockenspiel,

I hear what you’re saying, but that is exactly why Discord is shit for official communities like in the meme. There’s no reason why an open source project should rely on Discord for troubleshooting and feature requests and enthusiasm. Discord was meant for things like video games and friend chats, not instances where data discovery is paramount to growing the community.

There is a reason thar Discord communities trend toward toxic, and it is the insular weirdness that the platform enables and reinforces. Forums make much more sense for projects. Discord ends up with a bunch of no lifers ruining the communities. Been through it far too often with things like genre appreciation groups to open source projects. Reminds me of being a kid and encountering the, frankly, losers chasing people out of IRC.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

For open-source projects and stuff that needs to be public, I can feel you.

What these chucklefucks are asking for is to make ALL Discord content indexable and searchable, even extremely private intimate things, and that’s absolutely unacceptable.

friend_of_satan, (edited )

Assuming I’m one of the chucklefucks you’re talking about, that’s not what we’re saying. The meme and my comments are about software that somebody found. If somebody found it, it’s already public. Why should such a software community hold its discussions in private?

I’m very pro-privacy. The topic here is not private software, it’s public software.

Useful looking software that somebody stumbles across and wants to learn more about is what we’re talking about.

pinkdrunkenelephants, (edited )

It’s your proposed solution that’s the problem. The answer isn’t to make Discord public, it’s to convince people to move off of it, and quite honestly, if you want people to leave Discord so badly, you’d be better off setting up separate public forums for the open source projects you are interested in on your own and convincing/bribing respected members of the Discord to post there, or copy/paste technical info there.

I feel the same way about Lemmy so I sympathize with you, honestly.

friend_of_satan, (edited )

The answer isn’t to make Discord public

You’re absolutely right. Aside from me not caring at all what happens to discord, my explanation points out that even having IRC chat logs public doesn’t surface solutions in search engines, because chat isn’t good for that.

It sounds like you really misunderstood what I was saying. Public software that values community as a long lasting place for users to find solutions should not be promoting chat for those end-user facing discussions, they should be promoting forums.

Plus the original meme isn’t saying anything related to making discord publicly searchable, it’s saying “fuck discord, I’d rather not use that software than use discord.”

ccunning,

You don’t really address why having a “conversational” option is bad. I understand the advantages of searchable history but that’s not necessarily the right option for every community. Diversity is good.

RadicalEagle,

It’s not bad to have the conversational option, but at a certain point in a project’s life cycle it probably shouldn’t be the only option.

A complex project like a government would have a hard time throwing out all their knowledge infrastructure and relying purely on Discord.

ccunning,

Sure, but every project doesn’t have to provide every option.

Look at Reddit’s terrible conversational “solution”.

Discord is the option.

Ottomateeverything,

This whole comment/complaint is just the pros and cons of different types of communication. None of this is discord specific, it’s just complaints that real time chat isn’t indexed by search engines and isn’t organized into clear topics.

Sure, some IRC chats were logged/posted, but that still has all the same searchability problems, and that process can still be used within discord search. It’s just not useful because real time chat doesn’t have any sort of topic organization.

This whole thing is like complaining that signal is worse than email because it’s not as organized. It’s not worse, it’s just a different medium with different goals and purpose. And you’re not giving any specifics as to why signal/discord is bad, just that you don’t like direct messaging/chat rooms.

MajorHavoc,

Edit: I swear that wasn’t written even a bit by AI.

That’s the beauty of it. Tomorrow, it will be.

(When an AI copy/pastes your answer to someone asking about choosing the correct iphone power brick, or something.)

friend_of_satan,

Maybe that’s one thing people like about discord: AI can’t index their chat logs… unless discord starts selling that data.

RmDebArc_5,
@RmDebArc_5@lemmy.ml avatar

I think they already do

DocMcStuffin,
@DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world avatar

They’re using AI to generate summaries of chat logs.

I don’t believe they’ve had an IPO yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they start selling that data to hit profitability.

thanks_shakey_snake,

“Starts” lol. They are way ahead of you, my friend.

I recommend reading Discord’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy some time. It is… more eyebrow-raising than usual.

thantik,

It’s a closed ecosystem that locks what would otherwise be searchable knowledge on the web, with an unsearchable, proprietary lockdown of that information. It’s great for voice chat in gaming - not for a repository of knowledge.

RedAggroBest,

I think the problem here really is that people are using discord to fill a niche that they wouldn’t otherwise occupy if other options were as simple “make a server” (yes they aren’t actual servers but that’s not the point).

I will concede that it’s still weird to see any FOSS communities on there.

Ottomateeverything,

I think discord is primarily just useful for voice chat, yes.

But:

It’s a closed ecosystem that locks what would otherwise be searchable knowledge on the web, with an unsearchable, proprietary lockdown of that information.

Yeah, no. Proprietary, sure, but you can say that about almost communication mechanism that’s not a website with an API. It’s not like people would otherwise be posting these things somewhere else if discord didn’t exist. If it wasn’t discord it’d be slack or something. Discord is an entirely different medium and complaining that it isn’t a forum is just not a legitimate argument. They’re entirely different things.

thantik,

They are entirely different things, but people are using it where they should be using a forum or similar solution due to its easy of use and popularity culture wise.

That doesn’t negate the reason why it’s hated.

xigoi,
@xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Matrix, for example, is an open protocol for real-time messaging.

LainTrain,

Why are people choosing to chat in some random meme spam for actual info instead of making a reddit/forum/something indexable post like everyone always used to is what ppl don’t get

skulbuny,
@skulbuny@sh.itjust.works avatar

Typst is very good software, though. Never will ever use latex again in my life.

skulbuny,
@skulbuny@sh.itjust.works avatar

Where Linux?

dream_weasel,

At least it’s not some anime / trans issues “meme”. I’ll call it a step in the right direction.

JoShmoe,

I’m pretty sure the hype towards discord for programming is the convenience. A combination of gaming communities, content creators and I’ve actually seen it be used in professional environments.

lemmesay,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I’ve even seen schools conducting classes on discord during pandemic.

JoShmoe,

I haven’t seen that yet but I’m not surprised by it. Some people have (or had) discords for cryptocurrencies. The guy I knew involved with it wasn’t a tech savvy person though.

Feathercrown,

Discord makes for a bad forum because it’s not a forum! Stop using it as one! It’s good for small groups that need realtime communication-- friend groups, project groups, even classes of students. If you’re using it as a public forum you’re using the wrong tool!

corytheboyd,
corytheboyd avatar

I mean, I get it, but when the wrong tool is used so ubiquitously, you have to start asking questions about why people aren’t using the “right” tool. Forums seem to end up being hostile to newcomers, with all this “did you search the forum first you fucking noob?” mentality. Having a living place for real-time questions and discussion just feels better, same way email exchanges feel terrible after using Slack for so long. You can still have incredibly toxic people in real-time chat servers, obviously, but there just seems to be less overall stress to keep the posts in the forum “pristine” or… whatever that was.

Not being able to search for old content is a huge con to real-time chat. Even if the history is retained forever (in self-hosted instances), real-time messages just aren’t the best bits of data to recall later like forum posts. Clear drawback.

Still, people are using discord, not to spite forums, but because it works, is free, and is easy.

ElectroVagrant,

Forums seem to end up being hostile to newcomers, with all this “did you search the forum first you fucking noob?” mentality. Having a living place for real-time questions and discussion just feels better, same way email exchanges feel terrible after using Slack for so long. You can still have incredibly toxic people in real-time chat servers, obviously, but there just seems to be less overall stress to keep the posts in the forum “pristine” or… whatever that was.

Tbh you can find similar hostility to newcomers in Discord servers, simply swap some words about for a, “Did you read the pins you fucking noob?” mentality. It’s very much the old forum kneejerk response of, “Did you read the rules/stickied posts?” simply in a different context. As you note though, you’ll find assholes in any communication medium.

Also, to your point about a place for real-time questions & discussion, that’s also to its detriment for anyone out of sync with a server’s more active hours, which I think is kind of an understated argument against it among the usual criticism found in these threads. Sure search is one thing, but the asynchronous nature of a forum is imo one of its greatest strengths, especially considering how flaky and/or inundated Discord’s inbox/mentions can be.

LainTrain,

Most of discord is toxic AF and is so prone to astroturfing it’s unreal. Literally just use reddit at that point I beg you.

Real time conversation is only useful for children with too much free time on their hands and that’s why WhatsApp group chats exist.

JackbyDev,

Who is saying this is using it as a forum?

laurelraven,

This, exactly.

Discord sucks at what it wasn’t designed to do… Shocker. That doesn’t make it bad.

platypus_plumba,

Why do people do this when there are already Github discussions and issues?

Warl0k3,

Because having an active community on github or a forum is a very different feeling to having one on IRC or discord. They’re entirely different tools. IRC-style communities have always been more active than github, discord is just the latest iteration of that concept.

Hosting documentation or issue tracking on discord, though, I hate that. For tech support its… fine, for getting informal feedback or engaging with users its great. Anything archival its a goddamn crime.

The worst is when people try to use discords forum features, which are the worst of all possible worlds…

platypus_plumba,

Yeha, it should be done only for support.

I still think that support stuff should be opened FIRST in the forum tool because it gives visibility for search engines. Just label it as “Support”.

That should automatically open a thread in the discord server where people can discuss. The discord server thread should be tagged in the forum. If any bug/features come from that chat, then they can be linked to the support ticket.

If anyone has a similar support related issue, they’ll find full traceability using a search engine instead of having to find the discord server to search stuff.

someacnt_,

Yeah, wait, do people archive some info in discord? Why, there are approaches like github, readthedocs, blogs, wiki, and so on. I only use discord for socializing, works for well-managed servers.

TrickDacy,

It sucks at what it was designed to do also. One of the trashiest UIs I’ve seen, and buggy af. It’s barely gotten any better too.

uis,
@uis@lemmy.world avatar

One of the trashiest UIs I’ve seen,

You must have seen only best of the best UIs.

and buggy af.

I don’t think fuck is as buggy as Discord.

thedirtyknapkin,

i mean, it’s far from perfect, but as someone that’s been using video/voice clients since before there was a commercial solution, what is better? i haven’t found it.

Takumidesh,

Can you share some of the bugs you encounter? I actually find discord to be quite stable.

jjjalljs,

My favorite, though more of a UI blunder than a bug, and I think fixed now: If you right clicked on a user name and hit “Add Note”, a box would pop up for you to type in. Like for writing your note in. But that box was in fact the “send them a direct message” box.

So if you hypothetically wanted to write “Asshole” as a note, and didn’t pay attention to what text box had focus, well, that was a bad time.

chocosoldier,

my screen freaks out and flashes white and pink when I open/type in the gif thingy, in a way that makes me thankful i’m not photosensitive. it’s been this way for over a year.

TrickDacy,

Depends on what exact type of app you want, but as one example of something that can mostly replace discord and do a far better job-- Slack. There was an app in the early 2000’s for gaming voice chat which I thought worked far better too. It was called something like “Roger Wilco” I think. The only similar apps I’ve used which are obviously worse than discord? Teams, and once MS bought it, Skype.

Poik,
@Poik@pawb.social avatar

Man Skype used to be so good when it was peer to peer… I don’t see anything that MS brought to that platform that improved it at all.

I hate Slack Overflow (using Slack as documentation) but it beats the pants off of Discord Overflow.

Omniraptor,

ah yes slack the app that won’t let you voice chat in groups or store chat history unless you pay $7 per user per month. I’m honestly amazed how they’ve been getting away with it this long when discord exists

TrickDacy, (edited )

won’t let you voice chat in groups

Weird, I guess I have been imagining doing that at work for the past couple of years. I do understand though, when you’re used to apps like discord, you forget it’s possible to not only gain new useful features, but have them actually work.

Slack’s pricing logic makes perfect sense to me there. It’s free and works for a large number of users, but the ones who actually need chat history probably can/should pay for it.

I’m honestly amazed how they’ve been getting away with it this long when discord exists

Yeah it’s totally crazy that an app can be considered good enough that many thousands of businesses find it worth paying for. I mean why isn’t every business using free Gmail accounts? Or for similar shittiness in the UI department, why isn’t everyone using Hotmail?

Omniraptor,

I was pretty clearly only complaining about the features offered by their free tier, which I just checked does still not let you voice chat with three or more people or search chat history. (The chat history issue is more significant by far).

And yes $7 per user per month is not reasonable for an open source project with a few hundred members that doesn’t have a budget, especially compared to discord that gives you unlimited chat history for free. All the open source projects I know that use chat use either matrix or discord.

TrickDacy,

“I paid for nothing, I don’t I get everything? This janky shitty free app gives it to me!”

They give it for free to nonprofits. Anything else for the confidently incorrect movement today?

berg,

Slack got sacked in my circles when they removed the ability to view messages older than 30 days…

The UI in discord isn’t great, but it works, and it’s free.

bl4ckblooc,

Users don’t move everything from an already existing forum to Discord. It’s not like people are going there because they want to use it as a forum, lots of forums have been replaced by discord (like in the screenshot of this post). To reiterate the metaphor someone used already, it’s like wanting to eat a steak but the only steakhouse gives you a plunger instead of a knife.

Mango,

It makes for a bad forum sure, but why should it have to be a forum?

HowManyNimons,

Time zones.

TomAwsm,

To be able to search through and find information in previous discussions.

Mango,

You can do that.

TomAwsm,

Sorry, I forgot to add “easily”.

Mango,

If you don’t understand it, that’s ok. Maybe they could work on making it easier.

DragonOracleIX,

Making it easier is not the problem. The problem is having the search function actually find the messages you are looking for. The biggest problem I have with it is that word order matters too much. “Keyword1 keyword2” will find different messages than “keyword2 keyword1”. Not only that, but it will also search for different variations of the word with no way of preventing it from doing it. If there is a solution for these problems, then no one is taking about it.

DrQuint,

If only there was something called an Issues page attached to every code repository. Oh well, that is an idea that is probably impossible or whatever.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

They added forum-style posts a while ago, which greatly improves usability. But I won’t use it regardless, due to privacy issues.

lemann,

Sounds like a very neat feature, but IMO still not great for people outside of the discord server esp. if the threads can’t show up in a search engine

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

True. That’s why I recommend Discourse if you can’t use a proper development forum like Codeberg or something.

DrQuint,

Greatly improved usability, while still greatly hurting searchability, in that common bugs are still hidden away from indexable sight.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Discord has a robust search system

DrQuint,

That is absolutely not true unless if you have exact word matches, and anyone with half a brain knows it’s not about searching within discord, but about searching outside of it.

Discord is a black hole of information. What happens inside is unknown from the outside. This is why every single FOSS project using discord loses the right to call themselves FOSS - an issues page is equally free, has way, way better features to relate an issue to patches and releases, and is actually indexable.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

That is absolutely not true

It absolutely is.

it’s not about searching within discord, but about searching outside of it.

I’m gonna ignore your uncalled-for personal insult and instead point out that you might want to search a specific group for information rather than the entirety of the internet.

What happens inside is unknown from the outside.

Then just…go inside? These aren’t password-protected communities.

This is why every single FOSS project using discord loses the right to call themselves FOSS

Uhhhh no that’s not how that works.

an issues page is equally free, has way, way better features to relate an issue to patches and releases, and is actually indexable.

I agree.

DrQuint,

then just go inside?

Ladies and gentlemen of the Linux community: A guy telling you to step inside the walled garden. Unironically.

I rest my case.

I don’t have the time for this.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

A guy telling you to step inside the walled garden.

What “walled garden”? I don’t think you know what that phrase means.

I don’t have the time for this.

Good, go away.

LainTrain,

No I will not sign up for ze discord chinese data harvesting op

If your project isn’t something I can index through a search engine - you don’t have a project. Want a forum? Make a subreddit or better yet a Lemmy community.

helenslunch, (edited )
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

If your project isn’t something I can index through a search engine - you don’t have a project.

LOL are we just making up arbitrary rules now?

If your project doesn’t have a photo of a clown at the bottom of the page, yOu DoNt HaVe A pRoJekT! 🤡

LainTrain,

Are you slow

zeppo,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

That’s the problem. I know of a couple video games where the publisher closed their forums and opened a discord channel. I have no idea why people view them as equivalent things.

CeeBee,

I brought this up in a project Discord once and they told me “this is just the way projects do it now, get used to it”.

I left that server right away.

LainTrain,

See I always wondered what the rationale was, hiding from indexers to not get canceled or smth? Bruh 💀

AlexWIWA,

Discord is great for friends, bad for projects. I’ll never have a discord for a project because I don’t want to answer the same questions over and over.

assassin_aragorn,

You just gave me a fear I didn’t know I had.

boredsquirrel,

Same as Matrix tbh.

Awesome in FOSS matrix rooms: there are threads, but people never use them. Its horrible, they dont even jump on the boat. You could literally have one message = one topic and everything in a separate thread…

onlinepersona,

Suddenly, I don’t feel so alone anymore.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

lemmesay,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

yeah, your post was the exact thought I had.

autoexec,

What are the preferred alternatives?

Mine is probably matrix, mostly because I can use the same account everywhere, but it also feels like there’s a lot of gotchas and all the phone apps are kinda meh each in their own unique way.

lemmesay,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

matrix is adding sliding-sync functionality which is supposed to dramatically reduce startup times. you can try element x and see the difference.

autoexec,

I’m a bit annoyed with element X tbh, my home server only has sso logins, but they don’t support that and the error message doesn’t explain this at all, which means it’s up to me to figure out if I’m doing it wrong, my home server is doing something wrong, or the app is just bad at communicating errors.

crazyminner,

Revolt looks promising: revolt.chat

KingRandomGuy,

Personally, I’d prefer that projects use forums for community discussions rather than realtime chat platforms like Discord or Matrix. I think the bigger problem of projects using Discord is not that it’s closed source, but rather that it makes it difficult to search (since no indexing by search engines) and the format deprioritizes having discussion on a topic over a long period of time. Since Matrix is also intended for chat, it has these same issues (though at least you can preview a room without making an account).

autoexec,

I agree with you, but I also think people find Discord convenient because it’s just 1 account and free to use.

I wonder if Lemmy and the rest of the fediverse can work here, or just anything where smaller free projects don’t necessarily have to pay for and maintain their own community infrastructure, and still allow users to jump around without getting too locked in.

KingRandomGuy,

Yeah I think Lemmy would actually work pretty reasonably. It reminds me of how lots of software and projects have Reddit communities. I agree that being able to share 1 account over many services, and especially not having to pay for infrastructure is something that drives discord use over forum-based platforms.

LarmyOfLone,

Is there a good federated “one click” insta community replacement for discord yet? Or rather, what is the most likely to evolve into something like that? I looked into matrix chat and elements.

haui_lemmy,

Matrix is very much in development but its getting there. Especially enthusiast servers work great imo. Mine is bridged with discord, whatsapp and signal for example.

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