FLOSS communities right now
FLOSS communities right now
4 pane comic of dolan on the left and spooderman on the right
pane 1 (dolan): cum join opensurce cummunity!
pane 2 (spooderman): shure! how joyn?
pane 3 (dolan): Here discord! (with discord logo)
pane 4 (spooderman with tears in eyes): y u do dis?
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Half this thread is mad discord saves messages and the other half is mad that discord doesn’t save messages. You can’t make this shit up lmao.
I’ll eat all the downvotes but objectively discord is the best chatting service available to the public for discussion. Blows irc out of the water easily. The only point I’ll concede on is the phone number bullshit but otherwise I’d take it over anything else.
Never had issues using their search feature for dev discords. It’s keyword based; truly stupid simple and easy to follow.
And yes I’ve used irc actively. It’s delusional to think that is somehow easier to follow.
the irony here is that discord quite literally has quantum state messages/posts, unless you NAIL the search perfectly, you're gonna get everything but the exact message you wanted. I mean sure the keywords make sense, but try searching for two or three keywords in a server with tens of thousands of message, or better yet, not knowing what specific keywords to use.
i can't tell you the amount of times i've tried searching for an embed with words only to realize that apparently, discord is completely incapable of searching through embed names.
Discord is alright as a chat platform, would actually be better if it were a universal platform base, like matrix, or get this, IRC. Not being stuck on a shitty broken electron app would nice from time to time.
I'm not sure you understand what "objectively" actually means... Care to provide your data in support of your objective conclusion?
Sure.
- FREE with zero maintenance or resources required on my end since day 1
- All messages and uploads are saved and searchable to anyone who joins a discord server. Some of my servers are from 2016 and all 100k messages up to this day are still there with each and every file untouched whenever I search for something. Same thing if I join a new server.
No other app has these two points along with the incredible amount of features and QoL Discord has. This is objectively true.
this is not explicitly true, moderation is still a labor requirement.
Messages get deleted from bans, channels wipes cause problems, sometimes discord just decides people shouldnt exist anymore.
Moderation is a requirement with anything involving people so I don’t see that as a discord specific problem. If anything it’s easier than a forum since I don’t have to deal with spam bots myself for the most part.
The channel wipe thing is fair. You’re right about that.
i dont see how it would be easier on discord, discord is literally known only for bot/hacked account issues. I've never seen a spam bot on a forum before.
Plus nobody is likely to target a forum, everybody is targeting discord already. And on top of that the discord banning/automoderation isnt great, i've heard its getting better though.
I follow a niche community and the recent bans for their board is all spam bots even in 2024. I don’t want to put up with that nonsense and discord actively tries to curb that so the choice is easy.
idk you'd have to compare it between a few forums, and a few discord servers of the same size in order to figure it out.
I'd still be surprised to see people actually botting forums. It really just doesn't make any sense.
I mean I have compared it and bots are still relentless on forums.
you already said that, but like, what does it mean
What forum/s are we talking about? What discords are we talking about? What kind of botting are we talking about? Are the forums actively moderated? What's the moderation experience like? Etc...
The big problem here is that discord is the only thing between you and managing your server, either they do it right, or they don't (which is what they usually do) With a forum, you are the only person between the two, but you have full control over it You want to set up a basic entry gate to prevent bot accounts from sneaking through? Trivial. You want to set up message rate limiting? Trivial, you want to set up some clever detection and sequestering mechanism? Trivial.
With discord you're either using bots, which suck, or you have to pay for, or you just pretend that it isn't a problem and let humans deal with it.
Good for you, you have a short list of requirements out of a chat service and discord perfectly fills your niche. But different people have different requirements for chat, and they don't align. And network effects force people who have differing requirements to use the service with the most users which sucks.
For instance here are things that I require from any chat service that I use that discord completely falls flat at:
- Ability to run it on my linux machine without using an electron client (npm is a huge mess of supply chain attacks and I refuse to run any software that is likely to contain dependencies from it)
- Ability to run it on my AOSP phone which does not have any google play services installed
- Ability to write software to back up messages without fear of a company changing their API and breaking my backup system
- Ability to search answers without having to join a 'server'
Just join a server, find your answer, and leave. Why is that so scary? You don’t even have to interact with anyone.
That lazy culture is exactly why discord is bad for the job. I search for solutions first, instead of barging in with a question that may have been asked and resolved a thousand times before.
Discord has a search feature 🤦you still don’t have to interact with anyone…
I can't understand how the people advocating for Discord in place of support forums can be so tone deaf about the core complaints others have about Discord.
Discord's search feature is worthless to me and a huge section of others. The search results don't show up on web searches. Web search indices are important because they aggregate information from many sources. Forums like Discourse don't have that problem. With Discord, you instead have to install a shitty electron app and register an account just to do the above mentioned search. Sometimes, they even force you to give them your phone number. No - I don't want to do that for every software problem I need to resolve. Even plain mailing list archives are miles ahead in that aspect.
Meanwhile, the community discussions are stuck inside a proprietary silo that appears convenient until the company decides to profit from it through eventual and inevitable enshittification. At that point, the rest of the world will be left looking for a way to free those discussions.
It’s been 8 years and they’ve done nothing and still haven’t. The criticism that you have to make an account to use a search feature which many forums already do makes no sense. My uploads from the day discord released are still there.
There were many times I couldn’t find a Reddit thread using a web search whereas I could immediately find it using reddits built-in search. Most of the search engines aren’t actually that good because there is too much noise in most web browser results these days.
If you know the exact website or app where the discourse for your topic is happening then 99% of the time you have far better results just using that websites built in search instead of the trash results modern browsers give you.
May I remind you that situation you’re describing already happened countless times since the days of free forum boards and irc channels going down. Yet we’ve always managed to keep things going. Things shutting down and information needing to be found again is not a big deal.
If anything I’ve seen more information lost by people hosting things themselves than the 8 years discord has kept things running smooth. So many niche communities on public forums, irc channels, etc, all self hosted and gone. Yes I and most of the world are willing to not cry about making an account for that guaranteed stability.
It’s been 8 years and they’ve done nothing and still haven’t.
My uploads from the day discord released are still there.
Is there any guarantee that they won't? The same statement has been repeated for many such platforms and has proven to be completely myopic. Reddit has a 20 year history and they still managed to screw its entire user base. This argument is very weak is because it relies entirely on the benevolence of a for-profit company, to whom their profits outweigh the interests of their user base. All the alternatives mentioned here have a way to replicate and archive the data for future searches - they don't depend on anyone's benevolence.
The criticism that you have to make an account to use a search feature which many forums already do makes no sense.
I don't know the exotic logic you rely on. But I can search forum posts from Google or DuckDuckGo without ever registering. Let's see you search Discord messages without installing a crappy client (their web interface is lobotomized), registering and possibly giving up your phone number in the process.
There were many times I couldn’t find a Reddit thread using a web search whereas I could immediately find it using reddits built-in search.
You are attacking a strawman. The target you choose to prove your point is Reddit? The company that screwed its entire userbase in order to cut off their competitors from data access - which is the reason why they don't work well with searches? People don't like Discord for the same reasons as Reddit. Both are silos meant to lock users in.
Most of the search engines aren’t actually that good because there is too much noise in most web browser results these days.
If you know the exact website or app where the discourse for your topic is happening then 99% of the time you have far better results just using that websites built in search instead of the trash results modern browsers give you.
This is laughably inaccurate. So, you're just making up facts now? I do web searches on technical problems and search engines perform very well. Your claim doesn't stand up in an actual test.
May I remind you that situation you’re describing already happened countless times since the days of free forum boards and irc channels going down. Yet we’ve always managed to keep things going.
There is a reason why Discord is not searchable online - it's a silo by design. And they intend to monetize it someday. Doing that today will affect the growth of their platform. But some day when their growth slows down and once they've achieved lock-in, they will start restricting it. Even if you have reasons to believe that the current management has no reasons to do so, they will get acquired by someone else lacking the same sensibilities. You should be completely blind to not see this play out again and again and again. Reddit is the most recent example. If you think that it isn't going to happen with Discord, then you're just deluding yourself about the value you represent to a for-profit company.
On the other hand, those forums and IRC servers that you claim to have gone down, have backups and searchable archive because they are designed with them in mind. Longevity of information is not an accident - it's by design.
Things shutting down and information needing to be found again is not a big deal.
You're making up nonsense again. May be it's not important to you. But they are important to FOSS projects and their users. They don't just want to be able to pull up solutions to previously encountered problems - they depend on the traceability of the said information. You wouldn't have made such nonsensical claim if you were seriously involved in a project.
Yes I and most of the world are willing to not cry about making an account for that guaranteed stability.
The statistics of this entire discussion doesn't agree with your statement. But let's forget that for now. You're not crying about making an account or stability of the platform because you're foolish enough to believe in those. You don't have the insight required to observe what's happening all around you. I can't wait for the day to come back and say 'I told you so'. Because it will happen. Nowhere in history has it happened in any other way.
At the end of the day all of the reasons you stated maybe <1% of people care about and most of the points have nothing to do with the chatting features itself. If I’m honest it’s basically paranoia and fear for the insanely low chance something goes slightly wrong. It’s like refusing to leave your house because you can spontaneously get struck by lightning. 🤷
Whatever solution you’re using I would bet most people would find incredibly annoying to use from a usability perspective. As it would lack the 8 years worth of features and QoL discord introduced.
So we have a philosophical difference and that’s that.
Agreed, but my point is with a centralized network the lowest common denominator wins. There is no reason you can't have QoL features on an open network, and thusly let everyone have the features that they care most about.
Can you imagine what a shithole the internet would have been if email wasn't federated an open? There is absolutely no way that whatever centralized bullshit would have spawned instead would already be either long gone or enshittified to the point of being useless.
Do you want to alienate users who are banned from Discord or don’t want to use proprietary software?
Yup. I am not giving up that convenience for a tiny fractional minority. They’re the ones wanting to die on a hill over a trivial problem not me.
People willing to give up freedom for a little convenience is how we end up with enshittification.
That’s quite a blanket statement when things like Steam exist.
The search has issues but I don't fuck with irc channels because there is literally NEVER anyone there. I don't understand IRC, either. I'm young, sorry
IRC would have been the best tool if it did session logging instead of requiring the use of bouncers. IRC is text-only, nonproprietary and completely distraction-free.
But you don't have to use IRC. There are more modern federated protocols like Matrix and XMPP that do session logging. There are quite a lot of FOSS communities on them that are very active.
However, the main complaint here isn't about Discord vs other chat protocols. It's about the use of Discord as a community support forum. Unlike forums like Discourse, Discord messages aren't searchable on the web. If a person asks a question on it and gets a solution, it's then lost forever. Another person with the same question has to ask again. It completely defeats the utility of FOSS - of reusing someone else's solutions.
Telegram would be much better if you want some chat based discusstions. Search indexable forums are the best to find help
I don't think it is better at all. Unlike Discord, which might allow you to exist without a phone number, Telegram requires it right upfront. And it removed the ability to register from desktop, at least without spinning up an Android VM.
Managing chats and pinning rules/important info in single chat is much better imo to "manage" a chat community. I agree your points though