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Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

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Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#61

Post by chillfox »

dancemethis wrote: post #30
rhyssullivan1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's due to how Discord evolved as a platform Discord start as "your private place for your friends to talk" during a time where there were a lot of privacy issues with other communication methods. Then as it grew beyond this scope of being a private place for friends, it would have been good for indexing to be added but indexing a normal text channel is really hard since you don't know where the conversation…

It's beyond ironic that Discord called itself that, being the successor to OpenFeint and its privacy lawsuit scandal, and being proprietary. Now it is one of the most privacy-hostile AND preservation-hostile platforms around.

Not everything should be preserved forever. It's actually really nice to be able to talk online and not have it form a permanent record that can be instantly referenced by anyone.

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#62

Post by chillfox »

Grimburger wrote: post #48
hutzlibu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently because it is very easy to setup and offer a place where people can join. More and more open source projects are using it and I don't really like it, but what easy alternatives can you recommend to them? Genuine question, as it is an open issue for me. I want to focus on my project, not setting up and maintain a forum, mailing lists, etc. on top of that.

> what easy alternatives can you recommend to them Github discussions. A project I follow moved all their Q&A from discord and it's a joy to both search and ask now. Discord is actively hostile to anyone simply wanting to browse.

I would much rather engage with a community on Discord than on Github discussions/Reddit/a forum. The inability to easily browse historical posts is a feature to me that makes it much less risky to ask questions and join a community. I don't have to spend a lot of time searching and effort to phrase my questions just right to avoid getting yelled at by someone that I should have used the search instead of posting.

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#63

Post by teolandon »

chillfox wrote: post #60
apignotti wrote: post #5

Genuine question: I love Discord, but how on earth is it possible that such functionality was not built-in to begin with? I really don't understand how the need for indexing and search was overlooked.

Discord does have search, but I really hope they do not improve it. The lack of good search really prevents the hostility towards new users that you often see on Reddit/forums where every question is instantly answered by a one liner "use the search" reply. Discord communities are some of the most friendly and welcoming communities I have ever encountered on the internet. I think a large part of it is the chat nature…

I'd rather have the tools to find things without having to interact with humans.

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#64

Post by chillfox »

teolandon wrote: post #63
chillfox wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord does have search, but I really hope they do not improve it. The lack of good search really prevents the hostility towards new users that you often see on Reddit/forums where every question is instantly answered by a one liner "use the search" reply. Discord communities are some of the most friendly and welcoming communities I have ever encountered on the internet. I think a large part of it is the chat nature…

I'd rather have the tools to find things without having to interact with humans.

No one are automatically entitled to get the output of a community while sitting on the sideline, although a community may chose to make it available.

Perhaps you should consider getting your answers from ChatGPT in the cases where a community has decided to be for themselves instead of the greater internet.

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#65

Post by Karrot_Kream »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15
easygenes wrote: post #6

While I see the value here, I don't really think most Discord communities are appropriate to be indexed. It breaks the whole cozy web aspect of it. [1] [1] https://maggieappleton.com/cozy-web

The "cozy web" is out of control these days. A lot of social utility is lost by default because everyone uses Whatsapp and Discord and other such information black holes, places where knowledge goes to die. It's OK if you're using these to chat with your family or friends, but it's kind of... less OK, when every open source project these days, including major programming languages, tells you to join their Slack or Di…

> Maybe I'm too old, but I hate the "cozy web" with passion.

I don't know if you remember the net/web split but that's exactly what it felt like. Net people would crap on port 80, demand you install a news client and add some byzantine undocumented header or join an IRC channel and send custom DCC commands. There was also a lot of gatekeeping and making fun of the normies ("I may be a nerd but look at Bill Gates, one day I'll be your boss.")

It was a culture I really didn't enjoy and I mostly stayed out of because everyone seemed so interested in exclusivity. Not too many people seem to remember those communities either which says a lot.

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#66

Post by mavhc »

esafak wrote: post #19
apignotti wrote: post #5

Genuine question: I love Discord, but how on earth is it possible that such functionality was not built-in to begin with? I really don't understand how the need for indexing and search was overlooked.

It's not made for knowledge discovery; it's for gamers. Just look at that busy UI! The content is assumed to have no historical value.

But because it's free, and forums suck, people are using it for knowledge

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#67

Post by mavhc »

chillfox wrote: post #60
apignotti wrote: post #5

Genuine question: I love Discord, but how on earth is it possible that such functionality was not built-in to begin with? I really don't understand how the need for indexing and search was overlooked.

Discord does have search, but I really hope they do not improve it. The lack of good search really prevents the hostility towards new users that you often see on Reddit/forums where every question is instantly answered by a one liner "use the search" reply. Discord communities are some of the most friendly and welcoming communities I have ever encountered on the internet. I think a large part of it is the chat nature…

I always use discord search to find answers, but a lot of people don't bother. I'm not sure answering the same noob questions over and over is fun for anyone

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#68

Post by chillfox »

mavhc wrote: post #67
chillfox wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord does have search, but I really hope they do not improve it. The lack of good search really prevents the hostility towards new users that you often see on Reddit/forums where every question is instantly answered by a one liner "use the search" reply. Discord communities are some of the most friendly and welcoming communities I have ever encountered on the internet. I think a large part of it is the chat nature…

I always use discord search to find answers, but a lot of people don't bother. I'm not sure answering the same noob questions over and over is fun for anyone

Maybe not, but it makes a community feel very welcoming

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#69

Post by leobg »

Indexing Discord is going to be tough. The reason is that context is all over the place:

Question in one message. Then two unrelated messages. Then a partial answer by somebody. And so on.

It’s even worse than indexing a PDF. Just breaking stuff into paragraphs and generating embeddings isn’t going to cut it.

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#70

Post by TeMPOraL »

itsuka wrote: post #32
TeMPOraL wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "cozy web" is out of control these days. A lot of social utility is lost by default because everyone uses Whatsapp and Discord and other such information black holes, places where knowledge goes to die. It's OK if you're using these to chat with your family or friends, but it's kind of... less OK, when every open source project these days, including major programming languages, tells you to join their Slack or Di…

I am an advocate for knowledge sharing and have previously contributed (a tiny amount) to the community mentioned above, Reactiflux. There, I was able to share my knowledge freely without fear of being penalized or judged through a voting system, or being heavily moderated as is the case with Wikipedia or StackOverflow. I also didn't have to worry about my contributions being eternally indexed on the internet. As a c…

We seem to have interesting differences in perspective.

> There, I was able to share my knowledge freely without fear of being penalized or judged through a voting system, or being heavily moderated as is the case with Wikipedia or StackOverflow.

Private communities, especially chats, come with - IMO much stronger and impactful - built-in judging by peer pressure. That is, if someone doesn't like your contribution, it (or you) might get ridiculed in front of the entire community. At the very best, you'll have to defend the merit of what you wrote, which is kind of like replying to criticism on Reddit/HN, except you have to do it real-time. I personally vastly prefer the voting system on discussion boards. Less noise, takes more time to settle, lets you get positive feedback too (this is now partly solved in group chats via reactions), and of course:

> I also didn't have to worry about my contributions being eternally indexed on the internet. As a contributor, this is a feature (much less so for the lurker).

As a contributor, I never thought about it as a feature - on the contrary, I'm less willing to contribute something to a community (as opposed to small group of real life friends and family members) when said community is staying unindexed and unlogged - denying access to information to lurkers, and also to future community members, and even to current community members, as on such platforms search, if it exists, is so bad that it may as well not be there (also group chats make this structurally hard, too). I just don't like, and never liked, contributing anything to knowledge black holes.

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