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Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

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Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#291

Post by guptaneil »

DoctorOW wrote: post #225
MentallyRetired wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kids are using Guilded and dropping Discord these days, from what I hear.

Just Googling it, I haven't seen what makes it better than Discord. It reads like an alternative for the sake of competing. Not a bad idea, but I think it'll always be lagging behind like the wake of Facebook/YouTube/Reddit clones we've seen over the years.

Guilded eng here... in general, our marketing focuses heavily on chat because that's the first feature people switching from Discord will evaluate as table stakes, but our thesis is that team communication shouldn't be limited to just 1 format. To that end, we have lots of different channel types (calendar, forums, docs, media, etc). Admittedly our primary focus is esports teams, so a lot of our features are geared towards that (like inter-server tournament brackets). In terms of product roadmap though, you can think of it like how Basecamp is to Slack. We think one really well-built and integrated tool is better than having to juggle dozens of separate tools when managing a team/project/whatever. Hope that helps!

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#292

Post by dharmab »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #275
sbagel wrote: post #228

Discord does not give users a choice to opt-out of their wildly invasive data collection methods including logging executables running on your system while the desktop client is open, not just games. This data alone is very valuable. Comment from a 2019 support thread "I am pretty flabbergasted that people aren't making a bigger deal of this than they are. Discord actively monitors your executables, but the larger co…

Why would you install the desktop app? Isn't it Electron anyways, so aren't you basically running the same thing as you would in the browser, except now you've replaced the exceptionally well sandboxed, trusted browser with an outdated, unsandboxed browser and have given an app that doesn't need this access to your entire system?

> Why would you install the desktop app?

In-game push-to-talk requires a desktop app.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#293

Post by ed312 »

remram wrote: post #286
O_H_E wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I [and household] are now in a similar situation. At first, students got to use what they were already use to, but when the pandemic got painful and everybody flooded to online, thing went crazy. Discord is freaking enormous in that area rn. Servers for High school classes, university cohorts (ie. CS'24), university programs (ie. Electrical Engineering), There is even a course I am taking at uni where we have an offi…

One thing that would probably be welcome is some builtin support for threads. On the Python discord for example, there is a system of help channels which get assigned to the first person talking in it and returned to the pool after 30min of inactivity or once the problem has been solved. A bot keeps a few channels in a "free" pool, marks some as "occupied", and moves the surplus to a "dormant" section for UX purposes…

Personally I think threads ruin conversation flow. If you want to have an in-depth conversation about a topic limited to a few people, you should either open up another channel or do a DM. Just my opinion, but I hate Slack threads and love Discord's system.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#294

Post by Mehdi2277 »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #204
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord needs threads before I would even consider using it as a slack replacement.

Threads and the also send to channel are such a hack. It's much better to let conversations flow naturally.

There are many work conversations I have that rely heavily on threads and make the channel useless to scroll if sent directly. I think most of the discussions I read are in threads as often one engineer will encounter a bug, ask for help, and then there will be a back and forth discussion over a thread figuring the issue out. Keeping that in the channel makes reading the channel later fairly useless as most of that detailed discussion is too specific to care about. But being able to skim the main messages and see if anyone had similar issues and then enter that thread is great. On call alerts have a channel and then resolving the alert is often a thread discussion.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#295

Post by hnick »

vkou wrote: post #32
krzepah wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has trouble with UI design and it only got worse. Think about the "help" buttons that are on win system preferences, instead of directing you to the option they send you to google or bing. It's ridiculous.

IF you want a really ridicilous example of Microsoft's inability to deal with UX, try changing literally anything that has to do with sound in Windows, and tell me how many separate sound-related configuration applications there are, and what are the paths to opening them. Then, ask someone who never used Windows XP to explain to you what each of those configuration applications is responsible for. (So they won't be…

Or just use Outlook. I don't know what they did but it's like all the various panes are coded independently and don't talk to each other.

Multiple times a day I'll see a number next to 'unread' which won't go away, because I've read all my emails but it hasn't realised yet. And my calendar sometimes takes 5-10 seconds to load over VPN, it doesn't seem to be cached anymore. Made a mistake of going to lunch with an 'empty' calendar once! I miss 2016.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#296

Post by DigitalSea »

As a 30 something, I have been using Discord for a few years now. Like many long-term users, I started out being a member of gaming-affiliated servers and now, I am a member of numerous technology and cryptocurrency/blockchain related servers as well as gaming (but not primarily). Many of the big Twitch streamers have Discord servers and special roles for paid subscribers as do many content creators on Youtube (especially those who create reaction videos and cannot monetise it on Youtube itself). Pretty much every large blockchain/cryptocurrency project has a Discord server, many open source projects have Discord servers too.

The most impressive thing of all is Discord seemingly worked out stable audio/video years ago. I've had numerous calls on Discord which were more stable than calls through Slack, Zoom and even Facebook Messenger. The obvious choice for Discord is a professional offering, seeing as their core market is growing up with the product and largely probably in its late 20's, early 30's. I can see why Microsoft would have been interested, calls via Teams are like pulling teeth. Forget the terrible UI, the call quality (for me at least) through Teams has been atrocious and surprising given Microsoft have the resources to invest in making this component at least comparable to other products around.

Discord really needs to address the lack of server-specific avatars, though. Why can I change my username per-server, but I am stuck using the same avatar image for every server? Now that I use Discord for a wide variety of uses, I have needed this ability for a while now. Many of us have been crying out for this for years now.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#297

Post by indigodaddy »

holler wrote: post #258
hemloc_io wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha love how people have rediscovered the functionality and joys of IRC and the like!

Totally... If you enjoy the text/irc aspect, I welcome you to check out https://sqwok.im , a new realtime public discussion site very much inspired by growing up using aol chat/irc/icq/aim and others. I think we live at an amazing juncture of technology and ideas, where excellent communication software like irc that was always limited by it's own access requirements (install something, client, server, huh?), can now…

Wow, I visited the site. This is a super cool idea/concept! I hope it takes off and good luck!

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#298

Post by hnick »

steveklabnik wrote: post #278
Jonovono wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you feel is missing from Discord?

For me: per server avatars and/or usernames. Or even some sort of straight-up multi-account support. Being able to choose a display name upon joining a server, rather than after, would be a great start.

I am also a little miffed that someone can right click my profile in one server and then see that I'm the same guy in another. Just a little annoyed, not much, but it'd be nice to turn it off. Unless I missed an option?

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#299

Post by DigitalSea »

nikolay wrote: post #243

I guess, we should expect a version of Discord built by Microsoft, integrated into Xbox and Minecraft.

And if Teams is any indication as to the resulting quality of the end product, it won't be very good. It amazes me a company as rich and big as Microsoft struggles to build good software when it comes to copying competitors.

Re: Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft

#300

Post by sellyme »

uncletaco wrote: post #230
3PS wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I wish the desktop client was a bit more lightweight. I understand why they went with Electron, and I don't think they could have afforded their speed of iterated development as a small company otherwise, but I still wish their app was a bit lighter on my laptop. I'm especially disappointed that cordless [1], a very usable third-party terminal-based client for Discord, was banned due to a ToS violation. S…

and with this lightweightness the ability to customize the client more, maybe even create popouts to monitor multiple chats simultaneously or do one server per window.

Unfortunately software companies now view customisability as a bad thing, as their priority is profit, and that often involves making the client less usable. Discord wouldn't be able to periodically shift around the UI to make you accidentally click on the "Gift Nitro" button if they had to respect the layout you customised.
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