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Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

mooreds.com

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Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#141

Post by ejj28 »

PeterCorless wrote: post #119
ejj28 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone verification can certainly be annoying, but anyone who's been part of large Discord communities will know that spambots that DM users with all kinds of scams are a huge issue. Phone verification stops someone from raiding a server with it enabled with hundreds of bot accounts. As for VOIP numbers not being allowed, that also makes sense; VOIP numbers are extremely cheap and allowing them to be used would defeat…

If they allow the user a chance to send an appeal or out-of-band alternative method to verify then this becomes less of an issue. It's when people presume certain baselines — like a phone number — that it becomes a showstopper to community.

I have seen Discord servers that use 3rd party verification systems, but very rarely. An alternative to phone numbers would be ideal, but there will always be flaws similar to the flaws of phone verification in my opinion.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#142

Post by dqv »

ejj28 wrote: post #112
jedberg wrote: post #70

Oh please do. This seems like the perfect time to bring this up: I had a piece of software that used Discord for support. They required that users be verified, which requires you to give you phone number to Discord. I gave them my Google Voice number, which is the only number I have, and they rejected it because they don't support VOIP numbers. I asked them if there was any other way to verify my identity. They told…

Phone verification can certainly be annoying, but anyone who's been part of large Discord communities will know that spambots that DM users with all kinds of scams are a huge issue. Phone verification stops someone from raiding a server with it enabled with hundreds of bot accounts. As for VOIP numbers not being allowed, that also makes sense; VOIP numbers are extremely cheap and allowing them to be used would defeat…

>As for VOIP numbers not being allowed, that also makes sense; VOIP numbers are extremely cheap and allowing them to be used would defeat the whole purpose of phone verification.

Cool, except whoever or whatever is deciding what is and isn't VOIP is not doing a good job at making that determination. A few years back I ported my old cell phone number to a VOIP provider. I now have a new phone number on a different carrier. $OldPhoneNumber is apparently not a VOIP number and $NewPhoneNumber is. So I had to use the $OldPhoneNumber on a VOIP provider to verify my account because $NewPhoneNumber with a carrier wasn't acceptable.

But hey, it's their closed platform and they can use whatever means of keeping people off of it that they want. I don't really care for it anymore.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#143

Post by Barrin92 »

secondcoming wrote: post #87
dijit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not extremely hard to set up SSO with the big (tech) providers like GitHub and Google. Would you be cool with “log in with google”?

What to do when Goog closes your account and won't reinstate it?

never understand the purpose of that kind of question. What do you do when the forum owner closes your account? Complain or go somewhere else, as long as there's an account someone can close it by definition.

Chance that your Google account outlives everything else is if anything, pretty high.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#145

Post by jdlshore »

blibble wrote: post #103
jedberg wrote: post #70

Oh please do. This seems like the perfect time to bring this up: I had a piece of software that used Discord for support. They required that users be verified, which requires you to give you phone number to Discord. I gave them my Google Voice number, which is the only number I have, and they rejected it because they don't support VOIP numbers. I asked them if there was any other way to verify my identity. They told…

every time I sign in at asks me to input my university email address I cancel it then it comes back next time I'm in my 30s...

You’re probably deleting its cookies. I had the same problem until I set up a (Firefox) container for it and whitelisted its cookies in that container. Now, no university reminder and no need to re-login either.

(I use the Cookie AutoDelete extension to automatically delete cookies.)

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#147

Post by bullfightonmars »

novocaine wrote: post #13

Dev teams also benefit a lot from having an async way to discuss bigger issues that require thoughtfulness and long form answers, especially remote teams. There's a reason mailing lists are still somehow alive and well in open source projects that have been remote first for decades. We're using discourse internally for this (in conjunction with matrix) and it's allowed us to have discussions I don't think we would ha…

Basecamp worls really well for this. It has team and project based message boards with tight access controls that help to keep boards focused.

I have used this to great effect in my teams.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#148

Post by mooreds »

dzonga wrote: post #114
mooreds wrote: post #17

Author here. Thanks for submitting! I wrote this a year ago as my employer was starting up their forum[0]. While we have since added slack, the forum is the main support mechanism for our community (people who pay us money get support tickets). I still stand by that choice for: * SEO * durability * question quality I can't recall the exact numbers, but something like 5-10% of our overall traffic is to the forum. 0: h…

FusionAuth is a pleasure to work with. Thanks for the work and documentation :+1. You folks done saved me a lot of time, hopefully if I make a dollar will pay it forward.

Thank you, glad we can help you out! Hope your project is a smashing success.

When it launches, I'd love to interview you for a community story like https://fusionauth.io/blog/2020/11/18/reconinfosec-fusionaut... if you'd be game. My email is in my profile.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#149

Post by int_19h »

dragontamer wrote: post #25
monksy wrote: post #15

The discord/slack as a means of communicating technical questions is a great example how an entire generation refused to accept a solid solution because it didn't fit their impediment desire. (Need is wavy here because the responsiveness isn't the original need.. it's the answering of the question that's a need.. being instanteous is just a convenience ) What am I saying: We've had technical mediums to discuss techni…

I mean, a lot of developers used IRC as far back as I can remember? Forums are newer than IRC chat, though arguably Forums are based on USENET, BBS, or email-lists. ------- IRC / Discord / Slack / Skype are real-time communication / instant messenger style communications. Email / Forums / USENET / Reddit / Digg / Slashdot / Hacker News are async and slow.

Note the (d)evolution here. IRC was an open standard, with numerous client and server implementations. The other chat apps are all bespoke proprietary solutions. Ditto with email/NNTP vs other async options.

Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

#150

Post by encryptluks2 »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #41

I’ve tried to use forums so many times but I just can’t use them effectively. I don’t want to create accounts and get the notification settings correct so I don’t have to log in to see replies to my messages without getting spammed. The only forum I’ve had success with as a user is Reddit. It isn’t the best forum software in the world but it is miles better than the usual php bulletin boards. Having run a forum befor…

That brings up a good point. If forums are going to work, they need some form of federation that doesn't suck.
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