Earlier quoted context omitted.
We use Discourse's hosted solution and it's effectively zero maintenance
Why not use a facebook page? Super easy to maintain and some moderation
basic privacy, ethics
Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
221–230 of 698 posts
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#222I just wish people would use a system that's integrated into where the code is. I don't want to have to register for a forum when GitHub has a perfectly good ticketing system (and now discussions), and yet I have to register at another place where my details can be leaked from because who knows the technical capability of this one single person who may or may not have done any security.
If it's a company, please have the forum integrated into your software.
I seriously do not want yet another login unless there is a good reason. It's ridiculous. I have nearly 700 logins in my password manager and I'd say probably 500 of those items are websites I've registered once to ask a question (quite often questions that go unanswered). Half of these forums do not even provide the capability to removing my account without contacting the admins, which is just an unnecessary hassle.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#223Please don't ask people to run non-free software to participate in your open source community. Many open source / free software enthusiasts are reluctant to use them, or flat out boycott them. What's more, you are putting your worthy community somewhere out of your control if you do this. Slack and Discord are not cool and do not make your project cool. They make your project unreachable , now and in the future (arch…
If they want to boycott them, they can go ahead, but I consider Discord to be the best place to build a community right now and I don't think that free software purists have any right to demand that devs build their platforms on something like IRC (which in my personal opinion is inferior and a relic of the past) just because they don't like Discord or non-free software. And it doesn't matter if you can't archive or…
> I consider Discord to be the best place to build a community right now
Why so?
> I don't think that free software purists have any right to demand that devs build their platforms on something like IRC
Sure, but they can kindly ask, I guess! Don't you think using readily available open source software is a reasonable ask from an open source community?
And well, IRC is not the only alternative to Slack and Discord. You have Mattermost, Matrix, Telegram, Wire and numerous other tools which are decent modern chat apps. However, the points about using chat in the original article still stand with these tools.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
That brings up a good point. If forums are going to work, they need some form of federation that doesn't suck.
Mailing lists!
I too like mailing list, but most of the mailing list software I have seen isn't that great. Essentially, it would be like a glorified Google Groups which I am not a fan of. They are prone to spam and often leak your email address. I could see a modern system working with remailer support built in, but at that point it isn't much different than a forum. It is essentially Usenet, and at this point I'd rather see Usenet make a comeback.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#225Oh 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...
I've just been filling out the form with bogus school names and pointing the invite email to (randomword)@discord.com.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you. At the same time, people use GitHub and see no issue with it.
Probably because you're nowhere near as "locked-in" to GH. You can move your source code and all of its history to another hosting platform in minutes with git. If you want to move your Slack/Discord community to another platform, there is no easy way to export the content AFAIK.
There are third party whole-server backup bots for Discord. Import elsewhere is a different problem though.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you. At the same time, people use GitHub and see no issue with it.
Probably because you're nowhere near as "locked-in" to GH. You can move your source code and all of its history to another hosting platform in minutes with git. If you want to move your Slack/Discord community to another platform, there is no easy way to export the content AFAIK.
Not true. Good luck exporting the issues, pull requests, comments, discussions, wikis, etc. and bringing those to another platform.
Ironically (and I am not defending them), Slack[0] is the only one of the three that has an official way to export all messages. GitHub does not, unless you're counting their API, but then maybe you want to consider Discord things like this[1]?
[0] https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-worksp...
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely, I agree that phone numbers are a flawed verification method. Something better needs to be created, but I can't think of anything that wouldn't have the same or different flaws.
Pay $5 via crypto, venmo, whatever to add a similar cost barrier. Make it separate from nitro.
The difference though is that verification through phone numbers relies on money that you've already spent, which is a lot more reasonable for the majority of users. People would still be unhappy if they had to pay 5 bucks if they didn't own a phone.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#229I will patiently wait for the real internet to return.
RSS/Blogs/Forums.
This is the only way for archiving and communicating sustainable information repos which will serve people without a middleman.
Creating federated silos with "modern" UX is serving only the owners of this SaaS hell. It is logical for those type of businesses to optimize for "engagement" and profit.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not exactly sure what your requirements are but vanilla forums have a clean look, mobile friendly, and have pretty good customization. (Not sure if the latest version supports digest emails though) https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla
It doesn’t exactly look active though? Last release was in 2019.
Are we looking at the same page? Because I see multiple releases in 2021: https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/releases