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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

#231

Post by pfranz »

int_19h wrote: post #136
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Discourse is the first real attempt to bring forums in-line with "modern" UI expectations, which is why it feels like it won. There's probably lots of room to grow here. There's forums out there that allow SMTP-only [1] or SMTP and NNTP reading/posting [2], there's forum skins atop mailing lists like [3], there's distributed forums like Aether or Lemmy like [4, 5]. Unfortunately these are all new/raw. [1]: ht…

I would argue that "modern UX expectations" is a large part of the problem with Discourse. Infinite scrolling is one prominent example. Wasteful whitespace is another.

With signatures and details about the user who posted, vBulletin and phpBB use up so much white space for shorter comments (which is most of them).

Personally, I love that Discourse allows j/k for keyboard navigation. I get the hate over infinite scrolling. I feel mixed over the two approaches.

https://forum.vbulletin.com/forum/vbulletin-5-connect/vbulle...

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

#232

Post by gsich »

jedberg wrote: post #130
giancarlostoro wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? You literally put a sim card into a phone for it to be treated as a cell number? Thats odd and interesting to me how does that work?

The SIM has its own phone number, so when they put it in a phone they can do "phone" things like make calls. In their laptop it's just for data.

Or SMS. Calls may also work, depending on the modem.

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

#233

Post by klyrs »

mooreds wrote: post #201
klyrs wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Throwaway email address" has gotten a lot tougher in the last 10 years. It's not impossible, but many providers demand a phone number or email verification. The ones who don't are used by bots, so those email addresses aren't universally accepted by sites that require email verification.

Fair enough. It depends on your definition of throwaway. I didn't mean totally anonymous, I meant anonymous to who runs the forum (which was, I believe the main objection in the original thread post: I don't want my private data available to the random owner of a forum). If I set up foobarguy@gmail.com and use email verification because gmail requires me too, gmail can tie foobarguy@gmail.com to another email account…

> What am I missing?

Intense mistrust of google; a desire for the unattainable: true anonymity.

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

#234

Post by donmcronald »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #151
errantspark wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I constantly run into this problem, I've used my google voice number for everything for years (yeah it's not a great move but very hard to migrate away from) and a frustrating number of services recently have been rejecting it for verification. I end up having to take the sim out of my laptop and put it in my PinePhone. It's such a hassle. This whole "you're not a human unless you have a phone number" thing sucks. Sa…

Yep, the latest example was my credit card company rejecting my GV number. They easily have the means to see that I've been using it for 10+ years and it's definitely me. Luckily they wanted my business more than they cared about that policy; a CS droid was able to "force" the system to allow it. Requiring cell phone numbers isn't about anti-spam or 2FA or anything else these services and sites claim. It's about link…

It's 100% about linking identities between services. I've had my cell phone number for 25 years. It's basically a lifelong identifier at this point and I constantly have to use it for low value online accounts. I wish I could go back 10 years and get a dedicated phone number for online verification.

The security side is a total lie as well. Your post made me think about the biggest risk for myself and, like many people I know, I put my email address on my lock screen so that if I lose my phone someone can get it back to me. Now it just clicked for me and I realize I need to change that because if I lose my phone someone has everything they need to recover a lot of my online accounts. My Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. accounts all use that same email address and all they need to do to perform SMS recovery is put my (unlocked) SIM in another phone.

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

#235

Post by verve_rat »

ejj28 wrote: post #210
jraph wrote: post #182

Please 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…

Why does every piece of software need a community?

I don't want to be part of a "community" to use software, I just want to do the thing I set out to do.

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

#236

Post by vmception »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #212
errantspark wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I constantly run into this problem, I've used my google voice number for everything for years (yeah it's not a great move but very hard to migrate away from) and a frustrating number of services recently have been rejecting it for verification. I end up having to take the sim out of my laptop and put it in my PinePhone. It's such a hassle. This whole "you're not a human unless you have a phone number" thing sucks. Sa…

Just a couple of days ago, I signed in to a gmail account using the correct username and password. Gmail intercepted me and claimed to be worried that they couldn't recognize the device I was using. According to the flow, they wanted me to verify my identity in one of three ways: (1) I could verify the backup email address associated with the account; (2) if unable to do that, I could provide the 2FA code sent to tha…

I've actually found it hysterical. The phone number question seems to be for their data mining as well as evidence. But anyone can get into any email address when prompted this way. It is possible to send a text to someone else's phone, the servers connected to phones online are often polluted but many times they are not. You can send a text to those and get the code.

Or of course, just send the code to anyone and SS7 hijack that specific text message. You aren't hacking them, after all, you're hacking yourself or someone else.

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

#237

Post by mulmen »

Gigachad wrote: post #204
int_19h wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the desktop, it also hijacks standard browser shortcuts such as Ctrl+F.

It needs to so that it can search on the backend and show you all instances of that search rather than just what the currently loaded DOM elements contain.

What if I want to search only currently loaded DOM elements?

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

#239

Post by errantspark »

kreeben wrote: post #187
giancarlostoro wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? You literally put a sim card into a phone for it to be treated as a cell number? Thats odd and interesting to me how does that work?

Instead of "phone" do you actually mean "laptop"? Interfacing with a SIM through a computer seems pretty Futuramaistic to me. How does _that_ work?

My laptop has a built in cellular modem, I find that being connected to the internet constantly is much more useful in a laptop form factor. Phones mostly just try to serve me ads in invasive ways and I'm not here for it.

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

#240

Post by saladuh »

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…

> It's not mandatory

That's not true at all. At any point your account can be flagged by their internal system and on your next login you will be forced to add a phone number "for security purposes". It happens to people all the time, but in particular, though not limited, to TOR and VPN users. So, yea, sure Discord's not at fault in the situation where a server admin turns on the phone number requirement, but they are definitely to blame when they force users, some who prefer to remain anonymous, to either give up personal information or lose their account forever (support will not help you).

Not sure if this can still happen if you've got 2FA turned on, but seeing as I see it mentioned more often from tech literate people (e.g. on here) who are more inclined to setup 2FA I doubt it makes a difference.

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