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Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

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

#241

Post by kiklion »

ejj28 wrote: post #135
jedberg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem isn't with the phone verification. I totally understand why they do that. I don't even have a problem with not accepting VOIP. I get why they do that too. My problem is that they don't have an alternative, and there is no way for channel admins that turn on that feature to know how many people can't get in because of their choice. They should either have an alternative way to verify oneself, or a way for t…

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.

There’s an ID verification service, at least in the US, where you go to webpage A who wants you to confirm identity, A then redirects you to the service. The service asks a bunch of questions like ‘which of these cars have been related to you’ or ‘which of these addresses belonged to you when you lived in town x?’

That generates a score where the service determines if you are who you say you are and returns the result to the calling web page.

But I assume it uses background check/credit check information which may be limited to the US and is a paid service as compared to phone validation.

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

#242

Post by Kye »

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?

An increasing number of tablets and computers offer LTE. It was an option when I got my last gen iPad Mini, though I didn't need it.

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

#243

Post by Buttons840 »

errantspark wrote: post #82
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…

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…

Meanwhile the community is having a big debate over the CoC, deciding what exact wording they should use to say "be nice and include everyone".

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

#244

Post by jareklupinski »

ejj28 wrote: post #228
novok wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i wonder how many hours have already been wasted by people solving captchas...

everything old is new again :)

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

#245

Post by kiklion »

errantspark wrote: post #82
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…

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…

I think this is completely different than having a credit score.

I’ve never ‘needed’ a credit score unless I was requesting a line of credit. I’m which case a credit score is better than the alternative where I need to personally know someone that the lender already trusts and trusts their ability to trust other people.

You don’t ‘need’ a credit score but if you want a line of credit then it’s good to have. Otherwise you get the products that they offer to high risk individuals which costs a pretty penny.

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

#246

Post by harha »

judge2020 wrote: post #164
harha wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a regular phone number in Singapore from a new range of numbers that doesn’t work with many services, even with some government services. Customer care typically replies by having me first prove that the number is real (by showing a phone bill for getting an verification OTP, think of the irony) and then goes silent because they can’t work around their (human) robot way of thinking when something is unaccounte…

On the other side of there are bots that impersonate users to send spam or raid servers to overrun moderation and “DoS” the server’s communication. Part of the value proposition of running on Discord or Slack is that they handle offloading a large amount of user verification/spam prevention and moderation tooling. The only one you really have to do is manage rules and have some sort of rotation so at least one modera…

Is this the only viable solution today? Fully opt in to a provider that isn’t user friendly?

For a free service maybe ok, but then you typically shouldn’t have the bot problem to such an extent if it’s small enough.

For a paid service: no way, please find a way around this or I’ll find a way around your service as soon as a problem pops up and causes me extra inconvenience just to sign up.

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

#247

Post by int_19h »

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.

On pretty much any other web page, Ctrl+F will search whatever is on the page; why should Discourse be any different?

I don't mind them having a server-side search function that actually searches the entire thread. I do mind having a heavily-used shortcut hijacked to behave in a non-standard way.

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

#248

Post by chii »

jedberg wrote: post #128
ascar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's really about identification. Binding user accounts to SIM-based phone numbers is an effective way of limiting account creation as it's effectively binding it to a physical token. I can only guess why Discord wants to do this (fighting scam bots?), but for example for Tinder this is a very effective way of preventing abuse on the huge early discovery boost after signup or long inactivity.

I understand why they do it, and I have no problem with that. My problem is their lack of an alternative. Either have an alternative way for me to verify, or a way for an admin to let me into their channel without verification.

what if that alternative was "worse" than the phone number method? Would you then complain that there's no "easier" alternative?

For example, a photo-id as an alternative, which imho is way worse?

The problem with presenting an alternative is that if it is "better/easier" than phone number, then it gets exploited by the spam bots. If it's worse than the existing phone number method, then you'd have the exact same complaints, or worse.

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

#249

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#250

Post by Saris »

I feel like the current state of forums kind of sucks. Discourse is the common one I see and it's not that great, it loads weirdly sometimes, it's a bit hard to read threads with the layout, and it's just not that nice to use.

Figuring out notifications is still just as much of a pain as always, and they never seem to work right.

One forum I use a lot is using XenForo and I actually like that one reasonably well, it seems to get most things right.

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