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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

#271

Post by julianlam »

gizdan wrote: post #222

I 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…

> If it's a company, please have the forum integrated into your software.

Counterpoint. Other companies absolutely suck at making forum software. It's because it's not their core business, so why would they put more than token effort into it?

Edit: upon re-read this seems to be exactly what you are suggesting, so please disregard my reply. The solution here is a forum set up with robust and plentiful SSO solutions, so existing authentication providers can be used.

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

#272

Post by WalterBright »

Vladimir Panteleev wrote the forum software D uses:

https://forum.dlang.org/

It's all completely searchable, it works with NNTP (yes!), and I wrote a program:

https://github.com/DigitalMars/ngArchiver

to turn the message database into simple, fast loading static web pages:

https://digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/index.html

It has served us well.

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

#273

Post by comex »

nirvdrum wrote: post #76
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 really miss NNTP. I appreciate that spam was a huge problem, but it was really nice being able to discover and subscribe to a large number of topics and navigate them all from the same tool. And there was innovation in the client space. Reddit is probably the closest alternative I know of today. But, several communities treat an associated sub-reddit as unofficial in favor of their Discourse instance. However, I si…

With Discourse, you can enable mailing list mode and read all the Discourse instances from your email client. That’s what I do.

Personally, I only have one Discourse instance I keep up to date on, but if that instance weren’t right there in my email client, I’d have zero.

edit: The main caveat in my experience is that you probably want to click through onto the website if you’re planning to reply, both to be able to preview formatting, and to double-check that the post you’re replying to hasn’t been edited in a way that renders the reply unnecessary. (I wish there was a way to deliver edits over email.) But most of the time I’m just reading, and for that I just stick to my email client. The loss of edits doesn’t seem to be a big deal in practice.

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

#274

Post by slimsag »

minhazm wrote: post #264
slimsag wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/2016589…

Gitlab can import pretty much all of those things from Github. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/github.html

Wow, TIL! Can't believe I missed that, thank you.

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

#275

Post by ievans »

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.

This is a great example of a "feature" that seems to make sense but, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, really bothers me.

Maybe it's that Discourse's search functionality didn't really work well, or suddenly started searching across threads rather than only the current one (IIRC); maybe it's that it's the only system I can think of (other than google docs) that hijacks the shortcut, but it gave me a very negative first impression of the tool.

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

#276

Post by jeroenhd »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #150
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.

I don't know if it exists yet, but I can see ActivityPub (or even Matrix?) be used as a federated method for content sharing by combining the base protocol with some basic grouping and threading.

I'm not well-versed in ActivityPub and the systems interacting with it, but I believe Mastodon can do threading at least. I don't think it can do the categories to build a full forum system out of it, though.

Matrix is currently optimized for chat applications, but its "rooms" architecture could prove to be very powerful for building forums. You use rooms within rooms for categories and subcategories, and then either use threads (feature in beta) or more subrooms for the topics themselves.

You could make an overlay that renders the entire system as a forum, and people using Matrix chat clients could use it as an instantaneous chat system. Signing up for a forum could be done through a regular Matrix account, without forum accounts for all their users, or it could host its own Matrix account for new subscribers if they choose to partake in chats. The annoying chat popups you get in "modern" forums from direct messages would just be bog-standard Matrix chatrooms.

You know what, I'm kind of intrigued. I'm adding this to the pile of projects interesting projects that I'll probably forget about or never finish.

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

#277

Post by [deleted] »

jraph wrote: post #208
slimsag wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. At the same time, people use GitHub and see no issue with it.

I definitely see an issue with this. Fortunately, at least GitHub is readable without running non-free code and is searchable. I guess you can also participate with one of those alternative clients. You are still not in control of your community, and I'd like this monopoly to vanish.

[deleted]

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

#278

Post by iamstupidsimple »

jraph wrote: post #208
slimsag wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. At the same time, people use GitHub and see no issue with it.

I definitely see an issue with this. Fortunately, at least GitHub is readable without running non-free code and is searchable. I guess you can also participate with one of those alternative clients. You are still not in control of your community, and I'd like this monopoly to vanish.

GitHub.com is almost entirely non-free code, when seen through a web browser. Unless you're talking about just the git portion?

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

#279

Post by errantspark »

mindslight wrote: post #266
errantspark wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAIK cell modems generally have functionality to send/receive SMSs, and you should be able to do that with the right software. Completely agree about the walls of commercial surveillance closing in though.

Yeah, I'm sure it's possible to do so, but unfortunately my BIOS locks me into the OEM modem, there is no linux driver for it and the windows one is not documented so no luck for me in that regard. At some point I'll pour some more sweat into it and try to unlock the bios or something but sadly for now this functionality that my computer absolutely has is unavailable to me.

Same with getting NMEA sentences off the GPS, I have to use windows' idiotic location API for that. 9600 baud serial worked just fucking fine, I don't understand why that isn't available as well. It's so annoying that I have to fight this hard for functionality my hardware already has.

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

#280

Post by verve_rat »

RNCTX wrote: post #255
verve_rat wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because if it's open source or aimed at developers in some way, it wasn't built for you . It was built for everyone. It works by everyone helping everyone else use it. Maybe you should get out your credit card and call a commercial software vendor if you want personal attention?

I am a developer and I understand the need for person-power to continue the development of software. But that doesn't mean I have unlimited time (or money) to support the development of all of the software I might engage with.

If a new user (including devs using libraries) needs to join real time chat in order to get help with a "I tried X and I thought I'd get Y, but I saw Z instead" type problem then that seems pretty hostile.

Most users are going to be transactional in their engagement with the software, open source or not. The community around software grows over time as the top of the iceberg of users forms a community of active participants.

But forcing a "community" by trying to force transactional support style engagement into a real time conversation framework is detrimental to the users as well as the "community" you are trying to force into existing.

Edit: Plus as a Kiwi I am, as a general principle, against anything that reinforces the tyranny of time zones. Which synchronous communication definitely does.

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