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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

#331

Post by thaumasiotes »

megous wrote: post #310
thaumasiotes wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's especially nice when traveling. I was once asked by a client to do something while I was in other country about 5k km from regular location. Couldn't login to the apps account for this reason (no backup email or phone set). So I didn't do the work. I suspect it's some work-life balance enhancing thing. :D I don't really mind, since it also helps me bash Google services in front of my clients who still use them,…

If you look at the gmail login page, you may notice that they specifically recommend you sign in in incognito mode when using a device that doesn't belong to you.

Their expressed policy makes an interesting contrast with their behavioral policy of freaking out and locking you out of your own account if you ever try to sign in on a device they suspect might not belong to you.

And of course, they're godawful at recognizing whether a device belongs to you. They freak out and send me "urgent" emails (on a different gmail account) whenever my phone switches between wifi and the cell network. Responding "yes, that was me" does nothing to prevent this.

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

#332

Post by drawkbox »

Great article and covers all the points.

Important information should not be trapped in apps or walled gardens. This is a major problem today. People talk about worse search results today but that is largely due to information grabs by these systems locking that up to own it.

Anything not indexable is a problem.

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

#333

Post by Isthatablackgsd »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #278
jraph wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is more of the content inside GitHub is widely accessible without needing to log in whereas Discord are not really accessible and often would need "invitation link" to find those servers. GitHub is far more public in this sense than Discord is. Discord/Slack is a instant message system, far different, than forums style which are "static", which make archival extremely difficult to do in Discord/Slack.

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

#334

Post by zamadatix »

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…

How does this work for Fi users?

I've had a Google Voice number for so long it's the only voice number I have these days. I can't say it's a recent experience that it doesn't work with certain things though it has been a recent experience the things are aware it doesn't work and will alert you. Overall though I've yet to run into anything I couldn't use an alternative method for authentication be it luck (e.g. got into Discord before they required phone numbers) or email or calls being a thing (and working when text doesn't).

Ironically the biggest PITA I had was when I decided to migrate my primary cell number to Google Voice it was my fallback contact number. Thankfully I only ran into that as an issue once and was able to get back in to set up Google Authenticator (which was also new and hip at the time).

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

#335

Post by exists »

nightpool wrote: post #174
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…

This is super frustrating. Discord requires server operators to enable phone number verification if they want any of the additional "Community" features. It's a hugely backwards requirement and it's the main reason I haven't given the community feature set a second look for any of the servers I run.

From what I see the only verification related setting you need to enable for community features is the member email verification requirement - Please correct me if I'm wrong.

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

#336

Post by Gigachad »

codinghorror wrote: post #308
Gigachad wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably the UI/design of it. Discourse supports infinite scroll and live updates so it kind of looks like an IM thread with a lot more padding.

It's not though; all topics are permanent and searchable. So it's the best of both worlds. Have you ever tried searching chatrooms and 100+ channels? Excruciating.

I have used search in slack/discord/telegram and found it's super fast and fairly reliable. I can often see references to the same error messages or bring up the topic I'm interested in.

Discourse has the advantage that it is indexable by Google which is a big one, but I don't share the frustrations that many here talk about.

IM has always felt faster and more responsive than forums ever did. I used to be a huge forum user and I remember posting questions and having to wait at least a day to get to an answer while on IMs I have often found people start to help out immediately and provide their best guess even when they don't have the full answer.

While forums felt too formal and if you didn't post a well researched and correct question, your post would immediately be locked/flamed/sunk down.

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

#337

Post by smcameron »

badwolf wrote: post #34

This recurring discussion is very "This is the year for Linux on the desktop" Nobody wants to register on some random weird site, and figure that sites navigation, let alone their privacy/data policies. Discord/Reddit/Slack/etc... are easy to use. People are comfortable using them. They provide a more uniform experience across different servers/subreddits/etc...

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Discord is GARBAGE, and you don't know what you're talking about.

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

#338

Post by smcameron »

dmart wrote: post #63

No, please don't. I don't want to make a separate account for a random forum, and I especially don't want to use Discourse. Just use GitHub Issues and Discussions, please - it's so much simpler for everyone.

No, fuck discord.

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

#339

Post by Gigachad »

int_19h wrote: post #247
Gigachad wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because to remain performant, modem sites remove elements that have been scrolled too far off the page. So native ctrl + f would not be searching very much at all.

I don't see the problem with this tbh. When you create a JS app, you lose a lot of the native features of the browser and it becomes your own responsibility to reimplement them in a correct way. As long as the site pulls it off flawlessly, this is ok to me.

And from what I have seen, discourse does do this well.

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

#340

Post by Gigachad »

Zababa wrote: post #292
Gigachad wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That seems like a direct consequence of the non efficient infinite scrolling that they implemented.

Their method seems really efficient to me. It infinitely scrolls, feels like it's actually native, and hijacks the shortcuts to make them work as if it was native.

I really like their timeline scrollbar as well which lets you easily move through hundreds of posts very quickly and has become a pattern in many apps like Google Photos and Telegram.

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