I still don’t understand what were the problems that Slack/Discord solved. Almost all its features can be done with IRC, admittedly not easily, which kind of answers my own question, but……
Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
451–460 of 698 posts
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once upon a time not long ago, I got off from my flight into a foreign country (I don't have a SIM card that would work there). I turned on my wifi and was delighted to see they had a public network you can use. There was a captive portal, and the only sign in options (besides using a local phone number) were Facebook and Google. I chose Google, and entered my id and password. Google promptly went into the "sus" mode…
That's when you turn on the DNS tunnel ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7619259 ). If they somehow detect that and try to block, change your MAC and repeat. Those bastards deserve it for trying to force users into megacorps' services.
Wow that's something devious!
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#453Not just to support a developer community, but maybe communication in general.
I've mentioned this in the past and have thought this for years and years now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25273869
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the desktop, it also hijacks standard browser shortcuts such as Ctrl+F.
This drives me crazy. I feel not enough people are complaining about this. Is finding text from the currently-loaded discussion such a niche thing? I second the other comments, XenForo is the best currently.
I honestly usually give up and close the tab when I press Ctrl+F and this happens.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#455As discussed in a recent comment I made [0], I think the problem is that a good modern forum software simply does not exist yet. imo discourse doesn't cut it, feels almost as ephemeral as in slack/discord. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29016033
Development of high-quality forum software is something I have considered undertaking. Hypothetically, If one were to offer something that was hosted and provided a trivial one-click sqlite export facility, would HN generally agree to participate in that sort of ecosystem? A public webhook could be exposed so that enterprising users could build their own replicas or other event-sourced systems on top... Account manag…
> I feel you could take what HN has and add another 5-10% unicorn dust on top and have the best forum solution on earth.
That's cute. I thought the same back in 2014 when I started building forum software.
As it turns out, there's no one "perfect" feature set, and basic feature parity took far longer than I expected it to.
But I love reading about new entrants to the forum software scene... Do it! Give me a run for my money :)
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#456I think "less capable moderation tools" is really underselling how purposefully useless and nonexistent Slack's moderation tools are for open communities. I cannot overstate how terrible Slack is in this regard. To be clear, I really and truly don't fault them for this: Slack's always been clear that their focus is on business communication, which is a totally different animal when it comes to moderation needs. Disco…
> Discord is nearly infinitely better in the sense that they have any tooling at all, but it's still considerably far behind Could you expand on this a bit? A lot of this thread seems to be coming down to opinions. Are there specific moderation features that Discord lacks?
How do you move conversations/posts from one channel to another? I assumed this had to be built in because of so much meme ish talk of discord mods.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#457Oh 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.
> Members of the server must have a verified email on their Discord account before sending messages or DMing anyone in the server. (Note that this doesn’t apply to users that have assigned roles!)[1]
I also help with running a community server which doesn't have the phone number requirement enabled either. It's also not required for partnered servers as far as I'm aware.
You can even get around the email requirement if you just add a bot that gives every new user a role, since any role will automatically verify you as mentioned here.
[1] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047132851-E...
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#458This 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...
I agree and I've been wondering, why doesn't someone make something like a Discord/Discourse hybrid? Guilded has forum channels and yet it misses so many of the bells and whistles for moderation and discoverability that Discourse has. Basically, I want a Discord-type app, with it's UI and one login, and then blended with the Discourse forum power.
I think Matrix or Mattermost have Discourse and Discord bridging. Wonder how that can work.
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#459I loathe Discord for (non-dev but still software-related) community management but we tried launching a forum and realized users don't care and just want Discord or Slack. It's now in the "familiar" zone and registering for a forum sucks. They don't care that it's hard to find answers, or any of the other reasons listed here, many of which were our motivation for starting a forum. We ended up dividing users and now h…
I’d be interested in seeing how that stuff went for you. I am also worried about a dead Discourse. I am now leaning toward just doing Discord. I am unhappy about it. But I think it’s the right move for the community I manage. I will email you this week if you don’t mind. :).
Re: Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a believer in just creating a subreddit. It’s free and easy, many people already have Reddit accounts and it’s a much better forum than the ones that would be self-hosted, including moderation tooling and bot ecosystem. The threaded discussions are also better than what Github offers.
I agree that subreddits have a very low barrier to entry, but all that comes at a cost. Among other things, one of those costs is that your content is no longer owned by you. Should Reddit decide to take itself private, or make ethically questionable decisions, etc., you are locked in due to the networking effect.
There’s risk in everything…self-hosted forum software run by an open source project also has a potential of going offline, either because hosting becomes onerous/expensive or some sort of database issue. Discord and Github have the exact same potential you’ve mentioned for Reddit. There’s no perfect answer.