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Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

mooreds.com

491–500 of 698 posts

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

#492
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…

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.

You need a certain amount of reddit karma to make a subreddit IIRC. You can farm it, but it's yet another thing unrelated to working on your project you need to do, plus it takes time (could take days).

The whole process is opaque too, it feels distinctly like "we have arbitrarily bestowed upon you the privilege of operating subreddits... for now".

I like the reddit format so I've tried this option myself.

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

#493
post #17

Author here. Thanks for submitting! I wrote this a year ago as my employer was starting up their forum[0]. While we have since added slack, the forum is the main support mechanism for our community (people who pay us money get support tickets). I still stand by that choice for: * SEO * durability * question quality I can't recall the exact numbers, but something like 5-10% of our overall traffic is to the forum. 0: h…

Which platform your forum is on. Or its custom?

It really looks like a good ol' nodebb

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

#494

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…

When I sign into a Google apps account I have associated with a school about half the time I am forced to go through option (3) whereby I’m asked for a number they can send a SMS to. I am never presented with option 1 or 2. Per the tenant settings which I do not control, 2FA is disabled and users cannot enable it, nor provide a backup email last I checked. Extremely frustrating- especially not being able to use a VoIP number, landline to dial, or set up a more robust TOTP generator or the like. Perhaps the school should codify the requirement for students have cellular service just to enroll, since it’s the de facto case already. sigh

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

#495
post #393
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you immediately assuming racism?

Maybe I'm misreading what he is getting at. Is it more of a politeness is bad thing?

I'm trying to point out the hypocrisy of a cultural impetus to be super inclusive towards everyone, except the people you disagree with

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

#496
post #390
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just around that time, I remember seeing facebook and twitter stickers on various stores in malls (with the 'slug' name of the business). I was a bit surprised. Why would you bring your customers to your twitter profile instead of your own homepage? Who says that most people are even using these websites? At the time I never used Twitter and to me Facebook was just a boring place (it still is). At best they were just…

It seems like a giant confidence game to this day. 80% of adults in the US don’t use Twitter, and of those that do, only a much smaller number are regular users, and an even smaller percentage care to follow brands, which most people rightly see as opt-in advertising. The timeline algorithm makes it even less likely that the pointless post from @reebok is going to reach many people, probably nothing close to the amou…

Yes I’ve poked at twitter a few times but never saw the point. Have been drowned by news of them for almost a decade, right? Self promoters and journalists just desperate for “engagement” to their own detriment.

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

#497
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you imagining that the forum features are separate from the chat? I guess which aspects of discord would you like to merge with the forum concept? I'm working on a topical chat site where instead of servers/rooms, it's posts w/chatrooms. Curious to hear more in terms of how you envision a hybrid that would have appeal.

Honestly, I like how Guilded has set it up but not how they seem to 1) not be developing the app that quickly and 2) not communicating much with their users. They have separate channel types, where one is a chat channel (like Discord and other chat groups: a linear chat stream) and another as a forum channel (that has unexpanded topics that when clicked show a linear chat stream, also able to pin certain topics to th…

Thanks for all this great feedback! I'd love to chat and will reach out tomorrow! I know of Guilded but haven't used it, will check it out.

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

#498
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infinite scrolling on the threads combined with a very slow loading. A thread of 30 replies will not load everything, even though 30 replies is probably less than 1Mb of data.

I've found loading to be extremely fast. Way faster than pagination on most traditional forums, even over a slow mobile connection. On desktop it usually loads faster than I can scroll. Guess it depends on which server you're using? Example of a long thread, just so we're all on the same page: https://meta.discourse.org/t/trading-buttons-buy-sell-exchan...

This took 4 seconds to load here and I'm on pretty good hardware. In contrast https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=243917 took less than a second.

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

#499
post #77
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not extremely hard to set up SSO with the big (tech) providers like GitHub and Google. Would you be cool with “log in with google”?

Cool as a cucumber that has been cut off from every single account they have the moment somebody at Google (or an algorithm) doesn't like you. Good luck!

So, what's the alternative here?

Either one of the big companies is controlling your account (and, crucially, securing it) or you have many accounts across many platforms.

I'm genuinely at a loss here for solutions that are decentralised yet... centralised...

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