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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

#521

Post by vanviegen »

eftychis wrote: post #485
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…

Never ever ever ever give your phone number to Google for verification or authorization. People just don't understand how easy it is to find someone's phone number and then steal it for long enough to steal e.g. emails. Has happened, will happen etc. Like ssn, phone numbers were never made for this purpose. In fact phone numbers and services (e.g. SMS) are just the front end and are setup to be easy to redirect. We h…

Is it really that easy to steal a phone number and/or intercept SMS messages? Isn't the SIM supposed to hold all sorts of secrets to prevent that?

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

#523

Post by buro9 »

mftb wrote: post #161
buro9 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have something in Go that isn't too bad... it looks like this https://www.lfgss.com and powers sites like this http://forum.espruino.com/ Does need a bit of polish on the getting it to run side though... it was designed as a platform rather than a standalone, so it's hard to set up. But the fundamentals are sound as it's just a PostgreSQL database with a Go API which is documented here https://microcosm-cc.github.i…

Those home pages look pretty good and I like the go, single-exectable approach, but I have to say those docs look like more than I want to hassle with. That said, looks like you might be on a good path.

The docs shouldn't be needed by anyone wanting to run a forum.

But the whole forum is web API first, and the web site is just a client. The docs are there to say "anything you see this website doing, you can do it through a client you create"... and it doesn't have to be everything, if all you want to do is list publicly visible new conversations on a different website then it's a single API call that you can do from client side JavaScript.

But... if you do want to create an entirely new application using the forum as a platform for it, i.e. a full blog system with the forum hidden but driving discussions, or an app where the forum is at the heart of it but the app looks like a cyclists ride database oriented around events and a calendar but with discussions per ride... well knock yourself out, the API makes that pretty easy and there are apps that do both of those things (though natch, they're closed source and the rides one charges over $200 per year per user for it).

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

#524

Post by lmm »

jeroenhd wrote: post #283
muglug wrote: post #53

Slack developer here, views are my own. Prior to Slack I spent many years as an OSS maintainer. I also participated in a Slack channel that discussed my OSS tool's general problem space. That Slack workspace was on the free plan, so messages older than 6 months were memory-holed. In practice that wasn't too big of an issue. Most developers understood that GitHub was the place for concrete actionable things and long-t…

As an end user, I find that in practice most projects don't actually move any information to a suitable spot. I can't tell you how many times I've Googled an obscure error message and the only two results were the source code where the error came from and that self-hosted, open-source Slack alternative that Google can index. At that point, I already went to check the source code, and when I click the chatroom where t…

If they'd been using a forum, would you have a good record of the solution? Or would the problem just never have been solved? The low friction of slack-like tools matters.

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

#525

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

That is bad enough, but the worst part is that the content is not really discoverable outside of Discord. Sometimes you don't want that of course but I have seen communities pretty much dying because they only met there with no influx of new users.

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

#526

Post by masklinn »

eftychis wrote: post #485
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…

Never ever ever ever give your phone number to Google for verification or authorization. People just don't understand how easy it is to find someone's phone number and then steal it for long enough to steal e.g. emails. Has happened, will happen etc. Like ssn, phone numbers were never made for this purpose. In fact phone numbers and services (e.g. SMS) are just the front end and are setup to be easy to redirect. We h…

> Never ever ever ever give your phone number to Google for verification or authorization.

You literally do not have a choice, last time I checked you had to setup SMS 2FA first. Once you’ve done that you can setup a better method and remove the SMS, but you have to remember to do it.

> If my antiquated bank that is insured and doesn't really care can understand this, so can you, if you care just a bit.

My bank certainly has not gotten that memo.

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

#528

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

just wait til they roll out 2FA with the phone number being needed for a confirmation call (no authenticator app, there was a bug found in auth app 7000! voice calls only way!)

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

#529

Post by raxxorrax »

julianlam wrote: post #445
curun1r wrote: post #439

Earlier 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.

That isn't different for Discord though and reddit can be crawled at least.

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

#530

Post by ksec »

It doesn't go into issues which I think is the most important.

Slack / Discord being free?

Who is setting up the forum? Who is paying for it? Who does the maintenance? Who does the moderation with Spams?

Part of the reason why Discourse took over most of the forum for Open Source is that they are free for Open Source Project. And there are little to no maintenance involves.

Not to mention to this day, forum software still sucks.

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