Discord is a black hole for information • Hacker News Board

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#241

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

lux wrote: post #234

We tried introducing a forum to our users in the hope of moving away from Discord for all the same reasons and ended up finally shutting the forum down to preserve the unity of having a community all in one place. Reason being, users don't seem to care about the limitations like we do and preferred Discord. The users spoke through their choice of where to post. It feels like the same reason teams use Slack for the pe…

> It makes me think that users believe finding the answer is our problem, not theirs. Their job is just to ask the question and expect a response. Frustrating.

If you're selling a product, and you think that finding an answer is the user's problem, not yours, you will soon not be selling a product.

If, however, you're talking about an open-source project, then I think you're baselessly assuming that users "expect" an answer. Users will ask for answers in the most convenient way (asking on discord) in hopes of getting a quick answer. This does NOT mean that they will not fall back to googling if that avenue fails.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#242

Post by holler » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #26

opdahl wrote: post #7

What is strange about Discord is this great discrepancy between the ones that love it and the ones that hate it. If I were to guess on the reason of why that might be it would be that Discord is probably really good for the people that are constantly on it, and don't really miss any communication going in. These people have probably been there for some time so they don't feel the problem of not knowing where the past…

I've been using IRC for decades at this point and Discord is, seemingly, a modern, proprietary version of IRC so I assumed I'd feel at home the few times I've been invited to participate on it, but in practice it was an overwhelming, rather unpleasant experience and I never stuck with it. I think the main difference is that on IRC you'd usually be invited to a specific channel and you'd slowly work your way to other…

I too grew up on irc and now working on an alternative that has no gaming association, totally open so you can view w/o being logged in, topical, no gifs, and low friction, and planning to keep it clean and simple. https://sqwok.im

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#243

Post by jodrellblank » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

Again we have the two sides "everything is thrown away" vs "everything is kept forever".

This: "Every time I go to grab a mod or something on Github, have an issue and see the tickets replied to with "Closed, join the discord for help!" I want to cave my own head in with an iron." - Turd Ferguson

is not the same value as a piece of documentation for how to use a tool might be, both needing to be kept forever and surfaced in all future search results. Forum content is awful in its own ways.

Is there no system which keeps good content and poor content is deleted over time? For values of 'good' and 'poor' which mirror what people might want in search results, 'what does $error mean?' being good and 'I HATE THING, THING USERS ARE IDIOTS' being bad even if archaeologists might love it.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#244

Post by nextlevelwizard » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

micromacrofoot wrote: post #231

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you have to pay for a domain name (which granted is cheap), setup something to handle your IP changes, install and maintain the pi itself and hope there aren't any vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain a foothold in your home network, which means segragating it behind a VLAN which your ISP router probably doesn't support so you need to buy a router then of course you need to buy the pi it self and an SD…

Sure but good luck if you ever want to leave Discord or do anything with the data. TBH it’s kind of weird to hear someone bemoan running a raspberry pi on hn. You could also use Digital Ocean for $5 a month, I think they have a one click Discourse install. I guess running your own stuff is old fashioned.

I know how to run pi, but that doesn't mean it makes sense for everyone else or even most of the people. Say you have some open source project and there is a need to have some form of communication. You can either jump through the hoops to host your own forum that you need to host and monitor. Now you are spending time you could be using to work on your project on sysadmin stuff. So either you pay for it, which feels bad when there is free alternatives available which will do the job just as well with only lacking some discoverability in form of text search, but you can redemy that by making a sticky comment where you have FAQ or whatever you need.

Evne with digital ocean you still need to worry your server and keep it up to date which again takes time out of your actual project.

I don't see what problems you people see with Discord. Yeah you can't take all of the conversation data with you, but is that really what you would even want? I don't know what kind of projects you are running where forum is so much superior to discord.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#245

Post by thfuran » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #202

charcircuit wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what they abusively call a "server" It's modeled off of IRC / Mumble / TS / Vent terminology. A server is home to many channels which one can join.

In IRC terminology that was a "network", not a "server"; multiple servers worked together as part of a network (which might have only had a single server in the degenerate case) to create a unified channel namespace and it didn't matter which server you used (and yes, I know that at some point server-local channels were added as a thing using ##, but despite using IRC for a quarter of a century I never once saw anyon…

>The term "server" used in the way Discord decided to use it is awkward and even off-putting.

That seems more than a bit ridiculous.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#246

Post by nickvec » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

Never liked Discord. Always thought it was extremely confusing and cluttered. Information overload for sure, and very hard to keep track of things unless you are checking it constantly.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#247

Post by yoavm » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

donkarma wrote: post #157

charcircuit wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and it is miles easier to use than Discord No, it's not. With Discord you can just send them a link and have them join your chat / vc. They don't need to install an app, not do they need to make an account.

you need to use app to voice chat on discord, and need an account to use anything on discord

Unless this is a new thing, I used to do video and audio calls on Discord on Firefox on Linux without issues. No app.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#248

Post by n3dm » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

opdahl wrote: post #7

What is strange about Discord is this great discrepancy between the ones that love it and the ones that hate it. If I were to guess on the reason of why that might be it would be that Discord is probably really good for the people that are constantly on it, and don't really miss any communication going in. These people have probably been there for some time so they don't feel the problem of not knowing where the past…

Not really, people despise it for other reasons. I.e. how bloated and sketchy their privacy practices are and just how invasive it is.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#249

Post by boxed » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

xigoi wrote: post #210

boxed wrote: post #66

Talking is a black hole for information by this metric. I guess the author wants us to stop talking to each other too?

How many open-source projects use talking in person as their primary form of support?

Probably more common than you'd think :)

It was the primary form of support for iommi for many years before we got anyone outside our company to try it :)

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#250

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

> Every time I go to grab a mod or something on Github, have an issue and see the tickets replied to with "Closed, join the discord for help!" I want to cave my own head in with an iron.

Shouldn't this problem solve itself? At some point, a question gets asked often enough that people realize they should document it somewhere, and lo and behold, Github issues are perfect for that.