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Discord is a black hole for information

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Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#361

Post by tekknik »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #207
simias wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But on Discord you're invited to what they abusively call a "server" ... I don't know if this has changed, but they were originally called guilds.

They’re still referred to as guilds in the APIs, but their friendly name is now servers.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#362

Post by tekknik »

albio wrote: post #227
xboxnolifes wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But on Discord you're invited to what they abusively call a "server" ... I don't know if this has changed, but they were originally called guilds.

Seems like they're called "servers" now. I imagine "guilds" felt a bit too gamer centric for them after they saw how popular their service was becoming.

The service is still very gamer centric, Discord Nitro for instance gives you a game subscription. I really hope they’re not trying to become Slack, that will be the death of them.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#363

Post by tekknik »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #201
pessimizer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever want to turn anything off? What if you need it? Then what if it couldn't hear that you need it? You need it to be able to hear when you need it. Don't turn things off.

I don't think I experienced this when I was younger, but, now, it feels like being "on" (e.g., on Discord, even if it's closed and sitting in the tray and I'm getting no messages) incurs some subconscious stress somehow. I'm not getting any messages, but I could get some at any moment. And then I'd have to choose whether to respond immediately or not. And, while I'm not responding, some part of me is wondering what t…

You can disable notifications entirely

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#364

Post by tekknik »

holler wrote: post #242
simias wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> no gifs

Just gonna go ahead and call it, it’s dead. Gifs are required. Even in the Slack I manage for work for a large team the primary request is we add giphy.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#365

Post by tekknik »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #292
saurik wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In TS/Mumble/Vent terminology, there was no federation (unlike IRC), so a server was generally literally a single server hosted somewhere. All the channels, all the users, etc, went to a single machine. Discord's selling point isn't really being a "better IRC", it's the voice chat. It's a better TS/Mumble/Ventrillo. Low-latency, decent audio quality, push-to-talk or an actually functioning level detection, with an ea…

spot on, but you missed that critically they don’t charge for free voice. If you want higher bitrate then they charge

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#366

Post by tekknik »

gjvc wrote: post #91
nootropicat wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Around a certain age one's tolerance for such bullshit goes to zero. Discord, slack, et al would be doing the world a great service if their tools had notifications etc SWITCHED OFF BY DEFAULT so that they don't disturb other people in the same room as the user. Such notifications are designed to break your concentration / get your attention, but they have the toxic side-effect of polluting the environment of other p…

> Discord, slack, et al would be doing the world a great service if their tools had notifications etc SWITCHED OFF BY DEFAULT so that they don't disturb other people in the same room as the user.

This is a fun one. What if the new hire doesn’t know Slack? They’ll miss all the messages until figure out how to configure their notifications. Or we leave them on by default and then still tell them how to configure their notifications. There’s no magical way to determine the users preferred setting. You also can’t do something like leave it on for mentions only, as sometimes you need to be in a conversation you were tagged in.

A better solution is to use a hammer on their volume buttons. Or buy a nice pair of noise canceling headphones.

Many of us have tried for many years to complain our way out of open plan offices, with no luck.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#367

Post by remram »

ipaddr wrote: post #340
remram wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will still see the "server you're both in" and the game your currently playing, etc. Not good for work servers.

Wouldn't you use your work account? A separate account just for work?

Because I fear a ban, honestly.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#368

Post by tekknik »

dijonman2 wrote: post #141
ec109685 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m old too and use slack without any notifications or sound. I just am in a habit of checking it frequently during the day. I too have never been able to get into Discord, nor ever been able to participate in multiple slack organizations effectively.

Amen. I have all sounds and notifications disabled on all devices. I own the device. The device doesn’t own me. What pisses me off about slack is it’s actively user hostile. With notifications off it won’t let me mute channels. I’d like to meet the asshole from their product team who designed that.

> I own the device. The device doesn’t own me.

Doesn’t that depend on who bought the device?

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#369

Post by tekknik »

gjvc wrote: post #94
dijonman2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very insulting response. Notification fatigue is real, and it’s heavily abused by all apps. Regardless of your age.

Notification fatigue is real, and it’s heavily abused by all apps. Regardless of your age. Amen. It seems "user-centred" design is a long-forgotten philosophy, having been steamrollered by "attention engineering".

I find it even more interesting that people want notifications from arbitrary webapps as well. It’s bad enough the amount of notifications received from installed apps, and we want random websites we go to to have the same ability?

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#370

Post by tekknik »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #44
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…

The issue comes frome people shoehorning Discord as a replacement for forums. Like a subreddit is a nice place for discussion and it's free. Discord is a chat app, not a forum app. It's about real time communication. In popular discords you can often just be ignored and they have to deal with the same stuff asked every single day. If I want to share something cool then I'd rather post it on a forum because you don't…

> Like a subreddit is a nice place for discussion and it's free.

Reddit is cancer. Their karma system is ripe for abuse, and a great majority of their mods have power issues and ban for frivolous reasons. Reddit is just a joke for any real conversation.

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