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Discord is a black hole for information

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Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#381

Post by TheBicPen »

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…

As a Discord user, I don't really understand this issue. In what way is having a single channel with content on every topic less overwhelming than having specific channels for individual topics? If I want to read about a specific topic on Discord, I simply go to the channel for that topic. But if there's only a single channel a la IRC, then I would have to search through a whole bunch of conversations about topics irrelevant to me to find what I'm looking for.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#382

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

tekknik wrote: post #365
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True, but you had to pay for a server for TS/Vent/Mumble as well, so the $5/month Discord charges for the higher voice quality is comparable (or cheaper).

Discord is voice chat, with text as a nice extra, and with image/file sharing and screen sharing and emoji/stickers/profiles (these are attractive to some people). IRC is text only. TS/Mumble/Vent were all voice chat, with really awful text chat interfaces (TS was sort of OK, Vent may as well not have had text chat).

I don't think Discord is good as an information archive, and I'm not terribly fond of seeing FOSS projects using it as a primary means of communication, but it's great for gaming compared to what we had before.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#383

Post by bradknowles »

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…

Everything depends on the Discord community you’re connecting with.

We use it extensively for hosting chat related to role-playing games that I’m involved in, along with the voice channels for when we’re having an actual game. Character sheets are hosted on RPGSessions.com, with bot links to our Discord channels.

For that use case, I think it works pretty well.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#384

Post by CRConrad »

redwall_hp wrote: post #277
0x_rs wrote: post #83

I hate the discordification of communities. A lot of them did not survive the modern era and moved en masse there, but the experience is miserable, and they're usually moderated in a manner that doesn't spur discussion ("move to this section for X topic", et cetera, that's just one I see often). Finding content? You have to use some weird bot or the awful search function worthy of a high school assignment website pro…

That's actually my number one issue with Discord: the stratification of discussion. With IRC, your "community" is a singular channel where everyone congregates and talks. It can be chaotic, and maybe you only check in and catch up so often, but it's all in one place. Discord groups always end up with 735 channels about super specific topics. So you're not only spreading discussion over tons of channels where things w…

> Discord groups always end up with 735 channels about super specific topics.

rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan .

The rasfwrj newsgroup was my first major internet hangout. There were newsgroups for anything and everything.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#385

Post by CRConrad »

aliswe wrote: post #77
tovej wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC is almost always logged, and if you need to log things yourself, you can use a bouncer or set up a server.

no offense, but this answer sums up the reason why Discord is more popular than IRC. Not to say that Discord isnt deeply flawed in many respects, like client weight/resource usage, abysmal search (in server but especially DMs, coarse and clunky permissions systems, audit situation? and the very fact that using animated emojis will cost you 5 dollars per month is just stealing sweets from children, and their absolutel…

> no offense, but this answer sums up the reason why Discord is more popular than IRC.

No, the reason for that is more likely that all the darn generation-Z kids are deathly afraid (and therefore pretend to be deeply contemptuous) of any old-fashioned technology created by Unix greybeards.

(Now geroffmylawn.)

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#386

Post by pas »

tluyben2 wrote: post #119
pas wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that IRC archive was written by a bot, not the server(s). Adding a bot to Discord is just as easy.

Seems not so easy as the oss project owners I asked to do that had no idea how. That would make life better indeed.

They have to invite the chosen bot, for example this one https://top.gg/bot/884415978459512862 (I don't use it, haven't tried it.)

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#387

Post by 1_player »

tekknik wrote: post #366
gjvc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What if the new hire doesn’t know Slack? They’ll miss all the messages until figure out how to configure their notifications

In my experience, the "new hires" are overwhelmed by Slack notifications, turn them off, and I have to remind them later, after they failed to respond to semi-urgent public @ and direct messages, that they can configure Slack to be notify only on @ and direct messages, and they won't be bothered by regular chit-chatter on public channels. It's happened to me with at least 4 people it can't be a coincidence.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#388

Post by nextlevelwizard »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #359
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but what makes the format better other than you dont like discord?

search, permanence

Again please give examples. Everyone says that searching is better which obviously it is, but what the hell are you all searching from these forums?

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#389

Post by holler »

tekknik wrote: post #364
holler wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the key thought I had is not having it end up like twitch where there's a firehose of emoji/gifs and actual conversation is diluted...

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#390

Post by genewitch »

russjr08 wrote: post #347
genewitch wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ones on my homeserver aren't, and searching for the domain of the homeserver shows that users are in rooms on other homeservers/networks.

Under "Room Settings -> Security & Privacy -> Who can ready history?" do you have "Anyone" set? I believe this controls whether it can be indexed or not, as if you have it on any of the "Members only" settings, their bot needs to be in the room for it to see history. Disclaimer: I'm fairly new to administrating a Matrix server so I could be wrong, but the logic seems to make sense with my suggestion.

Ah, that setting was not ticked. Interesting. I might try this on a different room.
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