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Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

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Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#101

Post by bakugo »

mjr00 wrote: post #59
aliqot wrote: post #3

Are they searchable and indexable? What made PHPBB and all that cool was that it'd turn up in search queries. As a hobbyist, this was an incredible wealth of information for me that has mostly dried up with the advent of walled gardens like slack, discord, etc. Some might point at BBS and IRC and say that those were the same, but I'd argue that they had lower volume, and less rich media, and I'd go one further to say…

On the modern internet, I don't know that being searchable and indexed is always a benefit. I like the idea of a semi-private space. I don't want people on the internet to be able to drudge up out of context statements I made 10 years ago by googling "site:discord.com ". I can tell a lot of people are the same way just by their behavior; the discussion that happens on Discord is a lot different than anything on, say,…

Have you considered simply not using a username that ties back to your real identity? I absolutely do not understand this need people have nowadays with associating their identity and personal information with online aliases and then complaining when people find it. Discord even allows using multiple accounts on the same client now.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#102

Post by Cu3PO42 »

kmeisthax wrote: post #86
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agreed. Ironically, I already feel that Discord is a lot less private than IRC used to be. In a way, history not being accessible to those not currently in a channel is also a feature.

Scrollback is actually a permission that you can disable; but it's on by default and I've never seen someone turn it off.

That's a good point and now that you mention it I remember seeing that option. But as you say, it's almost always on, so it barely matters.

To be clear, I'm not saying Discord or any server admin are making a mistake here, scrollback is often very useful. But I've definitely opted not to share some things because I knew they would be searchable ultimately. Having witnessed the transition of some IRC channels to Discord, I dare say others must have felt something similar.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#103

Post by grishka »

xena wrote: post #9
moepstar wrote: post #5

I wonder why information-heavy communities chose "knowledge storage" in the form of Discord. Example: i'm looking to build a PrintNC - they've got a really good Wiki, however with all the options i'm a tiny bit overwhelmed, especially since for newcomers like me, there's so much to wrap my head around... Anyways, if i could look up the answers to my questions very probably someone has asked before on a forum, i would…

People do it because Discord has a fundamentally better UX. It's bad for long term archival and the like, but it is an earth-shatteringly better UX than with traditional forum engines.

Huh? Discord has really poor UX compared to other IM services I use, like Telegram. Notification settings are so complex that it takes trial, error, and missed important messages to end up with a sensible configuration (no broadcast mentions in any shape or form, no badges unless I'm mentioned by my own username or there's a reply to my message). Every little piece of its UI is custom-built and routinely defies my expectations about how UI controls should behave. Just a few examples of my pain points with Discord:

- They somehow managed to mess up the message text field so much that my system-wide text replacements don't work. They work literally everywhere else.

- When I want to add a reaction to a message, there's an emoji picker. It shows custom emoji FIRST, and it shows custom emoji from ALL "servers" I'm a member of. It takes actual time for something that should be a nearly-instant interaction.

- There are no last seen statuses when a user is offline.

- The files. Need I say more? Not only does that 8 MB limit feel like an insult in this day and age, so does Discord's insistence on always storing the original files as-is. OK for images, but I sometimes have to send screencasts, and you never know what size it even is. I end up having to upload them somewhere else and then send a link. Your files are too powerful, my ass.

And, yes, it's Electron, and at this point I'm convinced that an Electron app just can't possibly be good, no matter how hard you try and how good your engineers are.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#104

Post by SomeBoolshit »

gwillen wrote: post #100
kmeisthax wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrollback is actually a permission that you can disable; but it's on by default and I've never seen someone turn it off.

Disabling it doesn't really work right. It doesn't let you still see history from when you joined; it just lets you see whatever bits of history your client has cached, which resets anytime you restart the client (on desktop) or anytime the client loses state due to memory pressure (on Android, no idea about iOS.) It doesn't really make much sense. I guess the desktop behavior kind of matches IRC, but it's not what D…

So it's really just IRC mode?

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#105

Post by airstrike »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #58
philippejara wrote: post #25

As long as their search feature continues being so monumentally terrible to the point where you can't even reliably search for specific words(and straight up is unable to search for exact strings[0]) I doubt any kind of forum-like usage will be pleasant. [0]: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600430...

Discord's search definitely has lots of space for improvement, but it's already among the best in all these new IM services. For example, Telegram has it 10 times worse than Discord. It (roughly) can only search whole words, which basically means it doesn't work with East Asian languages at all (since they don't have spaces between words).

Probably worth pointing out that Whatsapp has near perfect search. I can go into any group chat and search for words and quickly skip to some reference from 5 years ago, then reply to that message

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#107

Post by mmcdermott »

culturestate wrote: post #68
mjr00 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the modern internet, I don't know that being searchable and indexed is always a benefit. I like the idea of a semi-private space. I don't want people on the internet to be able to drudge up out of context statements I made 10 years ago by googling "site:discord.com ". I can tell a lot of people are the same way just by their behavior; the discussion that happens on Discord is a lot different than anything on, say,…

> I don't want people on the internet to be able to drudge up out of context statements I made 10 years ago by googling "site:discord.com ". We’ve had public and private forums - or more often, private sub-forums within larger public forums - forever. I don’t see why you can’t achieve the same separation on Discord, as long as they allow admins to explicitly set indexability(?) for each channel.

That seems reasonable enough technically, but I doubt it would work out that way in practice. Most users would probably treat all Discord channels alike. Those who don't understand the setup would carry on as they always had, many of those who do would find it easier to treat all alike (if for no other reason than that the setting could always change).

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#108

Post by Cu3PO42 »

gwillen wrote: post #100
kmeisthax wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrollback is actually a permission that you can disable; but it's on by default and I've never seen someone turn it off.

Disabling it doesn't really work right. It doesn't let you still see history from when you joined; it just lets you see whatever bits of history your client has cached, which resets anytime you restart the client (on desktop) or anytime the client loses state due to memory pressure (on Android, no idea about iOS.) It doesn't really make much sense. I guess the desktop behavior kind of matches IRC, but it's not what D…

Doesn't it? I'd argue that this is a perfectly reasonable outcome. Server-side history is disabled -- for everyone. Sure, you could have saved the conversation when you saw it, but it doesn't do it for you.

Ephemerality can be desirable. However, I do agree there should ideally be three options, including the one you're describing.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#109

Post by entropie »

grishka wrote: post #103
xena wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do it because Discord has a fundamentally better UX. It's bad for long term archival and the like, but it is an earth-shatteringly better UX than with traditional forum engines.

Huh? Discord has really poor UX compared to other IM services I use, like Telegram. Notification settings are so complex that it takes trial, error, and missed important messages to end up with a sensible configuration (no broadcast mentions in any shape or form, no badges unless I'm mentioned by my own username or there's a reply to my message). Every little piece of its UI is custom-built and routinely defies my ex…

Discords notifications are actually are nightmare. I still have a single (1) on my direct messages link and I cannot figure out (since like 2 month) where it comes from. And that all after I had a little red dot in the taskbar discord icon for like a year which I somehow managed to get rid of.

Overall its usability is okay for me, but there are really some big quirks.

Re: Forum Channels: A space for organized conversations

#110

Post by elcomet »

danr4 wrote: post #71
spankalee wrote: post #28

My OSS Project (Lit - at https://lit.dev ) just moved our community chat from Slack to Discord[1] and we couldn't be happier right now. one of the main reasons is the velocity that Discord is moving to add useful community oriented features like this. Assuming this means that Forum Channels are GA now, we're going to us them for our #ask-for-help channel to make them more organized and searchable. I think it's a grea…

The velocity????? Discord’s product has barely changed, they move so slow, but thanks to their market dominance no one has been able to compete

This has not been my experience. Compared to slack they are moving much faster
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