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Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

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Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#1

Post by rhyssullivan1 »

Hi!

I'm Rhys, I develop Answer Overflow a search engine for Discord channels. Answer Overflow indexes content from channels into Google making them discoverable on the web.

I'm sharing this again after seeing a lot of discussion during the Reddit blackout about the inaccessibility of information sent in Discord servers.

Answer Overflow is a verified bot in over 100 communities, fully complies with the Discord ToS, and is open source! https://github.com/AnswerOverflow/AnswerOverflow

Check out some of the communities here!

T3 Community - https://www.answeroverflow.com/c/966627436387266600

C# - https://www.answeroverflow.com/c/143867839282020352

Reactiflux - https://www.answeroverflow.com/c/143867839282020352

All - https://www.answeroverflow.com/browse

Please let me know what feedback you have, thanks for checking it out!

Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web
answeroverflow.com

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#4

Post by rhyssullivan1 »

mdaniel wrote: post #2

Welcome back. How does this compare to Linen ( https://github.com/linen-dev/linen.dev#readme ), which claims to support Slack and Discord? I do see the license difference, but didn't know if that was the major differentiator

Couple key differences:

- Answer Overflow works on a consent basis for displaying messages (https://docs.answeroverflow.com/user-settings/displaying-mes...), while Linen does all the messages in a community. The consent system Answer Overflow has helps a lot with respecting user privacy while also getting content indexed.

- Linen appears to be building out a competitor to Slack & Discord while Answer Overflow is focused on building on top of those platforms, so we've got very different roadmaps. From what I can gather from the Linen roadmap, they're implementing things like voice chat, private channels, etc. Whereas with Answer Overflow some of the things I'm focused on is answer automation, tracking outdated answers, analytics for where to improve your docs etc

- Answer Overflow is pretty much only focused on Discord servers, it wouldn't be too hard to support both Slack and Discord but what's nice about focusing on Discord for now is it helps with our goal of being the best indexing tool specifically for Discord

- Global search (https://www.answeroverflow.com/search), you can search all Answer Overflow communities at the same time

The team at Linen have built out a great product though and it's cool watching them succeed with it!

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#7

Post by rhyssullivan1 »

apignotti wrote: post #5

Genuine question: I love Discord, but how on earth is it possible that such functionality was not built-in to begin with? I really don't understand how the need for indexing and search was overlooked.

I think it's due to how Discord evolved as a platform

Discord start as "your private place for your friends to talk" during a time where there were a lot of privacy issues with other communication methods.

Then as it grew beyond this scope of being a private place for friends, it would have been good for indexing to be added but indexing a normal text channel is really hard since you don't know where the conversation starts / stops to submit to a sitemap.

Now we've got large public communities and forum channels so it's possible they roll out their own version soon, but it does still slightly go against how their product was originally created so there may be some hesitation with adding it due to not knowing what the community reaction will be like.

Re: Show HN: Answer Overflow – Indexing Discord content into the web

#9

Post by rhyssullivan1 »

easygenes wrote: post #6

While I see the value here, I don't really think most Discord communities are appropriate to be indexed. It breaks the whole cozy web aspect of it. [1] [1] https://maggieappleton.com/cozy-web

Most Discord communities aren't meant to be indexed I agree! Thanks for linking that article it was interesting to read

There's lots that have support channels though for programming libraries, for games, etc and having all of that content locked away can be really damaging.

One of the interesting things I've noticed is when a community for a more niche game / programming library joins Answer Overflow, they often shoot up to being top performers on the site which is great to see.

Along with that, not all channels are indexed, mainly just help channels. What's nice with this is it keeps that cozy feeling of a private place to talk, while helping more people find a community they will enjoy and keeping information accessible.

Long term, I'd like to implement forms of anti-abuse tools for communities to use so they can understand what the types of people who join their server from Answer Overflow are like. For example, if it turns out that 90% of the people who join are abusive, then it'd make sense for them to turn off indexing.

You could possibly make the argument that for the long term health of some communities, having indexed content helps to keep the community active

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