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Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

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Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#81

Post by this_user »

Filligree wrote: post #6
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

This is exactly the reason why decentralised services cannot win. People talk about Mastodon instead of Twitter, or Lemmy instead of Reddit, but the overwhelming majority of users wants convenience above everything else. They don't want to figure out which instance to join and how to get access to federated content.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#82

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #75
bovermyer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than Teamspeak, yes. Better than IRC? Eh, I guess so. But let's chat about that "better than forums" supposition. - Forums are easy for search engines to index - Old threads on forums are easily discoverable - Forums have good threading in general - Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care) - It's easy to have completely different identities on differe…

One thing that I’ve not seen any traditional forum software do particularly well is search. For some reason, forum search sucks to the point that if the forum is visible when logged out you’re better off doing a “ site:forums.foobar.baz” search with Google. Your average user doesn’t know about that type of Google search though, and so I suspect that many people find it more difficult to surface information with tradi…

You say that as if using the site operator is the only way to do it, which it's not. Most people can figure out that just adding the name of the forum to their query is often sufficient. And this is often how people find forums at all. If you're googling for something in general and not looking for it on discord, you won't find any discord chats. You might find a forum though.

Also, your at worst scenario is a bit contrived. There's plenty of ways to not get an answer, to get a wrong answer, or to be berated by gatekeepers because "you don't actually want that".

It's still the internet, don't make it out like discord has somehow changed that fundamental fact, because they really haven't.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#83

Post by the_common_man »

INGSOCIALITE wrote: post #43

I seriously dislike trying to use Discord, and I get annoyed when open source projects direct questions / support to a community discord as opposed to a wiki or faq of forum. Searching discord is painful, and god forbid you ask a question that someone else asked 3 weeks ago that you weren’t sitting in front of the chat for. The only discord that kind of makes sense (that I’ve used, and I haven’t used many) is the doo…

Or nodebb

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#84

Post by nirvdrum »

INGSOCIALITE wrote: post #43

I seriously dislike trying to use Discord, and I get annoyed when open source projects direct questions / support to a community discord as opposed to a wiki or faq of forum. Searching discord is painful, and god forbid you ask a question that someone else asked 3 weeks ago that you weren’t sitting in front of the chat for. The only discord that kind of makes sense (that I’ve used, and I haven’t used many) is the doo…

Discourse is a nice experience once you're in, but the lack of federation is problematic. With NNTP, IRC, or even email lists, I can participate in multiple communities from one screen. With Discourse, I need to register on different sites and then visit each of them individually and regularly if I want to actively participate. Consequently, I don't often participate in those communities.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#85

Post by BoxFour »

nisegami wrote: post #37
ryu2k2 wrote: post #26

I think there's a real market for a non-profit discord-like platform on the open web, especially with all the reddit drama going on. Part of me wants to build this. The larger part knows I'll never ship a game when I keep letting web projects get into the way.

>The larger part knows I'll never ship a game when I keep letting web projects get into the way. I don't know if you knew this, but Slack started as a project for a game dev team to communicate. https://wiredelta.com/how-was-slack-developed/

and, notably, Discord too started out trying to make a game.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#86

Post by xp84 »

avian wrote: post #74
raxxorraxor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI is optmized for the usual ADHD kid on cocaine that really needs every stimuli maximized. The text density is attrocious. I guess they want to copy the Twitch model with microtransactions. Of course that would conflict again with making content actually discoverable. It is nice for chat, but not really for information exchange. I do think that many communities are making a mistake if they solely rely on it.

You're getting downvoted, but I think low text density contributes to the low quality of conversation. I've commonly witnessed conversations that were going around in circles, with people just tuning in and re-asking questions that were already asked and answered in the same conversation two or three page scrolls up. If it's not on the bottom screenful of text in a channel it might as well not exist on Discord. Which…

To be super fair too, if you compare Discord to forums, (the thing lots of communities were using before Reddit) in terms of whether it’s good at managing a large discussion, remember when there would be a thread with 19 pages? People would be challenged to find the actually useful post on page 5 when there were dozens of pages on an active thread.

So it’s a slight reassurance, although I feel like still the difference is Google would index those, so you could be landed right on the interesting page. With discord, an hour after the brilliant point was made, it’s essentially lost for everyone but whoever was looking at the chat when it happened :( so I guess my point is… it’s not so bad, but actually it’s pretty bad.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#87

Post by xattt »

Levitz wrote: post #15
Filligree wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

Voice chat alone was an absolute gamechanger. The alternative at the time was either crappy free solutions or you just paid for a server. It's really no surprise it got super popular.

Discord gives an opportunity to self-host. It’s a little bit frustrating to do that, but also turn your own hardware into a walled garden.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#88

Post by seydor »

serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

reddit was so bad and so politically onesided that people couldnt talk anymore, it did not evolve, so a lot of people migrated

IMHO people use discord as a reddit alternative, NOT as a chat platform. Everywhere i go i see asynchronous communication.

It's terrible though, a horrible way to organize text and hidden away from search engines too. the bots and other gimmicks are pure noise. text works though and notifications help

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#89

Post by kitsunesoba »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #82
kitsunesoba wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I’ve not seen any traditional forum software do particularly well is search. For some reason, forum search sucks to the point that if the forum is visible when logged out you’re better off doing a “ site:forums.foobar.baz” search with Google. Your average user doesn’t know about that type of Google search though, and so I suspect that many people find it more difficult to surface information with tradi…

You say that as if using the site operator is the only way to do it, which it's not. Most people can figure out that just adding the name of the forum to their query is often sufficient. And this is often how people find forums at all. If you're googling for something in general and not looking for it on discord, you won't find any discord chats. You might find a forum though. Also, your at worst scenario is a bit co…

The core point that forum search is bad and pulls down their user experience stands, however.

Don't get me wrong, my preference definitely leans towards forums… I grew up on them after all. They have a lot of the type of rough edges that people aren't very forgiving of these days, though.

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