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Stop Using Discord

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Re: Stop Using Discord

#171

Post by badsectoracula »

kwanbix wrote: post #59
NeutralForest wrote: post #37

I feel like we have this discussion every month, one way or another. People use Discord because it's useful and they like the experience. Discourse is nice for purely written communication but if you want to setup a call, direct message and, more importantly, write bots (presentation, topic organization, news, modding, now even AI Q&A); people will fall back to Discord. Pointing at Discourse when it doesn't have the…

I have been using computers for 40 years and I cannot see a single feature of discord that I cannot have on a forum or even reddit. In fact, the UX of Discord is abismal.

Forums and reddit do not have chat[0] and video calls/streaming. The real alternative to Discord is IRC, Matrix, etc, not Discourse and phpBB or whatever.

[0] hacks aside

Re: Stop Using Discord

#172

Post by nehal3m »

kwanbix wrote: post #59
NeutralForest wrote: post #37

I feel like we have this discussion every month, one way or another. People use Discord because it's useful and they like the experience. Discourse is nice for purely written communication but if you want to setup a call, direct message and, more importantly, write bots (presentation, topic organization, news, modding, now even AI Q&A); people will fall back to Discord. Pointing at Discourse when it doesn't have the…

I have been using computers for 40 years and I cannot see a single feature of discord that I cannot have on a forum or even reddit. In fact, the UX of Discord is abismal.

I don't see Discord as a replacement for forums, but as a replacement for TeamSpeak/Ventrilo. The chat is an added bonus.

As far as I know there is no other voice communication program that handles voice channels TeamSpeak style with a chat box next to it. If there is one I'd jump ship.

Re: Stop Using Discord

#173

Post by theshrike79 »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #69
Springtime wrote: post #54

Ultimately someone has to pay for things. Many communities have apparently decided they don't want to use even modern forum software and become a webmaster, along with avoiding the costs and time associated, or use someone else's existing forum (which may or may not suit their needs). The quite liberal free file attachment limits (25MB each), ease of communication and ironically the fact Discord is closed off in natu…

I tried discord only once, but to me it was a disorganized chaotic experience. People seem to really think that well organized faq sections on traditional websites and properly searchable and indexable forum threads should be replaced by "just search through two years of chat backlog on discord". Or something like that.

I have the same feeling about Matrix - and I've used IRC since the 90s so I'm used to jank.

Discord has a clear segmentation where a "server" (community) has multiple "channels" (and "forums").

I can easily context-switch between servers. With Matrix there is no clear way (at least to me) to get all channels from a specific context - that is provided by someone else. I can of course manually organise channels somehow, but that's not what I want to do.

Example: When I join the Retro Handhelds community[0] on Discord I get access to a huge amount of channels, created by the server admins. I then have a fancy UI (Channels & Roles) where I can pick which specific retro handhelds I am interested in (RG35XX and Anbernic) and it hides the other channels from my view.

There are no other tools that can do this currently. Matrix has the technical capability, but their insistence on making the client NOT-Discord is getting a bit tedious.

I WANT to like Matrix, but they're making it so damn hard.

[0] https://discord.gg/retrohandhelds

Re: Stop Using Discord

#174

Post by ourmandave »

michaelt wrote: post #88
morjom wrote: post #58

Use a matrix bridge to discord instead. Jokes aside the discord ux is good enough for the average user, it already has chokehold on its users and there is no equivalent. I would also prefer things to be easily searchable, archivable etc but consumers consume.

> it already has chokehold on its users and there is no equivalent. There are plenty of equivalents - Slack, Microsoft Teams etc offer the same IRC + persistent messages + searchable + persistent user accounts & admin + multi-device + image sharing + file sharing + spam protection product. They're just even worse , by most of the metrics that make people hate discord.

I'll never use MS Teams for personal stuff because it's way to work adjacent. The fear of a mis-click or wrong login is to stressful to even start.

Re: Stop Using Discord

#175

Post by hprotagonist »

hu3 wrote: post #32
hprotagonist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libera.chat is free. the network doesn’t compel registration, even! (though some channels do)

unfortunately, irc is not a replacement for discord.

discord is just IRC in a trenchcoat. what’s to replace?

Re: Stop Using Discord

#177

Post by theshrike79 »

mtndew4brkfst wrote: post #148
opensource4ever wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

matrix.org allows 100 mb attachment. It is federated, which means you can move your data to your server if you like later. There are many clients and server implementations now and it is e2ee.

I dip my toes in regularly for the last two years. Every time I do, Matrix has been an extremely janky experience with negligible command of good UX principles. It's awful, and I'm only trying to use two devices. If folks want to convince less ideologically motivated people to switch and support The Cause it still needs so much TLC. It's barely competing on table stakes features for a chat platform.

This is my exact experience. The tech underlying Matrix is very interesting, but they really need to hire a proper UX person.

Re: Stop Using Discord

#178

Post by hprotagonist »

poulpy123 wrote: post #48
hprotagonist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libera.chat is free. the network doesn’t compel registration, even! (though some channels do)

It looks like a small IRC-like chat, not a replacement for a forum and not even for discord-as-a-forum

it’s the new name for freenode — so it is IRC and large (by IRC standards…)

Re: Stop Using Discord

#179

Post by chrisjj »

NeutralForest wrote: post #108
chrisjj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People use Discord because it's useful and they like the experience. Let's fix that. Discord-using people use Discord because it's useful to them and they like the experience.

Ok? That's just being pedantic. The point I'm trying to make, is that we need to find why people use Discord and offer something better for our (devs+technical users) use case; that'll also need to go the existing network effect.

The point I'd make is you'd more need to find out why people who don't use Discourse (instead of fora) don't. The reason surely has little to do with the non-forum-like functions that appeal to those who do like it.

Having said which, finding out is obstructed by the fact that very few organisers offer users both.

Re: Stop Using Discord

#180

Post by Ekaros »

Why isn't lot of information just inside the project repositories for open source projects? It is text thus space it takes is trivial. At least if images are not needed. It would be versioned so stay in relatively sync with versions of code at time. FAQ and basic configuration things for commonly asked questions could be easily be stored in documents. Why is this not being done? Wouldn't it be trivial amount of work?
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