Discord is a black hole for information • Hacker News Board

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#221

Post by aaomidi » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

monocultured wrote: post #220

Twenty or so years ago I was running Hotline and KDX servers, and loved having "my own place" where people could visit and hang out. Recently, I started a Discord channel to rediscover some of that same feeling, but it's mostly become a persistent chat for my friends (in lieu of Messanger, Telegram, etc). Some other channels I've joined are quite quirky and fun though. The main difference being that you could only be…

People are using it as a knowledge repo and it's not indexable.

Learning from past discussions is getting so much harder.

Discord can and should fix this.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#222

Post by MatthiasPortzel » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

leni536 wrote: post #45

Ekaros wrote: post #25

Discord is the modern IRC. And at least you can see history there, unlike with IRC where it is just gone if your client fails.

Discord search is unfortunately garbage in my experience, so it's almost like not having history.

Several people in this thread have complained about it, but I haven't had any issues.

It's O(log n), it has fuzzy search (e.g. noun/verb forms the same word), and you can add qualifiers like `from:Author#1234`.

I can normally join a Discord server for a project, search for a keyword, find someone else with the same question, and read the chat log from that point in time.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#223

Post by MatthiasPortzel » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

e2le wrote: post #180

Ekaros wrote: post #25

Discord is the modern IRC. And at least you can see history there, unlike with IRC where it is just gone if your client fails.

At least with IRC, many would run bots which made channel logs available somewhere that could be indexed by a search engine. Doing the same with Discord will earn you a TOS ban.

IIRC, scripting your own account is bannable, so you can't download the contents of servers you join. But I don't think there's any prohibition on inviting a proper bot account to download messages, provided you have admin access on the server to do so.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#224

Post by ViViDboarder » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

kristjank wrote: post #115

unpopularopp wrote: post #37

Discord "won me" over the voice chat. It's just so easy to use and setup for people. I know it's a hard pill to swallow on HN but NOT everyone wants and/or can run their own TS/Mumble/Ventrilo server. That's the number 1 reason Discord became popular in gaming groups. Want voice chat for your WoW raid? 2 clicks. Going to play CSOG with your friends? Here is the voice chat channel. Discord is not perfect for sure (the…

You can get just as good voice chat on Signal, and it is miles easier to use than Discord, especially for people familiar with WhatsApp, Viber and other privacy invaders. And all of the screenshares and embeds that Discord gets glorified over work just as well over [matrix]

I feel like Discord is very different than Signal or WhatsApp and target very different use cases.

Signal and WhatsApp are basically replacements for phone, SMS, and MMS while Discord is meant to be more of a community with many people on many topics in many channels.

They are all quite good at what they do, but they do different things.

A more direct alternative to Discord is Matrix.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#225

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #34

Is there a concrete reason that we can't build a search engine for discord public content? Archive it? We used to do this for IRC as well. Anyone remembers https://ibot.rikers.org/ ?

[deleted]

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#226

Post by FastEatSlow » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

madars wrote: post #214

The worst part about Discord is that it is against their ToS to use third-party clients (and there are reports of people's accounts being banned for them making the black hole effect worse). In particular, you can't have a client that has local chat history, local search, or just better information density on the screen: >All 3rd party apps or client modifiers are against our ToS, and the use of them can result in yo…

I'd argue that it's not too significant of an issue, as generally most clients do a good job of presenting themselves with completely normal behaviour to the discord api. Most people are banned because of API limits, such as attempting to spam without keeping in mind the limits, (Random delays with around 1 msg/s last I tried), or there's a bug in the client, such as ripcord once causing a login loop for me. If you keep it sensible, it's fine. Most people using these custom clients know the dangers and keep information on how to get back into everything, so there's not too much of a black hole effect.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#227

Post by albio » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #207

simias wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But on Discord you're invited to what they abusively call a "server" ... I don't know if this has changed, but they were originally called guilds.

Seems like they're called "servers" now. I imagine "guilds" felt a bit too gamer centric for them after they saw how popular their service was becoming.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#228

Post by stefan_ » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

emptybottle wrote: post #130

Discord channel sprawl is a strange phenomenon. It happens to each server I’ve joined, just gets worse over time. I think park of the issue is that you cant /part a channel in discord. Every channel you have access is automatically joined, you can’t leave and you have to adjust notifications for each to avoid an overwhelming number of messages. That and the communities are usually small-ish so you have the same peopl…

Even small communities can have painfully unaware, "organization" obsessed OCD people in it. They are generally the ones that keep insisting some particular thread of discussion really belongs in #xyz.

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#229

Post by zer0-c00l » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #201

pessimizer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever want to turn anything off? What if you need it? Then what if it couldn't hear that you need it? You need it to be able to hear when you need it. Don't turn things off.

I don't think I experienced this when I was younger, but, now, it feels like being "on" (e.g., on Discord, even if it's closed and sitting in the tray and I'm getting no messages) incurs some subconscious stress somehow. I'm not getting any messages, but I could get some at any moment. And then I'd have to choose whether to respond immediately or not. And, while I'm not responding, some part of me is wondering what t…

you can mute specific servers and channels. I use this judiciously

Re: Discord is a black hole for information

#230

Post by zer0-c00l » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

etripe wrote: post #92

zppln wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subreddit is a horrible place for discussion though.

Mostly, yes, but it comes down to moderation and subreddit culture. Reddit - as a company - doesn't take moderation seriously, as evidenced by it being left to unpaid volunteers.

Moderation being left to unpaid community members is a sign that Reddit DOES take moderation seriously